27. Katya
27
W help, I guess we know where everyone went. I thought the makeshift village was depressing, but that has nothing on the mines. Everywhere I look, men, women, children, and even a few fae, covered in dust and grime, bustle about what appear to be three shafts cut into a massive rock wall. Something like fifteen blood Fae guards, wearing the same all-black uniform, weave in and around the throng screaming obscenities and striking the humans with thin canes when they aren’t moving fast enough. As a result, the slaves part around the guards like south magnets around a north pole. It’s all sort of surreal, like at any moment I might wake up and realize this is all just a bad dream.
In the great custom of big, fat chickens, I stand behind Aemon and wait while Gabin speaks to an especially tall fae guard wearing a red belt over his uniform. Does that mean he’s some sort of leader? After a few minutes, Gabin returns and shoves Aemon forward. I’m honestly surprised Aemon hasn’t tried to choke the guy out with his bare hands, but he just grits his teeth—albeit hard enough to crack a tooth—and obeys. The fae with a red belt calls to another guard, who comes running, carrying two more sets of shackles and chains. Now what? Are they going to chain our feet?
The answer is yes. Yes, they are. The new fae guard unlocks the shackles from our wrists and attaches new ones around our ankles. They allow just enough room for walking—with short strides—but running would be virtually impossible. This certainly puts a crimp in any future plans for escape. The guard points to a nearby cave.
Clear enough.
The cave is just barely large enough for us to walk side by side. Every couple of meters or so, we pass steel support beams I’m assuming are meant to keep the mountain from falling on our heads. This way, only a section of the tunnel will cave in, blocking our escape and leaving us to starve in the dark.
So much better.
For some reason, I’d expected it to be cold, but the inside of the mine is hot, and it seems to just be getting hotter the deeper we go. Sweat beads along my brow and upper lip and rolls between my shoulder blades. There’s a weight to the emptiness, as though I can feel the mountain bearing down on me from above. It doesn’t help that everything’s so dim. Lanterns dangle from the ceiling every few meters or so, but their weak flames do little more than faintly illuminate small swaths of floor. I hang onto the back of Aemon’s shirt, even though my half-fae eyes can probably see better than his, as we cross in and out of the pools of light.
Aemon’s right, of course. In his own way, he’s been trying to help me. And weirdly enough, I do trust him. He could have hurt me in a million different ways since he caught me. Instead, he’s protected me. Anyone else would have just told me to stay put when we were attacked, but Aemon removed the prisoner’s bracelet. My safety was more important to him than getting me back to Ranook.
And I believe him when he says he’ll beg the king to release me. What I’m not so sure about is whether Troi will listen. He seems like a bit of a loose cannon. I’m already convinced he hired the assassin that killed his mother. If he cares so little for his own flesh and blood, what possible chance do the rest of us have? Does Aemon know about that too? Did he arrest Leodin knowing he’d done nothing wrong?
Besides hitting you? s ays the irritating voice in my head.
But Aemon wouldn’t do that. Right? He wouldn’t set up a man to be executed because he struck a female.
Not just any female.
I toss that thought away. It’s idiotic. Yes, he seems to care about me for some odd reason, but to think he’d do something like that because of me is silly.
The clank of pickaxes against stone grows increasingly louder by the second, along with the stink of unwashed bodies. There’s a well-lit area up ahead, but all I can make out are silhouettes moving about like the shadow puppet theater Mama used to take me to before Max was born.
Aemon stops suddenly, and I, lost in my thoughts, plow right into his back. He looks at me over his shoulder, his brows knitted in confusion.
Yes. I don’t know what I’m doing either .
I release his shirt and smooth out the wrinkles my hands left behind. I can’t be sure, but I think the corner of his mouth quirks. Stepping around Aemon, I realize what I thought was a large concentration of lamps lighting the area is actually the light from a few lanterns being reflected and amplified by the mass of sythra crisscrossing the space. I’ve never seen so much of it in my life. Usually, the gems are doled out in tiny fragments for insane amounts of money, but here, the clear crystals stretch from floor to ceiling, jutting out of the stone in columns as thick as tree trunks. It doesn’t make sense. This much sythra—being mined by slave labor no less—would easily meet the needs of the doms, the crown and all the peoples of Solstyr.
It looks like somebody’s holding back the supply and inflating the cost. The only ones with access to the precious gems at this stage in the process are the blood fae and the crown. So, which one is it? And how convenient is it for the royal family to complain about the price of spelled gems being so high when they’re the ones selling them to the doms for far more than they’re actually worth.
I’m about to ask Aemon about it, when a stinging swat to my back steals my attention. I spin around to find a guard or soldier or whatever they are, with bright pink eyes and a full white beard shouting at me in ümbrian. “Get moving, you lazy—” I don’t know that last word, but I’m pretty sure I can guess its meaning. He points for us to keep going, so we continue deeper into the mine. At least thirty humans line the wall on one side, hacking away at the precious stone while children—ages ranging from maybe six to ten—dart around their feet, snatching up the fallen pieces and tossing them in wooden buckets. The children are able to move freely, but all the adults’ left feet are shackled to one large, massively thick chain, making it impossible for any single person to move very far without taking the entire group with them. We angle around them, carefully avoiding swinging picks until we find an open spot at the back of the line. There’s another guard standing here, shouting at one of the children. He lifts his cane, but the child’s too fast. He lunges between the adult’s legs and the crystal wall, and I watch in fascination as the slaves close ranks around the boy, hiding him with their bodies while he scurries down the line. It’s a small sort of rebellion, but effective, nonetheless. The boy makes his way to the other end of the line and the guard—either struck by a moment of altruism or simple laziness—lets him go. My gut tells me it’s the latter. He turns his attention to us, shoving first Aemon, then me, toward the wall and latches our left shackles to the thick chain. Then, he shoves a pickax into our hands and shouts at us to “get to work.”
They’ve literately handed me a weapon, handed all of us weapons, and yet there are only two guards for all these people. I wonder if they’ve ever rebelled, like really rebelled, something more than hiding a little boy. Already, I can see how difficult that would be. Even if their left feet weren’t shackled, these people are emaciated, their cheeks sunken and their bodies shriveled up to skin and bones. It’s a wonder any of them can lift their tools at all.
Aemon must notice this as well because his hands flex around the handle of his ax and the muscles around his jaw jerk from where he’s undoubtedly clenching his teeth.
Is that going to be us?
Are they going to starve us and work us day in and day out until there’s nothing left but skin and bones ?
This whole situation goes from surreal to real in an instant and suddenly my palms are sweaty, and I can’t breathe. I draw in air and blow it out, draw it in and blow it out, but I can’t shake this feeling. It’s like I’m suffocating, like all the oxygen has been sucked from this cave, and I’m breathing in everyone else’s recycled air. I step away from the wall. My heart’s pounding, pounding, pounding and my chest feels as though my corset’s been strung too tight. The collar squeezes my neck like a noose. I yank at it, not caring if the damn thing rips. Right now, I’d happily tear the whole dress to shreds for a moment of relief. My head’s getting fuzzy. I step back, hand searching for the wall. My heel lands on something hard and round, and my foot slips out from under me. I crash onto my back, my spine cracking against the hard stone floor.
“Katya.” Aemon’s voice pierces my mental fog, but the sound is distant, removed, as though we’re underwater. Black spots spring into my vision, and my heart is crashing against my ribcage like it’s trying to break free. Am I dying? Gods, please. I don’t want to die. “Katya,” Aemon repeats, pushing the hair out of my face. He cups my cheeks and forces me to meet his eyes. “What’s happening? What’s wrong?”
“I. Can’t. Breathe,” I say between gasps. The black spots are expanding, filling my vision. Everything is going dark. There’s a scuffle of some kind above my head, and my back stings, but all I can think of right now is the need to breathe.
Aemon’s warm hands disappear from my face and the melodic notes of a woman’s voice fill my ears. Her words are soft and soothing. She tells me I’m safe. “Breathe with me,” she says. “Deep breath in,” she draws in air, loudly enough for me to hear, and I do the same. “Do you feel your lungs expanding?” she asks .
Yes. Yes, I feel it.
“That’s right,” she continues. “Now, hold it in. Good. And breathe out.”
I release my breath. She tells me to “do it again,” and once again, we breathe in and out together. It’s too slow. I want to do it faster, but there’s something in her voice that makes me want to trust her. The same sort of something I’d hear in Mama’s voice whenever she was healing a patient, so I do as I’m told and after a few seconds my heart rate begins to slow, the vise around my chest loosens. Soon, my vision clears, and I find myself face-to-face with a brown-eyed fae female.
“See. All better.” She smiles.
I don’t have long to recover. The guard, who up until now was utterly useless, hollers at my savior to “Get back to work,” before I even have a chance to thank her. With Aemon’s help, I manage to stand and after quite a bit more yelling from the guard, I pick up my ax.
Aemon is going to talk to the king. You’re going to get out of here. I glance down the line, spotting the brown-eyed female who just helped me hard at work on the other end.
But what about them?
I raise the ax and, using what little strength I have left after that episode, hack at the precious stone. It only takes a few minutes for my arms to start aching, then shaking. After what is probably thirty minutes, but feels like a lifetime, I think I might die. Actually, I’m kind of hoping for it. How do these people keep going all day, especially when they aren’t getting enough to eat?
Luckily for me, work is called to an end for the day soon after, but I don’t know how I’m going to make it through tomorrow. I just want to go home, lie down in my nice fluffy bed and fall asleep, but I don’t have a bed, and I’m far away from home. We hand over our bucket of gems as we exit, and a guard gives us a bit of metal with a number one stamped on it. “What is this?” I ask Aemon.
He shrugs. “Dinner token, probably.”
“Oh, because we can’t eat—”
“—if we don’t work,” he finishes. “Exactly.”
Legs still locked to the long chain, the whole group is led back to the clearing where we first came in. The guard finally unlocks us from the long chain but leaves our feet manacled. The moment I’m free, I drop at the first bit of open space I see beside the wall. I lean my head against the cool stone and close my eyes. I’ll figure out something better tomorrow. For now, I just need to rest.
“What are you doing?” Aemon asks.
I open one eye to peek up at him. “I’m going to try to get some sleep.”
He turns his head up toward the ceilings, his lips moving as if in prayer. I wonder if he’s praying for the strength not to kill me right now? I definitely don’t have the strength to fight back if he tries. “They’re not going to wait for you to have a nap to serve food, Katya.” He spits my name out like a curse. “You have to get it now or never.”
“I’m alright with that,” I reply, closing my eyes .
“Fine. I’ll see if I can get something for both of us.” He holds out his palm, and I drop my token into it. “But don’t expect this to become an everyday thing.”
“I wouldn’t dream of it.”
He spins around in a huff and marches off. I don’t know what’s got him all in a tizzy, but I’m way too busy with my own pity party to deal with his issues right now.
“Where have you been?” asks a raspy male voice, venom dripping from every word. My eyes snap open, and I am suddenly very awake.
I don’t know much about humans, but I can tell that this one is past his prime. His salt-and-pepper hair is thinning badly and the little bit he has left hangs in long wispy strands to past his shoulders. His skin is sickly pale and weathered, deep lines etched into his flesh like a crumpled piece of parchment. “I’m sorry?” I ask as politely as I can because I have a feeling this man is the kill-first-asks-questions-later sort.
He draws back, eyes narrowing as he studies my face. “Oh, I thought you was somebody else,” he says with a shake of his head. “You ain’t seen another fae girl, dark hair like you? Name’s Jael.”
“No. I’m sorry.”
Another man, this one younger and wearing a toothy smile that doesn’t fit the current circumstances, comes up from behind the old man and throws an arm over his shoulder. “Branson,” he says, giving the old man’s shoulder a pat. “What have you found here?”
Branson, to his credit, shrugs off the other man’s arm, and with a nod to me, he says, “Just a girl. Get back to your business.” He turns and walks away, but the younger man doesn’t follow. Instead, he crouches in front of me and unabashedly runs his gaze up and down my body, his eyes heating as they reach my breasts.
I glance over his shoulder, hoping to see Aemon on his way back from getting food, but no such luck.
“Who you looking for, girly?" He pinches my chin, turning my head so I’m forced to look at him.
“Uh, my husband. He should be back any time now.” I try my best to suffuse my voice with confidence, but it comes out weak and unsure.
The man doesn’t miss it. His grin grows even wider, if that’s possible, but his grip on my chin tightens. And it hurts, but if there’s one thing I learned from Leodin, showing weakness only eggs bastards like him on, so I steel my spine and slap his hand from my face.
“Don’t touch me,” I say, and this time, I’ve managed to get some anger behind it.
That smile drops like an anvil, and it occurs to me that I might have read this situation wrong because instead of backing off, this guy looks at me with murder in his eyes. He grasps me by the nape and squeezes so hard I can’t stop the cry that escapes my lips. “You think you’re better than me, bitch. Huh?”
“No. No. I didn’t—” I say, frantically trying to stop whatever this is from escalating any further.
He scrunches his face like a whining child. “Whaa, whaa, whaa. You didn’t mean to. Don’t lie to me, bitch.” He tugs me closer and shakes my head. “You know what I think?” he says, pulling my face so close to his I can smell the sour milk on his breath. “I think it’s ’bout time somebody fucked that attitude out of you.”
“Please. ”
“Please. Whaa.” He makes the whiny face again, this time winding his fist next to his eye like he’s crying.
“Get your hands off of her.” Aemon’s deep voice booms from behind him, and I swear, I’ve never been so happy to hear his voice, or any voice for that matter, in my life.
The man turns around slowly, his expression flat. “Fuck off, pretty boy. Me and the lady are having a discussion.”
“That’s my lady you’re having a discussion with, and if you don’t get that hand off of her in the next three seconds, I’m going to break it.”
The first thing I notice is that he called me his lady, which gives me a little shot of excitement straight to the girly parts, but that’s soon eclipsed by the second thing I notice, just how still Aemon is right now. And I don’t mean still like a statue, I mean still like a jaguar about to pounce. In this moment, I get a glimpse of the predator lying in wait behind Aemon’s civil facade, and the only word I can come up with to describe it is beautiful. It’s as if his darkness is calling to mine, and a tremor, that has nothing to do with the pain in my neck or fear of what’s about to happen, ripples through my body.
And I want more.