The woman glanced at the paper. Her face darkened. ‘You dolts!’ she snarled.
‘Get out!’ Bird’s frantic cry rang out, echoing around the bare walls of the wagon. ‘Run!’
Bean slammed his hand down on a lever. Steam gushed, hissing, from beneath the wagon, smothering it in a billowing white cloud. As Kyte’s horse squealed and reared in terror, knocking the guard beside it to the ground, Bean hurled himself sideways out of the driver’s seat, onto the track. Stocky figures bolted out of the storage space and began scrambling after him.
‘Run!’ screamed Bird. ‘Bell! Chub! All of you—’
Kyte yelled in fury, fighting to control her panicking mount. The guards behind the gates hesitated, blinded by the steam. Rye leaped off the jell safe and began trying to fight his way through the press of fleeing slaves, towards Sonia.
There was a sharp crack, and a flash of white light lit up the wagon. The flash lasted only an instant, just long enough for Rye to glimpse ragged figures caught in mid-stride, Bird’s mouth wide open in a soundless cry, Itch half-turned with his knife in his hand, Chub crouched beside a man who seemed to have fallen.
They were all completely motionless. And in the same split second Rye realised that he, too, had frozen where he stood. He could not move a finger.
It was as if time itself had stopped. But only inside the wagon. Outside, there was noise and activity. Outside there was shouting, scuffling, cursing, the hissing of steam, the rumbling of approaching wheels, the thudding of fast-running feet. And there was Kyte’s voice, high and dominating, rising above everything else.
‘Krops, stay where you are! Stay, you fools, and hold the ones you’ve got! I’ve quelled the scum in the wagon—and the enemy spy who’s leading them, too. The strays can be rounded up later. Good! Here are my Baks with the cart!’
The sounds of wheels and running feet grew louder, slowed, then stopped. Rye tried desperately to turn his head so he could see what was happening on the track, but it was hopeless.
He could only imagine the cart coming to a stop beside the wagon. He could only imagine Kyte looking down from the back of her cowed horse at another set of inhuman grey-clad guards panting between the cart’s shafts.
‘Take the trench-bridge from the cart, Baks!’ he heard Kyte order. ‘We won’t need it now. Then turn the cart around. By chance we’ve been spared the journey to the Den. We don’t need Scour scum for the Master’s test any more. These traitors will do just as well.’
‘But Kyte,’ whined a Diggings guard, as the clatter of falling wood and the sound of turning wheels signalled that the woman’s order was being obeyed. ‘Can’t we at least have the mine rats back? We’re shorthanded as it is!’
‘Silence!’ Kyte snapped. ‘The penalty for trying to escape the Diggings is death. Isn’t that so?’
‘Yes, Kyte,’ the guard mumbled.
‘Yes!’ cried Kyte. ‘So these scum are doomed to die in any case. And if I were you, Krop, I’d think twice about questioning my orders. You made a bad mistake tonight. If I hadn’t come along—’
‘It wasn’t our fault,’ the guard protested. ‘The spy showed the Master’s paper, with Brand’s signature at the bottom. How did he lay his hands on it?’
There was a tiny pause. Rye knew why. Kyte was well aware that it was her error that had allowed the grey paper to fall into Bird’s hands.
‘It doesn’t matter where the paper came from!’ the woman snapped, recovering. ‘What matters is that somehow the spy knew where the mine rats he wanted worked, and which hut they slept in.’
‘It was not the Krops who told!’ exclaimed the guard. ‘The Krops would never betray—’
‘Luckily for you,’ Kyte cut in smoothly, ‘I’m in a good mood because I’ve been spared a tedious journey to the Den. So I’ll destroy the paper and say nothing of it to Brand. I’ll report that a spy made use of the jell-trader’s wagon to enter the Diggings, and tried to steal the slaves by force.’
‘Thank you, Kyte. The Krops are in your debt.’
The guard sounded very subdued. The woman’s reply was coldly triumphant.
‘Very well. Forget the paper ever existed, and you’ll be safe. And don’t open the gates again for any reason till I tell you to do it. Do you understand me?’
‘Yes, Kyte.’
‘Now, load the prisoners into the cart. Yours first—the quell will hold mine a bit longer. Tie their wrists and ankles, but don’t harm them. They’re to be delivered in good condition. The Master wants them to be able to run.’
Kyte’s final words echoed often in Rye’s mind during the long, jolting journey that followed. Bound hand and foot, lying packed together with the other prisoners beneath a canvas cover that hid the sky, he could not forget them. They kept coming back to him like a hideous refrain.
The Master wants them to be able to run …
What horror awaited him at the Harbour?
He had no idea how many others lay with him in the cart. Four-Eyes had been found, released from the sack, and left in the driver’s seat of the wagon, still fast asleep. But Bird had been taken, he knew. He had seen her carried out of the storage space with Sonia. Bean was here also. The Diggings guards had grabbed him as he stood helping others to jump down from the wagon. And Itch was here. And Chub and her husband, whose name seemed to be Pepper.
But there were many of the slaves from Tunnel 12 as well—all those who had not managed to escape in those first few moments of confusion. Rye could hear them whispering to one another. Every now and then he would catch a name. Lucky. Giggle. Bud …
Lucky, Giggle, Bud, Chub, Bird, Itch, Bean—what sorts of ridiculous names are they? Rye thought with a flash of useless irritation. And slowly it dawned on him that all the names of the people he had met since going through the silver Door were strange. Bones. Needle. Cap. Four-Eyes …
Then he saw it. Nicknames! They were nothing but nicknames!
The people here believed in the old tale, long forgotten by almost everyone in Weld, that those who know your true name have power over you. They kept their real names secret from everyone but their closest family and friends.
And perhaps this was wise. Perhaps it was their only defence against the sorcerer who had first led them, then enslaved them. Not knowing their names, the Master could control their bodies, but not their minds.
Of course! That was why Rye’s careless use of the name FitzFee had caused Bird to react so savagely. Bird’s family name must be FitzFee too. She had thought Rye was trying to enchant her!
If only I had been, Rye thought drearily. And if only I had succeeded. Then Dirk, Sonia and I would be together now, facing only the dangers of the Scour. And the bag of powers would still be with me, safe around my neck.
After a while, he lost all sense of time. And gradually the murmuring of the other prisoners, the bumping of the cart, the pounding of the guards’ feet, merged and became parts of confused, nightmarish dreams.
He seemed to see Dirk waking, groggy with myrmon, on the track far behind him. He seemed to see Bones sitting alone by the sled at the Den, his head in his hands.
And he seemed to see Sonia lying somewhere very near, somewhere in the rattling cart, coming to consciousness and searching frantically for some sign of him.
Hazily, knowing he was caught in the web of a waking dream, he sent his thoughts to her.
Sonia, I am here with you! Sonia, we are captured—being carried to the Harbour.
Rye sent the message, as so often he had sent urgent thought messages in the past, without any real hope that it would be received. But this time something was different. Faintly, so faintly that he could not be sure it was real, an answer came to him.
The nine powers. Can you or Dirk reach …?