In Dark Service

by Stephen Hunt

  ‘You are lucky to have survived.’

  ‘Luck had nothing to do with it,’ coughed Carter, propping himself up and taking a trickle of water. He tried to drink it slow, to avoid cramping up. ‘You saved me – you and others…’

  ‘Willow was here, that is true. She has been swapping shifts with the sorting line workers. I am worried about how little sleep she has allowed herself. Your nation is not nearly as hardy as gask-kind. The womanling is close to exhaustion.’

  Carter felt overwhelmed by a wave of guilt. The two people who had worked so hard to save him, and he’d left them behind on the station when he’d tried to break out. Maybe I was wrong about Willow? That was a difficult thing to admit, even to himself. He’d almost rather take another flogging than admit it publicly. ‘I’m surprised my throat wasn’t cut while I was asleep.’

  ‘Not for lack of trying, by some’ said the gask. ‘I asked the doctor to help us keep a special watch over you.’

  The slave in question was Samuel Tooky. He claimed to have been a doctor back in Weyland, but if so, Carter suspected he’d been the horse doctoring kind. Everyone on the station called him Doctor Too, for his habit of saying he’d be able to heal someone, if only he had his old surgical tools, nursing staff, or a decent pharmacy on hand, too. Well, at least he had proved himself useful when it came to preventing murder on his watch.

  Khow pulled his silver abacus machine out of a leather tool pouch and tapped its glass readout. ‘I am confused. During your fever your weight upon the world altered beyond recognition. Now it is as if you walk with the trail of a legion within your footsteps. Such a realignment should not be possible’

  ‘I’m full of surprises.’

  ‘I assure you, this goes far beyond your well-demonstrated talent for rash and random actions.’

  ‘Well, I’ve seen a few impossible things,’ said Carter. ‘When I was down on Old Smoky. And I suffered a head full of them up here too.’

  ‘And now the world is moving around you, rather than the converse.’

  ‘My head’s been left clear, is all,’ said Carter. ‘I know who sold us out. Who hid the tracking device in the transporter and made sure that Alan, Noah, Deeli and Eshean were murdered by the empire before we’d even bugged out for freedom.’

  Kerge checked around to make sure no other slave was within ear­shot. ‘Who on the station could do such a thing?’

  ‘Owen Paterson. The man overheard me outlining my scheme and as good as warned me not to try to break out. When I went ahead…’

  ‘You are mistaken, manling.’

  ‘The hell I am. Think about it. Paterson’s been around as long as anyone. Everyone looks up to him as a leader; yet he’s never been promoted into the middle-hostile caste with the other slaves who administer the station for our so-called mistress. He’s just one of the boys, eating alongside us, working alongside us. Always helpful to the greenhorns, always advising caution to new workers if they look like they might go making a ruckus. Always listening. I just don’t know if Anna Kurtain was in on the scheme with him. They’re as thick as thieves, those two.’

  ‘The two are merely veterans of this terrible place – they have survived together. Such trials create a resilient bond.’

  ‘And who the hell survives up here?’

  ‘Those blessed by fate and in possession of a good heart. Owen is the one who scavenged the rations and medicines that kept you alive while you recovered from your wounds.’

  ‘To throw off suspicion, or ease a guilty conscience maybe.’

  ‘Clear your head of this matter. I am sure you are mistaken. I have examined the station’s chambers and passages, searching for concealed mechanical devices that would allow the Vandians to eavesdrop on our conversations.’

  ‘And how many such devices have you found?’

  ‘None yet. But—’

  ‘But nothing. Owen warned us to watch what we say inside the station because there might be turncoats listening. He even said it with a straight face! You know what irony is, don’t you Kerge? The Vandians don’t need a legion of secret police sitting around bored, manning surveillance machines and listening to slaves farting and moaning, to control the sky mines. Not when they’ve got hungry slaves with loose lips doing the job in exchange for an easy ride.’

  Carter leant back in the bunk for a second, suppressing a howl of pain when his back brushed the rock wall.

  Kerge indicated a stone bowl on the floor filled with a foul-smelling paste. ‘You will need to rub the paste across your spine for many weeks.’

  ‘Do I want to know what’s in it?’

  ‘Mogo tubers mixed with fuel ether. Diluted, its toxins numb nerves and shield you from the worst of your pain.’

  ‘Maybe I need to be reminded of the pain,’ said Carter. ‘I’m the only one who survived. Noah, Eshean, they all died down there. They were relying on me.’

  ‘They followed their own branches, chose their own fate.’

  ‘They never had a chance,’ said Carter. ‘Not from the start. You were right.’

  ‘Time is a river sweeping all along its stream. There are currents you cannot swim against.’

  ‘Our friends weren’t the ones who deserved to drown, though, were they? It’s the bastard who betrayed us and slipped that tracking device inside the transporter.’

  ‘You must not act without conclusive proof,’ said Kerge. ‘Things will become difficult enough for you when you are assigned to the work parties. Starting a feud with a well-regarded worker would be counterproductive. Stay here and stay quiet. I shall fetch Willow to see you. Then, perhaps, she will allow herself some rest before her body fails her.’

  When Willow did appear she seemed flushed with excitement at her charge’s recovery, although if the skin of her hands was anything to go by – paler than Carter had ever seen before, almost translucent – she was far closer to collapsing than Carter, now. He could hear Kerge talking outside the fever room, conversing with male voices.

  ‘Did you thank Duncan for me?’

  ‘I never got the chance. He’s gone.’

  Carter felt a sudden shock of dread in his gut. ‘They flogged him to—?’

  ‘Gone off the station, not executed. Taken as a house-slave by that royal bitch. Thomas Gale told us that Duncan’s been assigned to the team of slaves tasked with keeping Lady Cassandra safe.’

  Carter just stopped himself snorting with laughter. ‘Of all the damn jobs. I never saw Duncan Landor as a wet nurse!’

  ‘He’s already saved her once,’ said Willow, brushing her crimson hair back in annoyance. ‘It’s not funny. It’s dangerous work. The girl’s bodyguards were murdered on the station, betrayed by people in her own house. How safe is Duncan going to be out there?’

  ‘The old hands keep on telling us what a soft position being a house slave is.’

  ‘Princess Helrena found someone willing to risk their neck doing the right thing. That’s as rare a quality out in the empire as it is in the sky mines. And just as likely to get Duncan killed.’

  ‘Did your brother do the right thing? Saving me?’

  ‘I really don’t think I’m fit to comment.’

  ‘I’m sorry Duncan’s not here for you. With luck he’ll outlast us all, now.’

  ‘It’s not hard to outlast you, Carter Carnehan. Trouble follows you around like a hound on a lead. Back in Northhaven, the consequences were never going to be too serious. But stranded here, kept as slaves in the sky mines? Trouble’s fatal. Almost every consequence is fatal!’

  Kerge reappeared inside the fever room with a bowl of barley gruel. The smell was as good as a feast wafting towards Carter. He realised how empty his stomach had been left by the ravages of his temperature. ‘You’ll see Duncan again, Willow, if he’s become that little girl’s shadow. Helrena’s always visiting the station, checking her house’s riches; making sure the whip’s not being spared against our spines.’

  ‘That really doesn’t make me feel better.’
<
br />   ‘I’ll make sure nothing happens to you. I never had a sister, before, only brothers. But I’ll watch your back as carefully as Duncan ever did.’

  ‘Don’t do me any favours!’

  Carter watched in confusion as the girl ran out, tears streaming down her eyes. ‘What the hell was that about?’

  Kerge rested the bowl down on the bunk. ‘That? It is outside the extent of my calculations, manling.’ He sighed. ‘What the eyes cannot see, the mind cannot explain.’

  Carter reached for the gruel. It was almost as if— No, he must be imagining it. She probably just needs some rest.

  As large as the dungeons keeping Jacob and the others prisoner under the grand duke’s palace were, little air circulated through the fetid arched chambers. And what air there was, was shared with close to a hundred gad prisoners. All of them waiting on their cruel ruler’s whimsy – or perhaps just for him to finish his breakfast. Sheplar paced up and down the chamber shaking his head and muttering to himself, as if he was imagining a dozen ways that they could have avoided being incarcerated. Khow tapped on his abacus box, as though he might calculate a better fate for them, while Sariel, true to form, chattered away, adding to the heat with his jabber.

  ‘I have never had the dubious pleasure of these ill-nurtured cells before,’ grumbled Sariel. ‘Previous grand dukes of Hangel have had too much decency to introduce the prince of players to their gaol.’

  ‘From what I’ve seen, decency and the ruler here aren’t even nodding acquaintances,’ said Jacob.

  ‘But you may be comforted to know that this is not the first gaol I have found myself imprisoned inside.’

  ‘That, at least, is true,’ murmured Sheplar, as the mountain aviator strode past.

  ‘The Fortress of Dolar is the most impenetrable prison on Pellas, perched upon a crag so high that its prisoners must wear oxygen masks like the crew of a merchant carrier. The only way in or out is in man-sized baskets lowered on chains, the journey to the ground below taking two hours. Each cell is attended only by a deaf and mute guard who could not be bribed or cajoled.’

  ‘A difficult place to escape,’ growled Jacob.

  ‘That was not the worst of it, Your Grace! The authorities hired the best chef in the land to work in the fortress kitchens. Each meal was a banquet so fine that the explosion of flavours could almost send you blind. You would find yourself sweating in anticipation hours before each meal. Four times a day, trembling like a drunkard for his sack. The food so exquisite, that once any prisoner had been fed in the fortress for a week, they could not bear to escape if it meant never eating there again.’

  ‘And yet here you stand.’

  ‘A liar and a scoundrel,’ said Sheplar, passing by. It was easy to ignore his asides with the low, wailing cadence of the gad prisoners filling the arched dungeons. They sat and rocked as they sang in their own tongue.

  Sariel ignored the flier. ‘And it was I who gave the lie to its governor’s boast of the place’s inescapability. Ah yes, but it took all my ingenuity to leave that wretched prison. I kept the food the mute pushed through my cell door and scattered it by the bars of my single window, to feed the colony of hump bats – flying rodents with a sack on their back to store oxygen – that nested in the crag’s caves. After the bats were addicted, I would snap one of their necks for each meal, then eat it raw. As disgusting a taste as you could imagine – but the perfect antidote for the kitchen’s mouth-watering fare. Many was the time I was nearly sick into my oxygen mask.’

  ‘But even cured of the addiction, you were still trapped.’

  ‘Not for long. I worked the dead bats’ teeth into a loose leg of my bed, fashioning a saw to hack away at my window’s bars. Finally, I made a parachute out of my blanket, and when the last bar was cut… then I leapt into the moonless night and sailed to freedom.’

  Sheplar merely snorted as he paced past again.

  ‘A jump so precarious, there isn’t a Rodalian glider pilot in the world who could emulate it,’ added Sariel, pointedly. ‘But what I had not counted on was the bats. They were so used to eating my food that a great cloud of them gathered and followed me across the sky, attracting the guard’s attentions. Soon the night was filled with searchlights with the brutes shooting wildly as they tried to bring me down.’ He paused a second to see if Jacob would bite for the escape’s conclusion, but the pastor merely shrugged.

  ‘Luckily,’ continued Sariel, ‘I had set aside a leg of honeyed ham to sustain me for my journey out of the barren forest surrounding the crag. I tossed it away and the bats followed it, along with the searchlights and the guards’ bullets.’

  Jacob cast an eye around the thin, miserable gads crowding the dungeon around them. ‘Somehow, I don’t think surviving addiction to prison rations will be a problem here.’

  ‘Indeed, he is a miserly host,’ said Sariel, casting an eye around the humid chamber. ‘Leaving us to bake in his oven without even supplying the dough to knead to make bread.’

  ‘This city’s ruler knows us somehow,’ said Khow from the floor. ‘My numbers indicate a reversion, the inverse of an analytic function.’

  ‘If you say so, friend. We’ll be finding out soon enough, I reckon,’ said Jacob.

  Sariel began thumping the flagstones with his walking staff, as though he might summon his missing breakfast. Instead, the door – steel-plated wood as thick as a man’s forearm – unlocked, drew open, and a team of gad slaves dragged in a heavy oak barrel. Four well-armed soldiers watched the slaves prise up the barrel lid, revealing a tub of brackish-looking water, then departed with the slaves while the prisoners lined up to use a wooden spoon to slop out rations of drink. Jacob and the others joined the line. He was impressed by the gads’ discipline. There was no fighting or brawling over the precious liquid, despite the fact they would need a lot more than what was inside here to stay alive in the dungeon’s oppressive heat. In fact, looking at how fast the liquid disappeared, there was a chance it would be empty by the time Jacob reached the barrel. It wouldn’t be the same inside a Weyland cell, that much he knew. A figure among the queuing gads caught Jacob’s eye. It was the way he tried to stay out of sight of the visitors that roused Jacob’s suspicious hackles. Jacob looked closer. Something strange about the prisoner’s striped yellow and brown and green skin, too; different from the other prisoners. He strode towards the gad. Confirming his suspicions, the locals began clustering more tightly around their friend, blocking Jacob’s view.

  ‘Your skin paint,’ noted Jacob, ‘is running in the heat.’

  The other gads tried to shoo the interloper away, protesting that none of them knew what he was talking about.

  ‘What is this?’ said Sheplar, coming up behind Jacob.

  ‘That one,’ said Jacob, pointing to the gad sheltering behind his kin, ‘isn’t what he seems.’

  Sheplar followed the line of Jacob’s finger. ‘Why… the patterning on his skin is running?’

  ‘Yes, that happens when it’s been painted on.’

  ‘A spy!’ hissed Sheplar. ‘A dirty informer.’

  Jacob held the aviator back as he tried to push his way through the crowd. ‘I don’t think so. Leastways, not a spy for the grand duke, not with so many genuine gads eager to cover for him. I would say he’s a half-breed. Perhaps a scout for the tribes beyond the walls.’

  ‘This is not so,’ called one of the gads hiding their comrade.

  ‘Let’s shout for the grand duke’s guards, then,’ said Jacob. ‘If you’ve got nothing to hide, you’ve got nothing to worry about.’

  The figure the natives sheltered reluctantly stepped forward. He was a tall male. His skin similar to his comrades, apart from where an indistinct mottling had been revealed around his neck, still running with sweat. Somewhere between common pattern and gad. He was a half-breed.

  ‘You have your freedom, then,’ said the gad. ‘If you reveal my presence, the grand duke’s soldiers will surely reward you with your liberty.’

  ‘
I doubt it,’ said Jacob. ‘I’ve yet to meet the man, but from what I’ve seen of his state, he doesn’t strike me as the grateful type. You’re taking a risk, coming into the royal city.’

  ‘I heard that a baby had been born to a servant. We snatch them, whenever we can. Before the city law is applied.’

  ‘I reckon you were one of them, once.’

  ‘Your guess is a good one,’ said the gad. ‘I am called Zanasi by the people in the city.’

  ‘The trickster,’ said Sariel. ‘Zanasi is the Gaddish god who became King of All Stories after proving to the Land Mother that he could change his shape into a hippo, a jaguar and a hornet.’

  ‘You know our history well, old one,’ said the gad.

  Sariel shrugged modestly. ‘I bested the real Zanasi once in a poet’s duel. By rights, the title of King of All Stories belongs to me. But he wept so much afterwards, I couldn’t bear to strip him of it.’

  Zanasi grinned at the vagrant’s cheek. ‘That is wise. For when he is in the shape of a hornet, he stings mightily.’

  ‘Yes. I am far too kindly for my own good.’

  ‘All I can change into is a gad or a Hangel,’ said Zanasi, ‘depending on which dye I apply to my face.’

  ‘You might have wanted to pick the latter for your morning’s work,’ said Jacob. He introduced himself and the others in Northhaven’s expedition to the scout.

  ‘A city man carrying a gad babe?’ said Zanasi, staring quizzically at the strange group of foreigners after Jacob finished his introductions. ‘Not a common sight. And nobody looks twice at a gad servant.’

  ‘A common problem,’ said Khow. ‘To a manling, all gasks look alike. They can barely distinguish male from female.’

  ‘There is a little truth in that,’ said Zanasi. ‘It was bad luck for me there were so many soldiers out early. The Hangels are normally asleep in their barracks at such a premature hour.’

  ‘We are to blame for their early patrols,’ said Jacob.

  ‘I have heard tell of you. You are the party which climbed the servants’ stairs up to the city yesterday. But I do not think the grand duke has imprisoned you for that.’