In an instant she was back in the grottoes, reliving her years of slavery with Mia. Poor, hapless Mia. She had been a good friend, better than Tali had deserved, and her own recklessness had led to Mia’s death.
She balanced the box on her knee, wiped her eyes with her free hand and hurried on. Past the breeze-room where she had hidden the day of Mia’s death, and where she had first met Rannilt. Tali could hear the water-driven box fans ticking, pumping fresh air down to the lower levels. She continued along to the sloping drive, twenty feet wide and nine feet high, that ran down to the chymical level.
The floor of the drive was scored with paired wheel grooves where hundreds of laden wagons had been hauled up the slope by teams of Pale women. Tali assumed the wagons had been laden with chymical weapons for the war. As she had expected, the drive was now closed off a third of the way down by a wall of stone. There was an iron door in the left-hand side but it was locked.
Holm was already at the wall with two other Pale, a thin man with his arm in a sling made from a yellow loincloth, and a white-haired young woman. Under his direction they were attaching clusters of heatstone pieces to the wall with eel glue. Tali could smell it from here. Holm was fitting together a small clockwork device.
Radl ran by, carrying a large crate on her shoulder. Tali stumbled after, her breasts bouncing painfully with each movement. Her feet hurt, too. It was months since she had gone barefoot and her soles had lost their former toughness. She stumbled, fell forwards and dropped her crate with a crash.
Radl spun around. So did Holm. They were staring at the crate. How much force did it take to set off a piece of heatstone? Some burst easily when thrown, others not at all. And if one piece went off, would it detonate all the others? Was that what Holm was relying on here?
The crate did not go off. Radl shook her head pityingly and ran back the way she had come.
“Try not to do that again,” said Holm. He tightened three nuts, then wound his mechanism with a brass key, clack, clack. “Not sure my old heart can take it.”
“Sorry. Where’s Tobry? I haven’t seen him since we armed the Pale.”
“No idea.”
Tali could hear distant shouting and the sound of sword on sword, but it was impossible to tell which direction the racket was coming from. She had a bad feeling, though.
She checked with the mage glass. Fighting was now going in so many places that she could not keep the whole battle in her head. The Pale were advancing in a couple of small tunnels, but retreating everywhere else.
“What do you know about the chymical level?” said Holm.
“Only rumours. It’s secret, because it’s where they make a lot of their weapons — chuck-lashes, shriek-arrows, bombasts, grenadoes, and so on. I’ve heard they have great retorts there, and furnaces, kilns, distilling apparatuses…”
“Anything useful to us?” Holm fitted his apparatus in the middle of the central heatstone cluster.
“I don’t know. The only time we heard anything about the chymical level was after accidents. Last year an explosion at one of the acidulators sent a green mist gushing up into our level. Burned out the lungs of dozens of Pale; some of the enemy too.”
“Sounds unpleasant.”
“People are always dying in horrible accidents here. There was one at the elixerater just before I escaped. A woman had her thigh eaten through from spilled alkoyl… I saw it. Her leg just… fell off.” She shuddered. “Why do you ask?”
“If this bang smashes something nasty on the chymical level, it could make it awkward.” Holm stood up, his knees cracking, and rubbed his back. “Why am I doing this, at my age? I should be tucked safely in my bed.”
“Hoy, old man!” It was Radl, at the top of the drive. “Make it quick. They’re breaking through.”
Holm flicked off a latch. His mechanism made a series of clicking sounds, each louder than the previous one.
“Go!” he said to the two Pale who had been helping him.
They ran up the slope. Tali and Holm followed hastily.
“Around the corner, I think,” he said. “You never know…”
They turned the corner. Tali could hear fighting coming from both directions. She checked the map with her mage glass, and wished she hadn’t.
“I hate this thing,” she muttered.
“And I went to so much trouble to make it,” he said, mock sorrowfully.
“It shows me how the battle is going, and tells me every bit of bad news, but I can’t do anything about any of it. Like here, for instance.”
She focused on the main tunnel up near the subsistery. “A hundred enemy are finishing off a small band of Pale. In the next tunnel, I can see hundreds of armed Pale who could come to the rescue — if only they knew help was needed. But they don’t and I’ve no way of telling them.”
“Send a messenger.”
“He’d be cut down before he got there. I need more people, Holm. I need the ones who stayed behind in the Empound, but I can’t get to them either.”
“Didn’t you say there were eighty-five thousand Pale?” said Holm.
“Counting children and mothers with young children. Maybe thirty thousand could fight, though only a tenth of those followed us.”
“And the rest will die anyway.” He shook his head. “Poor fools.”
Tali shivered. It did not bear thinking about, but she could not stop herself. “If there was a way to get them out…”
She checked with the mage glass, and swore. “The enemy have blocked the Empound off with an iron gate.”
Thousands of slaves had gathered on the Empound side of the gate. They would be able to hear the fighting but they could not get out.
Holm didn’t answer. “It’s been too long,” he said, frowning. “It should have gone off minutes ago.”
As he put his head around the corner of the drive, the clusters of heatstone went off in a series of shattering blasts. Holm reeled backwards, his arms outspread, then landed on his back.
Tali ran to him. Blood was pouring from a triangular gash on his forehead and it brought back bad memories of the time he’d been struck down on the south coast. She studied the wound, put her hand on his forehead and tried to heal it.
A series of small thumping bangs shook the tunnel behind her. It sounded as though the Pale were using heatstone more effectively now. The blasts must have temporarily stopped the enemy advance, for a host of Pale surged past. Many had bloody, untended wounds but there was nothing Tali could do for them. Holm had to take precedence.
Another group appeared, sent by Radl, then another. There were more blasts in the other direction and more Pale appeared, wild-eyed and desperate.
“We’re the last,” said a hairy, bloody-chested man. “Ah! So many dead.”
Tali tried to estimate how many Pale had passed. Surely less than two thousand. So few. How could they hope to win now? Or had they already failed?
Holm wasn’t responding. She lifted her hand, checked the wound in case she had missed something, and began the healing again.
Radl stopped beside her, covered in sweat and gasping. “Damage won’t hold the enemy back for long. Is the way open?”
Tali peered through the whirling dust. “Looks like it’s still blocked. You might have to blast it again.”
“I’ll get onto it.” Radl looked down at Holm. “Leave him. He’s finished.”
Radl checked the tunnel behind her, then took a red chuck-lash from her belt and hurled it up to the left. Someone shrieked.
“I can’t leave him,” said Tali. “Help me.”
“Do you know how many of my people I’ve had to abandon to die alone?” Radl said furiously.
For a moment, Tali thought Radl was going to stab her. “Holm understands the enemy’s devices and traps,” she said hastily. “Without him, we can’t get out the exit.”
“How the hell are we going to get out if we go down to the chymical level?”