CHAPTER FOUR

Pelemere, the Central Kingdoms

I shbel lay against Maximilian’s body in their bed, relaxed but not sleepy. They had made love—a pleasure so intense Ishbel did not yet wish to slip into sleep and forget.

She was happy. Happier than she had been in months. Happy she’d told Maximilian about the terrifying whispers that continued to torment her, happy he’d suggested that he would allow her to go home after a year if she wished. A year with Maximilian would not be a trial, and perhaps she might even stay a few months longer…just to watch Maximilian with the child…just to see him smile.

Ishbel moved against Maximilian, running a hand softly down his side. He was deeply asleep, and did not move, and so she allowed her fingers to linger over some of the scars on his body.

Scars from his seventeen years spent in the Veins.

When they had first met, Maximilian had told Ishbel that if she asked him about that time, then he would tell her. Ishbel had, on several occasions since, asked a question about the Veins. Maximilian had answered, true to his word, but his answers had been brief and too unemotional, and Ishbel knew that he hid a world of pain behind them.

Her palm slid over a particularly ridged scar on his hip. She had felt it when they’d made love; now she allowed her fingers to travel up and down its length, wondering what had caused it. What horror had befallen him in the Veins?

She lay thinking a long time.

Eventually Ishbel came to a decision. As archpriestess of the Coil she had many skills, the very least of which was the slicing open of bellies to glimpse the future. She could use these skills now, to retrieve the memory of how Maximilian had come by this scar.

It would give her an insight into Maximilian she was sure he would never share with her, and Maximilian was fast asleep. He would never know.

Ishbel debated briefly whether or not to deepen his sleep with some of her power. She often granted unconsciousness to the victims of Readings, those who were there through no fault of their own—it was generally only the rapists and murderers she preferred to keep conscious throughout the entire procedure. But in the end Ishbel decided Maximilian was fast enough asleep anyway. Adding to that sleep magically could leave him groggy—and suspicious—in the morning.

Ishbel took a deep breath, steeling herself, for she would experience this memory as if it had happened to her, and allowed power to seep down her arm into the fingers lying over the scar.

Unwind for me, she whispered to it. Show me the memory of your creation.

After a long moment, memory began to uncoil from the scar, and Ishbel found herself transported to hell.

She had no name, and she had no identity, save that of her number: Lot No. 859. If she had ever had a name, she did not know it.

There was nothing in her existence save the rhythmic raising of the pick above her shoulder and the burying of it in the rock face before her, over and over, five swings over her left shoulder and five over her right before swinging back to her left shoulder.

There was nothing but the black tarry gloam collecting around her naked feet, nothing save the grunt of the anonymous man chained to her left ankle, and those of the seven other anonymous men in the chained gang.

Raise the pick, swing it, bury it. Breathe. Raise the pick, swing it, bury it. Breathe.

This was the entire sum of existence, nothing else. Occasionally when someone in the line of chained men died, and another brought in to fill his place, the new man would babble about sun and wind and children and happiness beyond the hanging wall—the rock face hanging over all their heads.

But Lot No. 859 knew there was nothing beyond the hanging wall, just a greater blackness, extending into infinity. Sometimes she thought she dreamed of something—an echoing memory, a glimpse of a rolling green sea, the scent of something called apple blossom—but Lot No. 859 knew these were figments of her imagination. Lies created by hopelessness to torment her.

She raised the pick, swung it, buried it in the rock face, feeling pain ripple throughout her entire body, but ignoring it because it was such a constant companion that it had ceased to have any meaning.

Something overhead groaned and then cracked.

The hanging wall, Lot No. 859’s only hope for salvation.

She dropped the pick and looked upward, spreading her arms in supplication, baring her breasts to the inevitable rockfall, praying for the oblivion of death.

Beside her the men in her gang screamed, trying to scramble away.

Lot No. 859 knew it was too late.

In a breath the hanging wall collapsed. Rock fragments struck Lot No. 859, throwing her down to the gloam-covered floor of the tunnel, half burying her and wrapping her in thick, tarry, choking dust.

Lot No. 859 opened her mouth, sucking in the dust, praying that her lungs would drown in it, soon, please, gods, soon…this was her only hope, her only escape…

Pain exploded in her left hip, and she cried out, trying to wrench herself away, her hand fumbling down to feel what had happened.

It was the pick blade of the man next to her, hammered into her hip during his dying moments.

And worse, over the next terrible minutes, the knowledge that while everyone else in her team had been crushed or smothered into death by the rockfall and its dust, she was still alive, the Veins still had her, and there would never be an escape for her, not into death, not anywhere.

Ishbel woke out of the vision suddenly, gasping for air, bathed in cold sweat, absolutely terrified. For a moment she was completely disoriented, thinking that Maximilian’s body next to her was that of the man who had died chained to her left ankle and that the darkness about her was that of the gloam mines. Only very gradually did she calm, and realize that the darkness was that of natural night, and that Maximilian’s body was warm and alive.

She breathed in deeply, regaining her composure, grateful that her sudden waking had not disturbed Maximilian.

By the Great Serpent, Maxel had endured seventeen years of that?

What had struck her was his absolute hopelessness, and a despair so deep he had convinced himself that there was no world beyond that of the hanging wall, because to admit that would have been to go insane.

She knew with absolute certainty that if she unwound the memories behind each of the scars on his body she would experience much the same thing.

How could anyone survive that and come out from it with as much compassion as Maxel?

“Oh, Maxel,” she whispered. Seventeen years? “Maxel…”

She wrapped herself tightly about his body, wishing she could somehow comfort him. She ran her hands over his body again, with more pressure this time, deliberately meaning to awake and arouse him.

He moved slightly, then rolled into her arms, still more asleep than awake.

“Wake up, Maxel,” she whispered into his ear, kissing his neck and then his collarbone, making him moan. “Wake up. There is a world beyond the hanging wall, and here it is, in my arms and in my mouth, and in my breasts and my belly. Here it is, here it is…”

To the south of them, on the main road between Pelemere and Kyros, Ba’al’uz led the Eight to the west.

Despite the cold and snow, and the subsequent difficulty of travel, Ba’al’uz was in a high good humor.

He knew that Maximilian and Ishbel had fled Pelemere, but he was content with that.

Ba’al’uz knew where they were going.