Well ... some of you sorta guessed it. Sorry not sorry but like when has anything ever gone right for Lyra? Anyway, you'll get the next chapter in a week because I'm ahead of myself again.
"Lyra," the voice repeated, more certain this time. "Is that you?"
I searched the faces desperately, looking for some familiar features beneath all the dust and grime. Tem squeezed my arm, pulling me closer to him as the people around us reshuffled themselves to let a man crawl towards us. At first, I didn't recognise him. How could I? It had been moons, and his face was swollen in several places, darkened by bruises and far gaunter than I remembered.
"Ronan," I said. The word tasted strange on my tongue. It took me back to the long evenings learning to read in a barn with the other village children. We had all brought food to his lessons as payment: a jar of honey one week, a pint of milk the next, and for some reason I could suddenly smell his mix-and-match lunches cooking while we had traced our letters.
"We looked for you," he marvelled. "That boy, the one you ran with, he was asking around for weeks. Someone said you'd been taken out of the column before we crossed the border, and I s'pose he musta gave up."
"Tom?" I hardly dared voice it, because I had never dared hope that he had even survived the massacre in our village... "Tom is alive?"
I got a nod and a smile. "He was three days ago, anyway. Three levels up. Kriss is above him."
"And is anyone else—"
"Moira and Ike and their oldest son are on the other hill. The teenagers from the apple orchard are working the horses, and I've heard Seren is alive, but I've not seen her with my own eyes."
That wasn't even a dozen. There had been more than a hundred villagers. I was very conscious that we had an audience, so I choked back every drop of emotion I could catch before it reached my face. But the relief of knowing that Tommas, that anyone had survived this long...
"That's it?" I asked. "That's everyone?"
"More of us made it here, but people drop like flies, Lyra. The workload is too high." He shook his head. "I reckon I've got another moon in me yet."
"Yes, well, we might be able to do something about that." I looked expectantly at Temris, since he was the speech-maker and the spider at the centre of this web, and he didn't need any further encouragement.
"Can you still swing a sword?" he asked.
Ronan's eyes seemed to acquire a new light. I hadn't noticed it was missing until it reappeared, which was strange, but empty, uncaring expressions were normal in this place. "I would give my life to hold a blade one more time, Ragnyr. Swing it? I could cut my way through the entire Anglian army."
I knew he had been a warrior in his youth because he had told us countless stories about beating off Sihon raids and raiding them in turn. I also knew he had broken his sword arm, and it hadn't healed properly, but I wasn't about to injure his pride in front of so many men.
"I'm glad to hear it," Tem snorted. "What about the rest of you?"
Another chorus of, "Aye, Ragnyr," and "Yes, Ragnyr," and one particularly enthusiastic, "Like a bloody berserker, Ragnyr," deafened us.
"Good. What about the southerners?"
They had to think about this one. One man offered, "They are mostly farmers, Ragnyr, but swinging a pick isn't so different."
Tem nodded solemnly. "Then I think it's about time we got you all out of here."
The excitement in the air was tangible. Dusty as it was, it seemed to crackle with energy and tension. Every voice cut a bit sharper than a moment before. The northerners must have suspected something was afoot as soon as they saw their warlord's face, but hearing it said was another thing.
"We've thought about it," one of the girls piped up. "Long and hard. The soldiers on the walls have bows, and they can split squirrels at a hundred paces."
I found myself eyeing her simply because she was female. She was an auburn-haired girl in her early twenties, shoulders corded with muscles and skin tanned chestnut. Nothing special, but nothing to spit on, either.
"Shields." That was Tem's only reply, his tone satisfyingly indifferent to her as a human being. She tipped her head to one side as she thought about it.
"Aye, it would help. Making a wall tight enough to keep the quarrels out, now ... that would take preparation. None of us have fought together before. And the southerners ... I wouldn't bet they even know which way to hold the things."
They all thought that was hilarious because, of course, northern shields were round, and you could hold them whichever way you pleased. The laughter felt subdued to me, but I got the sense that these people just didn't have the energy to empty their lungs properly.
"What's your name?"
"Kiare. I was raised in Sierra, Ragnyr, a few corps away from you."
I brushed aside a prickle of discomfort. Just because I had never had to compete for Tem's attention with another girl didn't mean I could be spiteful to this one for opening her mouth in his presence. Besides, I had him wrapped around my little finger. Insecurity was a luxury I didn't need to afford.
He nodded, his eyes smiling even though his lips remained flat. "Well, Kiare, you stay here. You and anyone else with a brain and something to contribute. The rest of you need to get back to work. How do they make sure we're working?"
Like the obedient creatures that they were, the northerners began scattering in all directions, disappearing down a dozen semi-invisible side tunnels. Only four stayed: Kiare, Ronan, a sharp-eyed youth with a Brakin look about him, and a stocky woman in her thirties.
She smiled with a distinct lack of happiness. "There's a quota. If we don't meet it, they don't feed us."
"Then let's manage it today," he said firmly.
In the slight pause which followed, I threw in, "How many hills are there?"
"Five," Ronan told me immediately. "We can contact the nearest one indirectly — their ore is taken to the same place as ours. The other three will be trickier."
Dammit. There wasn't enough time to overcome communication issues. Anlai had been told to give us three days. The day and time of the escape was set, and there was no way to change it. Three days, and the weapons would be brought inside, whether we were ready or not.
Tem chewed the inside of his cheek, and I knew he was thinking along similar lines. "We sleep down here, don't we?"
Ronan shrugged at the tunnel wall to our left, where a row of iron rings was set deep into the rock. "Aye. I haven't seen the sun in weeks. They chain us at dusk."
"The soldiers come down here?" I asked, frowning. Hadn't the smith said—
"No, they have a slave to do it. If they catch anyone wandering after dark, he would get put to death, so don't even think of asking."
But I was looking at those rings and getting an idea, and I saw the same spark reflected in the blue eyes opposite me.
"I wasn't thinking of asking," I said slyly. "And I wouldn't get caught...
"Now just wait a minute," Temris interrupted. "If anyone's going, it should be me."
Ridiculous. "Why?"
"Because I've invested far too much time in you to let you get yourself killed now," he said, and he said it in such a matter-of-fact way that I became acutely aware there were no emotions involved whatsoever.
"You are the one we need at Belmery," I pointed out. But even as the words left my mouth, I was questioning it.
Tem smiled at me. Gently, but firmly, he corrected, "We need you too, little one."
And of course, I couldn't accept that without an explanation, and I conveyed it through a raised eyebrow and an icy stare. I was getting a horrible suspicion that he had only accompanied me into Canton because he needed to make sure I survived.
He looked at the faces around us and sighed because any audience, loyal or not, was too much of a risk. "Later."
It was a lie. He had no intention of telling me later. He had no intention of telling me at all. It was written all over his face, in words too tiny for me to read individually. But the meaning of the passage was clear. No, you can't know.
So, was my task so awful that I would refuse it, or was my ignorance a key component — or both — and which of those possibilities was worse?
I dropped it reluctantly, and the next twenty minutes was a stream of questions about the soldiers, their routines, their skill and their weaponry. The youth was most useful about those matters. He had run messages for them when he was younger, he said. The stocky woman had been in camp the longest, and she was able to describe precedents for almost every act of rebellion you could imagine. Ronan used a mixture of knowledge and wisdom to assess our half-formed ideas, and Kiare threw in comments at any mention of violence.
All in all, we worked well together. But there was only so much we could learn before we had to stop and absorb it all, and if we stood any chance of meeting the quota, we would all need to work. So Tem was handed a pick and led into one of the tiny crevices, and Kiare volunteered to show me how to work the drams.
They were larger than I was and ran on a pair of rails. There was a leather strap attached to the front, and she showed me how to fasten it around my waist, the strap running between my legs. I had to crawl hand over hand, dragging two or three times my own weight in rock, and I was supposed to do it for twelve hours a day.
I ripped strips from my shirt to tie around my hands and knees, but before an hour was up, my fingernails were torn and bleeding. The throbbing made me overly aware of the passing time, and the day dragged on and on. But I did learn plenty about Canton in the process.
There were seven women on this level and more than a score of men. They mined the rock, then we dragged it to the shaft and fastened our drams to the pulley. It was hard, dangerous work, because a single slip of the foot would send you tumbling into the water below. A woman had died that way only a day ago, Kiare told me. She had hit her head and drowned before anyone could get there.
There were plenty of other ways to die. Tunnel collapses, fires sparked by broken oil lamps, being crushed by runaway drams. And the water itself was deadly. If you got too thirsty and tried to drink groundwater, you would spend your last hours throwing up and seizing.
"My husband went that way," she confided. "It was slow and agonising and he deserved better, but we didn't know. Other people had been dying the same way. Everyone just thought it was sickness."
"I'm sorry," I muttered, eyeing one of the orangey puddles. It didn't smell right, that was true, but my throat was so raw that I might have been tempted to take a sip. "They don't give us enough water, do they?"
She shrugged. "It has to be brought up from the river."
That was, of course, a fair distance, and I was sure the soldiers drank more alcohol than water, so what did they care?
"Three days," I said. I was talking to myself — it was a reminder that I was only visiting this hell, not moving in. But Kiare scraped her teeth across her bottom lip and I saw a very dangerous glint to her eye. Hope.
***
Much, much later, I was alone and hauling a near-empty dram back up into the tunnels when Ronan caught hold of my arm. He guided me into a side tunnel devoid of northerners, and I was curious enough to comply without a fuss.
"What are you doing with Temris Ragnyrsbane, Lyra?" he asked quietly. It was an inevitable question, I supposed.
"I think I'm a pawn in one of fate's games," I mused because honestly, I wasn't sure what I was doing with Temris either. "I've yet to learn the rules."
"I won't pretend to understand what you mean, but I do know for certain that any game fate wants to play is not one you would enjoy." He paused to stare at me, watching his words sink in. Then he unfastened the dram strap from around my waist. "Nightfall in half an hour. If you go now, you should make it back in time."
I looked at him quizzically.
"I told you, three levels up. Be quick."
And I understood. It was something I should have realised hours ago. There was nothing and no one to stop me climbing the ladder to see Tommas...
But did I dare? The excitement was tempered with inexplicable fear. Now that I was so close, it felt almost too easy. I was sure he would find some way to slip out of my grasp.
"Do you think he would even want..." I trailed off, unable to finish the question, but Ronan seemed to understand the unspoken words.
"Of course he wants to see you, Lyra." He smiled in a way that shuts down protests before they begin, then he nudged me towards the shaft. And I went. I climbed the ladder, my muscles screaming in protest, and I swung myself into the eighth level.
I never stopped to think that Ronan might be playing a game of his own.
I crawled down the tunnel. It was easier to breathe up here, and without the weight of the dram behind me, I felt a thousand times lighter. I passed a dozen curious faces, all silent and still as they stared. A shiver ran down my spine, and excitement coursed through my veins, as thrilling as a good dose of adrenaline.
Two dozens paces of crawling and no luck later, and it finally occurred to me to ask one of the watchers, "Do you know a boy called Tommas?"
He made a face as he squinted at me.
"Tommas," I repeated, more firmly.
"The one with the...?" He made a vague motion around his ear.
Heart thundering, I nodded.
"Well," the miner said, "he inna here. Got himself moved to the second hill yestereve. You musta got the worst timing in Aenmia, I'll say."
He waited politely for me to reply, but when I kept my mouth closed, my mind twisted to a halt by sheer frustration, he was left to awkwardly come up with something else to say.
"Ai, Loa, why did Tom say he was going, again?"
Without even glancing at us, a nearby woman muttered, "He got tell of some kid he reckoned he knew."
"Girl or boy?" I asked of the woman, because if Tommas knew this kid, I would too.
She had to think about it, her face scrunching itself into a little ball. "Girl, I think."
"Do you know her name?" I tried.
"Nay, I canna remember that, lass."
"It was Emri," someone called out from further down the tunnel.
My heart processed the name before my brain did. It squeezed and stuttered and shivered. My lungs were next to realise: they released a single shuddering breath and then stopped altogether, rebooting themselves. And then finally my mind stopped bouncing Emri around itself and shattered into ripples of shock, knots of confusion, and a smattering of that dangerous thing called hope.
Gods, could my little sister be in this hellhole? I hadn't seen her die, only heard the screams, so that meant she could be alive, right? She could. And as long as she could, as long as there was the tiniest, faintest possibility that she was still breathing, how could I walk away without making sure?
I thought of that dark, silky hair, those smiling eyes and that smile which had hidden a tongue even sharper than mine. If she was still breathing, somehow, I needed to find her.
"How does a person get themselves moved to another hill?" I managed to whisper.
The newcomer shrugged. "Dunno, really. Tom blackmailed some of the Anglian bastards. They were sneaking down here to plough our women when they were supposed to be working."
Well, then, it looked like I would be the one sneaking away, after all. Like hell I would sit and wait for Tem to go just so he could protect his investment. No, I would find my sister or I would die trying and Cambria could burn to ashes for all I cared.