“Wait.” Abioye held up a long, fine-fingered hand. “It’s fine.” He straightened his jacket and shrugged. “She can stay down in the mines for all I care,” he said, before appearing to forget that I even existed as he started talking animatedly to One-Eye about where the possible ‘seams’ of more Earth lights might be found.
Whatever. I threw the thought back at him. As if I wanted to present food and wash laundry for that jerk anyway.
“Come on, princess,” chuckled a voice. It was Fankin, looking about as happy as a dog with its dinner. He and the rest of my work shift had been watching the whole exchange, but clearly he had found it all hilarious. “Work shift’s over anyway. Maybe you can catch up to lover-boy if you hurry!” the man nodded back in the direction of the retreating Abioye.
I hissed at him, but as the mine guards started to corral us back up the Western Tunnel to the Main Avenue above I realized that the damage had been done. Just yesterday these Daza had stamped their feet at what I had to say, and now they acted as if I were some kind of traitor and could barely look at me.
Chapter 9
The Plan
“Halt right there! Don’t move!” bellowed Toadie, racing towards our work team as we emerged from the mine. The man looked flustered, with red blotches blooming in his cheeks as he waved a cane menacingly at us.
“What did we do now?” I groaned. It was late in the afternoon, with the sky turning the golden yellow that it always did as the sun lowered itself over the plains. Below us, the work camp seemed in a state of turmoil, with what looked like every slave and prisoner already gathered in the central yard.
“None of you lazy sluggards move, you got that?” Toadie harangued, whipping his cane back and forth in the air as if daring us to disobey him.
“Well, we’re not in a hurry to run back down the mines!” sniped one of the prisoners from our crowd, earning a shout of indignation from Toadie – but he was too slow to identify who it was. And anyway, something else was happening down in the workcamp.
“You lot! You! Work team 3, 4 – get over here!” There was a commotion as the thin and high shriek of Dagan Mar carved up the assembled workers as sharp as any blade. I could hear grumbles and worried voices, as each of them must be thinking exactly what I was; What new torment have they devised for us?
Roughly half of the assembled slaves were being marched up to one of the terraces in the cliffs, where the lines of stone sheds rattled and belched smoke, day and night. Except they weren’t. I hadn’t noticed before in the confusion that the smelting sheds were quiet.
Dagan Mar had sent lines of guards up with overseers to manage the slaves, and I watched as heavy ropes – the same sort that we used to pull the carts loaded with mining ore – were passed down the line. They snaked back to the double iron doors of the largest of the sheds.
Whatever it is, it can’t be good. That was my first thought. Whatever was in that shed had to be some new sort of mining machine that Inyene (and Abioye, no doubt!) had dreamed up.
My second thought, however, was that just about everyone was busy.
The guards were out, and I’d never seen so many of them, all concentrating on the shed.
If ever there was going to be a good time for a breakout, then now would be it. From my previous attempts, I knew that the guard changeovers were the easiest of times. I would be a fool to not take this opportunity.
I looked behind us to where the main entrance to the mines stood. If I could run past that and get to the far end of the terrace, that was where the tumbled boulders led up the side of the Masaka mountain to an old creekbed. Even as tired as I was, I could make that scramble.
But I couldn’t. I couldn’t make my legs move at all. How could I run away, and leave the rest of my people here? The people who thought I was making friends with Abioye? Who wouldn’t even look at me now? The thought flashed through my mind.
No. I stood firm. I had turned down Abioye’s offer of more comfortable employment because of these people around me – my people. I couldn’t just run away and leave them here, could I?
“Heave!” the small and faraway form of Dagan Mar had climbed the terrace to better bawl at the slaves. The iron doors of the largest of the smelting sheds had been swung open, but whatever their ropes were now attached to inside was dark. The backs of Daza and the western criminals alike strained and stretched in the last of the burning sunset.
“Not enough!” one of the overseers shouted, and there was another commotion as more of the available work teams below were sent up the terraces to be given ropes, and to heave.
“She’s moving!” someone called, and, to my dismay I realized that it was none other than Abioye, marching out of the smelting shed with his hands raised up in victory.
So. It looks like you were just trying to fool me with all that pretending to be nice, I thought bitterly. For some reason, I felt more deeply hurt and betrayed than from any of Toadies’ slaps or Dagan Mar’s nasty little whips. But why should I care what that man – Inyene’s own brother – did? Maybe it was because he had seemed to want to be nice. Maybe it was because he had actually talked to me rather than at me.
“Clear the space!” Abioye called, gesturing down the main ramp of the terrace to the main yard. It was Dagan Mar however, who instructed the remaining slaves to form a circle, with a thinner line of guards behind them.
And what of us? I thought. My work shift was still here by the mine entrance, with Toadie, our overseer, pacing back and forth in front of us nervously. It looked like we were being held in reserve, but why? And for how long? I was painfully aware of the boulders behind me.
“Heave!” Dagan shouted again, and this time the mine guards set upon the pulling slaves with jabs and prods from their clubs. I had never understood that. Why on earth did they think that hitting us would help us work better or faster?
But then, all my irritable thoughts were washed away as I saw what was being pulled out of the smelting shed. It was a dragon.
“That thing is no dragon,” I said urgently. Although it had almost the outward appearance of one, everything about it looked wrong.
The main reason being for this – was that it was made out of metal. I could see the ruddy gleam of golden-bronze struts and supports that jutted from its spine, shoulders and hips like bones. Where the creature’s elbows, wrists, or knees might be were pairs of giant bronze cogwheels. Gray-silver glinted all across it in drops, until I realized that they had to be steel bolts, each as big as my clenched fist.
But the very worst thing was what it was covered in. An eye-boggling, multi-colored array of scales. They were the same scales that we had been collecting, I was sure of it. Someone had tried to match the gradient of a real living and fire-breathing dragon’s skin, with the largest of scales occupying the most area, gradually getting smaller and more closely knit as they met limbs, joints, and underside.
They’ve done a poor job of it though. I could remember the glossy sheen of the Black Dragon’s scales, and how his entire suit had sighed gently as he had moved, and there was no seeming complication. On the mechanical monstrosity below however, there were several places where the wrong sizes and shapes of scales had been used, creating weird patches that stood out like the way that scar tissue or my old branding marks forever pulled oddly on my arms.