Far Called Trilogy 01 - In Dark Service (54 page)

‘From what?’

‘From what? I don’t remember. But it must be bad, Lord Carnehan. It might even be the truth.’

‘Why don’t you remember?’

‘I rebuilt myself with magic… from such a trifling speck of blood. Poor murdered Sariel. But I didn’t do it properly. I am a spur-galled wimpled copy, erased and ignorant.’

‘I have something for you, I think,’ said Carter.

‘And I for you,’ said Sariel. ‘It’s a gift. The end of things. You have to die to live.’

‘I’m getting there.’

‘Stay alive for me, Lord Carnehan. We’re coming…’

‘Who?’

‘Hell is coming. A devil to fight stealers. In such a conflict, only a devil will answer the purpose.’

Carter begged for more tidings, but the vagrant faded from view and only his crazy tales remained twisting through Carter’s visions – dolphins that danced and bees that laughed and men that leapt through the air on springed boots, heroes and villains from a thousand impossible lands before breakfast. When Carter’s fever finally broke, he found himself on the bunk, sopping wet, and it was as if his body was newborn, as though he had been reincarnated in someone else’s form. A water canteen lay just out of reach on the floor and he groaned as he reached for it. Kerge appeared and scooped it up, passing it to him.
Water
. Carter remembered the cold, headache-inducing liquid he had drunk in the strange labyrinth below the volcano. The sweats it generated. Was the tomb water somehow the cause of his visions? Or had he been poisoned by vapours and gases during his failed escape attempt?

‘You are lucky to have survived.’

‘Luck had nothing to do with it,’ coughed Carter, propping himself up and taking a trickle of water. He tried to drink it slow, to avoid cramping up. ‘You saved me – you and others…’

‘Willow was here, that is true. She has been swapping shifts with the sorting line workers. I am worried about how little sleep she has allowed herself. Your nation is not nearly as hardy as gask-kind. The womanling is close to exhaustion.’

Carter felt overwhelmed by a wave of guilt. The two people who had worked so hard to save him, and he’d left them behind on the station when he’d tried to break out.
Maybe I was wrong about Willow?
That was a difficult thing to admit, even to himself. He’d almost rather take another flogging than admit it publicly. ‘I’m surprised my throat wasn’t cut while I was asleep.’

‘Not for lack of trying, by some’ said the gask. ‘I asked the doctor to help us keep a special watch over you.’

The slave in question was Samuel Tooky. He claimed to have been a doctor back in Weyland, but if so, Carter suspected he’d been the horse doctoring kind. Everyone on the station called him Doctor Too, for his habit of saying he’d be able to heal someone, if only he had his old surgical tools, nursing staff, or a decent pharmacy on hand,
too
. Well, at least he had proved himself useful when it came to preventing murder on his watch.

Khow pulled his silver abacus machine out of a leather tool pouch and tapped its glass readout. ‘I am confused. During your fever your weight upon the world altered beyond recognition. Now it is as if you walk with the trail of a legion within your footsteps. Such a realignment should not be possible’

‘I’m full of surprises.’

‘I assure you, this goes far beyond your well-demonstrated talent for rash and random actions.’

‘Well, I’ve seen a few impossible things,’ said Carter. ‘When I was down on Old Smoky. And I suffered a head full of them up here too.’

‘And now the world is moving around you, rather than the converse.’

‘My head’s been left clear, is all,’ said Carter. ‘I know who sold us out. Who hid the tracking device in the transporter and made sure that Alan, Noah, Deeli and Eshean were murdered by the empire before we’d even bugged out for freedom.’

Kerge checked around to make sure no other slave was within ear­shot. ‘Who on the station could do such a thing?’

‘Owen Paterson. The man overheard me outlining my scheme and as good as warned me not to try to break out. When I went ahead…’

‘You are mistaken, manling.’

‘The hell I am. Think about it. Paterson’s been around as long as anyone. Everyone looks up to him as a leader; yet he’s never been promoted into the middle-hostile caste with the other slaves who administer the station for our so-called mistress. He’s just one of the boys, eating alongside us, working alongside us. Always helpful to the greenhorns, always advising caution to new workers if they look like they might go making a ruckus. Always
listening
. I just don’t know if Anna Kurtain was in on the scheme with him. They’re as thick as thieves, those two.’

‘The two are merely veterans of this terrible place – they have survived together. Such trials create a resilient bond.’

‘And who the hell survives up here?’

‘Those blessed by fate and in possession of a good heart. Owen is the one who scavenged the rations and medicines that kept you alive while you recovered from your wounds.’

‘To throw off suspicion, or ease a guilty conscience maybe.’

‘Clear your head of this matter. I am sure you are mistaken. I have examined the station’s chambers and passages, searching for concealed mechanical devices that would allow the Vandians to eavesdrop on our conversations.’

‘And how many such devices have you found?’

‘None yet. But—’

‘But
nothing
.
Owen
warned us to watch what we say inside the station because there might be turncoats listening. He even said it with a straight face! You know what irony is, don’t you Kerge? The Vandians don’t need a legion of secret police sitting around bored, manning surveillance machines and listening to slaves farting and moaning, to control the sky mines. Not when they’ve got hungry slaves with loose lips doing the job in exchange for an easy ride.’

Carter leant back in the bunk for a second, suppressing a howl of pain when his back brushed the rock wall.

Kerge indicated a stone bowl on the floor filled with a foul-smelling paste. ‘You will need to rub the paste across your spine for many weeks.’

‘Do I want to know what’s in it?’

‘Mogo tubers mixed with fuel ether. Diluted, its toxins numb nerves and shield you from the worst of your pain.’

‘Maybe I need to be reminded of the pain,’ said Carter. ‘I’m the only one who survived. Noah, Eshean, they all died down there. They were relying on
me
.’

‘They followed their own branches, chose their own fate.’

‘They never had a chance,’ said Carter. ‘Not from the start. You were right.’

‘Time is a river sweeping all along its stream. There are currents you cannot swim against.’

‘Our friends weren’t the ones who deserved to drown, though, were they? It’s the bastard who betrayed us and slipped that tracking device inside the transporter.’

‘You must not act without conclusive proof,’ said Kerge. ‘Things will become difficult enough for you when you are assigned to the work parties. Starting a feud with a well-regarded worker would be counterproductive. Stay here and stay quiet. I shall fetch Willow to see you. Then, perhaps, she will allow herself some rest before her body fails her.’

When Willow did appear she seemed flushed with excitement at her charge’s recovery, although if the skin of her hands was anything to go by – paler than Carter had ever seen before, almost translucent – she was far closer to collapsing than Carter, now. He could hear Kerge talking outside the fever room, conversing with male voices.

‘Did you thank Duncan for me?’

‘I never got the chance. He’s gone.’

Carter felt a sudden shock of dread in his gut. ‘They flogged him to—?’

‘Gone off the
station
, not executed. Taken as a house-slave by that royal bitch. Thomas Gale told us that Duncan’s been assigned to the team of slaves tasked with keeping Lady Cassandra safe.’

Carter just stopped himself snorting with laughter. ‘Of all the damn jobs. I never saw Duncan Landor as a wet nurse!’

‘He’s already saved her once,’ said Willow, brushing her crimson hair back in annoyance. ‘It’s not funny. It’s dangerous work. The girl’s bodyguards were murdered on the station, betrayed by people in her own house. How safe is Duncan going to be out there?’

‘The old hands keep on telling us what a soft position being a house slave is.’

‘Princess Helrena found someone willing to risk their neck doing the right thing. That’s as rare a quality out in the empire as it is in the sky mines. And just as likely to get Duncan killed.’

‘Did your brother do the right thing? Saving me?’

‘I really don’t think I’m fit to comment.’

‘I’m sorry Duncan’s not here for you. With luck he’ll outlast us all, now.’

‘It’s not hard to outlast you, Carter Carnehan. Trouble follows you around like a hound on a lead. Back in Northhaven, the consequences were never going to be too serious. But stranded here, kept as slaves in the sky mines? Trouble’s fatal. Almost every consequence is fatal!’

Kerge reappeared inside the fever room with a bowl of barley gruel. The smell was as good as a feast wafting towards Carter. He realised how empty his stomach had been left by the ravages of his temperature. ‘You’ll see Duncan again, Willow, if he’s become that little girl’s shadow. Helrena’s always visiting the station, checking her house’s riches; making sure the whip’s not being spared against our spines.’

‘That really doesn’t make me feel better.’

‘I’ll make sure nothing happens to you. I never had a sister, before, only brothers. But I’ll watch your back as carefully as Duncan ever did.’

‘Don’t do me any favours!’

Carter watched in confusion as the girl ran out, tears streaming down her eyes. ‘What the hell was that about?’

Kerge rested the bowl down on the bunk. ‘That? It is outside the extent of my calculations, manling.’ He sighed. ‘What the eyes cannot see, the mind cannot explain.’

Carter reached for the gruel. It was almost as if— No, he must be imagining it.
She probably just needs some rest
.

As large as the dungeons keeping Jacob and the others prisoner under the grand duke’s palace were, little air circulated through the fetid arched chambers. And what air there was, was shared with close to a hundred gad prisoners. All of them waiting on their cruel ruler’s whimsy – or perhaps just for him to finish his breakfast. Sheplar paced up and down the chamber shaking his head and muttering to himself, as if he was imagining a dozen ways that they could have avoided being incarcerated. Khow tapped on his abacus box, as though he might calculate a better fate for them, while Sariel, true to form, chattered away, adding to the heat with his jabber.

‘I have never had the dubious pleasure of these ill-nurtured cells before,’ grumbled Sariel. ‘Previous grand dukes of Hangel have had too much decency to introduce the prince of players to their gaol.’

‘From what I’ve seen, decency and the ruler here aren’t even nodding acquaintances,’ said Jacob.

‘But you may be comforted to know that this is not the first gaol I have found myself imprisoned inside.’

‘That, at least, is true,’ murmured Sheplar, as the mountain aviator strode past.

‘The Fortress of Dolar is the most impenetrable prison on Pellas, perched upon a crag so high that its prisoners must wear oxygen masks like the crew of a merchant carrier. The only way in or out is in man-sized baskets lowered on chains, the journey to the ground below taking two hours. Each cell is attended only by a deaf and mute guard who could not be bribed or cajoled.’

‘A difficult place to escape,’ growled Jacob.

‘That was not the worst of it, Your Grace! The authorities hired the best chef in the land to work in the fortress kitchens. Each meal was a banquet so fine that the explosion of flavours could almost send you blind. You would find yourself sweating in anticipation hours before each meal. Four times a day, trembling like a drunkard for his sack. The food so exquisite, that once any prisoner had been fed in the fortress for a week, they could not bear to escape if it meant never eating there again.’

‘And yet here you stand.’

‘A liar and a scoundrel,’ said Sheplar, passing by. It was easy to ignore his asides with the low, wailing cadence of the gad prisoners filling the arched dungeons. They sat and rocked as they sang in their own tongue.

Sariel ignored the flier. ‘And it was
I
who gave the lie to its governor’s boast of the place’s inescapability. Ah yes, but it took all my ingenuity to leave that wretched prison. I kept the food the mute pushed through my cell door and scattered it by the bars of my single window, to feed the colony of hump bats – flying rodents with a sack on their back to store oxygen – that nested in the crag’s caves. After the bats were addicted, I would snap one of their necks for each meal, then eat it raw. As disgusting a taste as you could imagine – but the perfect antidote for the kitchen’s mouth-watering fare. Many was the time I was nearly sick into my oxygen mask.’

‘But even cured of the addiction, you were still trapped.’

‘Not for long. I worked the dead bats’ teeth into a loose leg of my bed, fashioning a saw to hack away at my window’s bars. Finally, I made a parachute out of my blanket, and when the last bar was cut… then I leapt into the moonless night and sailed to freedom.’

Sheplar merely snorted as he paced past again.

‘A jump so precarious, there isn’t a Rodalian glider pilot in the world who could emulate it,’ added Sariel, pointedly. ‘But what I had not counted on was the bats. They were so used to eating my food that a great cloud of them gathered and followed me across the sky, attracting the guard’s attentions. Soon the night was filled with searchlights with the brutes shooting wildly as they tried to bring me down.’ He paused a second to see if Jacob would bite for the escape’s conclusion, but the pastor merely shrugged.

‘Luckily,’ continued Sariel, ‘I had set aside a leg of honeyed ham to sustain me for my journey out of the barren forest surrounding the crag. I tossed it away and the bats followed it, along with the searchlights and the guards’ bullets.’