Far Called Trilogy 01 - In Dark Service (52 page)

Carter stared at her defiantly. ‘You call this justice?’

‘Discipline and order,’ said Helrena. ‘As vital in keeping the sky mines functional as water, food and salt. Stand silently, you barbarian dogs! Here’s an entertainment that will make your fast a little easier to endure, at least for today.’

Carter watched a wooden post being set up at the far end of the chamber, slaves made to do the hard work of hammering it into place, the hangar set as a stage for his punishment. The scar on his face smarted like a hot cable as he realised it was about to be joined by a few cousins across his spine. Still forcing Carter to kneel, soldiers tore off the remains of his silver survival suit, exposing his back, already burnt and raw.

‘So,’ said Helrena, ‘you’ve visited the slopes of the volcano recently. That much was true.’

‘I was trying for a tan. I’ve been getting pasty in your tunnels.’

‘In the coming weeks, you will need to stay out of the sun. In the sky mines this is called a slave’s massage’

Guards dragged Carter towards the frame. Lady Cassandra came up, whispering quickly and quietly in his ear. ‘You will live, though.’ The young royal said it as though she was betraying some confidence or secret.

‘Reckon I will.’ Carter trusted the turncoat who had betrayed his escape was watching this, enjoying the rewards of selling him out. Settling in for the coming show. They’d pay for their ticket just as soon as Carter was done here. His captors shoved him towards the punishment frame, joking with each other while the structure was finished off. They didn’t even bother to keep their guns pointed at Carter as they waited. He was so weak he could hardly stand, let alone fight the guardsmen off. Willow had managed to join the detail setting up the structure, gazing knowingly at him with her sad eyes. She didn’t say
I told you so
, but then she didn’t have to. Carter’s escape attempt had ended exactly where she had predicted any breakout would.

‘Unhappy about Duncan getting dragged into this. Tell him that, when you next see him.’

Willow slipped him a little handle covered in a wet rag. ‘Bite on the wood. Owen says you’ll lose your tongue if you don’t.’

‘Would that be so bad?’

‘You wouldn’t be able to say sorry, Carter. And you’ll need to do a lot of that in the coming weeks.’

‘Get behind the crowd. You don’t need to watch this.’

‘I probably do. Maybe that witch of a princess is right – it’ll make our empty stomachs ride a little easier.’ She walked away, leaving Carter feeling even more miserable than before. He almost wished she’d fallen into her usual cantankerous banter with him. At least that was a game he knew how to play.

Kerge was one of the last slaves to come over, screwing the final few components of the frame in place. ‘Manling,’ he whispered, ‘I carry news for you.’

‘If it’s about the poor chances of success of escaping the sky mines, I think I’ve already figured the odds.’

‘No!’ the gask bent down, using the cover of the frame to talk. ‘I inspected the wreckage of your transporter after it was brought back. There was a device concealed inside it not found on any other craft here. A miniature signalling mechanism like a radio, broadcasting your position.’

Carter groaned. No wonder they had been discovered so easily. Their escape never stood a chance. Even if Carter had reached a stake small and worthless enough to escape notice, the Vandian patrol ship would have followed them straight into the air and used the rock for target practice.

‘You were betrayed from the start,’ whispered Kerge.

‘Keep that between us,’ muttered Carter. ‘I don’t want the son-of-a-bitch who sold us out getting wind that I know we were set up.’

‘Revenge is a poor servant,’ said Kerge as he slipped away with his tools.

Guardsmen strapped Carter tightly against the frame, laughing and mocking the Weylander about how fine his massage was going to be. They wouldn’t have sounded so amused if they knew he’d put a spray of bullets into their comrades down on the volcano’s slopes, then happily bashed in a few more Vandian skulls before flinging a blade into their captain’s throat. He heard the crack of a whip unfurled behind him, testing the air. Yells and taunts rose from the slaves too, now, an angry, expectant buzz growing louder.

Revenge is all I have left.
He bit down hard on the rag-wrapped handle as one of the guards began yelling the count.

One –
slash
– two –
slash
– three…

Duncan had expected to receive a piece of what Carter Carnehan must be enduring right now. But after clubbing Duncan to silence, the guards quickly dragged him to the station’s surface. A large Vandian ship was moored to the rock, anchored between the station and the closer of the two stakes. Hatches lay open along the vessel’s side, multiple gangways exposed with conveyor belts running from sorting lines to the ship. All the belts were stilled at the moment, the bulk of the workforce assembled inside the hangar for their hard education in the price of freedom. Engines at the vessel’s stern sat cold and silent, adding to the eerie quiet as she hovered on anti-gravity stones. Vandian soldiers stood posted at each steel gantry bridging the ship. Duncan hung in the guards’ thick muscled arms as they halted by the sentries, exchanging greetings. One of the soldiers muttered into a small microphone extended from his golden helmet. Whatever permissions they needed to proceed were granted, and the two brutes continued across the gantry, into the vessel, hauling Duncan along after them.

Inside, he was forced, stumbling, through metal corridors, passing Vandian sailors and the occasional house slave, all of whom studiously ignored the prisoner while giving way to the two guards. They dragged Duncan through a smaller version of the giant warship that had carried the Weylanders into their harsh new existence. Rather than being racked like meat in an automated slave pen, Duncan found himself rudely tossed into an empty cabin. Not often used as a brig, presumably, since it contained a single porthole. He turned to demand an answer from the guards, but they slammed the steel door in his face, a complicated-locking mechanism in the door clanging shut and sealing him in inside. The porthole wasn’t large enough for him to squeeze through even if he had tried. His new quarters contained bunks, three berths apiece, but no sheets or personal possessions. Only bare mattresses. There was a tiny locker, which, when opened, he found was empty of everything except dust.
Spare quarters for a spare slave.
Why the hell have they brought me here
? Were they going to make him toil, loading the station’s bounty of ores, before tossing him into the sky?
Carter Carnehan
, he thought,
have you got me killed at last?
Duncan pressed his face against the porthole. Only a view of the station’s roof. Little indication of Willow and the others going back to work. He waited and waited, but there was no answer to his concerns until the walls shuddered, the vessel cut loose from its moorings and drifting away from the station. They angled up, and Duncan felt the powerful push of the engines driving the craft higher and higher. His cabin grew warmer, sunlight outside raw and intense, pouring through the porthole. His ears began to hurt until they popped, his view through the thick circle of glass an endless bank of clouds, below. No sign of the dead zone, no sign of the stratovolcano. They were heading somewhere with a purpose. Had Duncan been forgotten? Were the crew going to turn up at some Vandian factory city with a hold full of ores, only for their skipper to remember that they had a cabin holding a slave they had forgotten to execute? A blind could be lowered over the porthole, but Duncan left it unclipped. Better a view of the endless sky than four metal walls and an empty cabin. The ship kept on flying, levelling out and powering forward, their passage uninterrupted save for a series of strange bangs, as though the craft broke the very sky by whipping through the heavens. Why had they taken him from the sky mines? How long would Willow survive on the station without his help? Brooding reflections jabbed at him like a knife. It grew dark, and in the end Duncan grew weary of watching the empty sky, only the surf of clouds and his concerns for company. He lay down on the bunk and despite his best intentions, he fell asleep, worry and exhaustion drawn around him as a thick blanket.

Duncan woke. Daylight streamed through the porthole. His ears had just popped again, and the craft felt as though it was descending. Gazing through the small circle of glass he noticed that they were crossing a body of water – either a small sea or a lake larger than anything he had ever encountered. Metal bridges crossed the waves like a wheel’s spokes, vast cantilevered spans strung with a webbing of suspended cables that bore multiple purple-painted roadways. He was heading towards a distant landmass – a continent-sized island necklaced by lesser islets; the bridges’ destination. The craft began to turn, riding in on roaring thrusters as gravity grew stronger. They manoeuvred over an islet below, its flattened plain criss-crossed by landing strips, hangars and a concrete fortress. An insect cloud of aircraft – tiny by comparison – alighted and took off around the metal behemoth settling amongst them. Metal feet extended from the ship’s hull to absorb the impact of landing, leaving the craft squatting like a vast metal grasshopper. Duncan’s cabin provided a good vantage point to watch a queue of vehicles drawing up below the vessel. Workers walked alongside the vehicles, each man a quarter of the height of the wheels, steel stairs needed to climb up to the cabs. Chutes extended out of the ship’s holds and showered ores down into the trucks’ bodies, a rumbling shower rapidly filling each container-back. The Vandians obviously hadn’t carried Duncan here to break his back unloading cargo.

Duncan heard the cabin door unlock. Turning around, he found himself facing Helrena’s daughter, the Lady Cassandra dwarfed by a Vandian soldier standing behind her.

‘Out,’ ordered the guardsman. ‘Time to go.’ The soldier stood a head taller than Duncan, his scalp shaved and shining in the glow of the passageway, a face broken by tributaries of scars. He wore the same silver armour as the other Vandian soldiers, but on his substantial frame the plate seemed a lot more deadly and a lot less ornamental.

‘We’re a long way from the sky mines,’ said Duncan.

The little noble girl nodded soberly, as if Duncan had surpassed her expectations by working this out for himself. ‘We have landed outside the empire’s capital, Vandis. I don’t suppose a barbarian such as yourself will have heard of it?’

‘There were a few lessons hard-taught back in the station,’ said Duncan. ‘But your empire’s geography wasn’t among them.’

The brute of a soldier shot him an evil look. Same kind an overseer gave a sky miner when he caught a slave gabbing on the job.

‘A horse best understands how to trot,’ said Cassandra. That sounded like a quote to Duncan, even though its source was unfamiliar. He had a feeling he was going to be in for a lot of that. ‘Follow,’ she added, as though commanding a dog.

Duncan exited the cabin and did as he was told.

‘You are to be my house slave,’ said Cassandra, as though Duncan’s change of position should have been obvious and communicated to him on the whisper of the wind. ‘You are to be one of the servants given responsibility for looking after my person.’

Duncan rocked in surprise.
They’re taking me off the station for good
? ‘But I was never a teacher back home.’

Cassandra giggled as she marched through the ship’s corridors, everyone giving way to her and bowing low. ‘A
tutor
? How ridiculous, I already have one of those. Doctor Yair Horvak. He is a slave, too, of course, given as tribute by one of the conquered dominions that excel in science and philosophy. He is judged the finest mind in the empire. Are you so quick of intelligence?’

Well, Duncan would never have predicted this turn of events, for a start. ‘I reckon not. But if you don’t need a teacher…?’

‘You shall taste my food before I eat it. Check my bed for snakes and spiders. Ensure my bath has not been secretly connected to a fatal electrical source. Keep your eyes open for treason and assassins. You have already proved yourself highly adroit in that regard.’

‘I guess I have.’ Duncan could barely keep the grief out of his voice. When would he see Willow again? How long would his sister survive without him in that floating hell, nothing but work and death ahead of her?

‘This is a promotion for you,’ said Cassandra, staring quizzically at him. ‘Do you not understand? You will be of the hostile-upper caste, superior to all slaves save those that serve the emperor directly.’

‘I thought I was being dragged away for a flogging.’

‘You showed personal constancy to one of your caste, when that could only be to your cost. You owed that man a debt, yes, the slave who was flogged? A matter of honour? It is by such devotion as yours that a house becomes preeminent. That trait can never be purchased, no matter how rich a house grows through its holdings. It can only be uncovered.’

Was that her damn mother talking? Sounded like it. If Duncan could have remained behind in the sky mines, he would have taken a flogging and be damned. ‘I never asked for this.’

‘If you had, you would not be the appropriate choice to serve my house. You need not fear; the last food tester to perish eating from my plate passed many years ago. Even when our house’s enemies don’t fear my mother’s revenge, they usually cower at the thought of my grandmother’s. In that, they are wise.’

Duncan recalled the station’s blasting powder stores rigged to explode and murder the girl’s mother, thousands of slaves sacrificed to facilitate a single assassination.
Yes, wise indeed to fear Circae
. ‘She’s the one who wanted to kidnap you from the sky mines?’

‘Of course. I am all that she has left of my father.’

‘You never get to see your grandmother?’

Cassandra leant in conspiratorially. ‘No. If I did, I would slip a dagger through Circae’s heart for what she did to my father.’

‘What was that?’