The Stars Askew (27 page)

“Coffee is fine,” said Kata. “Thanks.”

Corette sauntered back out of the parlor, and Kata turned to Rikard. “Your mother?”

He nodded, sat up a little more, and fixed Kata with a stare. His voice filled with leaden seriousness. “I know what you are, Kata. You're a philosopher-assassin.”

Kata stared at him, speechless, panicked. He had guessed from the fight with the smugglers, and now this was it: her secret was out. She would be disgraced. She might even find herself in the Arbor dungeons with the rest of the seditionists' enemies.

“Look at you,” said Rikard. “Trained, athletic. I was knocked out with a single blow, and yet you defeated two armed men in a matter of seconds. You've been keeping it a secret, though. Since before the overthrow. Why would that be?”

Kata didn't have the strength to lie, but she didn't have the strength to tell the truth, either. If she didn't say anything, perhaps she could believe the conversation wasn't happening.

“Were you spying on us for one of the Houses?” said Rikard. “I remember there were suspicions, back before the overthrow. Everyone thought we had been infiltrated, and then one night—wham, the Technis guards were on us.”

Kata tried to conjure up a defense, but nothing came. There was no defense. “I'll hand myself over.”

Rikard examined her. Then his voice warmed. “But you've changed, haven't you? I know you and trust you.”

“You shouldn't,” said Kata.

“But, you see, it's just that attitude that proves yourself to me. Anyway, who among us has no sins?”

“Will you tell Ejan?”

Rikard shrugged. “He has enough on his mind, don't you think? The next Authority meeting will order the assault on the villas to break the blockade. We, on the other hand, must capture Aceline's killer.” When Kata said nothing, he added, “You see, Kata, you've changed me, too. A little, at least.” She startled, and he added, “Don't get too excited. I'm still a vigilant.”

After that, Corette brought in tray with a little pot of coffee cooked over a stove and three small cups. “It's the best I could do, I'm afraid. Blow to the head, huh? I should give you a blow to the head, young man.”

“You should,” said Kata. “Beat some sense into him.”

“I knew it was a mistake to introduce you two,” said Rikard.

 

TWENTY-ONE

Armand swung his feet over the edge of his cot and placed them on the cold wooden floor. Outside, the morning bell rang. He rested there, looked down at his thin legs. His body had changed. His features were beginning to resemble the gaunt and skeletal faces of those surrounding him. The prisoners arrived as individuals, but the camp was ironing out the differences between them. Like tributaries flowing into a river, the prisoners were becoming one—a great flood of humanity, gray and uniform, headed for death.

Irik and Armand had started to accept their fate. Armand had seen it happening to those around them: men broken down, giving up on life. The autumn cold had set in, striking the weakest with illness, sending them prostrate to the infirmary, where they quickly died. Perhaps they were the lucky ones. Others who had been taken by the bloodstone disease raved incomprehensibly as the spidery redness crawled through their bodies. In the last week, another man had shuffled out of the camp and planted himself on the ground beyond the gates. It took about six months, Armand understood, from first infection until final transformation.
But none of them would last that long with winter coming,
he thought.

Armand ran his hand over his mattress. Beneath the canvas cover, he felt the pouch of bloodstone he'd hidden in the straw underneath. If he were a thaumaturgist, he would be able to use the bloodstone to invoke some force to break down the walls of the camp, or to make himself invisible, or fly into the sky, or something. But of course, Varenis's thaumaturgists were scattered across the Empire, waiting for the stone the prisoners were mining. Armand dreamed of returning to the city to wreak his revenge or to rise back to his rightful position. Of course, the bloodstone would not be enough of a weapon to influence anyone in the Directorate. He needed something more. Still, it was something.

When they finished their watery porridge, the prisoners began the slow shuffle to the mines. As Armand's gang descended into the darkness, he felt a rumble from afar. The vibrations hummed up his legs. Like the others, he instinctively squatted down and pressed himself against the cart. In the last week, the mountain had shifted on its haunches several times, leaving the ground shaking and rattling, sending huge slabs of rock sliding down faraway mountain faces. As before, the rumbling passed and all was again silent.

The gang reached the dark end of the tunnel, and Armand began to strike at the rock face with his pick. His body had become hardened to the rigors of the labor; no longer did his back cramp and spasm. Instead it ached like a hot coal, and he entered a deathlike stupor where the long hours seemed as one. Carelessly, he breathed in the bloodstone particles drifting around in the air.

A second deep and ominous rumbling broke Armand's trance. Dust and debris fell from the roof, and the timberwork began to groan. Armand heard a crack, and, in an instant, the crew dropped their tools and squeezed themselves against the sides of the tunnel. One of the beams gave way, and several large rocks fell onto the tracks. Then all was silent. Only after the rumbling had passed did Armand's heart begin to race. Like the others, his eyes roved over the walls and roof, expecting them to give way.

Ohan pointed to Armand. “Lift those rocks into the cart.”

Armand took two steps toward them, when, in the far distance, he heard a soft whisper that slowly turned into a hum. In an instant he recognized that the earth was moving, but this time it came from far away. It grew in strength with each second like a terrible tidal wave rushing toward them.

Armand dropped his pick and raced through the dark with the rest of them, bouncing off one another in their panic, striking the stony tunnel walls, fleeing for the surface. Someone behind him held a lamp, and it scattered jittery light. One moment Armand could see the tracks and the tunnel, the next nothing but darkness, then once more the road was lit up.

Armand lost his feet, smashed his hands against the rough ground, scrambled up again. The roar of the mountain filled his ears, magnifying in the tunnel. Still the sound rose, until it was a deafening roar. Everything shook, dust poured from the roof, and the quake struck. Beams exploded above him. The air was filled with particles and debris. Armand lurched to one side, his arms struck hard rock, something smashed down onto his foot, and sharp pain drove up his leg. Rocks peppered him from above. Everything was momentarily black. Then all was still.

Armand pulled himself to his feet as the dust around him settled. The roof behind him had given way completely. A still-lit lamp was lodged in the rockfall beside a protruding hand. Two others had escaped with Armand, but the other five of their gang were smashed beneath the rockfall or trapped behind it.

One of the prisoners pulled the lamp from where it was stuck. “Let's get out of here.”

“Anyone there?” called Armand.

“They're dead. Or they soon will be.” One of the prisoners started to move away.

Armand thought he could hear something from behind the rockfall, but he couldn't be sure.

“Come back. I think I heard something,” said Armand.

But he was left in the steadily enclosing darkness. The other two were already around a corner. Only one side of the wall was illuminated, and soon he would be immersed in complete darkness.

Armand raced after them. By the time they reached the outside, other gangs had emerged, covered in dirt. Yet others remained beneath, dead or dying in the darkness of the mountain. Lost souls without hope.

Tiedmann's man—the collaborator 7624—lined the prisoners up and counted them. That was what they were: only numbers. But Armand began to put together a plan. He saw now how he might gain the trust of the barbarians, if Ohan were alive behind the fall.

Armand approached Prisoner 7624. “There are survivors below. We have to get them out.”

The collaborator sneered. “They'll be dead soon enough. You should thank the gods you escaped.”

Armand thought of those below in the darkness, black desolation filling them. It might have been him. His fists clenched, and he pictured himself striking 7624 down for his callousness. Armand took two steps toward 7624 and dropped to his knees. “Please, let me lead a team to save them. They're our brothers.”

Prisoner 7624 frowned. First he seemed confused, then he seemed to give up as if it was too much bother. He waved his bloodstone-infected arm. “Go on then, with anyone who wants to go with you. You have until the usual time.”

Armand looked around desperately. He needed help, but no prisoner stepped forward. In desperation, Armand grasped the two men from his own crew by the arms. “Come with me.”

To his surprise, they followed him passively. Perhaps they had grown accustomed to obeying orders. He didn't know their names, and with their gaunt, skeletal faces, they had the look of the prison's many gray men eking out their last days.

Together they pushed a cart down into the deadly tunnel, down into the blackness.
This is my chance,
thought Armand as he strained and heaved. He didn't want to become like the men who walked beside him. It all rested on the hope that Ohan was still alive, and that rescuing him would bring Armand the favor of his tribesmen.

When he reached the rockfall, Armand listened, but there was no sound beyond the dripping of water from the roof.

“We have no idea how much rock has fallen,” one of the gray men said. “By the end of the shift, we'll never have moved enough.”

“The others will be sent back to work mining bloodstone,” said Armand. “At least we have a higher purpose.”

They began to shovel away the rock, pulling out boulders and piling them into the cart or tossing them against the side of the tunnel, finding more rocks and shattered fragments of timberwork behind them. Occasionally they listened but heard no signs of life. So the hours went, deep into the afternoon. The shift came to an end, the tunnel still blocked by a wall of rubble.

Armand felt crushing disappointment, but there was little else he could do, so the three of them placed their hands against the cart's cold side, ready to drive it up to the open air.

“Ready?” said one of the men.

Armand stood back, held his hands in the air. “Wait.”

The three of them stood in the shadowy hellhole, listening. Yes, there it was, a soft tapping from behind the rock:
tock, tock, tock
.

“Do you hear that?” Armand cocked his head to listen. There it was, a definite sound. Someone was alive behind the rockfall.

Armand unhooked a pick from the cart, but one of the other prisoners grabbed his arm. “We have to go. The shift is over.”

Armand grimaced, looked back at the rockfall. They might work all night and not break through. He sighed, felt defeat rush in on him. “We'll come back tomorrow.”

He hooked the pick back onto the cart, and the three of them strained and heaved and sweated and cursed until they finally burst out into the cold twilight of the surface, where streaks of amber smudged the chilly sky.

In the icy twilight air, Prisoner 7624 directed the factory workers back to the camp. At the factory entrance, warm gusts of air coursed from the furnaces and kissed Armand's frigid hands and face. He thought of the dark tunnel and the brutal task facing them tomorrow. He steeled his voice and approached 7624. “There are men alive below. Tomorrow I'll need some men to dig them out.”

Prisoner 7624 stared balefully at Armand, raised his gleaming red hand to the depression in his forehead. “That vein of bloodstone is lost. Tomorrow you'll work with another gang at another seam.”

“We can't leave them down there.”

“Just be happy it's not you, prisoner. What, are you going to stay up all night, thinking about the poor critters shivering down there in the cold and the dark? No, you're not. You're going to forget about them and focus on yourself. That's what everyone's going to do. Now get out of here.” Prisoner 7624 bared his blackened teeth, like an attack dog ready to growl.

As Armand shuffled back to the camp, he realized the terrible toll the day had taken on him. His arms and legs trembled from exhaustion; his emotional reserves were gone. He felt like crying but didn't seem to have any tears.

In the evening Armand sat beside Irik, the barbarians beside them grim-faced at losing Ohan. Armand only had a few more bursts of energy before he would be reduced to one of the gray-faced men, incapable of action, who haunted the camp, who took even his orders … ghosts who were not yet dead.

The Westerner chieftain, whose name was Ijahan, pulled at his white beard and leaned toward Armand. Worry had carved lines on his face, and Armand could only imagine the years he'd spent trying to save his tribe from Varenis before he ended up here. He was lean as a reed, and there was a ropy toughness to him. Without the feathers in his hair he might have been mistaken for a weathered ship's captain who had seen too much sun and salty spray.

“Ohan is perhaps alive?” Ijahan said. “You tried to rescue some of the men today, they say.”

Armand nodded toward the Tiedmann's table. “Our supervisor, 7624, won't allow us to continue tomorrow.”

Ijahan drew a deep breath and looked at Tiedmann and his collaborators, sitting at the front of the hall like lords. One of Ijahan's men said something to him in their strange western dialect. He nodded. Together they stood and approached Tiedmann, pleaded with him, but the moonfaced man shook his head and waved them away.

Seeing this, Armand racked his brain: How might he buy Tiedmann's favor? He was still wondering this as he forced himself to his feet and approached the table, where he slipped onto the bench beside Tiedmann. He would improvise.