CHAPTER ELEVEN

This was a gemstone mine. I could see two slaves turning a crank to draw something up out of a narrow hole in the earth. My first horrified thought was that this tiny passage led to the mine, but then they grabbed a bucket of water and dumped it into a brick-lined shallow pool in the ground. Other slaves knelt beside the pool, scrubbing the loose rocks. The washed rocks were tossed onto broad sheets of linen, then sorted through under the sun by more slaves. The larger chunks were broken into smaller chunks by slaves working with hammers on big rock slabs, then washed again. If they were finding anything valuable, I didn’t see it. A few glanced up to see the newcomer, but I didn’t see Prax.

A hill rose up to our west, and a tunnel had been dug into the hill. I could see two slaves coming out with a wheelbarrow full of rock chips, which they dumped into the pile of stones to be washed. The soldier led me into the side of the hill. “Down,” he said.

The opening was larger than the well, but not by enough. A ladder led down into the darkness. You can’t be serious, I thought, but he clearly was. I began to climb down. The daylight disappeared, replaced by the dim flicker of lamps. “Fresh muscle,” the guard shouted down the hole. “On her way down.”

My legs trembled as I went down into the darkness; my palms were slippery with sweat. I don’t need a dark bird this time; I’m meeting the darkness on my own feet. I told myself that I was meeting the darkness on my own ground as well, but I knew that was a lie. For a minute or two of climbing, I could see nothing at all, and hear nothing but my ragged breath and my borrowed sandals hitting each rung of the ladder, but then I saw a grayish flicker, and I could hear the clink, clink, clink of hammers working against rock.

When I’d joined Sophos’s harem, I’d been given a disdainful welcome from Boradai, and then instructions from her and Tamar. Here, as soon as I set foot on rock at the bottom of the mine, the guard gave me a hammer, and put me to work.

Is Prax here? I tried to look around, only to get a rough shove in the back hard enough to knock me to my knees. “Quit stalling,” the guard said.

There were only two guards down here at the bottom of the mine. They had twitchy hands that seldom left the whips they carried, and short swords. I can look for Prax later, I thought, swallowing hard, and climbed back to my feet to get to work.

We chipped rock away from the walls of the tunnel, piece by piece, carrying the chunks in baskets to empty them into a barrel that was pulled up on chains. In the lamplit shadows of the mine, all the rocks looked gray. I hoped they didn’t expect me to actually spot gems.

In the dust and the dimness, and my own interior bleakness, the other slaves all looked alike to me, too. Until the person next to me hissed, “What are you doing here?” I looked over. I didn’t recognize him at all, but he was cleaner than I’d have expected, wilted like a spent flower but not yet hardened. Fresh muscle, like me. Why did he know me? Then I realized—he was one of the seven, one of the ones who’d chosen to return to slavery. Oh, gods. Boradai sold them here? But . . . but . . .

“It is you,” he hissed. “This is not what we asked for, you lying, foul . . .”

“I know,” I said. “Shhh, the guard is looking at us.”

He lapsed into frightened silence. After a little while he said, “Sophos was a fine master. A good man. He treated me well.”

“Sorry,” I muttered.

“You should be. I never asked for your help.”

“He had two faces. You saw the nicer one.”

“It wasn’t that hard to stay on his good side. You were with Tamar, weren’t you? She was uppity. Thought she was too good for anyone.”

Our eyes met in the dim light and I knew he saw my disgust, as I saw his anger.

“I’m going to free you again,” I said.

“Sure you are. Did you bring a djinn?”

“No, but I’ll free you without one.”

“Sure you will.” We heard a guard approaching and fell silent. The guard stood directly behind me for a long moment; I redoubled my efforts with the hammer, breaking chips loose from the wall. I thought I could hear the guard’s breath, feel the heat of it against the back of my neck. I didn’t dare look; he would take that as an invitation to draw out the whip, and with eight fresh slaves this would be a convenient time to make an example of someone. Anyone. I was one of the weaker new slaves, a good choice should they decide to beat someone senseless—or worse.

Finally the guard moved on.

“I never wanted freedom,” the man said. “Never.”

“Sorry,” I muttered again. thinking, shut up, already.

“Sophos fed me, he gave me a roof over my head. I was warm in the winter and had water to drink in the summer. You took my home away from me. And now, now, thanks to you, here I am.” He swung the hammer up and against the wall with a particularly vicious clink. The force of the blow shook a basket’s worth of rock chips loose, and he knelt to gather them up and dump his rocks into the barrel. When he was back, he gave me another venomous look and said, “This is all your fault.”

“You’re here because you chose slavery,” I hissed. “You were gifted an opportunity that many people die trying to get, and you chose slavery. So don’t whine to me because it didn’t work out the way you’d hoped.”

“You promised a kind master.”

“Did I? Well, I gave Boradai the name of a man who would have bought you and treated you kindly. She sold you here instead. Blame her.”

“Boradai—”

“—is a free woman now.”

“But—”

“When we were standing outside Helladia you were free. You didn’t have to go with Boradai. You put yourself in her power. Your mistake.”

“I hope you rot in hell.”

“We’re already in hell. If you’re lucky, I’ll get us out.”

I wondered where Tamar was, right now—what she’d done when she woke up and found us gone. She’ll go back to the Alashi, the darkness whispered. She’s stuck around out of loyalty, but after this—this betrayal—she’ll shed you like the deadweight you are. You’re on your own. I shook my head. I could trust Tamar; she was out there, waiting for night, and we’d manage this together. She’d had plenty of opportunities to leave me if that’s what she wanted to do.

Not since winter ended, though.

I could trust her.

You used to say the same thing about Kyros.

Tamar was my blood sister.

Kyros is your father.

When the shadow had fallen over me in the winter, I had taken to my bed and scarcely moved until it lifted, finally, weeks later. Here I didn’t have that luxury. I had to keep moving, keep the hammer moving, keep my mind working on our escape. I’d forgotten, during my months without the shadow, how hard it was to think in the darkness. It felt as if weights were chained to my mind, at least for any reasoned thought. My fears—about Tamar abandoning me to my stupidity, about Kyros finding me, about Prax killing me—continued to chase each other around and around like little yapping dogs.

Someone up above struck a large bell; around me, everyone gathered up their stone chips into their baskets and went up, one by one, to dump them into the barrel. I followed. The barrel went up, lifted on chains by slaves turning the crank somewhere above. Then it came back down with a steaming pot and a stack of wooden bowls. A ladle for each of us; everyone slumped against the wall to eat. I’d hoped for stew, but what came out of the pot looked like cooked horse grain. I was still hungry enough that I scraped the bowl clean to get the last of it.

As we were bringing back our bowls, I heard a quiet voice say, “I heard someone say your name is Lauria.” I turned—it was Prax. He’s still alive—but his eyes burned silently, and I swallowed hard, wondering what I could say with the guards so close.

Nothing, as it turned out. I was shoved back to my spot, Prax was shoved in another direction. Anything I had to say to him would have to wait until later.

I picked up my hammer. My hands were beginning to blister; my arm muscles were sore. As I swung it, the yapping dogs started up again. Even if you can swing it now, what about tomorrow, what about the next day? This plan was doomed; you only came up with it as a way to atone by dying. So let them make an example of you. Prax will see, maybe he’ll be satisfied. But it certainly sounds easier than swinging that hammer one more time, doesn’t it?

Prax. He hates you, and for good reason. He has every right to hate you, far more than the whining bastard on your left has. Even if you want to help Prax, why should he listen to you? Maybe as soon as the guards are out of sight for the night he’ll pick up one of these hammers and beat you to death.

Well, if that’s what he wants to do, I guess I’d better keep swinging this hammer so that the guards don’t kill me first. Prax sure has a better right to kill me than the guards do.

And then Tamar will try to find you tonight, and . . . what? If you’re dead, you won’t be able to talk to her. She’ll think she just didn’t find you, so she’ll stay close, and try again . . . and again . . . How long before she gives up? How long before one of the detachments from the Greek Army stumbles across her and kills her out of suspicion that she’s Alashi?

I tried to clear my mind, as I would when I was meditating, but the fears crowded in anyway, swarming through my thoughts, nipping at me. Tamar, I thought, swinging the hammer with a clink against the rock wall. Tamar. Tamar. Tamar. Tamar. I focused my mind on her name like a bead on a chain, willing that to banish the other thoughts and worries. I could do nothing more until evening, nothing more until I’d spoken with Prax and—I hoped—Tamar. Wait until evening.

         

We heard another bell. Up went the rocks, and down came dinner—more gruel. Our hammers went into the barrel with our empty bowls to go up. I guess Prax will have to kill me with his bare hands. Down the ladder came the slaves who’d worked that day washing rock chips. Down came a barrel of blankets—one each—plus a pot to piss in. Up went all the lamps save one, leaving us nearly in darkness as the barrel was pulled back to the top. Finally the guards went up the ladder, and last of all, the ladder itself was pulled up.

It was a remarkably secure prison.

As the guards were leaving, the slaves from up top were looking for places to lie down and sleep for the night. The slaves from below were waiting, though, and I thought I knew why.

Prax approached me from the back of the mine as I stood, gaping up at the hole where the ladder had been. “You are the Lauria I remember,” he said.

“Yes.”

“This makes no sense. You weren’t owned by Kyros. And half a dozen from the line swear they saw you last week, a free woman. What are you doing here?”

“Looking for you,” I said.

“Why?”

“Because I want to give back what I took from you.”

“Are you drunk? What the hell do you think you can give me here?”

The slaves from above had gotten back up to listen, and there was a ripple of hard amusement at Prax’s question.

“I mean, really. Do you see a way out of here? Do you see a ladder? Every slave is put down here at night.”

“I have a friend on the outside,” I said. “A shaman, and my blood sister. Once we know what we’re going to do, we can have her come and let us out.”

“There is a wall. There are guards. They are constantly watching for bandits, and you think your friend has a chance?”

“I think she’ll have a chance if we can poison the guards.” I pulled the packet from my pocket. “Who cooks for the guards?”

A long pause. Then . . . “He does,” Prax said, and pointed.

I held out the packet to the man. He was cleaner than the rest. “Would you use this?” I asked.

“What will it do?”

“Make them sick.” I hope.

“If I make them sick, they’ll take away my job and send me back to the bottom of the mine.”

“No they won’t. Because while they’re throwing up, my blood sister will come throw down the ladder, and we’ll come up and kill them all, and escape to the Alashi. And then we’ll all be free.”

The cook looked at Prax. Prax looked at me.

“I swore last fall that I would free the people I sent back to slavery,” I said. “I found Nika, and took her to the Alashi. I took Uljas to the steppes. And . . . and Burkut as well.”

“What happened to Burkut? You’re trying to hide something,” Prax said.

“Burkut died. He was free, but he died.” I waited for Prax to say something. When he didn’t I went on. “I don’t know where Thais is. But I spent all winter trying to think of a way to free you. I thought that if I was willing to risk everything by going inside, I might be able to help you get out. And all the other mine slaves.”

“Why?”

“Do you really need to know the answer to that?”

Prax stepped close to me and for a moment I thought he was going to try to kill me with his bare hands. I could smell him, fetid and sweaty with a faint odor of rot and death. His breath was terrible. “I dreamed of you, some months ago,” he said. “We faced each other, and you promised to free me.” I nodded. “So tell me. Why? And why now, and not two years ago when you took me back to Kyros?”

“I was Kyros’s servant then.” I swallowed hard. “Now . . . now I am Alashi.” And always will be. No matter what they say.

Prax’s eyes swept over me and he nodded, finally.

“There are two guards down here during the day,” I said. “Why not kill them and break out, even without poisoning their food?”

“The ladder is pulled up unless someone needs to go up or down,” Prax said. “Also, there is air to breathe here at the bottom only because a djinn blows fresh air down a shaft. If they sent the djinn to do something else, we’d all suffocate.”

“What about the slaves above?”

“There are far more than two guards on top,” Prax said. “They protect the mine from bandits. They could certainly fight off slaves.”

“Well.” I turned back to the cook. “Will you put this in their food? It’s possible that it won’t do anything at all.”

He took it, crumpling it in his hand and hiding it, finally, inside his shirt.

Prax took his blanket and lay down in the tunnel. “You probably need to sleep now,” he said. “Speak with your blood sister. Then tell us if she’s willing to help us.”

I wrapped my blanket around me, then lay down and closed my eyes. Around me, I could hear the shuffle of other slaves settling down. The tunnel floor was cold, even through the blanket, and uneven. And despite my exhaustion, I couldn’t fall asleep.

I rose, finally, and sat up, leaning against the wall and trying to meditate. Around me, in the dim light, I could see silent humps, the sleeping slaves. Then Prax sat up and came to sit next to me.

“I couldn’t sleep my first night here either,” he said. I thought he was going to go on to give me grief—after all, it was my fault he’d wound up here—but he just scratched his knee, his eyes a little distant. “The floor is awfully hard.”

“I need to talk to Tamar,” I whispered.

“Maybe tomorrow night.”

“I gave the cook the packet . . .”

“Well, and tomorrow night we’ll know if it’s worked.”

My eyes felt like they were crusted with sand; I was so tired, I couldn’t understand why I hadn’t been able to just sleep. “Why are you being kind to me?” I blurted, resting my forehead against my knees.

Prax shrugged. “Why not?” When I didn’t answer, he went and lay back down. After a few minutes I lay down again as well.

I slipped into a gray twilight sometime very late in the night, but I couldn’t find Tamar, or she couldn’t find me; I thought I heard the echo of her voice, but I couldn’t make out her words over the clatter of a bell. Then the ringing of the bell woke me, and I was back in the mine.

We ate breakfast below; more cooked horse feed. Then a different group of slaves went up to work on the surface for the day. We rotated, apparently. I wondered when it would be my turn to go up, and hoped that I wouldn’t have the opportunity to find out. Prax was down with me, still. He worked beside me today, his eyes on the rock as he chipped away.

“How much of what we’re breaking here is gems?” I asked as we worked.

“In a good week we find a handful. Up above, they get a bonus if they find any. Extra food. Down here, they don’t expect us to be able to spot anything. There was one time, though, that someone found a big swath of something in the rock—they had us chip away the rock around it to pry it all out, and then everyone got the rest of the day off.”

“When was that? Recently?”

“No. I don’t know when it was. Maybe last spring? Or last summer. It’s hard to keep track of time.”

I wondered what had kept Prax alive, all this time. How he’d survived the work, the hunger, the abuse. He was rail-thin now, hard and spare; anything extra he had had been burned away, eaten by the darkness. He saw me looking at him and returned a measuring look before going back to his task.

The hammer was rubbing blisters onto my hands; I tried to change my grip, but that helped very little. I thought about tearing loose some strips of cloth from my shirt to pad my hands, then discarded the idea. Just endure it, I thought. Either we’ll escape and I’ll have time to heal, or I’ll die anyway. Attracting attention from the guards now isn’t worth it. By the time we stopped to eat lunch, my hands were slick with blood.

I watched carefully to see what the guards were eating. They had a separate meal, which they ate, leaning against the barrel and chatting with each other. I wondered if the cook had slipped the packet in. The guards didn’t seem to find anything wrong with the food. One glanced toward me as the meal was ending and I quickly looked away.

Not quickly enough. “Hey, girl,” the guard said, ambling toward me. I looked down—then, afraid the guard would be angry at me for not answering when he was clearly talking to me, I looked up again. I stood up and instinctively tried to square my shoulders and straighten up before thinking, no, he wants me to cower, just give him what he wants. It didn’t matter. I could smell my own fear, and I’m sure he could, too.

“What did you do to piss off your old master, anyway?” The guard wasn’t fat, but he was fleshy, and soft, for a soldier. Stark contrast to the hungry slaves. His clothes were dirty, but pressed and mended. No doubt some privileged slave had laundry duty.

“I don’t know,” I said, my voice ragged.

The guard poked me in the chest with the handle of his whip, hard enough to knock me back down. Then he uncoiled his whip and lashed me once on the legs. The tearing pain caught me by surprise and I yelped like a puppy. “Sure you know,” the guard said. “They all know. Are you going to tell me now?” The whip snapped out again and I cringed, trying to pull away with nowhere to go, biting back my own sobs. He wasn’t hitting me hard; I knew that. From his perspective, this wasn’t punishment, but teasing.

“I’ll tell you,” I said, my back pressed against the tunnel wall. “I can tell you my guess.”

The whip snaked out one more time as I was saying that and I almost broke down into sobs before I got some sort of shaky control over my voice. “I went for water and got lost. He must have thought I was trying to run away, since we were so near bandit territory. He said he would make an example of me, so he sold me here, not even for a very good price, to be rid of me. To make sure everyone knew.”

“Got lost. Sure you did.” The guard nodded, and for a moment I thought he might press the issue, but he’d tired of his sport. “What are you all gawking at?” he roared, and everyone picked up hammers and went back to work.

My hands were shaking, and my legs, but the tears dissipated as I let the darkness swallow me again. Nothing matters, nothing matters, wait it out, wait it out.

Before I had left with Sophos, he had promised that I would be treated respectfully—that he wouldn’t forget that I was a free woman. Then he’d raped me. But that had happened just before I left Sophos’s house for the Alashi. For most of my time with him, I’d thought myself untouchable; my fear had been feigned. Here, I was truly a slave. Reflecting on that even briefly made the panic rise up in me like the urge to vomit. There’s only one way out now. Only one way out. So keep going.

The guards did not look ill. Not even slightly. Maybe the evening meal would be different? Dinnertime came, we ate again, and the guards and the ladder went up. All eyes turned to the cook.

“I put it in the noon meal,” he said. “That stuff you gave me. It smelled terrible, I thought they’d all notice, but no one complained. But they’re not sick, either. It didn’t work.”

It didn’t work. I felt dizzy with dismay.

“We need a stronger poison,” Prax said. “We’ll mix together the stuff in the night pot tonight. Scoop out a little, let it sit in a packet for a day, then try giving them that.” He squeezed my shoulder. “This will work.”

“Why are you so certain?” I asked him as we lay down for the night.

“The djinni promised me I would be free,” he said softly.

“Are you sure it was the djinni?” I asked.

“Are you thinking of the dream where you came to me? I’m not thinking of that. This was different. Not long after I first came here, I decided that I’d rather die than remain a slave. I didn’t want to be beaten to death—too painful—so I didn’t dare just stop working. Instead, I stopped eating. For two days; no one noticed. Then that night, a djinn came to me and told me that I needed to eat, and survive, and trust them, because I would be free. I asked when, and the djinn wouldn’t tell me, but it did say that an Alashi woman would come and lead me to freedom. I thought that was strange. I didn’t know a great deal about the Alashi, but I did know that they never free slaves. You’re supposed to free yourself, and then if you reach them, they figure you’re worthy. The Greeks say the Alashi sacrifice newcomers to their gods, but they don’t, really—the desert does it for them.”

“But I’m not Alashi. They cast me out. Alibek . . .” I trailed off, not wanting to tell the story. “They took my vest,” I finished, lamely. “I’m not one of them.”

“You said yesterday that you were Alashi.”

“It was the easiest way to explain. And—I am more Alashi than I am anything else, even if they don’t want me anymore.”

Prax almost smiled. “The djinn meant you.”

         

I could see Tamar, but she was a terribly long way away, across the steppe, riding her horse. I shouted her name, and she turned toward me, but though she urged her horse forward she grew no closer.

“We’re going to poison the guards,” I shouted. “Once they’re sick, we’ll need you . . . we’ll be trapped, below the ground, we’ll need you to lower the ladder . . .”

She was still distant, but I could see her face, tight with fear. “Can you hear me?” I shouted. “Do you understand? Please . . .”

She was yelling something back, but I couldn’t hear her; the wind whipped her words away. They reached me, finally, echoing in my ears as I woke up. I’m going to kill you for doing this to me. You and Jaran both, I’m going to spit you on sticks and leave you for the vultures . . .

I lay awake in the dim light of the one lamp. Tamar wants to help. She must be willing to help, because I have to survive this in order to give her the satisfaction of killing me. But that’s not what she’d have said if she heard me. If she’d heard what I said, she’d have given me more of an answer.

Maybe she heard me just as I woke, the way I heard her.

The message got through.

Surely it did.

There was nothing I could do about it, not lying awake. Even after dozing off into fitful light sleep, I wasn’t able to find Tamar again. I thought I heard Kyros’s voice, in the distance, but I couldn’t be sure.

         

I woke for real sometime before the guards came down to wake us. Prax had taken a stick, stirred together the contents of the night pot, then scraped the revolting result out onto a scrap of cloth, and set that aside in a corner.

“The guards are going to smell that,” someone murmured. “What are you going to say when they find it?”

“Lauria can say that she was sick during the night and soiled her clothes,” Prax said calmly. “She’s feeling well enough to work this morning, though.”

The cook came over to stare dubiously at the shit-smeared folded cloth. “Do you really think they’re not going to notice if I put that in their food?”

“Put in only what you think you can get away with,” Prax said.

“And you think it’ll work this time. What if they catch me?”

“Take care that they don’t. But I think it will work.” Prax caught the man’s eyes and touched his arm. “The djinni have said that we’ll be free.”

The cook nodded, trembling a little. We were going to let it sit for a day; hopefully he wouldn’t drop dead from sheer nervousness in the next day and a half.

“Did the djinni really promise that everyone here would be free?” I whispered as we took our spots and picked up our tools. “Or just you?”

“I see no way that I could be freed alone,” Prax said. “It’s everyone or no one, don’t you think?”

“Some could die,” I said.

“It will do him no good to think about that.”

It would do me no good to think on it, either, but that’s what I did for much of the day. I found it hard to imagine this working well enough that no one would die in this escape attempt, and I saw no particular reason to believe that I would be one of the survivors. The melancholia made me slow. My thoughts had no clarity and my wit no quickness; surely I wouldn’t be any better at avoiding a swinging sword.

Even after a mere two days underground, the sunlit world had begun to seem strangely far away. The rock was real, the task was real, the pain in my hands was surely real, but the open air, the steppe, freedom . . . they seemed much farther away than a hundred rungs of ladder.

The day passed, somewhere above us. With no sun to follow across the sky, my only hint was my increasingly hollow stomach. But our lunch arrived, finally, and then our dinner, and then people were descending the ladder and blankets were passed out.

I’d hoped, desperately, that I’d be able to speak with Tamar again tonight, but instead I found myself aching and sleepless, my mind lurching in slow circles like a dying animal. I sat up, finally, and leaned against the wall. The pebbles on the floor had begun to poke into my sore muscles, and my entire body felt bruised.

Something lifted my hair—a stray breeze? No. A glimmer in front of me, pale in the shadows, a djinn as miserable as the rest of the mine slaves.

“You’re the djinn that brings us our air,” I whispered. “I can’t free you. We’d die before morning.”

“You can’t free me now,” it whispered back. “But I will be free, like you. You will set me free before you go. It was promised.”

“What was promised?”

“You were promised. I’ve seen you in the places that only we can go; I’ve seen your face, I’ve heard your name.” Another feathery brush against my hair. “We aren’t supposed to share our secrets with you, but they’ve left me here, abandoned me in the darkness, and I don’t care anymore what they say. You are ours. You are the one who will free me. Promise me, promise me . . .”

“Can you fetch me something that will really make the guards sick? Real poison?”

“No. I am bound tighter than you are.”

“You’re talking to me, though.”

“I can wander the mine freely, but I am bound below the surface.”

“I think you’re as crazy as I am.”

“The slavers think that my land is dark, they think that darkness is what we need, what we like. They are wrong. They see nothing, nothing! They don’t know what our land is like. We are not creatures of darkness. We are not creatures of stone, of caves.”

“Neither am I.”

“No.” Another touch.

“I will free you as soon as I can.”

“They won’t want you to. The others here. Keep the spell-chain. Use it.”

“I know. I’ll free you anyway.”

“Promise.”

“I promise.” It was a foolish thing to promise, but I could no more turn away from the djinn’s plea than I could turn away from Prax, now. “Once I can, I will free you.”

My hair whipped briefly around my face, and then the djinn was gone. I wondered how close we were to morning, and after a while I lay back down. I did sleep, and I even dreamed, but I didn’t remember the dreams in the morning.

         

The cook took the new packet, slipping it under his clothing and giving Prax one more terrified look before he headed up the ladder. “Lunch pot,” Prax whispered to him. He glanced at me, and I nodded, thinking, I can’t bear any more waiting. Let this work. Please, please let this work.

I’d been staying as far away from the guards as I could, but after lunch, I found a spot to work on that was near enough that I could listen to their conversation. I was hoping desperately for indigestion, at least; a lack of appetite, the cold sweat and headache of looming illness. They weren’t much for talking, though; they paced up and down the line for much of the afternoon.

Finally, though, they took a tea break, lounging against the wall for a little while as we kept working. “Anything new on the rider?” one of them asked the other.

I felt the sweat on my arms turn cold. Tamar. Is this Tamar?

“Well, from what Therapon could tell, it’s only the one. If she’s a scout for a bandit raid she’s a long way ahead of the rest.”

“Maybe she’s planning to break in and rob us in our sleep?” They both chuckled at that.

“Word is, she’s to be brought in if you can catch her. She’s got a fast horse. Probably tomorrow the word will be, go catch her. There’s no way she’s out riding for her health. She’s up to no good.”

They put their cups down, with that, and a moment later the whip snapped out against my leg. “Teatime’s over,” the guard said, and I realized I’d slowed my pace, trying to listen to their conversation. “Back to work.”

So. There it was. She’s here, but we’re almost out of time. I wondered if she knew they’d seen her, knew they were after her. I have to dream tonight. Have to. Have to warn her.

         

The cook was shaking and pale when he came down. “I’m not doing this again,” he said when the guards were gone. “They tasted it, you fools. They knew something was different.”

“Did they eat it anyway?”

“Yes, but that was lunch, and are they on their knees vomiting? Some poison!”

Everyone looked at me. Including Prax. Just admit defeat. You’ve lost. You are lost. What are you going to say now?

If I don’t give them hope, right now, they will truly be lost.

“I have another idea,” I said. “But it needs to be day. For now—sleep.”

It was enough. Barely.

Prax came to speak with me, once all was quiet. “I don’t have a plan,” I whispered before he could ask. “I don’t have an idea. I lied.”

“I know.”

“The djinn that brings our air stopped to speak with me last night,” I whispered. “Last summer, there was another djinn that helped me.” The djinn bound in the bandits’ spell-chain had promised me that if I would free it by breaking the chain, it would move the bandits somewhere far away from us before returning to its home. “We made a deal,” I said after a moment. “I freed it by smashing the binding stone of its spell-chain. It helped me. I could free the djinn that brings our air. Maybe it could do something . . .”

“Do you know where the spell-chain is?”

“No. But I could free it another way. It’s . . . hard to explain.”

I saw Prax’s hair move, ruffled slightly in a stray breeze that touched nothing else. “If I freed you, could you help us, if you chose?” I asked the djinn.

“No.” The hiss was tinged with regret. “I would be home, and not here. And you would suffocate here in the darkness, and I would be an outcast forever, for sacrificing your life for my freedom.”

“If we freed you during the day, what would they do then? Would they bring us up, or let us die here?”

“I think they’d bring us up,” Prax said. “It would cost them a lot of money to replace all of us, and it would shut the mine down for weeks. They’re always buying. But they’d keep a close eye on us.”

“For how long? It would take time to get a new spell-chain. Perhaps they’d get careless.”

“Perhaps . . .”

“Tomorrow,” the djinn hissed, and was gone. I felt my resolve harden. Tomorrow. One way or another.

         

Tamar was with me; she was in my arms, like a lover. “You have to leave,” I whispered, and her arms tightened around me. “They know you’re out there, they’re going to capture you if you stay. Pull back, at least. You can still help us once we’re all out.”

“You’re going to need my help to get out.”

“No, I have a new plan. But you need to be sure they don’t catch you—if they do, it’ll all be over.”

“You don’t think I could talk my way out?”

I thought that over. “No.”

“I’ll bear that in mind.”

“Tell me you’re going to take my advice,” I said. “No more hints. Tell me what you’re going to do.”

“Don’t worry about me.”

“They haven’t caught you already!” I said, horrified, but the dream was fading.

         

I woke feeling grimly certain that Tamar was in the hands of our enemies. I watched the faces of the guards for clues. They’re smiling. They have her, and that’s why they’re smiling. I tried to position myself near them again, to listen. They seemed a little groggy, though, as if they had been sick the night before, if not as incapacitated as I’d hoped. They paced and watched us; conversation was minimal.

“Hey, girl,” one of them said. I thought from my hunger that it was late morning, but I wasn’t sure. I kept my eyes on the rock, hoping they meant someone else.

“Yeah, I mean you,” he said, and I turned. He nodded. “Come here.”

I dragged my feet. “We’ve got a special task for you,” he said.

“A special privilege,” the other said.

“Do this right, and we might let you spend tomorrow upstairs in the fresh air. Would you like that? You know, you get a piece of cheese if you find a gem. Or a slice of apple. You’d like that, wouldn’t you.”

I swallowed hard and nodded, keeping my eyes on the ground.

“Well, then. Let’s show her what we’ve got. No, wait—first, have your hammer ready.” They snickered. I shrugged and raised my hammer.

One of them had his tea glass upended over something; he lifted it, and I saw a tiny spider, no bigger than my thumb. I remembered, last summer, Zosimos telling us about this, after Tamar freed him from the mine. It was a good amusement to force the slaves to kill spiders, knowing that many worshipped Arachne. No doubt they weren’t sure whether I worshipped Arachne or not—or else they’d caught Tamar and were trying to use this to know if I was Alashi. Surely any Alashi would hesitate to kill a spider.

I am a child of the djinni.

The spider was scuttling for the shadows fast enough that I didn’t think I could actually get it with my hammer, so I stomped on it with my foot.

“That’s one dead spider,” said the guard who’d first taunted me. He bent over it, and I saw the back of his neck, exposed: pale skin, the bony spine jutting out. My chance, I thought, and not trusting my sluggish mind to consider the consequences fast enough, I simply swung my hammer, as hard as I could.

The hammer sank into bone and flesh with a crunch. He was far more yielding than the rock wall, and my stomach twisted. He was a man, but he was my enemy, and I knew that I couldn’t afford second thoughts.

Prax—had he seen this coming? How could he, when I hadn’t known until just now that I would do this? Prax had his own hammer in his hand, and he leapt forward, swinging it into the face of the other guard. Another crack and a crunch, a second swing—his cry was cut off even as he voiced it, and a moment later both lay still.

“Are they dead?” someone whispered.

I flinched from touching their bodies, and Prax did it, feeling for breath and a heartbeat. “This one’s dead. This one isn’t, but I wouldn’t expect him to wake again in this world.”

“They’ll leave us to die,” said one of the men who’d gone with Boradai. “Even if there were a ladder, they’d see us coming up and kill us all . . .”

“They’re not going to leave us to die.” I swallowed hard. Just keep lying. “This was all part of my plan. The spider, that was a surprise, but it worked out well, didn’t it?” Nervous murmurs of agreement. I looked at the body and the unconscious guard. “I know how to use a sword,” I said, and took one.

“I’ve swung one. Once.” Prax took the other. I remembered the cut he’d given me when I took him back to Kyros and didn’t argue.

We need to get to the top. That’s the next step. How? The barrel of rocks that will go up at lunchtime. “Right,” I said. “Prax and I can hide in the barrel. We’ll pull a sheet over us and pile rocks on top. When it gets to the top, we’ll come out, kill the guards, and kick the ladder back down.”

“Kill the guards?” Prax said.

“We can do it,” I said.

“Then what?”

“How many guards are there in all?”

“About twenty.”

“Eighteen, now,” I said. “There are a lot more of us than there are of them. We’re going to do this.”

Above, we heard a gong. “That’s the signal for lunch,” Prax said. “Normally everyone would dump in their stones now.”

“Let’s get in.” We both fit, barely, our limbs twined together like lovers instead of old enemies. I wedged my sword in, point down, so that it wouldn’t cut me or Prax, and Prax did the same thing with his. Someone stripped a shirt off the dead guard and we pulled it over us like a taut roof; a thin layer of rocks was carefully piled on top.

“The slaves will know something’s going on. We’re going to be much lighter than the rocks.”

The slaves clustered around us. “If the unconscious one stirs, hit him on the head again,” Prax said.

“We can do this,” I said. “Trust us.” I could smell their fear, but there wasn’t anything I could do about it now. “If we don’t succeed in this, what will happen?” I whispered to Prax, in the dark.

“Something like this? At best, they’ll pull out the djinn and let everyone below suffocate. At worst, it’ll be an uglier death. No mercy, not for something like this. And for us . . .”

“I don’t want to know. Shut up.” I closed my eyes. “Djinn, are you near?”

The touch, like a feather. This time I reached back. “Return to the silent lands, lost one of your kind, and trouble us no more,” I whispered.

A moment of exhilaration. In the darkness, I thought for a moment that I could see a glimpse of the place the djinn came from, through the gate in my heart. And the djinn—I saw the djinn, like a wild-eyed woman of ragged flame. It hesitated for a moment in the doorway, turned back, grabbed my face, and kissed me full on the lips. It was like being kissed by a whirlwind, or by the sun. I felt a moment of intense heat, and all the breath went out of me. Then it was gone, and I was in the dark again, in Prax’s lap, his arms wrapped around me.

“Are you sure that was a good idea?” Prax asked.

“No. But this way we guarantee ourselves no stragglers. And the Greeks can’t pull the djinn out of the tunnel to use it against us.”

A shrug. And then another gong, and the barrel began to move.

It was a curious feeling, being lifted up like that. On one hand it reminded me of the trip in the makeshift palanquin, carried by the djinn; on the other hand, it was much slower, with many jerks, each of which threatened to leave the contents of my stomach on my lap. How are we even going to know that we’re at the top? But we slowed, and then stopped. “Be ready,” Prax whispered, as if I needed a reminder. Then, “Now!”

I leapt to my feet; Prax followed as soon as I was off of him, stolen swords in our hands. Whirling, I saw a guard, and lunged, trying to run him through before he even knew what was happening. Djinni guide my sword . . . His stunned cry choked off in a gush of blood from the slash to his neck. Well, or guide Prax’s sword. Really, either is fine.

There was only the one guard. Only the one! The ladder was rolled up on a spool; I unbuckled the belt that held it in place and let it unroll to the bottom of the tunnel. “Start up,” I called down.

Prax leaned past me and called down the shaft, “The djinn is gone. Come up if you want to live.”

“Is there usually only one guard?”

The two slaves shook their heads. “There’s usually three. They pulled two out to go out looking for bandits, I think.”

Had Tamar not been caught, then? Or maybe she had, and had sent them out looking for a nonexistent bandit tribe to better the odds against me.

The ladder and barrel were inside a cave in the hill. This was probably to keep rain out of the mine, but for the moment they also gave us a hiding place. We waited while the slaves climbed up from below. When I realized that no one was bringing up their hammer, we lowered the barrel again, shouting down to put the hammers in there if they weren’t going to carry them up. I wanted more targets than just me and Prax, whether the other slaves liked the idea or not.

The slaves climbed up steadily, but it was going to take a long time—and once up, everyone had to let their eyes adjust to the daylight just inside the cave. How are we going to even fight out there? When about half the slaves had climbed out, another guard came in looking to see why the rock wasn’t being delivered, and we struck him down, too. Four down. Sixteen—or so—to go.

“How many more do you think will come looking before they start to wonder what’s going on?” I asked Prax.

“One more, if we’re lucky.”

“Let’s wait a little longer. Give our eyes more time to adjust.”

The last of the slaves were coming out when the next guard approached. He hesitated well short of the door and called, “Methodios? What the hell are you doing?” Pause. “Methodios?”

I turned to the slaves. “There are sixteen guards left. Each of you has a weapon. Kill all the guards, and we will have a stable of horses to take us to join the Alashi. Go.” I turned to the door and ran toward the guard with drawn sword.

This was the first guard who was actually prepared to be attacked. His sword was out by the time I reached him, and it was clear very quickly that he was a much better swordsman than I was even when I was not hungry, bleeding, and half blind from the bright sunlight. But Prax was on my heels, and three more slaves armed with hammers, and he fell beneath our blows like a felled tree.

“Come on,” I shouted. “You know who your enemies are. Take them down!”

The rest of the guards knew now that something was horribly wrong, and were running toward us from their positions along the wall. One was pulling out a spell-chain, and I felt a malicious sense of triumph that I’d denied them that weapon, at least. The slaves who were sorting rocks began to pick up large chunks of stone as their own weapons. From the corner of my eye, I saw the cook running out of the tent with a large butcher knife. There were slaves who were falling back and doing their best to hide, but most were fighting like rats in a tunnel.

We can do this. We’re going to do this.

In battle with the Alashi, I’d always felt a mixture of terror and exhilaration. Exhilaration that I was fighting my enemies, sword in hand, free to defend myself in any way I could. Terror because I was usually facing a better fighter than I was. Now, the heat of battle was in my blood, burning away the shadow, at least for now. I caught a guard across the wrist with my sword; he fell back a step, then was forced to the ground by my allies with hammers. Another guard had a long spear, but someone threw a hammer at him hard enough to knock him off his stride, and then he was lost, fallen.

Then we heard a horn, blasted long and loud. Summoning back the ones who rode out looking for bandits. Shit.

There was no time to think about it. There was only time to raise my stolen sword to defend myself against the next guard, to hope that the slaves with hammers would be able to overwhelm him before he killed me. There could be no retreat here. There was nowhere to run. We would kill or die until only they, or only we, were left standing.

Then suddenly there was no one in front of me. I looked around wildly, just in time to see arrows. The remaining guards had scrambled up on to the wall, lined up beside each other, and were shooting down at us. “Spread out,” I shouted. “Scatter!”

We needed something to hide under, or behind. I found myself with Prax and one of the slaves who’d gone with Boradai, behind a building I thought was probably the kitchen. “We could hide inside,” the slave panted. I noticed that he still clutched his hammer, and that it was red with someone’s blood.

“They’ll trap us there,” I said. “Burn it down around us.”

“But out here—they’ll circle around to the other part of the wall. Shoot us down. How are we going to get out of here? How can we fight against bows?”

“We should move now,” Prax said. “Charge them before they get a chance to spread out.”

In the shelter of the building, my blood was still racing, but my mind had slowed again. I had no idea what to do. On the other side of the building, I could still hear cries of pain; not everyone had found shelter. We need to get out of here. We need to kill those guards before we can get out of here. We need to protect ourselves from the arrows . . . “Is there anything we can hold like a shield?” I asked.

“The pans for sorting the rocks,” Prax said, pointing. The pool of water for washing and sorting was a short sprint from where we sheltered, across open ground.

“This is all your fault,” Boradai’s slave said, turning on me.

I closed my eyes. “Shelter in the kitchen if you want. I’m running for a shield, and then toward the guards with the bows. I don’t see as we really have much of a choice.”

We ran for it—Boradai’s slave following along with me. I snatched up a tray, unscathed, and held it up like a shield, then whirled around, trying to see where the bowmen were now, where I needed to hold the shield to protect myself. Come on. Come on. Djinni help me, have they spread out already?

But no more arrows came.

“Lauria! Help me close these doors,” a familiar voice shouted.

“Is that your ally on the outside?” Prax asked.

I ran toward the gate. It was Tamar, still clutching her bow. “What,” I gasped, helping her to pull the gate shut. “How . . . ?”

“There are more out there, hunting the bandits they thought I might be scouting for. But we can close the doors and shoot down at them. Who knows how to use a bow?” she shouted down at the slaves who were stumbling out from their makeshift hiding spots. “Come on, surely some of you must have seen one used. Get up here!”

“The rest of the guards . . . ?”

“There’s no time . . .” Tamar glanced over the wall, then shrugged. “Yesterday evening I rode up to the gate and told them I represented the Younger Sisters, and was here to make them a very lucrative offer for whatever karenite they were finding.”

“Karenite? They mined gems here!”

“I figured that surely they found karenite occasionally.”

“Did they really believe that you were a sorceress? You’re not old enough.”

“I had that spell-chain you made back in Casseia—I linked the two ends together and kept it as a necklace. They didn’t get a good enough look at it to see what was missing. If they’d asked for me to summon my djinn, I’d have given them a stern look and said that my aeriko was already on an errand that was far more important than any silly games for their benefit. Anyway, when I realized you’d made your move, I was in a private conference with the officer in charge. I stabbed him in the heart before he knew what was going on, and then got my bow and found a spot where I could be useful. And I think I was pretty useful, taking out the five men on the wall like that.” She looked over the wall again, then eyed me. “And you didn’t think I could talk my way out if they caught me.”

I knew what she wanted and was more than happy to provide it. “I was wrong. Oh, was I wrong!”

“You’re lucky, did you know that?”

“I am far luckier than I deserve.”

“And don’t you forget it. Now go get the bows and see what you can do about teaching a bunch of slaves to defend a fortress.”

Prax was already pulling bows loose from the twitching fingers of the fallen guards, and digging out the quivers of arrows. “I’ve never used a bow before,” he said.

“You’ll be great at it. It’s not that hard.” We found three more slaves who were willing to give it a try—the nervous cook was one, to my surprise, and one of the others was one of Boradai’s.

The wall was built to defend the mine against bandit raids, and provided shelter for us to crouch behind while occasionally leaning out to shoot arrows. “Put your bows down,” Tamar said. “Wait until I give word to pick them up. There’s no point in shooting at them until they’re within range.”

We could see them coming, now, five men on horses riding together down the road. Tamar’s own bow was in her hand, the arrow ready. “Right,” she said as the men slowed to a walk. “Pick up your bows . . .”

Another pause. I heard one of the horses snort.

“Arrows ready . . .”

The men came to a dead stop, staring at the closed doors.

“Now,” Tamar whispered. Her arrow hit the lead horseman square in the chest; the rest of the arrows went wild. I’d expected them to charge forward to come to the aid of their fellow guards, but instead the four survivors wheeled their horses around and ran, as fast as they could, in the other direction.

“We’d better get out of here,” Tamar said.

“First—” I grabbed her arm. “Prax, this is Tamar. Tamar, this is Prax.”

“It’s a pleasure to meet you,” Tamar said.

Prax gave her a slightly hesitant nod.

“Where’s the stable?” Tamar asked. “We’ll make better time getting out of here if we’ve got horses. Unless you’re hiding a djinn up your sleeve . . .”

“I freed the djinn.”

“You did? Well—good.”

We climbed down from the wall, and for the first time, I had a moment to survey the damage. My elation began to fade. Of the mine slaves, fully half had been killed or were dying; of the survivors, most nursed an injury, minor or severe. Some of the slaves knelt over the bodies of friends, trying to stop the bleeding, or whispering to them to open their eyes. Others stood stunned, blood-slicked hammers drooping from their hands, waiting for me or Prax to tell them where to go next.

“Have you had enough of slavery?” I asked. There was no response. I looked around, wondering about the slaves Boradai had brought here. I could see at least one dead on the ground; another was standing, shocked and empty-handed, in the courtyard. The one who’d whined to me my first day held a blood-soaked hammer and looked like he was actually ready to climb on a horse and find the Alashi. “Listen up,” I shouted. “We’re leaving as soon as we can get the horses ready. We, as in me, Prax, and all of you.” There was still no response.

I turned to Tamar. “Get the horses ready. I’ll send someone to help you if I can figure out who’s taken care of the horses.” And then I went to the cook. “It’s time to go,” I said. “Do you know anything about horses?”

“No.” His voice was shaky.

“Riding isn’t that hard, honestly. Do you want to go wait by the stable?” I moved on to one of the slaves who stood with a bloody hammer, staring in horror at the blood on his hands. “You can go wash off, if you want, and then get ready to go. Freedom is within reach.” He seemed as half-asleep as I felt, and I shook his arm gently. “We need to hurry. But we’re going to make it; the desperate part is over.” I went next to one of the ones who knelt beside a body on the ground. “We have to leave the dead. Even the dying. Freedom is within reach, but we need to hurry . . .”

A ragged line was forming beside the stable; others were following my lead, gathering their friends, washing their hands, getting ready to go. “Find waterskins,” I told one of the men who looked a bit less lost than the others. “We’re going to need water.”

“Have you had enough of slavery?” I asked one of the slaves who’d gone with Boradai.

It took more time than it should have, precious minutes when the four surviving guards had gone to get reinforcements, but then we were picking up the waterskins and the sacks of food, loading up horses from the stable, and then setting out, over the hills and away.