Ilbei Spadebreaker and the Harpy's Wild (41 page)

“I’ve had a long day,” Ilbei said. “I’d rather not have to kill a poor sod like you on top of it, mainly on account of me knowin you’re nothin but cheese in the buffet of whatever is goin on here. It might make me stay up nights feelin bad fer yer old mum and dad somewhere, grievin yer sorry loss.” He relaxed enough that the man could speak again.

“I don’t know,” the man gasped. “I don’t know.”

Ilbei swore and released him, letting him slump to his knees. He knew the slaver was lying, but he wasn’t going to kill a man for that. But he wasn’t opposed to scaring him some more.

“Jasper, come on over here,” he said. “I need ya to hit this feller with a bit of lightnin. Gentle at first, nothin to boil his brains, but, ya know, enough to make his bladder steam and his pecker whistle.”

Jasper looked mortified at the suggestion and opened his mouth to protest, and perhaps even to explain the nature of lightning magic in general … again … but he realized his mistake before it cost him a berating—or worse. He paused, closed his mouth, and gave his head a little shake as he straightened himself. He even wiped down his robes with a smoothing sweep of his hands. He put on his most regal and theatrical façade and approached the figure quivering on the ground before him.

“No, please,” the trembling man said. “Don’t burn me down. Please. Swear to Anvilwrath, I never meant anything by it. Please. I can’t take more lightning. I swear I don’t know anything.”

“Well, swearing won’t help you now, you … you villain,” Jasper began in his most menacing tones—Ilbei and Meggins both suppressed groans. “For I am not unwilling to smite you with the most injurious of magicks: the very hammer of Anvilwrath’s fifth hand will strike down upon you, and the energies of storms gathering, a terrible static charge … a static charge that will … it will ….” He looked at the man, who was cringing, writhing before him on the ground, obsequious as a fresh-beaten harpy slave at his feet. The craven captive pressed his forehead against the ground and pleaded. Jasper turned to Ilbei and made a “what comes next?” face, but Ilbei waved him on. Meggins snorted, trying very hard not to laugh. “And so,” Jasper began again, leaving off the static-charged dead end, “I will do it too, because I can. In fact, I derive great joy from killing people. I do it all the time by my various methodologies. And you will, too, by my smiting. Die, I mean, not enjoy it or derive anything, obviously. Well, except death. Death you will derive terribly!” He cringed and made an obvious effort
not
to look at Ilbei that time. “That is, if you don’t tell us what we want to know.”

Meggins looked as if he might burst, the pressure of such restraint squeezing tears from the corners of his eyes. Ilbei grimaced and shook his head. His sigh was loud enough for everyone to hear, but he stepped forward and raised their captive up by the back of his jerkin, committed to the show. “So there ya have it. Ya can have all that static and smitin there from our most heinous mage,” he turned briefly back to Jasper and scowled, “or ya can tell us what sort ya are workin fer, honest like. Last chance to be out with it, or I let ole Jasper go at ya as he is so inclined.”

“No, please. I just don’t know anything. I swear I don’t. I can’t take any more. You have to believe I don’t know.”

“Well, ya ain’t even had it yet, but that’s yer choice. Ya got to three, then it’s comin.” He began the countdown, slowly, drawing each number out. The man shook and pleaded on his knees, drooling into the stone, crawling to Jasper and hugging him around his ankles, begging him for mercy and to not bolt his brains right out of his skull. Jasper looked absolutely mortified by the display.

“Time’s up,” Ilbei said. “What’s it gonna be?”

“I don’t know,” stammered the man, the living embodiment of a personal temblor. He was far more desperate than could be faked. Urine ran freely on the ground around him.

“That’s it, then. Go ahead and do him, Jasper. We’ll get the next one to tell us.”

“But I—” Jasper began, but Ilbei silenced him with an upraised index finger.

“Do him, Jasper. Fill him with the power of Anvilwrath and … the static energy of all the gods and so on. Go to it, son.” He made a zapping sound through his teeth. “Zzzzzt!”

The man simply collapsed and shook in abject terror, his body quaking as if Jasper had actually cast a lightning spell. He reminded Ilbei of the dogs some men kept, dogs who’d been kicked too often and developed a curling reflex in their spines. Someone had been on this sad bastard sorely, and many times before.

“Why ya so afeared of wizards?” Ilbei asked. “I ain’t never seen nobody cower so.”

The man remained where he was, folded over his knees, his arms out and his hands still lying atop Jasper’s soggy shoes. Ilbei had to go and pull him up physically, gripping him by the front of his jerkin. He hung limply in Ilbei’s grasp, knees too weak to support him, as Ilbei stared down into his face.

“I said, why ya so afeared of wizards?”

“Gangue,” he said.

Mags groaned.

“Who?” Ilbei asked.

“Gangue,” he repeated. “Ivan Gangue.”

Ilbei looked at Mags. “Ya know him?” It did sound familiar, but he couldn’t recall where he’d heard it before.

She nodded. “It’s, well, you know who.”

Ilbei frowned as he resumed his questioning. “Who is he? Is this here his mine?”

“No, he’s the overseer. The one I told you about. Pays us and keeps everyone in line.”

Ilbei let go a strangled gasp. They were going in circles now. “So who’s he answer to?”

“I don’t know.”

“Then how do ya know it ain’t his mine?”

“I just know.”

“How?”

“By the way he sneaks around sometimes, like he’s hiding something.”

“So why has he been roughin ya up so much that he’s got ya quiverin like a shovelful of puke?”

“Men get tempted to take gold sometimes,” he said. “It’s only natural. You know? And then, when the weights are off, he knows. Somehow, he knows. And then he puts you on the grill and calls lightning on you. Even if he only thinks you did. Same for anyone who tries to run off on their contracts. Straight to the grill.”

“The grill?”

“Yeah, the grill.” His eyes narrowed as he spoke, and for the first time Ilbei caught a glimpse of something other than terror there. Nascent embers of outrage. “A table, made out of the same as these.” He pointed to the bars that kept him separated from the harpies outside, all of whom had formed a bucket brigade and were at work throwing liquid on the wall now that the fire had burned down. “Nobody crosses him twice.”

“So why stay? Just leave.”

“It’s not as easy as that,” he said. “Nobody that works down here gets to leave, not for visiting, not for supplies. It’s all part of the contract. There’s a man they send for anything we need, and that’s it. You need something, it goes through Gangue, and he arranges to have it brought back. Only place we go is here and, if we’re lucky, Fall Pools on our eighth-days. That’s it.”

“Sounds like a rotten way to live. Why’d you get on a deal like that?”

“It won’t be so bad once we get the prize. They pay us enough copper coins to live on, and the promise is a stone’s weight in gold crowns when the lode is all out.” The anger that had glinted in his eyes faded, exchanged for the sparkle of greed.

“How long’s that supposed to be? Seems a lot of rock been dug out around here. The whole mountain is full of holes as I seen, and a lot more mountain to go. Could be a while before ya see that pile.”

“It is a lot of digging, but it’s close now. The vein is played out. There’s seven drift chambers like this one that have been working all year, plus the big one down below. This one is almost done. Another two or three spans and it’s spent, and word is most aren’t much farther from it than that. The big one will go for a while longer. But they say even that one will be cleaned out before Harvest Festival next year.” He looked around him then, suddenly wary that someone might come down the passage that led up and out. “Gangue will kill me if he finds out I told you all of this.” He turned back to Ilbei, and it was as if he saw the crimson sergeant’s stripes for the first time. “You heard all this from me, so now you have to get me out. He’ll kill me instantly. If not him, someone above him will.”

“Well, if’n ya keep yer fool mouth shut, nobody has to know.”

“They’ll divine it. They’ll find a way.”

“That Gangue feller a diviner too? How many schools he got? Any chance ya know his ranks?” That would be a valuable piece of reconnaissance.

“No. He can call lightning is all I know.”

Ilbei watched him carefully and gauged that he was being candid now. He was too far in to try lying.

“Tie him up,” he told Kaige. “Make it somethin he can work loose in a few hours if’n he needs to.”

“No! You can’t leave me here now.”

“Listen, I can’t trust ya leadin us out, as you’ll just run off. And I can’t have ya followin along like some nippy little pup. You’ll turn on us the second it’s convenient, and until that time, you’re nothin but a liability. So just go back to what they expect ya to be doin and play yer hand man-like until I can get us out of here. You give me a name, and I’ll make sure the army goes lenient on ya when they get in here and shut it down. Lenient as possible, all given, of course.”

“You mean the army doesn’t already know it’s here?”

“Ya think Her Majesty would let all this go on if’n they did?” He pointed out through the bars with a flick of his eyes.

“Well, you’re here. I thought ….” He let go a low moan.

“Yeah, well, us bein here ain’t so much by design as ya might expect. But we’ll be fer fixin that straight away.”

The man’s eyes filled with a frantic sort of terror, the expression of a man who’s just realized the ice has given way beneath his feet, the instant before the plunge into the lake. He bent his gaze toward Jasper, suddenly welcoming the sight of him. “Can’t he just tell someone? You know, with his mind? Telepathically?” He looked at Jasper and gave a shudder, then back to Ilbei. “You’ve got to get them underway now.”

“We ….” Ilbei slid his jaw around, unwilling to tell this man anything about Jasper’s singular school of magic, and which one it happened to be. Ilbei had already given more information than he liked. “We have reason to delay our report a bit longer yet,” he said. “So ya do as I told ya and get back to it, regular like, once ya work out them knots. Keep yer head here in the short term and, well, maybe you’ll keep it long term after.”

Gauging by the way he moaned, the man might as well have been being electrified right there. But he nodded.

Ilbei pulled him close, so their faces were nearly nose to nose. He stared into the slaver’s eyes and fixed him with an earnest glare. “If’n I hear ya call out the alarm like that feller what was in here before told ya to, I’ll come back and push this here pickaxe straight through yer eye, ya hear? I don’t need no lightnin fer that.”

Despite the threat, the man’s trembling abated some. He seemed resigned. “Please don’t forget me. Promise you won’t.”

“I won’t. Give me yer name, and I’ll make sure they know.”

He said his name was Sett, and Ilbei made sure that the others heard it, in case something untoward should befall the burly sergeant before they got out. That seemed to mollify the man, though he still collapsed on the floor moaning when Ilbei finally let him go. Kaige bound him as Ilbei had instructed, and then they left him there. They made for the tunnel leading out of the caged-in area, Meggins mumbling that there was no chance Sett wasn’t going to run to the overseer the moment he got loose.

Ilbei didn’t argue because there was a large part of him that agreed. But right was right. Which prompted him to turn back into the room just before heading up the steep incline. “One more thing,” he said. Sett raised his mournful eyes, hopeful perhaps that Ilbei would invite him along. “Go easy on them bird-folks in there. Mercy’s watchin, and there may still be a chance to redeem yer rotten soul when this is done. Doubtful, but maybe.” The man nodded and dropped his eyes, pressing his forehead to the floor. Ilbei thought it was good that he at least had sense enough to be ashamed.

Chapter 31

I
lbei led his companions up the sloping passage and out of the metal cage where he’d interrogated Sett. Meggins continued to complain several minutes after, certain that the slaver was going to call the whole place down on them the instant they were far enough away. Ilbei figured there was more than a fifty percent chance of it, but there was little he could do about it. He had no desire to drag a prisoner around, and killing him in cold blood was not an acceptable alternative. He would have to trust in the man’s fear and leave the rest to fate.

They followed Sett’s directions for finding the way out of the mines. Eventually the narrow, sloping passages opened onto a long horizontal tunnel. It was a wide passage, three paces across and nearly as high, cut out of the rock and braced every five paces with thick wooden beams from which hung small, oil-burning lamps. The air was heavy and warm, rich with mineral smells. There was movement in the lamp flames that revealed a consistent flow of air, evidence of a system to move it put in place by whoever had built the mine, someone who had known what they were doing. Seeing it, recognizing that the tunnel complex was as sophisticated as it was, got Ilbei to thinking about those harpies walking the stair wheels on the Kordiak screws. That was no doing of the monarchy. It was clear when he’d first seen them, and it was even clearer after talking to that fellow in the cage. Her Majesty didn’t abide torture generally—not unless it was dire convenient, he supposed—but surely not for a mine. And she definitely didn’t have harpy slaves in any operations that he had seen, which were numerous. And while it was true that the men who worked the royal mines weren’t paid near as well as they ought to be, they were free to come and go when the workday was done, and they were free to quit the job if they were so inclined. A man can’t grub in the dark bowels of the world without a respite, some time with his family come evening. And the work would be unbearable if a man thought he could never simply walk away. So, since such slavery and torture were not the way of Her Majesty, and yet the mine itself was clearly an enterprise on a scale beyond any but the nobility, Ilbei didn’t have to work very hard to figure out who had to have a hand in it somehow. It had to be Cavendis.