There was nothing I could do about it, not lying awake. Even after dozing off into fitful light sleep, I wasn’t able to find Tamar again. I thought I heard Kyros’s voice, in the distance, but I couldn’t be sure.
I woke for real sometime before the guards came down to wake us. Prax had taken a stick, stirred together the contents of the night pot, then scraped the revolting result out onto a scrap of cloth, and set that aside in a corner.
“The guards are going to smell that,” someone murmured. “What are you going to say when they find it?”
“Lauria can say that she was sick during the night and soiled her clothes,” Prax said calmly. “She’s feeling well enough to work this morning, though.”
The cook came over to stare dubiously at the shit-smeared folded cloth. “Do you really think they’re not going to notice if I put that in their food?”
“Put in only what you think you can get away with,” Prax said.
“And you think it’ll work this time. What if they catch me?”
“Take care that they don’t. But I think it will work.” Prax caught the man’s eyes and touched his arm. “The djinni have said that we’ll be free.”
The cook nodded, trembling a little. We were going to let it sit for a day; hopefully he wouldn’t drop dead from sheer nervousness in the next day and a half.
“Did the djinni really promise that everyone here would be free?” I whispered as we took our spots and picked up our tools. “Or just you?”
“I see no way that I could be freed alone,” Prax said. “It’s everyone or no one, don’t you think?”
“Some could die,” I said.
“It will do him no good to think about that.”
It would do me no good to think on it, either, but that’s what I did for much of the day. I found it hard to imagine this working well enough that no one would die in this escape attempt, and I saw no particular reason to believe that I would be one of the survivors. The melancholia made me slow. My thoughts had no clarity and my wit no quickness; surely I wouldn’t be any better at avoiding a swinging sword.
Even after a mere two days underground, the sunlit world had begun to seem strangely far away. The rock was real, the task was real, the pain in my hands was surely real, but the open air, the steppe, freedom . . . they seemed much farther away than a hundred rungs of ladder.
The day passed, somewhere above us. With no sun to follow across the sky, my only hint was my increasingly hollow stomach. But our lunch arrived, finally, and then our dinner, and then people were descending the ladder and blankets were passed out.
I’d hoped, desperately, that I’d be able to speak with Tamar again tonight, but instead I found myself aching and sleepless, my mind lurching in slow circles like a dying animal. I sat up, finally, and leaned against the wall. The pebbles on the floor had begun to poke into my sore muscles, and my entire body felt bruised.
Something lifted my hair—a stray breeze? No. A glimmer in front of me, pale in the shadows, a djinn as miserable as the rest of the mine slaves.
“You’re the djinn that brings us our air,” I whispered. “I can’t free you. We’d die before morning.”
“You can’t free me now,” it whispered back. “But I will be free, like you. You will set me free before you go. It was promised.”
“What was promised?”
“You were promised. I’ve seen you in the places that only we can go; I’ve seen your face, I’ve heard your name.” Another feathery brush against my hair. “We aren’t supposed to share our secrets with you, but they’ve left me here, abandoned me in the darkness, and I don’t care anymore what they say. You are ours. You are the one who will free me. Promise me, promise me . . .”
“Can you fetch me something that will really make the guards sick? Real poison?”
“No. I am bound tighter than you are.”
“You’re talking to me, though.”
“I can wander the mine freely, but I am bound below the surface.”
“I think you’re as crazy as I am.”
“The slavers think that my land is dark, they think that darkness is what we need, what we like. They are wrong. They see nothing, nothing! They don’t know what our land is like. We are not creatures of darkness. We are not creatures of stone, of caves.”
“Neither am I.”
“No.” Another touch.
“I will free you as soon as I can.”
“They won’t want you to. The others here. Keep the spell-chain. Use it.”
“I know. I’ll free you anyway.”
“Promise.”
“I promise.” It was a foolish thing to promise, but I could no more turn away from the djinn’s plea than I could turn away from Prax, now. “Once I can, I will free you.”
My hair whipped briefly around my face, and then the djinn was gone. I wondered how close we were to morning, and after a while I lay back down. I did sleep, and I even dreamed, but I didn’t remember the dreams in the morning.
The cook took the new packet, slipping it under his clothing and giving Prax one more terrified look before he headed up the ladder. “Lunch pot,” Prax whispered to him. He glanced at me, and I nodded, thinking, I can’t bear any more waiting. Let this work. Please, please let this work.
I’d been staying as far away from the guards as I could, but after lunch, I found a spot to work on that was near enough that I could listen to their conversation. I was hoping desperately for indigestion, at least; a lack of appetite, the cold sweat and headache of looming illness. They weren’t much for talking, though; they paced up and down the line for much of the afternoon.
Finally, though, they took a tea break, lounging against the wall for a little while as we kept working. “Anything new on the rider?” one of them asked the other.
I felt the sweat on my arms turn cold. Tamar. Is this Tamar?
“Well, from what Therapon could tell, it’s only the one. If she’s a scout for a bandit raid she’s a long way ahead of the rest.”
“Maybe she’s planning to break in and rob us in our sleep?” They both chuckled at that.
“Word is, she’s to be brought in if you can catch her. She’s got a fast horse. Probably tomorrow the word will be, go catch her. There’s no way she’s out riding for her health. She’s up to no good.”
They put their cups down, with that, and a moment later the whip snapped out against my leg. “Teatime’s over,” the guard said, and I realized I’d slowed my pace, trying to listen to their conversation. “Back to work.”
So. There it was. She’s here, but we’re almost out of time. I wondered if she knew they’d seen her, knew they were after her. I have to dream tonight. Have to. Have to warn her.
The cook was shaking and pale when he came down. “I’m not doing this again,” he said when the guards were gone. “They tasted it, you fools. They knew something was different.”
“Did they eat it anyway?”
“Yes, but that was lunch, and are they on their knees vomiting? Some poison!”
Everyone looked at me. Including Prax. Just admit defeat. You’ve lost. You are lost. What are you going to say now?
If I don’t give them hope, right now, they will truly be lost.
“I have another idea,” I said. “But it needs to be day. For now—sleep.”
It was enough. Barely.
Prax came to speak with me, once all was quiet. “I don’t have a plan,” I whispered before he could ask. “I don’t have an idea. I lied.”
“I know.”
“The djinn that brings our air stopped to speak with me last night,” I whispered. “Last summer, there was another djinn that helped me.” The djinn bound in the bandits’ spell-chain had promised me that if I would free it by breaking the chain, it would move the bandits somewhere far away from us before returning to its home. “We made a deal,” I said after a moment. “I freed it by smashing the binding stone of its spell-chain. It helped me. I could free the djinn that brings our air. Maybe
it could do something . . .”
“Do you know where the spell-chain is?”
“No. But I could free it another way. It’s . . . hard to explain.”
I saw Prax’s hair move, ruffled slightly in a stray breeze that touched nothing else. “If I freed you, could you help us, if you chose?” I asked the djinn.
“No.” The hiss was tinged with regret. “I would be home, and not here. And you would suffocate here in the darkness, and I would be an outcast forever, for sacrificing your life for my freedom.”
“If we freed you during the day, what would they do then? Would they bring us up, or let us die here?”
“I think they’d bring us up,” Prax said. “It would cost them a lot of money to replace all of us, and it would shut the mine down for weeks. They’re always buying. But they’d keep a close eye on us.”
“For how long? It would take time to get a new spell-chain. Perhaps they’d get careless.”
“Perhaps . . .”
“Tomorrow,” the djinn hissed, and was gone. I felt my resolve harden. Tomorrow. One way or another.
Tamar was with me; she was in my arms, like a lover. “You have to leave,” I whispered, and her arms tightened around me. “They know you’re out there, they’re going to capture you if you stay. Pull back, at least. You can still help us once we’re all out.”
“You’re going to need my help to get out.”
“No, I have a new plan. But you need to be sure they don’t catch you—if they do, it’ll all be over.”
“You don’t think I could talk my way out?”
I thought that over. “No.”
“I’ll bear that in mind.”
“Tell me you’re going to take my advice,” I said. “No more hints. Tell me what you’re going to do.”
“Don’t worry about me.”
“They haven’t caught you already!” I said, horrified, but the dream was fading.
I woke feeling grimly certain that Tamar was in the hands of our enemies. I watched the faces of the guards for clues. They’re smiling. They have her, and that’s why they’re smiling. I tried to position myself near them again, to listen. They seemed a little groggy, though, as if they had been sick the night before, if not as incapacitated as I’d hoped. They paced and watched us; conversation was minimal.
“Hey, girl,” one of them said. I thought from my hunger that it was late morning, but I wasn’t sure. I kept my eyes on the rock, hoping they meant someone else.
“Yeah, I mean you,” he said, and I turned. He nodded. “Come here.”
I dragged my feet. “We’ve got a special task for you,” he said.
“A special privilege,” the other said.
“Do this right, and we might let you spend tomorrow upstairs in the fresh air. Would you like that? You know, you get a piece of cheese if you find a gem. Or a slice of apple. You’d like that, wouldn’t you.”
I swallowed hard and nodded, keeping my eyes on the ground.
“Well, then. Let’s show her what we’ve got. No, wait—first, have your hammer ready.” They snickered. I shrugged and raised my hammer.
One of them had his tea glass upended over something; he lifted it, and I saw a tiny spider, no bigger than my thumb. I remembered, last summer, Zosimos telling us about this, after Tamar freed him from the mine. It was a good amusement to force the slaves to kill spiders, knowing that many worshipped Arachne. No doubt they weren’t sure whether I worshipped Arachne or not—or else they’d caught Tamar and were trying to use this to know if I was Alashi. Surely any Alashi would hesitate to kill a spider.
I am a child of the djinni.
The spider was scuttling for the shadows fast enough that I didn’t think I could actually get it with my hammer, so I stomped on it with my foot.
“That’s one dead spider,” said the guard who’d first taunted me. He bent over it, and I saw the back of his neck, exposed: pale skin, the bony spine jutting out. My chance, I thought, and not trusting my sluggish mind to consider the consequences fast enough, I simply swung my hammer, as hard as I could.
The hammer sank into bone and flesh with a crunch. He was far more yielding than the rock wall, and my stomach twisted. He was a man, but he was my enemy, and I knew that I couldn’t afford second thoughts.
Prax—had he seen this coming? How could he, when I hadn’t known until just now that I would do this? Prax had his own hammer in his hand, and he leapt forward, swinging it into the face of the other guard. Another crack and a crunch, a second swing—his cry was cut off even as he voiced it, and a moment later both lay still.
“Are they dead?” someone whispered.
I flinched from touching their bodies, and Prax did it, feeling for breath and a heartbeat. “This one’s dead. This one isn’t, but I wouldn’t expect him to wake again in this world.”
“They’ll leave us to die,” said one of the men who’d gone with Boradai. “Even if there were a ladder, they’d see us coming up and kill us all . . .”
“They’re not going to leave us to die.” I swallowed hard. Just keep lying. “This was all part of my plan. The spider, that was a surprise, but it worked out well, didn’t it?” Nervous murmurs of agreement. I looked at the body and the unconscious guard. “I know how to use a sword,” I said, and took one.
“I’ve swung one. Once.” Prax took the other. I remembered the cut he’d given me when I took him back to Kyros and didn’t argue.
We need to get to the top. That’s the next step. How? The barrel of rocks that will go up at lunchtime. “Right,” I said. “Prax and I can hide in the barrel. We’ll pull a sheet over us and pile rocks on top. When it gets to the top, we’ll come out, kill the guards, and kick the ladder back down.”
“Kill the guards?” Prax said.
“We can do it,” I said.
“Then what?”
“How many guards are there in all?”
“About twenty.”
“Eighteen, now,” I said. “There are a lot more of us than there are of them. We’re going to do this.”
Above, we heard a gong. “That’s the signal for lunch,” Prax said. “Normally everyone would dump in their stones now.”
“Let’s get in.” We both fit, barely, our limbs twined together like lovers instead of old enemies. I wedged my sword in, point down, so that it wouldn’t cut me or Prax, and Prax did the same thing with his. Someone stripped a shirt off the dead guard and we pulled it over us like a taut roof; a thin layer of rocks was carefully piled on top.
“The slaves will know something’s going on. We’re going to be much lighter than the rocks.”
The slaves clustered around us. “If the unconscious one stirs, hit him on the head again,” Prax said.
“We can do this,” I said. “Trust us.” I could smell their fear, but there wasn’t anything I could do about it now. “If we don’t succeed in this, what will happen?” I whispered to Prax, in the dark.
“Something like this? At best, they’ll pull out the djinn and let everyone below suffocate. At worst, it’ll be an uglier death. No mercy, not for something like this. And for us . . .”
“I don’t want to know. Shut up.” I closed my eyes. “Djinn, are you near?”
The touch, like a feather. This time I reached back. “Return to the silent lands, lost one of your kind, and trouble us no more,” I whispered.
A moment of exhilaration. In the darkness, I thought for a moment that I could see a glimpse of the place the djinn came from, through the gate in my heart. And the djinn—I saw the djinn, like a wild-eyed woman of ragged flame. It hesitated for a moment in the doorway, turned back, grabbed my face, and kissed me full on the lips. It was like being kissed by a whirlwind, or by the sun. I felt a moment of intense heat, and all the breath went out of me. Then it was gone, and I was in the dark again, in Prax’s lap, his arms wrapped around me.
“Are you sure that was a good idea?” Prax asked.
“No. But this way we guarantee ourselves no straggl
ers. And the Greeks can’t pull the djinn out of the tunnel to use it against us.”
A shrug. And then another gong, and the barrel began to move.
It was a curious feeling, being lifted up like that. On one hand it reminded me of the trip in the makeshift palanquin, carried by the djinn; on the other hand, it was much slower, with many jerks, each of which threatened to leave the contents of my stomach on my lap. How are we even going to know that we’re at the top? But we slowed, and then stopped. “Be ready,” Prax whispered, as if I needed a reminder. Then, “Now!”
I leapt to my feet; Prax followed as soon as I was off of him, stolen swords in our hands. Whirling, I saw a guard, and lunged, trying to run him through before he even knew what was happening. Djinni guide my sword . . . His stunned cry choked off in a gush of blood from the slash to his neck. Well, or guide Prax’s sword. Really, either is fine.
There was only the one guard. Only the one! The ladder was rolled up on a spool; I unbuckled the belt that held it in place and let it unroll to the bottom of the tunnel. “Start up,” I called down.
Prax leaned past me and called down the shaft, “The djinn is gone. Come up if you want to live.”
“Is there usually only one guard?”
The two slaves shook their heads. “There’s usually three. They pulled two out to go out looking for bandits, I think.”
Had Tamar not been caught, then? Or maybe she had, and had sent them out looking for a nonexistent bandit tribe to better the odds against me.
The ladder and barrel were inside a cave in the hill. This was probably to keep rain out of the mine, but for the moment they also gave us a hiding place. We waited while the slaves climbed up from below. When I realized that no one was bringing up their hammer, we lowered the barrel again, shouting down to put the hammers in there if they weren’t going to carry them up. I wanted more targets than just me and Prax, whether the other slaves liked the idea or not.
The slaves climbed up steadily, but it was going to take a long time—and once up, everyone had to let their eyes adjust to the daylight just inside the cave. How are we going to even fight out there? When about half the slaves had climbed out, another guard came in looking to see why the rock wasn’t being delivered, and we struck him down, too. Four down. Sixteen—or so—to go.
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