12. N #2
She slid the completed brick out of the form, and wrapped it with waxed paper, as she had been shown, making the complex folds that tucked the paper back into itself in such a way that it would not accidentally open.
Aelford stood. “That’s eight. Seventeen more and you make your quota.”
Triana sat on the edge of her bunk, her head in her hands.
She had missed her midday meal, and taken only a brief break, but she had done fourteen.
Her head throbbed, and she just wanted to sleep.
She checked the thin mattress and the threadbare sheets.
Nothing seemed out of the ordinary. Still, the hall could be cold at night, and sleeping in her clothing provided a bit of extra warmth.
Magic had always been a way to make things easier, and she wished she had paid more attention to her education.
Magic instruction was next to nonexistent back home, compared to here …
you just did it. None of this folderol about ambiances, tea cups, and whatnot.
Still, learning at least a little about how it all worked might have helped her.
She knew she had improved. Gone from six to fourteen.
Fourteen. She needed to make at least two more to keep from taking bread out of others’ mouths.
What in the name of the ancestors had Aelford even meant by “golden glows” and “auras” anyway?
Frustration made her eyes sting. There was something missing here—or maybe she was missing something, some …
sense or other that they had and she didn’t.
“Get up.” A foot jostled her bed. She rolled over to see a young woman, her face flushed with anger, backed by what looked like several others.
Triana saw the girl poised for a fight, and that she needed to be on her feet, if she was to have a chance at defending herself.
She swung her legs out around the edge of the bed, and stood. She was so tired.
Triana was a head taller, and perhaps a little longer armed, but the rest of the advantages went the other way. She opened her mouth to speak, to try to calm this before it got out of hand, but the other woman wasn’t having it.
“You shut your sewer mouth, street trash. I don’t know how you conned your way in here or whose hand you filled with silver to get this job, but this has gone far enough. Me and the rest of the girls all had to make our gems, had to make them glow, and are working our asses off …
while you float in there and you do what, a half-quota, when you feel like it? And spend the rest of your time napping! What were you? A red … maybe a weak orange? Think you can slide in here and do serious Making on that weak sauce? Walk out, while you still can.”
Triana tried to answer, but was cut off.
“I make my quota every day, and the one or two extra that I’ll need if I am going to get out of here, and I’ll be damned if I lose my extras to some gutter-rat.”
Triana got her hand up in time to block the first punch, but was too tired and too slow to stop the second.
It split her lip and dazed her long enough for the girl to get a solid hit in low against her side, where the ribs had been removed.
Triana folded, went to one knee, and saw stars as she tried to draw breath into her bruised lung.
The woman knelt down, got a fistfull of hair, and jerked her head up to snarl in your ear. “Take one of my rations. Get between me and my baby. Keep me from getting out of here, and I won’t be hitting you with my hand. I’ll find a brick, and I will split your skull.”
She stood up, releasing Triana, and walked away. The other woman gave her glares from over their shoulders. The last jammed her knee into Triana’s shoulder as she passed.
Triana sat on the floor, holding her side. The woman on either side of the narrow passage between bunks either studiously ignored her, or gave her their own hostile looks. Blood from her split lip dripped down her front.
Once her breathing settled, she got painfully to her feet, and went into the bath. Her side, shoulder, and lip all hurt. She took a rag and dabbed at the split lip, studying her distorted reflection in the metal mirror bolted to one wall.
Once, she had been hailed for beauty … fine high cheekbones and the porcelain complexion that signified the finest breeding …
in all senses of the word. The most beautiful women back home weren’t like these fat lumps.
They were as slim as grass stems, and she had been considered a beauty among beauties.
Slim as a reed. She did not have much weight to lose before “slim” became skeletal. Her eyes looked hollow with fatigue, and her skin drawn tightly over her face. A rash had broken out on her cheeks, and her lip looked about to swell to twice its size where it had been split.
She took the rag and dabbed at the lip again, then hissed at the pain.
She licked the swollen lip. The taste of blood made her ill.
Her hand shook as she rinsed out the rag and pressed it to where it bled.
She counted to ten, and inspected the rag, moved to a clean part, and did the same thing again.
In time, the bleeding slowed, and finally settled into a slow ooze.
Other women came into the bath. They gave her a wide berth.
She could hear the whispers, the murmurs, and the little laughs.
She felt her stomach turn with anxiety. She had been on her own, at least since her father died, but she had never felt this alone.
She had been hated on her home-world, but her wealth and connections insulated her from the consequences of that anger.
She glared at the women on the far side of the bath.
They giggled to themselves, unimpressed by her expression, and left.
The mage-lights in the sleeping hall began to dim, and the soft sounds of the hall quieted as women took to their beds.
Triana stood, looking into the mirror for a long while.
She had seen enough bluffing to know the women who had hit her had been deadly serious.
And there was absolutely no one she could go to for help.
Aelford had made it clear that she did not believe Triana couldn’t do the work.
And she had made it clear that this was Triana’s problem, not hers.
She looked at her reflection in the mirror.
That bitch is going to kill you, you know.
If not her, then someone else. In their shoes, I’d do the same …
lazy wench can’t pull her weight, expecting others to do her bit for her.
She spat blood into the basin, watched it dissipate in little tendrils.
I can bust my ass for fourteen. Once. But I can’t hold it.
And two days from now, when they take a ration from some other girl’s pile to fill mine, it’ll be just a matter of time someone puts a knife into me, or mashes my head in with a brick when I’m asleep.
She spat again. Another pink tinged blob in the basin.
Even if I make that number, and not get stabbed, I’m still too far out to make the rat-bastard Overseer’s cut much less the arse-licking eunuch-livered Haldeen’s.
She slammed her hand down on the side of the basin. “Haldeen, you bastard, I’ll ….”
“You’ll what, dear?” Triana had not seen Aelford enter. “You’ll what?”
Triana was past caring. “I’ll cut his balls off and feed them to the pigs”
“Hrmm,” replied Aelford, not much impressed. “Not sure he’d notice. His Nibs is a right weasel, sure enough.” She came a step closer. “What happened?”
“I fell,” Triana replied. “Come to enjoy the show?”
Aelford frowned. “Bedcheck. Do it most nights. You are usually asleep, so you’ve never seen.” She tipped her head to one side, gesturing to the sleeping hall. “They don’t understand that you’re doing your best, but they aren’t wrong.”
“No?” Triana answered, not bothering to hide her bitterness. “I didn’t ask for any of this.”
Aelford shrugged. “Doesn’t matter. The people who figured out this system know that a gel that can glow a yellow gem can make about twenty-four or twenty-five bricks, and each brick keeps a person alive for a day. You glow a yellow gem and pee sitting down, and you land here.
Just like if you glow a yellow gem and you pee standing up, you end up running a firelance.”
Triana blinked. She hadn’t known that the males got a different role. She opened her mouth to ask for that, then closed it. Haldeen wouldn’t let her within bow-shot of the wall’s heavy equipment. For good reason. Giver her one of those metal contraptions ….
Aelford snapped her fingers in front of Triana’s face, drawing her back. The supervisor scowled.
“Twenty-five is about the upper limit, but a lot of these gels can push harder, as hard as you are pushing, and can do one, maybe two more. The extras get banked for credit. Each gel has her own credit roster … you have one too … and it’s your extras that will eventually pay Haldeen back.”
Given her inability to make her quotas, Triana let the absurdity of Aelford’s statement pass.
Aelford leaned against the doorway to the bath and crossed her arms.
“Raelin, the gel that made you ‘fall,’ has been banking her rations for nearly two years. She’s desperate to have a baby, and she needs those rations to live off of while she can’t work. Your failure to pull your weight puts you between her and that babe she wants so bad.
She will gut you like a fish before her savings gets pushed into your box.”
Triana set the bloody rag down and turned to face Aelford. “What about you? Do I need to worry about you?”
Aelford didn’t bat an eye. “Yes.” She shrugged.
“It’s not personal, Triana. Even if you manage to make enough to not get a shiv from one of your coworkers, Haldeen is going to take six from me each day you don’t make quota. Six. That bites deep and hard. I don’t have a deep enough well to cover that, and I wouldn’t even if I did.
Our quota is partially based on how many producers we employ, so if slipping on a bar of soap and breaking your neck keeps Haldeen from robbing me, then so be it.”
Triana put her finger to her split lip and tested it. Puffy and painful, but not bleeding. “You’re being very matter-of-fact about it,” she said.
Aelford shrugged. “If talking sweet to you gets to twenty-five, then I’ll sugar my tongue and whisper encouragement the full day. If yelling and screaming gets you there, I’ll do that. But, if nothing will get you there, then I need you … and the gels need you … gone.”