“Not bad enough that it’s so cold it would freeze the nuts off a wolf,” Piran Rowse grumbled. “Not bad enough that we’ve got these bloody shackles. Does it have to be dark for half the year, too?”
Blaine McFadden—Mick to his fellow inmates—grunted in reply. “That’s the point, Piran,” he said. “If you recall, we were exiled because they weren’t fond of us.”
Piran’s curses were spectacularly creative. “I seem to remember exile was supposed to be better than a noose. Some days, I’m not sure about that.”
It was up for argument whether it was colder and darker outside Velant’s ruby mines or down in their depths. At least in the mines, Blaine thought, there isn’t the constant, cutting wind, or the wild bears and wolves. Predators of another type ruled the deep places.
The crack of a whip stung Blaine’s shoulder. “Stop talking and keep digging!” The guard glared at Piran and Blaine as if he were hoping they would be foolhardy enough to reply.
Piran held his tongue until the guard was out of earshot, and then began a muttered litany of expletives that was remarkable even for him. “Shut up, Piran,” Blaine said. “For some reason, you mouth off and I feel the lash for it.”
Piran shot him a crooked smile. “Just one of my many talents.”
Chok the guard moved on, only to stop several paces farther down the tunnel to lash another prisoner who was not mining the rubies quickly enough, though Blaine suspected the inmate was nearly to his breaking point. Velant was Donderath’s garbage heap, its dumping ground for people it considered useless for anything except brutal labor. The prisoner went down with a whimper. Chok cracked him over the head with his staff for good measure, a sickening muted thud. This time, the prisoner fell silent. Most of the Velant guards were dangerous. Some were worse than others. Chok was one of the monsters.
“You won’t get out of here that easily,” Piran said, with a nod toward their unfortunate fellow convict. “If anyone kills you up here, it’s likely to be Prokief himself.”
“Compared to you, who’ve annoyed the shit out of nearly everyone, so you’ve got a line waiting to do you in,” Blaine replied, but his grin took the sting from his words.
If I had to be shackled at the ankle to a fellow prisoner, there would be worse partners than Piran, Blaine thought. They had been paired by the guards because they were relatively equal in their reach and stamina, meaning they could swing their pickaxes and sledgehammers efficiently without knocking each other off balance, and march in and out of the mine without tripping each other.
Three months ago, Blaine had been a free man, the son of a down-at-the-heels noble back in Donderath. But when his father, Lord Ian McFadden, dishonored Blaine’s sister, Mari, Blaine killed him in a cold rage born of years of abuse. Blaine had expected to hang for his crime. But King Merrill knew of Ian’s penchant for violence, and he had granted Blaine the ‘mercy’ of exile, to the arctic wilds of Velant on the island of Edgeland at the top of the world.
Even now, Blaine felt no remorse, though he often thought that a quick death at the end of a noose would have been preferable to the prospect of spending the rest of his natural life in a frozen wasteland under the thumb of Commander Prokief and his vicious guards.
“Just three years,” Blaine said. “We only have to survive three years before we can get out of this godsforsaken pit and earn our Tickets.”
Piran barked a sharp, bitter laugh. “Keep on believing that, mate, if it gets you through the night. You know how many convicts survive three years? Not many. Not bloody many at all.” Tickets of Leave were granted to convicts who served their first three years without further crimes. It meant they became colonists instead of inmates, but no one returned home, not even the soldiers, who were as much prisoners as their charges.
Despite the persistent cold, mining was hard work, and sweat beaded Blaine’s forehead, running in rivulets down his grit-streaked face. Although he had done physical labor on his father’s estate, nothing had prepared him for the relentless hard work demanded from Velant’s inmates. Prokief made it clear that his first priority was making a profit for the homeland with rubies they mined and the herring fished out of the bay by the colony’s small fleet of boats. Whether or not the inmates survived the effort was of little consequence to Prokief or anyone else.
Piran had started singing a popular tavern song, making up additional verses that were as obscene as they were amusing. The guard glowered but said nothing, since both Blaine and Piran swung their pickaxes in time to the off-key melody.
“Better get those rock chunks broken up smaller than that, or there’ll be grief,” Blaine advised the third prisoner in their shackled trio. Ford nodded, too winded to speak. Ford stood a head shorter than Blaine, with the slight build of a boy not yet a man. Only fourteen years old, he had been exiled for stealing, not uncommon when a thief made the mistake of pickpocketing a powerful victim.
Too late. “What kind of rubbish work is this?” Chok said as he made another pass down the long mining tunnel. He kicked at Ford’s rock pile, scattering the pieces. “Pick those up.”
Ford bent to comply. The guard brought his knee up into the boy’s face, and Blaine heard a snap as Ford’s nose broke. “Now look at the mess,” the guard chided as blood flowed down Ford’s face. “Someone’s gonna have to wash that blood off the nuggets. Who’s gonna do that? Huh?”
Ford snuffled a reply, doing his best to stoically bear the pain and humiliation. Malice shone in the guard’s eyes. Piran had a reputation for a hot temper, and the branded ‘M’ on Blaine’s forearm that marked him as a murderer gave the guards pause. But Ford was easy prey.
“I asked you a question!” the guard thundered at Ford, and slapped him hard across the face. “Well?”
“Me, sir,” Ford stammered, scrambling to gather the blood-spattered ruby nuggets.
The guard’s foot shot out, catching Ford in the stomach. The boy crumpled with a muted “oof.”
“On your feet, boy!” the guard snapped. “Lazy ass. Get up before I drag you up by your hair!” He gave another savage kick, and Ford’s body jerked with the force of the blow.
Blaine’s temper was at the breaking point, and he knew from Piran’s stance that his partner was already past that. With barely a glance between them, Blaine and Piran moved at the same instant, closing in on the guard from both sides.
“Leave the boy alone,” Piran growled, landing a right hook that connected with the guard’s jaw hard enough to break bones, as his pickax swung low, busting the man’s ankle. Blaine had already learned how to use the chain of his shackle to trip an attacker, and he swung one foot in an arc and then jerked the chain back hard, pulling the guard’s good leg out from under him. The soldier fell and Blaine swung his sledgehammer into the guard’s shoulder with a satisfying crack.
“Don’t think you’ll be busting up any children for a while,” Piran gloated. “And it’s a shame about your jaw, but I don’t think you’ll be telling the commander any tales until it heals up.” The guard sputtered angrily, sending a spray of blood flying. “Not that you’ll be much good for anything with a bum shoulder and a bad leg, but the healers might fix you up enough to clean out the latrines.”
Blaine knelt next to Ford. “Come on,” he said. “Get up. We’ll pay Raka for what we’ve done.” But Ford’s breathing was shallow and uneven, and he was moaning in pain. That last kick hit him hard. Maybe hard enough to break something inside. Damn.
Blaine looked up at Piran. “Got any other bright ideas?” he asked, glancing at the guard, who was trying to grab at Piran with his good hand. Piran stayed just out of reach.
“Not really,” Piran replied. “But he had it coming. And it’s not like we were going to get out early for good behavior.”
Running footsteps echoed in the rock tunnels. Blaine heard guards shouting as they barged their way through the miners, alerted if not by the sound of the fight itself then by one of Prokief’s many informants among the prisoners.
“Get him up!” a guard ordered, regarding Ford with disdain. “Or we’ll haul him up ourselves.” Blaine muttered an apology as he lifted Ford as gently as he could, wincing as the young man cried out in pain and doubled over.
“Rowse! Should have figured you were causing trouble. Tell your tale to the commander,” the second guard said. “Out with you.”
Two more of Prokief’s soldiers came to help the downed guard, who let out a bleat of pain as one of them jostled his broken shoulder.
“Not so tough now,” Piran mocked, then cursed as one of the soldiers gave him a shove toward the mine exit hard enough to drag Blaine off balance.
“Shut up, Piran,” Blaine muttered. But it was far too late for that to matter. Fights between the convicts and the guards were common, and when the guards won—which was often—the matter went unnoticed by the prison’s commander, even when convicts turned up dead. Blaine was under no illusion that their transgression would go unpunished, especially since Velant’s commander seemed to have taken a particular, personal dislike for both Blaine and Piran.
Ford was barely conscious as they made their way up the narrow rock tunnels toward the mine entrance. Blaine was supporting most of the boy’s weight. Normally, a healer could put an injury right most of the time. But Prokief rarely wasted healers on convicts, unless he was short on labor for a needed task. Blaine doubted that the little bit of healing magic and hedge witch cures the prisoners provided for each other could save Ford if the guard’s attack had damaged his innards. Then again, that particular guard wouldn’t be damaging anyone else for a long while. The satisfaction of that knowledge was almost enough to temper Blaine’s fear of the punishment that awaited him. Almost.
Other prisoners glanced up as the guards hustled them out of the mine. Some gave bored stares, and Blaine guessed they were glad that this time, the guards were focused on someone other than them. Others eyed them with anger, certain that Blaine and Piran’s misdeeds would lead to harsher conditions for all of them.
A few looked at them with grudging respect. It was rare to win against the guards, all the sweeter for being a fleeting victory. But if the time ever came that Prokief’s warden mages lost their ability to enforce the commander’s harsh discipline, Blaine doubted there were enough guards to hold off the inmates’ pent-up rage.
A blast of frigid air hit them as they stepped out into the perpetual twilight of the Long Dark, the half of the year when the sun barely rose above the horizon. Edgeland’s temperatures barely rose enough during the ‘summer’ months to enable the colonists and inmates to go outside without heavy cloaks and hats. The dark winter months felt interminable, and the temperatures plunged to bone-chilling cold that even the thickest furs would not warm.
Piran continued to hum the bawdy tavern song, a small show of defiance. Still, Blaine could see a glint of fear in Piran’s eyes. Blaine felt his gut tighten at the prospect of Prokief’s revenge. They might have saved Ford, or perhaps merely avenged him, but there was a good chance that they would die for their efforts.
“Unlock the boy,” one of the guards ordered. “Take him back to the barracks,” he said to two of the other guards. It would be useless to request a healer, since the guards would only laugh. Maybe one of Blaine’s barracks mates could help Ford, or at least ease his passing if there was naught that could be healed.
“You two aren’t getting off that easy,” the guard gloated, as Ford was dragged away, hanging limply between the two soldiers.
“Is the commander having a dull day?” Piran asked cheekily. “No small children to drown? All out of animals to torture? Did the Butcher of Breseshwa get bored?” Prokief had commanded an army that turned the tide at Breseshwa, a border city where there had been an uprising ten years prior. When the fighting was done, the rebels were dead, and so was every man, woman, child, and animal in Breseshwa. King Merrill had ‘awarded’ Prokief his position as warden of Velant, recognizing that his bloodthirsty battle tactics made him too much of a monster for a kingdom at peace.
“Shut up, Piran,” Blaine muttered, but it was far too late now.
Commander Prokief’s headquarters was squat and ugly. Unlike most of the buildings in the prison camp, the commander’s building was made from hewn rock. Convicts still whispered about the number of men who had died quarrying the stone and hauling it into place. The prisoners’ barracks, the laundry, the storage barns, and the camp’s other buildings were made mostly of wood, but Prokief’s building was his own personal fortress, against the elements and the inmates.
“I hear the commander’s waiting for you,” one of the guards said, with a nasty chuckle. Few prisoners who attracted Prokief’s personal attention were seen again.
“If we’d have known that, we’d have dressed better,” Piran said. Blaine elbowed him, but Piran only grinned more broadly.
The commander’s headquarters was the anchor for King Merrill’s authority on Edgeland’s godsforsaken ice. The royal seal was painted over the doorway into the sentencing chamber. A pennant with the insignia of the king’s army hung down one side of the entranceway, and a battle flag from Prokief’s former unit graced the other side. The two guardsmen at the doors wore uniforms that were reminiscent of the king’s guards back at Quillarth Castle, though Blaine knew that even the soldiers assigned to Velant had been given the choice between exile and death for their crimes.
Even the tall, wide wooden doors appeared to have been designed to intimidate, carved with the seals of the noble houses of Donderath. There, near the bottom, was his own family crest, the mark of the House McFadden, lords of Glenreith, for all the good it would do him. Blaine had left that history, that identity, behind when the convict ship left Castle Reach. The king had stripped him of his title. He had disavowed his heritage. Here, he was just Mick. Probably for the best. Prokief would probably enjoy slapping me down even more if he knew who I used to be.
“Enter.” Commander Prokief’s deep voice was flat and cold. The guards shoved Blaine and Piran into the sentencing chamber, then forced them to their knees. Prokief was a bear of a man with the manner of a brawler, tall and broad shouldered with a cloud of unruly dark hair and a full dark beard. He was known for his brutality on the battlefield as much as for his effectiveness. Prokief had been useful to the king up to a point, but he had long ago crossed the threshold that made him an embarrassment.
“McFadden. Rowse. Again. I am not patient.” Prokief glowered at them. “You fought a guard. Struck a soldier. Caused him bodily harm. Disobeyed direct commands. Do you deny this? There are witnesses,” Prokief said.
“Your attack dog savaged a young boy for the fun of it,” Blaine snapped, at the end of his patience. “We’re convicts, not monsters.”
Prokief’s laughter was a low rumble. “No? So…righteous…considering the crimes that brought you here.” He looked to the well-armed guards. “Remove their shackles,” he ordered. “Then restrain them on the floor.” He jerked his head toward the cuffs and manacles set into the stone. “And bring me the whip.”
Prokief removed his uniform jacket and slowly turned up the sleeves of his shirt. The look in his eyes gave Blaine a sick feeling, as he recognized that Prokief relished delivering the punishment. He drew a pair of black leather gloves from his belt and slowly fitted them onto his beefy hands. Then he reached out to take the whip from the guard who had retrieved it from where it hung on the wall, among many instruments of Prokief’s ‘discipline.’
“Bind them.”
Guards pushed Blaine and Piran toward the iron restraints. They were stripped of their clothing and spread-eagled facedown on the cold stone, bound at the wrists and ankles. The ropes stretched the skin on their backs tight, in preparation for the lash. Blaine worked at keeping his face impassive. Even Piran stopped wisecracking.
Rough rope bit into Blaine’s wrists. The cold stone floor leeched the heat from his body, and Blaine knew that the restraints would tear at his flesh when he began to shiver. Prokief swished the knotted leather whip through the air so that Blaine and Piran would hear it. He cracked it, chuckling when they flinched, although this time, he did not strike them. He was enjoying their fear, just like he would relish their pain.
Showing them the whip had been part of the performance. The whip sang through the air, and its first strike slashed across Blaine’s back. He gritted his teeth, refusing to give Prokief the satisfaction of hearing him cry out. The second strike lanced open Piran’s skin shoulder to hip. Piran cursed, jaw set, eyes narrowed.
“One.”
Prokief was no novice when it came to administering the lash. He was skilled in making every blow count, opening new skin with each strike, cutting across muscle and sinew in a way calculated to make the victim’s every movement exquisitely painful.
Blaine forced himself to breathe and closed his eyes. Prokief did not know that Blaine’s father had long ago taught him how to take a beating, had trained him to hide his pain and force down his killing rage. And while Blaine’s father had not whipped him, he had laid into Blaine often enough with his fists or walking cane that Blaine knew how to go far away in his mind, to his own imaginary fortress, where he would wait out the assault.
“Two.” The lash fell twice, once on each of them.
“Three.” Blood spattered as Prokief raised the thin, merciless leather cord and snapped it once again, spraying them with droplets. Forty lashes would kill most men, Blaine knew. On occasion, the flayed body of a prisoner had been tossed out in the snow of the parade ground until it froze solid, where it remained until the thaw, a warning for the rest of them. Blaine wondered how far Prokief would take their punishment, whether he and Piran would become Prokief’s next cautionary tale.
“Four.”
After ten lashes, Blaine’s vision swam. His body cramped from the unnatural positions in which the manacles stretched him, but every twitch and shiver tore at his bonds or pained his bloodied back. Piran stopped cursing, and his face had paled. Blaine’s jaw clenched so tightly against the pain that he feared he might crack a tooth.
“Fifteen.” Blaine grunted and bit into his lip. The lash fell again and again, each time striking in a new spot. He lost count, slipping in and out of consciousness.
Blaine gritted his teeth. His silence enraged Prokief, who brought the lash down harder as the guard counted. “Sixteen…Seventeen…Eighteen…Nineteen…Twenty.”
When the last lash fell, Blaine lay still, lost in pain and shock.
“Douse them with salt water,” Prokief commanded.
A guard went to grab a bucket from near the wall. The weight of the water hurt as much as the salt that stung in the fresh, raw wounds, and Blaine barely bit back a cry.
“Take them to the Holes. No food or water. Three days.” He paused. “Ejnar, come here.”
Dimly, Blaine heard the swish of the warden-mage’s gray robes as the man’s soft boots stepped around the rivulets of blood on the tile floor. “Commander?”
“Use your magic to keep him from dying. I want him alive when he leaves here, even if he’s barely breathing.”
“Done, Commander.”
Blaine could hear the satisfaction in Prokief’s tone. “Give him something to remember me by while he’s down there. Fever and cramps, eh? It would be pleasant to hear him beg for death.”
“As you wish, Commander.” Ejnar paused. “And Rowse?”
“The same.”
“With pleasure.” Ejnar had no sooner spoken than Blaine felt a wave of fire building inside his body. A moment earlier, soaked to the skin and spread-eagled on the ice-cold floor, Blaine had shivered uncontrollably. Now, he felt sweat breaking out on his temples, only to subside a moment later with the onset of shuddering chills. His gut clenched, and the pain would have doubled him over had the ropes not kept him flat against the floor. Blaine’s breath came in shallow gasps as the pain hit again. He writhed, twisting against the ropes that held him until the skin at his wrists and ankles were raw. After only a few moments, the scream Prokief coveted tore from Blaine’s lips.
“Make sure he remains conscious.” Prokief turned from Ejnar to the guards. “When his time’s up, drag him out when the prisoners are in the yard. Let them see the price of insolence.
“Unlock the cuffs,” Prokief ordered. The commander made no effort to hide the gloating tone in his voice. “Get them dressed and give them each a woolen cloak. Then throw them in the Holes.”
Blaine forced himself onto his knees, refusing to give in to the pain of every movement. Pulling the rough-spun cloth of his shirt over his savaged back hurt enough to make him pale.
“Three days in the Hole,” Prokief repeated, settling his gaze on Blaine with satisfaction. ”Perhaps you’ll remember who’s in charge.”
The Hole. Prokief’s oubliette. Blaine felt his hopes, briefly raised from surviving the whipping, plummet. Deep holes cut into Edgeland’s ice held prisoners Prokief wanted to make sure never forgot the ‘lesson’ he wanted them to learn. Usually, the prisoners were beaten first, or whipped, before being dropped into the icy, solitary darkness until Prokief remembered to send someone to get them out. Some survived. Many did not.
One of the guards shoved Blaine, intentionally placing his hand to press against the fresh wounds that seeped blood through Blaine’s homespun shirt.
Blaine bit back a curse. He had no desire to go into the Hole with broken bones, something a vengeful guard could easily arrange. Even Piran restrained himself to a murderous glare.
The snow crunched beneath his feet as the guards dragged Blaine and Piran to the oubliettes. Blaine saw an unbroken expanse of white that stretched into the gray horizon, and more snow falling from slate-colored skies. He shivered as the snow fell on bare skin where his ragged prison uniform did not protect him from the cold.
A soldier on either side dragged him, one on each arm, with Blaine between them as deadweight, too injured to stand. Blood dripped from Blaine’s mouth into the snow, leaving a crimson path of droplets. Red stains trailed behind him. The gritty ice burned against his raw wounds until his skin grew numb from cold.
Blaine and Piran exchanged a glance that spoke volumes. Solidarity. Shared suffering. Acknowledgment that it might be the last time they saw freedom. And above all, an unspoken vow that someday, somehow, they would be avenged against Prokief and their attackers.
One guard removed the lid from the Hole; then the two guards heaved Blaine into the darkness. Blaine tumbled down, deep into the ice, as they replaced the lid and left him in blackness. He landed hard.
Blaine lay where he had fallen, gasping from the pain, alone in the darkness. Will Ejnar really meddle to keep us from dying down here? It would be like that bastard Prokief to want the chance to torture us longer. Gods know, Piran and I have earned his ire a dozen times over.
After he caught his breath, Blaine forced himself to his knees, and began to feel around the ice to discover the bounds of his prison. To his relief, Prokief’s sadistic humor had not included tossing in a wolf or some other predator to finish Blaine off.
Of course not, Blaine thought. That would be too easy. Merciful, by his standards. And if he had intended a blood fight, he would have left the lid off, so the soldiers could watch.
It would not have surprised Blaine to find the frozen corpse of one of the oubliette’s prior occupants. Then again, Prokief liked to make sure all of Velant’s inmates saw the evidence of his brutality to remind them that their lives and deaths were wholly under his control and subject to his whims.
Blaine permitted himself a grunt of pain. The fall had winded him. His back hurt badly enough to bring tears to his eyes, but he swallowed down his pain and forced himself to pace the circumference of the oubliette.
He could stretch out his arms and reach both sides. That meant his prison was barely wide enough for him to lie down. On the other hand, cold as it was deep in the ice, he was out of the wind and snow. Still, freezing to death was a real possibility. Prisoners found it difficult enough not to die from ice sickness in the normal course of their work, when they could retreat to the relative warmth of the barracks and the heat they could coax from the scant rations of firewood.
The oubliette contained no food, and certainly no means to build a fire, and no draft to vent one. Once again, the dubious mercy of Prokief’s punishment was clear.
Blaine eased down to sit, tucking his cloak around himself to conserve as much body heat as he could. His gut still clenched spasmodically and he alternated between chills and fever.
I never really expected to survive Velant, Blaine thought. No matter what Prokief told his mage this time. And none of us will ever return to Donderath. Piran’s right; the chance of living long enough to get out of this damned prison and become a colonist is slim. A sucker’s bet.
And yet the colony of Skalgerston Bay was populated by the Velant colonists who had survived the hardships of Prokief’s prison. Those who earned their Tickets of Leave received small amounts of acreage and pittances of coin to build cabins for themselves and start over as colonists. Most returned to the kind of work they had done in Donderath, coopers and blacksmiths, whores and tradesmen. The herring boat fleet made fishermen of all able-bodied colonists, and sometimes if the food ran short, some of the convicts as well. Everyone did some farming, since the shipments from back home did not come as often or as regularly as needed to keep people fed.
How much life can change in just a short period of time, Blaine thought. I managed to trade father’s brutality for Prokief’s. At least back at Glenreith I had a bed to sleep in and hot meals most of the time.
Still, he knew that given the choice he would not change the course of action that brought him to Velant. Not if it meant that Father continued to beat Carr and abuse Mari. If I hadn’t killed Father, he would have had to kill me. So perhaps death was looking for me either way, though I cheated King Merrill’s noose.
Three days, Prokief said. Do I believe him? If I fall asleep, I’ll likely die down here in the cold—unless Ejnar can actually keep me alive and torture me at the same time. Freezing to death isn’t that bad of a way to go, considering the options. No more pain, or hunger, no more being the guards’ target. I can fight to stay awake. Maybe I’ll even manage to last that long. But did he mean it? Will he really haul us out then, or did he just say that to raise false hopes? What’s to say he won’t change his mind?
Cramps bent him over from time to time. Fever raised a sweat; then chills shook him to his core. But after a time, Blaine felt some strength return. He did not trust Prokief’s word or Ejnar’s magic to assure his survival. The cold, not his wounds, was the biggest threat. He resolved to keep moving as long as he could.
Blaine struggled to his feet and forced himself to pace the oubliette, then reverse course and pace again. He rested, leaning against the icy wall, and traced the path once more. The pit was cold, dark, and silent except for the scrape of his boots against the ice. Blaine felt jumpy, as if energy tingled through the darkness and the ice, catching him in its flow. Just my imagination, he thought. But he had heard whispered rumors, back in the barracks, that magic coursed beneath Edgeland’s snow and rock, out through the bay to Estendall, the volcano that sometimes rumbled and sent plumes of steam into the cold air. Rivers of magic flowed through certain places, some of the hedge witches said, things they called ‘meridians.’ Legends and wives’ tales, Blaine thought. But in the darkness, he wondered.
Most people in Donderath had at least a flicker of small magic, and they used their talent for everyday tasks—healing a sick cow, making crops grow faster, finding out where to drill a well. Blaine found his own talent of limited usefulness. In a fight, he had a second of forewarning of where his opponent would strike, sensed even earlier than signaled by the movements or expression of the other fighter. It was a secret Blaine had long guarded, since it gave him his only edge against his father. Here, it had enabled him to best other convicts who had tried to put him in his place. But against the ice and cold, it was useless.
As he remained alone in the darkness, memories returned, vivid and unavoidable. For the first time since the awful days aboard the convict ship, he let himself think about Carensa. The anguish in her eyes when King Merrill passed sentence had been almost too much for Blaine to bear. He remembered the touch of her skin and the scent of her hair, and her last, desperate visit to him when he awaited exile in the dungeon. Despite his pleas, she had been there on the dock when the Cutlass sailed from Castle Reach, a silent witness. We would have married just a few months from now, he thought. If I hadn’t ruined everything.
To stay awake, and to blunt the pain of his injuries, Blaine counted his steps as he walked. Even so, his mind wandered. He thought about Glenreith, and realized that the only truly happy times he could remember were when Ian McFadden was gone at court, sometimes for months. Only then had Blaine and the rest of the family been certain that they would not bear the brunt of one of Ian’s rages. A few golden moments were crystalized in memory. His mother Liana, before the awful night Ian’s temper had taken her life. Carr, his brother, when he was young enough to escape Ian’s fists, when Blaine had been able to draw off Ian’s anger and protect Carr and their sister, Mari. It had been worth every bruise to see them safe. Then Blaine had grown too tall and strong for Ian to beat, and he had turned his attention to the others. Blaine had not always been able to protect them. Carr turned sullen and angry. Mari grew quiet and hid. When Blaine finally discovered why Mari tried so intently to vanish from her father’s gaze, when the depths of Ian’s debauchery had finally been exposed, Blaine had taken the matter into his own hands and run Ian through.
Five hundred steps. Walking keeps me warm, but eventually I’ll tire. No food to replenish my energy. Sooner or later, exhaustion and cold will overwhelm even the pain. And then it will be over.
It was cold enough that the blood on his back froze to his shirt. Every movement ripped his shirt free from the ice-scabbed lacerations. Fever melted the ice, and blood trickled down his back, only to repeat the cycle again and again. For now, Blaine welcomed the pain. It proved he was still alive. When it dulled, his life dimmed with it. He focused on the pain like a beacon.
Five thousand steps. Only a few candlemarks had passed, but Blaine was growing tired. Before the fight in the mine, and the ordeal in Prokief’s headquarters, Blaine had already been exhausted from the hard labor in the ruby mines and at the edge of starvation from the prison’s scant rations. That left few reserves on which to draw, now that his body began to register the full trauma inflicted on it. Uncontrollable shivering cramped bruised muscles and tensed broken skin, jerking him awake every time the tremors made him shake from head to toe.
At least I won’t die of thirst, he thought, using the buckle from his belt to scrape off some chips of ice. But even that was folly. Eating ice would lower his body temperature. Sooner or later, whether from cold, hunger, exhaustion, or thirst, he would die in the darkness. Weaponless, he lacked the means to shorten his suffering.
Twenty thousand steps. Blaine sank to the floor, unable to push his weary body further. He wondered how Piran was doing, whether Piran was shouting curses in the darkness or trying to climb the slick walls of his oubliette, or surrendering to the finality of the situation.
One hundred thousand. One hundred thousand and one. Blaine kept counting, though he had stopped walking candlemarks before. He was resigned to the numbness in his fingers and toes, the growing stiffness in his bruised body. He huddled in his rough cloak, trying and failing to warm his burning cheeks and ears.
If I’m still alive when they haul me out of here, what will I lose to the cold? A hand? The tip of my nose? My ears? Toes? Just in the few months Blaine had been in Velant, he had seen his fellow convicts lose a bit of themselves to the awful cold. Frostbite was relentless. Blaine had helped hold a man down as the hedge witch cut off two gangrenous toes, frozen dead by the cold.
That’s what we have to look forward to, if we survive. Dying by inches.
Blaine kept on counting, but the pace grew slower. Now and again, he lost his place and had to back up to the last number he remembered. It gave him a focus, but he was tiring. Even something as simple as counting became difficult to maintain. He counted to keep from sleeping, but it didn’t help. He faded in and out of consciousness, and the dreams and nightmares finally claimed him..
Sunlight warmed his skin. The meadow down the lane from Glenreith was yellow with spring flowers. Mari ran through the blooms, shrieking with glee. She gathered a fistful of blossoms and presented them to Blaine with a wide smile. Her face and dress were grass stained but her eyes were alight. Innocent. Untouched still by the horrors to come. Blaine reached for the flowers, but Mari pulled them away and, with another gale of laughter, turned and ran across the field.
“Come back!” he shouted, starting after her. It occurred to him that he should be counting his steps. Why? He wasn’t sure. It had been important. He knew that, but not the reason, and so as he ran he kept a silent count with each footfall, as the tall grass sliced at his skin, leaving traces of his blood behind on every razor-sharp blade.
“Mari!” She only laughed harder and ran faster. Surely he could catch her, but she remained far ahead of him. They were leaving the meadow and its brilliant sunlight, heading into the darkness of the forest. Blaine called for Mari to stop, but she ignored him, or perhaps she was too far away to hear his warning. The forest was dark and cold, filled with danger and predators. Wolves. Bandits. Monsters.
In the shadows of the tall trees, Blaine lost sight of Mari. He could hear her laughter but he could no longer see her. A glimpse of her white shift sent him running in one direction, and the sound of her voice made him veer off. Mari was everywhere and nowhere, and it was growing dark. He had lost count of his steps, and now he would not find his way out of the forest.
Blaine shouted Mari’s name, but silence answered him. His steps pounded on dry leaves and crunched on the sticks and pinecones that littered the forest floor. Nothing mattered except finding Mari and leaving the woods. He stopped, lost. Her laughter was gone. A wolf howled. He heard her scream, this time in fear.
“Mari!” he shouted, starting to run again. Shadows gave way to darkness. So dark beneath the tall old trees. Cold, too. Snow began to fall, thick and heavy, blanketing the ground. The wolf howled again. Another scream. The forest melted away, and Blaine ran through knee-deep snow. Up ahead he saw Mari. Her shift was no longer white, but crimson, and she stood over the wolf’s body, holding a bloody sword. Blaine shouted to her, terrified for her safety, angry that she had taken on the wolf herself, but Mari only stared at him as if in a daze, then began to shake her head.
Blaine lost his footing and crashed down into the snow. The cold blackness swallowed him. Mari and the wolf were gone, and only the dark remained.
The sound of a pennywhistle pierced the darkness. Lost, Blaine followed the music. He could barely hear it at first, but gradually, the notes grew louder, closer.
“What in Raka is he muttering?” a distant voice asked. The music stopped.
“Sounds like he’s counting to me,” another voice replied, just as far away as the first.
“Why in Esthrane’s name is he counting?” the first voice sounded, closer now.
“Ask him if he wakes up,” the second man replied.
For a time, the voices faded into darkness. The pennywhistle took up its tune again, a jaunty tavern song that reminded Blaine of home. When the shadows parted again, Blaine heard the steady cadence of a boot tapping against rock.
“Are you back yet?” The voice was one of the speakers he had heard before, familiar, but not yet someone he could place. “Because it’s bloody boring sitting vigil.”
With a struggle, Blaine opened his eyes. Even the dim light of the lantern hurt. It took him a moment to recognize the sparse surroundings of the prisoners’ barracks. “Verran?”
“Thank Torven! He’s stopped counting!” A chair scraped against the floor and then Verran Danning stood over him, looking down with an expression that mingled annoyance and concern.
“How long?” Blaine croaked. His throat was parched, and his body felt leaden.
“Three days in the Hole, two days since then,” Verran snapped. “With Dawe and me playing nursemaid, trying to get food down your sorry gullet and warming you up slowly enough so we didn’t have to chop off all the small bits from the cold.”
Blaine had met Verran on the ship from Castle Reach. He and the minstrel-thief had struck a deal to watch each other’s back on the long journey, and that had deepened into friendship when they had been assigned to the same barracks. Dawe Killick, one of the other prisoners in the same section as Blaine and Piran, had also become a good friend.
“Piran?” Blaine managed.
“He’s alive,” Verran replied. “Probably refused to die just to annoy the piss out of Prokief. Not in much better shape than you, but at least he didn’t mutter numbers in his sleep.”
Counting. Steps. The oubliette. Cold darkness. Little by little, memories flooded back. Pain. Dreams. Blaine shifted his weight and realized he lay on his own bunk. He winced, then realized that moving did not hurt as much as he expected.
“Got Tellam the hedge witch over here to save your sorry ass,” Verran said, slipping his pennywhistle into his pocket. “Did his best to fix Ford up as well. Tellam said he’d settle for a quarter of your next pay, if you survived, for his trouble. He closed up the stripes on your back and kept them from souring, and then he eased the ice sickness the best he could.”
“Thanks,” Blaine said.
“Dawe and I agreed. It was better to keep you and Piran alive than have to get new bunkmates,” Verran replied. “We’re used to how bad the two of you snore, and how you both wake up fighting in your sleep.”
“You’d prefer counting?”
Verran barked a laugh. “No. Definitely not. Snore all you want. Just no more bloody numbers.”
Blaine went back to sleep. After a time, he woke again. Verran was gone, but Dawe dozed in a chair nearby, and startled as Blaine roused. “Good. You woke on your own. Thank Charrot and the spirits.” Dawe unfolded his thin, lanky body from the chair and bustled over to the small brazier. The fire kept the chill away and let them warm snow for water and the tea they made from dried berries and leaves.
He helped Blaine sit up and forced a cup of hot tea into his hands. “Drink this. The healer said it would help.” Blaine glanced across the small room and saw that Piran was also sitting up. They nodded to each other, in recognition of the shared triumph of survival.
“Prokief sent a guard to say you’re back to the mines tomorrow,” Dawe said. He shrugged as Piran let out a halfhearted barrage of curses. “Hey, I’m just the messenger. Guess you’re bloody lucky he didn’t throw your carcasses to the wolves when they fished you out of the Hole.”
“What about the guard we thrashed?” Piran asked, his voice rough.
Dawe gave an unexpected chuckle. “Yeah. About that. Turns out his fellow soldiers didn’t much like him, either. I hear he turned up dead, with his throat slit and his pay missing. One of the guards tried to blame it on you, but there were enough witnesses to what happened in the mine that that didn’t work out so well. Blaine came out of the Hole, he went in. Not sure Prokief means to fish him out.”
Blaine sipped his tea and looked away. Tomorrow would bring new horrors. Maybe, if he survived long enough, he would earn his Ticket of Leave. It was little enough to live for, but it was something. He closed his eyes and, at the very edge of his memory, he heard a child’s remembered laughter. Worth the price.