Don’t betray me. Please, please don’t betray me.
Radl smiled, displaying her pointed teeth.
Tali rubbed her scar. Time stopped, then jerked forward a second; another.
Radl said something to the guard, too softly for Tali to hear. Now the guard was studying Tali’s ankle, frowning. He knew! It was all over.
She pressed harder on her scar. You can’t see anything different. I’m Lifka and I’ve got broad, tanned feet.
The guard’s black eyes crossed, then he waved her on, irritably. Tali met Radl’s blue eyes. Her lips moved and Tali read, Leaving you to your enemy, bitch.
Tali forced herself to not react, but as she went on her legs felt de-boned. The twin lines moved towards the loading station, where a pair of burly Pale eunuchs, their smooth, indecent thighs well covered, lifted the rectangular, faintly shimmering sunstones from a stack and lowered one into the leather pouch on the back of each slave’s harness. A Cythonian foreman studied the faces and checked each woman off on his list.
Sunstones were the size of tombstones and each slave shrank an inch or two under the enormous weight. Tali braced herself and moved forwards, trying to look as docile and vacant-eyed as Lifka. The bulge on the ankle bracelet seemed to be ticking more loudly than before and the vibration felt as though teeth were meshing inside it.
The foreman inspected Tali, checked her off but then, instead of waving her past, thrust back her hood and turned her head from side to side. Tali’s mouth went dry. If he made her remove the harness, her lack of calluses would reveal the deception at once.
‘Name?’
‘Lifka, Master,’ she said in Lifka’s colourless voice.
‘What’s the matter with you?’
Was the voice wrong? Her skin too pale? Not knowing what had alerted his suspicions, Tali had no idea how to remedy things. ‘Master?’
‘Why are you sweating?’
‘Gripe, Master.’ Tali touched her belly and winced. ‘Gut gripe.’
Her belly looked like Lifka’s, at least. She pushed it out and swayed forwards, praying he would not notice her pale feet.
CHAPTER 22
Tali felt like screaming hysterically, head-butting the guard in the belly then running wild and pushing over all the sunstones.
The guard was staring at her as though he knew she was an impostor and was waiting for her to crack. She kept her eyes lowered like a docile slave, bit her tongue until it hurt, and waited. And waited. In her mind’s eye she could see Banj’s runners sprinting down the tunnels, surely only minutes away. He would also have informed the matriarchs that a slave was trying to escape, and that there had been no reply from the maze guards. They would know she was the one and their executioners would also be on the way.
After an agonising minute the guard grunted, flipped the hood over Tali’s golden hair and gestured her to the loading station. The Pale eunuchs were built like wrestlers, yet they grunted as they lifted each sunstone from the stack and rotated it to the vertical. As the first eunuch raised Tali’s stone, it slipped.
‘Don’t drop it!’ cried the second eunuch, steadying the sunstone with both hands. He cast an anxious glance at the guards.
‘Ready?’ the first eunuch said to Tali. Sweat was running down his round face and dripping from his chin.
‘Yes,’ she said in Lifka’s empty voice, then realised that she had forgotten to push out her lower lip.
The first eunuch did not move. He was holding the weight of the stone, his gaze travelling up and down her small form as if he did not believe she could carry it. Now he was looking at her feet. His eyes flicked to the second eunuch, then he smiled, ever so faintly. He knew!
She met the eunuch’s eyes, praying that he would not give her away, yet knowing that most slaves would. Betraying another slave meant favour with the guards, and extra rations. And for many, the pleasure of seeing a troublesome rebel brought down.
Please, she said through her eyes.
The eunuch’s eyes misted, as if looking upon a daughter he would never have, and his lips moved. Good luck.
There was one good man left in Cython, at least, and it gave her heart. She tilted her head to him.
‘Move it,’ the second eunuch said curtly.
As Tali braced herself for the weight, heat flickered around the loops and whorls of the scar on her shoulder and she felt a momentary dizziness. She put her hand across her shoulder and the dizziness passed, though the scar still felt hot.
Holding the sunstone vertically, the first eunuch slipped it into the long leather pouch at the back of her harness and stepped away. Tali’s knees almost collapsed and a groan was squeezed out of her. It was impossible; her backbone was compressing, her arches flattening until her feet looked like twin tortoises. She could barely stand up under the weight. No way could she carry the sunstone a thousand steps to the surface.
The second eunuch was looking at her curiously so she lurched off, following the line of carriers. If she did not reach the top of the shaft before Banj’s runners arrived, she was lost.
The sunstone should have been cool, its absorbed sunlight being reduced to the faintest shimmer, but Tali could feel its presence at her back as if an alien force was surging and ebbing in its core. How many thousands of Pale men and boys had died mining heatstone, and the concentric layers of sunstone and glowstone that surrounded the blistering heatstone mine?
An arched opening led into a ten-sided shaft running vertically to the surface. A stairway with shallow stone steps coiled around it and the leading carriers were already halfway up. The walls around the base of the shaft were blackened, as if a fire had once burnt there, and the edges of several steps looked glassy. The upper section of the shaft was dimly lit and she could not tell how high it was, but it had to be hundreds of feet to the top. To Hightspall, the beloved realm, the homeland the Pale had yearned for all the thousand years of their enslavement.
The leading slaves were striding up the steps as if it were a race. Tali pressed back against the wall, waiting her turn, and it felt as though the bones of her feet were cracking.
‘What’s wrong with you, Lifka?’ a stocky slave girl said, elbowing Tali in the side.
‘Gut gripe,’ Tali said faintly.
‘If you can’t take it, call sick. If you drop a sunstone …’ The slave girl shivered.
The entire sunstone gang would be punished. It was the Cythonian way — the group suffered for the failings of the individual, therefore the group enforced the enemy’s will as ruthlessly as any slave master.
‘I’m all right,’ said Tali. ‘I can do it.’
She stepped onto the lowest step, but as she stretched for the second the weight of the sunstone pulled her off balance. Her arms flailed and she was falling backwards with no hope of recovery, failing at the first hurdle.
As abruptly, she went flying forwards. The slave behind her had shoved hard on her sunstone.
‘Thanks,’ she choked, stumbling but recovering.
‘Keep right, sluggard.’
She lurched to the wall side of the stair and the slave barged past, cursing her. The ankle bracelet vibrated, scutter-click-click, reminding her of the skritter that had embedded itself in the flesh of Sidon’s calf. Tali took another step, careful to lean forwards, then another. Her breath was wheezing in and out, her knees wanted to collapse and her thigh muscles were ablaze.
By the time she made it to the first landing half the line of slaves had passed her. She stopped, gasping, but could not drag enough air into her lungs to satisfy her desperate needs. Her face was burning, sweat flooding down her chest. At her back, the core of the sunstone seemed to be throbbing in time with her racketing heart.