"They're worried about you. What's the problem?"
"There's a body blocking the outlet. I… tried. Couldn't pull it loose. Ran out of air. This stuff just leaves me weaker." She coughed again as his own throat began to bum from the gas. Worse, she'd used up almost all of the oxygen in this pocket.
"How far?" Staffa asked, trying to fill his lungs with the stink.
"Five meters. maybe six."
He ducked past her body and hurried along in the blackness. Like working in vacuum, he decided, and the horror and panic receded. His momentum carried him into soft spongy flesh. Cloth still surrounded the body. He grabbed a handful and found one of the rungs. With all his might, he pulled back, feeling his lungs strain. Something soft came out of the blackness and bounced off his face as he pulled. He could feel other things slipping over his flesh as they were carried past by the movement of the water.
Grunting, he felt the body give. Water began to rush past, dragging ever harder at his burden. Despite the gurgle and
surge racing by his ears, he could hear his heart — the blood pounding in his ears. His burning, gas-scorched lungs heaved, wanting to cough.
He braced himself and hooked a leg around the corpse so he could reach another rung and get that much more leverage. Water rushed faster as his strength began to fail and his heaving lungs started to spasm.
If he could get up one more rung, how long would it take before the air pocket extended to him? His fingertips slipped off the slimy metal. Fear gave him one last chance. Got it And he pulled himself against the weight of the water and the turning, twisting corpse.
By grim determination he held on, bits of vile material pattering his skin. The chill stole the warmth from his body. Fire flared in his lungs as they sucked at the bottom of his throat.
Water swirled around his hair, dropping rapidly in a bubbling gurgle. His head broke clear and he raised his mouth to gasp in the fetid stink. Sewage bitter on his tongue, he spit, feeling fouled and filthy. A faint glow behind him illuminated the scaly roof above his face. A stir of fresh air reached him just before he gagged and vomited into the black swirling current.
As the waters fell, he looked back to see his gruesome burden, a young woman, flesh puffed ghastly white, hair twining blackly with the refuse of the palace. Grasping her robe, he pulled her back up the tunnel.
Kaylla still clung to her rung, panting as she hacked and coughed. Staffa got a glance of hair plastered blackly to her skull as she turned and looked, eyes large in the faint light. Her wet face shone in the gloom.
"Thought the Rotted Gods were gonna be chewing on my soul real soon," she rasped. "You weren't any too quick, friend. I owe you."
"Call me Tuff," he told her as he shivered and shook with exhaustion. How much could happen in a single day? How long had it been since he'd stepped off the CV?
He remembered Skyla's skepticism and closed his eyes while filth trickled down his pale flesh. Dear Skyla, she'd tried so hard to help. Would he ever see her again? At the thought that he might not, a wretchedness filled him.
"Let's get out of here," he growled, unnerved by what he'd been through.
"Got that right Tuff." She slogged her way ahead as the water fell to their waists. Staffa towed the limp, cavorting corpse behind him as he pulled his way along the rungs. "This the sort of thing that happens all the time?"
He could see the grating behind him now. The dead girl's body had blocked it, her thick robe making an effective plug.
Kaylla shook her head. "Nope. Mostly it's boring, backbreaking labor. Things like roadwork, picking up trash around the public buildings, cleaning up storm damage. We were supposed to go to the desert this morning to lay pipe. The other crew had casualties."
Ahead, light showed. Splashing and cursing, they made their way to the inspection hole. Kaylla helped Staffa lift the body so the two slaves above could pull it out.
He boosted her up first and then pulled himself out — only to realize his cloth wrap had disappeared, lost somewhere in the sewer. Bits of fecal material and other filth clung to his flesh. He fought the urge to vomit again, his very soul feeling sullied.
"Huh," Anglo was saying. "Another Priestess. Young one. Couldn't take it."
"Why do they do it?" Morlai wondered.
"Can't take the consecration, probably. The hard sell that they're giving of the Blessed Gods doesn't take. Some client says something about them. I don't know."
Staffa glanced up and found himself under Kaylla's careful scrutiny. A frown etched her brow as she studied him, reservation in her eyes.
She looked trim and healthy, with no fat on her muscular body. But then maybe slaves at the bottom of Etarian society weren't allowed fat. Her hair wasn't black but apparently brown and cut shoulder length. Her facial features might not have been those of incredible beauty, but she wasn't bad to look at either. She had a slightly crooked nose and a square jaw. Her face had been graced with high cheekbones, a generous mouth, and fiery tan eyes. Her breasts were small and high over a slim tapering waist that led to long firm legs. Her expression remained grim, full mouth pinched — a look of animal wariness in the squint of
those hard eyes. She leaned against the wall, gooseflesh rising in the chill air.
"Kaylla, take Tuff to the corner, there, and hose off; you smell like shit," Anglo ordered, and Staffa saw her tense, the wariness intensifying.
He got to his feet and followed her, noticing the coiled anger in her movements. She said nothing as she turned on the tap and let it run over her body, awkwardly trying to scrub herself with one hand and hold the hose with the other.
Staffa took it from her and doused her liberally. He even found a bar of soap on a sink corner. She lathered and soaped while he hosed himself down, aware of his wretched odor. She rinsed him after he'd used the rest of the soap bar. He even washed his mouth out and spit, watching the water trickling back to the drain and shivering.
"Come on!" Morlai called. "We've got a full day yet."
"You going like that?" Kaylla asked, tone wry as she stepped into a loose garment.
"Lost my kilt in the sewer," Staffa admitted with a slight shrug.
She ripped a long section of hem off, leaving her legs exposed to above the knee.
"I owe you," Staffa told her as he tied it into a breechclout.
"Don't mention it," she said wearily. "I do that for all the guys who pull me out of the sewer. I keep remembering that Priestess' face. If you'd been a little slower…"
"We'd both have been there," Staffa added as they climbed into the back of the warden's battered aircar.
"What now, Morlai?" Kaylla slumped into the seat and closed her eyes as the vehicle hummed and rose.
"Pipe laying equipment west of the city is down. We go string pipe. That ought to make your backs crack. We'll sweat the fat out of you yet, Kaylla."
"Thank God," she whispered softly.
"Thank God? For hard labor?" Staffa studied her from the corner of his eye.
She glanced at him, tan eyes holding his for an instant before they flicked away. Her voice came as a low murmur almost lost in the wind. "Yeah, anything to keep out of that bastard Anglo's bed."
Staffa glanced out at the city they passed to avoid her haunted expression. The hot dry air sucked his sweat away before it could form. "How did you
get here? You don't sound or act like a slave."
She gave him a bitter smile. "No, I suppose not. Once, in what seems an eternity ago, I was the First Lady of a planet called Maika. I ruled with my husband. Tybalt valued our world more than our treaty. He hired that pus-spawned Star Butcher, and the rest is history."
Is there no one I haven't ruined? Is my legacy truly as the Praetor said? Does everyone curse my name?
"I had heard that all the governmental leaders had been killed," Staffa said woodenly. He remembered Maika. They'd executed the Maikan leaders in the main cathedral. He remembered the First Lady, a shy thing, broken and bawling as they blew her head off with a pulse pistol.