Empire of Ashes

Chapter XLIX - Cultured Cruelty

She cocked her head to one side. "Whatever it took."

And so I had a dram. It was rusty, and the wheels screeched like a dying cat, but it could get me outside. The surface tunnels were different — there was no pulley, just an extended track which led to a bricked surface where the drams were upended and children picked through their contents, searching for the red-brown rocks which held the iron.

The girl had described it all for me, but nothing prepared me for the moment when I first crawled into the light. The dram was a constant, back-breaking weight, reminding me of where I was. It was almost a blessing when I caught my first glimpse of the children and my mind left my body far behind.

They had their backs to me. I couldn't see a damn thing except that there were five of them, but only two were small enough to be my sister. Closer, then. I dragged the dram across the open rails and let it grind to a halt on the bricks.

From there, I could see a little more. One of the little ones had fiery red hair, albeit much obscured by dirt and soot. Not her. But the second ... her hair was identical to my own, the same depthless shade of ebony.

The dram was heavy. I had to rock it on the rail and throw my weight against the side before it would topple, sending an avalanche of rocks crashing across the bricks. A couple of the children looked up at the noise, their faces twisting into grimaces at their added workload. But the dark-haired girl, the only one who mattered, carried on sifting through the rocks.

I righted the dram, slipped the chain from around my waist, and took a few wobbly steps towards her. With my heart thundering in my chest and my breaths coming in hoarse gasps, I crouched near her.

"Em?" I asked her quietly.

The girl dropped the rock she was holding and turned in alarm, staring up at me with sea-green eyes. She looked so very, very afraid. "Yes..."

I could see why Tommas had crossed the camp to follow the description. She had the right looks, in a vague sort of way. Short, dark curls and the pale complexion which was so common in the wetlands. But it wasn't her. It wasn't my Emri.

Because my Emri was dead.

And that little ball of hope I had been nurturing shattered inside me. The fragments sliced bloody holes through my heart and soul and left a trail of destruction in their wake. There was something broken — irreparably, permanently broken — because I had managed to undo all of my grieving in the last day, somehow.

In a daze, I began to wander back to the tunnel entrance. I almost made it, too. Three steps away and I stopped because Tom was watching me from the gloom. He raised his eyebrows, full of desperate hope. I managed to shake my head, and then I had to just stop and remember to breathe.

So when the soldiers began marching towards me, I didn't care. When a giant of a man seized my arms in an iron grip and wrenched them behind my back, crushing my flesh into my bones, I didn't care. They dragged me away to gods only knew where. Someone had told. One of the slaves had told. For a scrap of food or chance to see a loved one, they had whispered about the girl who had slipped into the tunnel in the dead of night.

I didn't care. It wasn't Emri, and it had never been Emri, and Emri's corpse was most likely rotting on our kitchen hearth.

"Lyra!" Tommas was mouthing at me, frantically trying to form the words before we were pulled too far apart. "What can I do?"

And I was tempted to keep my mouth shut, to do nothing, to let myself die just out of spite. But Temris was in this godsforsaken place, too, and he had come to protect me, whatever his motives. I didn't want him dying in the dark, deep underground, and I didn't want that for Tom or Ronan or Kiare.