Steeling himself, he set out to make it through another day. At this time in the morning the open pit of Skullcup was still mostly in shadow, yet this did nothing to spare its prisoners the heat of the surrounding desert. He headed to the barricaded hut that was the guard shack. Here he’d receive the day’s work chit – a sliver of copper. No chit, no morning meal.
A line had already gathered. Dancer studied his fellow inmates. Seven Cities natives mostly; lean, not as tall as he, dark-haired, and tending towards a dark gold in hue as the sun beat down mercilessly in this place. Most, he understood, were condemned petty criminals, together with a smattering of transported mages and apostate priests. Some few were purely political prisoners, while he and a smattering of other outlanders were the contingent of trespassing foreigners.
An old woman with long scraggly dusty hair was in the line ahead of him and on impulse he asked, ‘What did you do to deserve this?’
She glanced back, rather startled at being addressed, and then scowled. ‘Nothing! This is all Yath’s doing! I should be Holy Faladah! My interpretation of the Seven Holies is no less legitimate than theirs.’ Then she pointedly turned her back on him – uninterested in foreigners, it would seem.
When he reached the barred window the chit was slid across to him and he then headed for the kitchen tents. The stabbing desert sun seemed to hammer his head and shoulders as he crossed the open ground and already sweat dripped down his back. To one side of the pit here lay pens of chickens and goats. Next to these were the night-soil gardens. Tending these were the soft assignments usually handed over to the eldest or most infirm of the inmates. Greybeards leaned on rakes and hoes, studying him with tired eyes as he passed, for he was an unusual exception among the population here. He had seen a third of the years of most; a fifth of some.
In this section of the pits a gleaming turquoise pool lapped up against the sheer north cliffs, and though everyone was as dry as a desert snake none touched that water, not even the animals. It lay glistening and unearthly clear, a constant invitation to parched throats and yearning stomachs, but undrinkable. For the water’s eerie clarity betrayed its true character – alkaline death.
At the kitchen tents he received a clay bowl, a glop of mush, and a piece of rock-hard bread. Sometimes there was boiled meat, fish or sea-turtle, but word was the turtles were becoming more and more scarce.
He ate crouched in what slivers of shade he could find, then joined the line forming up in pairs for the day’s assignments. When he reached the guards at the front of the line he was handed a long-handled hammer and his shoulders fell. The sledge again. Swinging the damned thing was killing him.
‘Sorry, lad,’ a gravelly voice croaked beside him, and he glanced over to see the squat and blunt-featured mage, Hairlock. Sweat already ran in rivulets down the man’s bronzed bullet head.
The guard handed Hairlock a copper chisel and urged them along with a nod. Hairlock led the way up the maze of tunnels. Once they were far from the guards, he slowed, saying, ‘No change in your friend’s condition, hey?’
‘No.’
Hairlock grunted his understanding. They walked the tight constricted tunnels until they reached the face of one side channel. Here the mage set the chisel to the rock and Dancer swung the sledge sideways – the tunnel was too low to allow an overhead swing.
Between ringing, deafening blows, Hairlock said, ‘He won’t recover, you know.’
Dancer, his teeth clenched with effort, answered, ‘We’ll see.’
‘It’s the dust. His mind, or spirit – what some call his kha – is disassociated. Lost. He’s wandering the Warrens now as a ghost.’
‘How does it work?’
‘The dust?’
‘Yes.’
‘Well, no one knows for sure. It deadens magic. Suffocates it.’
A skinny grey-bearded elder who had been filling a woven basket with rock now straightened and approached them. ‘Think of water,’ he said.
Dancer hefted the sledge, thought of his own dusty-dry throat and croaked, ‘I’d rather not.’
The fellow smiled indulgently. ‘Water flows freely, yes? But when it freezes it holds its shape – understand? Some think the ore does this – freezes magic. Or metal. Molten it flows. Until it hardens. Otataral hardens it.’
‘Thanks for the lecture, Eth’en,’ Hairlock said, rolling his eyes.
Eth’en raised a bushy grey brow. ‘This is an entire field of study, I’ll have you know.’
Hairlock waved him away. ‘Of that I have no damned doubt.’
The oldster picked up his basket and shuffled off. Hairlock watched him go. ‘Scholars,’ he sneered, derisive.
Dancer returned to hammering. After a few more blows, he asked, ‘What is this place, then?’
The squat mage shrugged. ‘Just a money-making enterprise. Privately held.’
‘Not a prison?’
The mage eyed him for a time. ‘Not as such. The Falari pirates who run it take whoever they’re paid to hide away.’
‘Like scholars and malcontents?’
A wide frog-like smile split the mage’s face. ‘Yeah. Kinda like that. Took two Holy Falah and one of the Seven City champions to bring me down. This is the only place that can hold people like me.’
‘Mages.’
Hairlock grunted his agreement.
‘A prison of mages.’
‘And politicals ’n’ thieves. ’Cept for the odd duck – like you.’
Dancer hefted the sledge over the crouching mage. ‘Like me?’
Hairlock grinned up at him, revealing his greying rotten teeth. ‘Been watching ya. This place can’t hold you. Ain’t built to. I figure your friend won’t last much longer and you’ll leave once he’s gone.’
‘So?’
‘Take me with you.’
Dancer leaned on the sledge. ‘Why should I do that?’
‘You want to get off the island, don’t ya?’ He glanced about to make certain they were alone. ‘I know where there’re boats hidden.’
Dancer shook his head, disappointed. ‘There are no boats here. The supply boats arrive with food and water then leave with the ore, and that’s that.’
‘So the guards say. But I’ve been here a long time and I’ve heard things.’
Dancer returned to breaking rock. ‘Such as?’ he asked between blows.
‘These islands, they’re clan lands. Right now the Dosii claim them out of Dosin Pali. Every once in a while one of the Holy Falah gets his panties in a twist over the damned foreigners here and so they whip up their followers into delousing, if you know what I mean.’ Dancer nodded his understanding. ‘That’s why they keep boats hidden nearby.’
‘Okay. So why aren’t you gone yet?’
‘Can’t do it m’self. Can’t climb any wall. Can’t sneak up on any guard. But you…’ and he winked, grinning his ugly frog-grin, ‘something of a speciality of yours, I’m guessing.’
Dancer said nothing. He continued hammering, though his arms burned as if afire. ‘I won’t go without my partner.’
Hairlock grunted, nodding. ‘I c’n wait. Won’t be long.’
The rest of the day Dancer worked in silence. When the dusk gongs sounded the end of shift, he shuffled back up the tunnels, deposited his sledge, and was given a new chit for the second meal.
He ate this in the alcove. His shoulders and arms twitched and he could barely raise his hand to his mouth. He kept a smear of the glop for Kellanved. This he pushed through the lad’s lips, not knowing if he was swallowing or not. In the murk of the evening it appeared to him that the mage’s form held a strange translucency, as if he were but an image, or shadow, of himself. He squinted, reaching out; touched the rough solid cloth of the lad’s chest. He shook his head and collapsed on his own ledge to take the fitful rest of the exhausted and hungry.
A fist tapping on the rock nearby roused him. He raised his head. ‘Yes?’