Scutter-click-click. The bracelet tightened around her ankle and she felt a series of little prickings there, like a warning of pain to come. That’s where those little scars around Lifka’s ankles came from.
From high above, great bolts were drawn back, clanking against their brackets. She heard the thud of heavy doors pushed wide and yellow light washed in. Tali caught her breath and her eyes misted — it was the first daylight she had ever seen.
She lurched up to the next landing and stopped again, her legs unable to drive her any further. Leaning back against the wall, she allowed it to take part of the weight and prayed she would be able to stand upright again.
By the time she made the third landing her heart was palpitating. At this rate she would not have to worry about being caught; she would die of apoplexy. Her muscles were melting, the shoulder straps felt as though they had torn her flesh down to the collarbones and her vision was going in and out of focus. Was this how her poor father had died, worked to death for seeking a way out?
Click-scutter-clack. The bracelet tightened again, its points pricking and biting all around her ankle. Horror froze her for a second, somehow worse because the bracelet was a relentless mechanical weapon driven by that drop of chymical fluid. It felt nothing, cared about nothing, and there was nothing she could do to get it off her ankle.
The pain cleared her head, though, temporarily pushing the burden of the sunstone into the background. The first slaves had reached the top. Even the stragglers were two flights above Tali and the Cythonians at the exit were eyeing her suspiciously. Yet even if she got there, and even if they let her outside, how could she hope to escape so many guards without a spell of concealment?
Tali had no energy to think. She had to get to the top before the teeth around her ankle tore through to the bone. Never give up, her mother had taught her. If you begin something, you must complete it. And so she would, her own small monument to Iusia.
Her agony could get no worse, or so she had thought, but each flight proved harder than the one before. As she reached the fourth landing, her body a mass of spasming pain, the first of the slaves were on their way down again. By the sixth landing, even the tail-enders were descending. Tali wanted to lie down and die. Only will drove her on.
At the exit, a hard-faced Cythonian who might have been Orlyk’s brother was uncoiling a yard-long, bright yellow chuck-lash, a punishment far worse than the little ones Orlyk used in the grottoes. Yellow chuck-lashes burst against the skin like miniature bombasts.
A second guard raised a piece of metal in the shape of a musician’s triangle, then struck it with a rod. The triangle chimed, an answering ting came from Tali’s bracelet and, with a clacketty-scutter-clack, it drove a series of needle-sharp teeth into the bone of her ankle.
The pain was a shriek from a torture chamber. She stumbled, nearly fell, and trying to stand upright again was like lifting a mountain. It felt as if the sunstone itself was resisting her. She could not pretend to be Lifka now — Tali could no longer remember the way her double spoke. Was it her lower lip that gaped, or the upper?
The last of the slaves reached the blackened floor of the shaft and went out through the archway for their next load. The teeth in her ankle withdrew, though only so they could bite deeper next time. At the top, three more guards came in from outside to join the watching pair. The guard with the triangle raised it and Tali braced herself for more pain.
She staggered across another landing and kept going; if she stopped for a second she would never start again. Fantasies ran through her mind — the slaves’ bathing chamber and cool water flowing over her overheated body; pressing her face against the green, bubbly ice in the cool rooms. Her stomach was cramping, her knees vibrating like a fiddler’s bow, her ankle throbbing with every shuddery vibration of the bracelet.
Then, as she glanced down, a tiny, skin-and-bone figure lurched through the archway. Mimoy had come. Tali’s heart jumped and she felt a surge of hope, but it swiftly faded. The old woman looked exhausted. She was leaning on a knob-headed cane, swaying from side to side, and her twisted feet left bloody prints on the floor.
Tali’s heart went out to the old woman, who must be in agony on those ruined feet. But what could Mimoy do? If she used magery under the eyes of the guards they would take her head at once.
‘Move, slave!’ shouted the guard with the yellow chuck-lash.
Tali tried to go on but her thigh muscles cramped. She should not have stopped.
‘I — can’t — ’
The guard with the triangle began to come down, one step at a time, never taking his eyes off her, the rod held high above his head as if to strike a mighty blow. The teeth of the ankle bracelet pricked into her, quivering. Tali imagined the next snap shearing right through her ankle, the teeth meeting in the middle, but she had nothing left.
With the cane, Mimoy gave a feeble wave. Not even the most suspicious Cythonian would have taken it for magery, yet Tali felt the cramps ease, a little strength trickle into her legs, then the teeth in the ankle bracelet withdraw. She looked up and down, biting her lip. What did Mimoy want her to do? You’re taking me, she had said, but Tali could not go down for her, nor could Mimoy follow. Only sunstone carriers were allowed up the shaft, so how did she plan to get out?
Mimoy met Tali’s eyes and nodded, almost imperceptibly. Did that mean Tali was to continue up? She climbed the next flight, stronger now than she had been at the beginning, and the guard lowered his triangle.
A tiny bubble of optimism carried her on. She would climb to the exit, then haul her burden out to the racks where the stones were exposed to sunlight. And once there? Cold logic defeated every plan, every hope. Without magery, she could not escape the ever-watchful guards. Without magery, she would be driven down the shaft again, where Overseer Banj would be waiting with his blood-drinking blade.
But life was hope: once outside in Hightspall her gift might come. Or Mimoy might have a plan to help her find it. And Mimoy must know who had ordered her mother’s death. It was enough to keep Tali going.
She was two flights from the top when a big man entered the base of the shaft. Her vision was blurred from exhaustion and at first she thought it was one of Banj’s runners, though there was no tumult below, no shouts of, Stop her! He looked up, saw her desperate eyes on him and his ruined mouth cracked wide. Tinyhead licked the wall she had rested against, up and down, his bloodshot eyes rolling. Even from this distance the sound turned her stomach.
One word from him and the guards would stop her. The only way to escape him was to give herself up, though if she did the Cythonians would cut everything off.
It would be better to jump, yet jumping meant failure to punish her mother’s killers and breaking the oath sworn on Mia’s blood. Failure meant victory for her family’s enemy; it meant no warning for Hightspall about the coming war; it meant the Pale being slaughtered as soon as war began. It meant more than her own life.
Since she was going to die, was there a way to make her death meaningful, as her parents’ deaths had not been? Tali slumped against the wall, every breath hurting. Iusia’s killers were beyond her reach but she might be able to punish her betrayer.
She was turning to the rail when Mimoy pointed her cane at Tinyhead and this time the pose was unmistakeable — she was attacking him with magery. As she croaked the words of a spell, he struck her a ferocious backhander across the chest, sending her flying out through the archway. Mimoy’s breaking ribs made the same sound as Iusia’s had that day in the cellar, and a terrible, killing rage surged through Tali. Surely, now at the moment she was about to die, she could use that rage to find her gift?