12. N #3
She stood. “For you, given what you owe Haldeen, that probably means being taken out feet first, toes up, covered in a sheet.”
Aelford took a deep breath. “It’s not personal, Triana, it really isn’t. It’s just how it is.”
She looked back into the sleeping hall. “If you were prettier, or had something else you could do, then perhaps you could parlay that into a ticket out of here” She sighed.
“I will have a word with the gels, give you two days to work a miracle. After that, once your tally starts to count … each brick short of twenty-five puts you one step closer to that slippery bar of soap. Understand?”
Triana nodded.
“Now,” Aelford said. “You’re out of bed after lights out, and that is normally a two brick fine. Maergry is a corrupt old hag, and you don’t want to get caught by her on an infraction. She has a way of stacking the fines up.”
Triana went to step past Aelford, who put an arm up across the door to the bath, blocking her way. “Two days, Triana. You need a miracle.”
She wanted to explode. She wanted to shout in rage.
She wanted answers, dammit! You want a miracle?
Then tell me, show me, give me the way to see this invisible ambient magic you keep telling me about so I can use it!
But she was too sore—every breath hurt—too exhausted—it was all she could do to stand—and too mentally fogged to do anything but croak out something incoherent.
So she just nodded, ducked her head submissively, until Aelford let her pass.
As she lay down on her bed, the only thing that kept circling in her mind until sleep claimed her was—that Haldeen had all the power. And somehow, she had to remind him she could still be valuable to him. Before she got a knife in her ribs.
She rolled onto her side, away from where she had been punched.
She was sleep fogged and tired, but the fight had given her a jolt of energy that kept her awake, at least for a little time.
She could see no way out of her current predicament.
Aelford had laid it out fair and square, and as she thought about it, she knew that if their situations had been reversed, Triana would be as hard …
had been as hard. She recalled what she had done to Varien when he had failed to repay money owed for the breeding-slaves.
She’d turned him out in scandal and ruin.
It hadn’t been personal, but she had to make the point that she was as tough as any of the male elven lords when it came to her rights.
She shifted, trying to get comfortable on the thin mattress. She saw no way to win, playing by these rules. Aelford explained how that game would end. In two days, her shortfall would take literal bread out of someone else’s mouth.
She wondered if Haldeen knew about her predicament, or had set her up to fail.
I made the yellow gem light up, so for him that is that …
a Yellow is a Yellow. Rather more likely he saw this as a way to get me out of his thinning hair, slap me down for going through his things, and make a little coin on me, all at once.
Probably has no idea. Probably doesn’t care.
She yawned deeply, fatigue washing over her as the last dregs of the energy that had wound her up earlier now faded away. Perhaps that’s it. Find a way to send a message that he can’t miss.
Triana rose from her seat in the eating hall.
She normally sat by herself. Her poor performance, odd appearance, and accent had kept others well away.
This morning proved worse. Word of the fight had spread, and many of the other workers treated her as though contagious, staying even further back, so that she sat in a table-sized pool of isolation.
She should see other producers looking at her over shoulders or across tables, quick glances, followed by furtive whispers.
She smiled to show she didn’t mind being the center of attention.
She went and got a second cup of the brown bitter drink, the better to suppress her hunger. The ration she had demolished this morning had been accompanied by the cook’s knowing look. She had already known they had a betting pool. How long would she last?
The only way she could win was to change the game, change the rules so she wasn’t a herd-beast to the slaughter. She had a thought on how to do that, but wasn’t sure she could cause a big enough ruckus to get Haldeen’s attention.
She lingered a moment at the large clay jar that held the drink. A supervisor she didn’t know was talking to the cook mixing more of the drink.
“I heard it was bad,” she said.
“How bad?” said the cook.
“They had to throw away a thousand rations, send them back into the algae vats. All had that black mold. Word has it some scrubs by the west wall ate theirs anyway. Went mad and died.”
The cook gave the supervisor a look.
“Well, that’s what I heard,” the supervisor said in a defensive voice.
The cook grunted in a noncommittal way. “Hmm. Didn’t hear anything about that. I did hear Haldeen was all tossed up about having to make good on several days’ production.” He paused. “Perhaps it was mold. Maybe”
“See!” she said triumphantly. “I told you there are things going on here that ‘they’ don’t want us knowing about.”
The cook gave the supervisor a stern look.
“And if you keep up that kind of talk, the lord will put you out. No ration, and no production means conscription.”
He stopped ladling the liquid for a moment.
“And I will tell you what I have heard about that. Conscripts’ job is to do their bit, and their bit might be some dumb dangerous work that gets enough killed to take the pressure off the food production, once and for all. Haldeen’s already run a rum lot off to conscription. Keep running your trap,
and you could join them.”
The supervisor looked up, saw Triana, and frowned. “Got nothing better to do than listen when your betters’ talk?”
Triana shook her head. “Just getting a fresh cup.”
He ladled more into the cheap ceramic mug, and made a “go-away” gesture with his hand.
She bobbed her head and followed the others towards the workroom.
She considered what she had heard, and it confirmed where she might have some leverage, at least enough to get her out of her current predicament.
Food. Haldeen completely relied on food production, and things weren’t going well. She could use that. Once.
She drank the cup quickly, and felt the butterflies well up in her stomach.
She knew what she was about to do would toss the board into the air, but had no idea what the ultimate outcome would be.
She hoped it would get her out of this stupid room before she got killed …
Aelford had been crystal clear about that.
She sat at her station, set her form in front of her, and began to ladle the paste in.
She saw a couple of the other women watching her under lowered brows.
Oh, you bitches, you are going to get a show.
She looked around cautiously while she made a show of smearing the paste into the form.
Now, to time it right. Not the first brick, or the second, but not too close to midday meal either.
She filled the form, then used the tip of the ladle to make a little curlicue in the top of the paste, just because she could.
She made her first ration brick, taking her time to reduce the amount of work she had to commit.
She had no intention of overstraining herself, and worked just hard enough to keep from being called out.
Aelford passed her once, a concerned expression on her face.
Triana gave her a quick twitch of her lips, careful not to reopen the split.
Aelford looked at her box, saw the single brick, and frowned. Triana shrugged.
She started on her second brick, still taking her time. She felt the butterflies surge up again, and her heart raced. She took a deep breath. It was time.
She abruptly stood, and called out in a loud voice.
“I have had enough of this!” She followed this up with a burst of profanity as she took her hands, placed them under the edge of the table, and flipped it over into the station next to hers.
Then, she kicked the chair into the path of a woman carrying a large bucket of paste, sending her stumbling into another table and crashing it to the floor.
The room exploded into chaos. The shouts and noise and clatter destroyed the room’s quiet like a hammer through a window.
Women deep in concentration lost their focus, ruining the bricks they worked on, to Triana’s great satisfaction.
The tumbling tables and falling paste buckets matched well with the rising tide of women’s cries of alarm and shouts of rage.
Many scrambled out of their seats, uncertain about what had happened and alarmed by the noise and Triana’s drama.
She fed into the disruption, taking two quick steps and kicking one table into another, breaking a table leg and overbalancing it, and knocking the paste, bucket, and half-made ration to the floor.
One of the women close to her tried to restrain her, grabbing her arm as Triana lined up on another table.
She felt a deep seated joy in ramming her elbow back into the woman’s face.
She was pretty sure she heard the crunch of a nose breaking.
The woman let go. A second one of the producers angled in on her, also trying to restrain her.
Triana felt no need to let a perfectly cocked fist go to waste.
She gave it to the other woman, punching her right in the mouth.
The other woman staggered back, her hands going up to her face.
Triana swore, her knuckles gashed from where she thought she had hit teeth.
She doubted she was strong enough to break any, but that really hurts!
She shook her hand several times and flexed her fingers to try and ease the pain.
She heard a noise behind her and swung around.
A table, angled out of its position, but otherwise upright, beckoned with its cute little form and paste bucket positioned just so.
She swore and used the bottom of her foot to kick the table away, right into the path of a woman trying to flee Triana’s tempest.
The table struck her on the hip, turning her, and slamming her into another pair of tables before going down in a heap.
She had, in a few short moments, reduced Haldeen’s well-ordered food production room to an absolute shambles. No one would be making their ration quota today.