A scuffle breaks out behind us, and Katya and I both spin around to catch sight of a female blood fae racing through the street, something brown pressed to her chest. Two black-cladsoldiers—sans the veils and head wraps—race after her. There’s no way she’s getting away. She’s stick thin, her cheeks sunken, eyes crazed, with white hair sticking up in uneven clumps like somebody took a hacksaw to it. One soldier raises his hand and a ball of light surges from his palm, hitting the female in the back and knocking her to the ground. The males are on her before she can even push to her knees. They lift her in the air, legs kicking. A sac of some sort of grain or rice is ripped out of her arms, and the contents scatter across the stone floor and into the water. The guards don’t even seem to care about the mess as they drag her away. They simply leave it where it fell.
And the watching mob descends on it like flies.
“Get in,” the red-robed fae says, limping up behind us. Gods. I was so engrossed with what I was seeing, I forgot he was there. I step down into the tiny boat. It wobbles beneath me, and I probably let out a dozen different curses before I find my balance. One of the soldiers, the one with pink eyes, actually helps Katya inside, which I should be relieved about, but it mostly just pisses me off. We take our seats while the others climb aboard. Glancing over the edge of the boat, I see little glowing balls of blue and purple light sweeping through the water. It only takes me a moment to realize they’re fish.
One of the guards grabs a long rod latched to the backside of the boat, and pushes off the river floor to gets us moving. We’re ferried past more ornate buildings and crystal gardens, beneath canopies of scarlet flowers and through a series of caves where the passageways narrow so much, I could almost touch the walls on either side. It’s dank and claustrophobic, but luckily only lasts a few minutes before we’re spit back out into a larger cave system. It’shard to tell what’s natural and what’s been hollowed out for this waterway since everything is covered in moss and stalactites. The river splits, and we turn down an offshoot that leads into another open cavern. There aren’t as many crystals here to light the area. Instead, a tall steel wall hung with torches and topped with a lattice covered in the same thorny vines and red flowers stretches from one end of the cavern to the other, cutting across the river. A guard flanks the river on each side, but it’s the male on the right who approaches our boat.
The guard says something in what I assume is Ümbrian, and the red-robed fae reaches into one of his long sleeves, pulls out a folded sheet of paper and hands it over to him. I crane my neck, trying to get a look at the writing, but my angle is all wrong. Scanning the paper, the guard nods, steps back and pulls a lever jutting out of the wall. There are a number of loud clicks and a groan. Then, what I thought was a solid metal wall splits down the middle, and the panels slide into narrow slots carved into an outcropping of stone on either side. We pass through the entrance and into a tiny cove enclosed in stone, except for an opening I may have to walk through sideways in order to fit. The air here is different, caustic and thick with smoke. I can only imagine what it will be like when we reach the camp.
The soldiers secure us to a decrepit dock, and the red-robed fae jabs me, then Katya in the back with his cane. “Go on,” he says in a biting tone. I take Katya’s arm to help her onto the dock, but she wrenches it free from my grip. So she’s still mad at me. Fine. She gets up onto the dock by herself, and I wait a few seconds for her to step off before I follow. The rotted wood groans under my weight, and I scramble onto the dirt before the whole thing falls apart, andI’m stuck trying to swim with my hands shackled. The blue-eyed soldier doesn’t even bother with the dock. He simply leaps from the boat straight onto the ground.
“Gabin will lead you to the mines,” the red-robed fae continues. “You don’t work, you don’t get fed, so I suggest you get started immediately.” He says something to the soldier steering the boat and they start back for the gate, leaving us staring after them, our hands still chained in front of us.
The soldier, Gabin, points toward the opening in the rock and grunts something I’m not sure I’d understand even if I spoke the language, but his meaning is plain enough.
I hold out a hand to Gabin as if to say, “lead on,” but he shakes his head and points again. “I guess we’re going first.” Letting out a long sigh, I head for the opening, not waiting to see if anybody’s following me. If Katya doesn’t want my help, then she can do it alone. And good luck to her. I’m tired of trying to convince her I’m not a horrible person, or at least that I’m not going to be horrible to her. Have I done some truly awful things? Absolutely, but at least I have the good grace to hate myself for them.
Stepping through the opening, I find myself in a small clearing where I get my first glimpse of the slave camp. I knew it was bad from the reports Troi received, but seeing it in person, it’s so much worse than I imagined. Long swaths of shitty fabric stretch across the rocky stone floor, with metal rings—I’m guessing are for chaining slaves—set about a meter apart at the end of the makeshift beds. In the middle of the clearing sits a long marble slab that looks suspiciously like a sacrificial altar. Then, beyond that, fire rings filled with charred sticks—not logs, sticks—lie cold and dormant and empty, beneath a chimney-like funnel in the ceiling.
Katya stands beside me, taking in the general destitution. “Where is everyone?”
“At the mines—ouch,” I say as the soldier-asshole jabs me in the ribs. He returns my glare and points toward a path that travels past the fire rings. I’d love to spew profanities at him right now, but I keep my temper in check. I have a feeling I’m going to need to do that a lot from now on. I’m a good fighter, but there’s only so much I can do with my hands chained. I start down the path, and Katya has to walk at double her normal speed to keep up with my long strides.
“What mines?”
“What mines do you think?” I throw back at her. I refuse to let her play dumb. She knows exactly what I’m talking about, even if she doesn’t want to admit it.
“Sythra?”
“There you go.”
“You’re joking,” she says, even though I can tell from her dead serious expression she believes me.
“I joke about a lot of things, Katya. This is not one of them.”
“But…” She glances around. What she’s looking for, I have no idea. “I don’t understand; there must be hundreds of people living here. How could they kidnap so many fae and nobody notice?”
“Because it isn’t kidnapped fae working these mines, at least not the majority. It’s humans, and nobody gives half a damn what happens to humans.”
She draws back in shock. Then glances over her shoulder at the guard following us and lowers her voice. “But you’re human. How could you just sit back and let this happen?”
I stop in my tracks. “You know what, Katya.” She’s ahead of me by a few steps, so she turns around to face me. “Fuck you.” Her mouth drops open in shock. “That’s right. Fuck you and your judgmental bullshit. You have no idea what it’s like to be saddled up with that sadistic bastard day in and day out, and the queen was no better. She just made other people do her dirty work for her—namely me,” I say, emphasizing the last word with a slap to my chest. “I have lived in that fucking palace for twenty years and every day I struggle to keep Troi in check. To do the little things I can to keep him from destroying everyone and everything around him.”
Gabin shoves me, and I stumble forward. I spin on the soldier. “Do that again, asshole, and I’ll beat you into a bloody pulp with my hands chained.” The bastard may not speak my language, but he understands just fine, so of course, he sneers and shoves me again. My fingers are itching with the need to punch something, and this asshole is starting to look real good, but Katya grabs me by the elbow and jerks me forward.
“You’re going to get yourself killed.”
I tear my arm from her grip. “Don’t pretend like you care.” I turn around and stomp down the trail before soldier-guy Gabin can push me again. I’m all riled up and jittery. Back home, I’d have sparred, done pull-ups or gone for a run, but I can’t do shit right now, and it’s making me a little crazy. Katya’s feet crunch in the dirt as she jogs toward me. Part of me wants to tell her off again and not have to deal with her anymore, but the larger part of me, that moron who can’t keep away from her, just wants to pull her into a dark space and fuck the sass right out of her.
Great. Perfect. Now I’m getting hard. Good timing, there. I drop my head back and groan. Katya moves into place beside me, but I don’t acknowledge it. She keeps turning her head and looking at me, like she’s waiting for me to say something, but I’m done talking. If she wants to talk, then she’s going to have to do it for a change, and only if she apologizes, which is obviously never going to happen.
“I’m sorry,” she says.
Wait, what?I peek at her out of the corner of my eye just to make sure she isn’t some apparition with Katya’s voice, but nope. It’s her.
“I know you try to help. Elsbeth said as much herself. I’m just upset by… well… pretty much everything and I was taking it out on you.”
I have literally no idea how to deal with this change of heart, so I just nod to acknowledge that I heard her and slow down a little so she doesn’t have to run to keep up.
