A Thief in the Night

chapter Eighty

“Eight hundred years ago,” Aethil told them, as they trooped through one of the winding, unfinished passages through the rock, “my ancestors came here seeking a better life. The war with the humans was dragging on and we had tired of always fighting. We’re a gentle, peaceful people by nature.”

Except for all the torturing and evil magic, Malden thought. Though he had to admit that it was difficult to look at Aethil and imagine her torturing anyone. Croy had made the elves sound like sadistic bastards. The Hieromagus fit that description pretty well, but perhaps—like humans—elves weren’t all of a sort. Maybe only some of them were cruel and decadent villains. Malden had always found there was more than one way to look at any given story. Certainly Aethil’s version of the events leading to the elves being driven into the Vincularium and buried there to rot differed considerably from the historical accounts he’d heard.

“We sealed ourselves in, because we didn’t wish to be followed. In the early days we expected always to be invaded. The humans really had treated us very badly.” She stopped and put a hand to your mouth. “Not that I blame you for that, Sir Croy!”

“It’s all right, lass,” Slag told her. “All water under the fu—under the bridge, right?”

“You’re so generous and forgiving,” Aethil said. She slid her hand under his gown and touched his chest with her fingers. “Such a good heart.”

“These tunnels,” Cythera said. “The dwarves didn’t build them. I assume the Elders dug them?”

Aethil blinked and looked at the human woman. “What? Oh. Yes—as I said, we expected at any time to be attacked. We fortified this place as best we could, and our ancestors built secret tunnels so that we could surprise any invaders. The entire Vincularium is riddled with them now. We can go anywhere we like, to any hall or chamber, without being seen.”

Slag slapped the wall with one hand. “Not the best plan, honestly. You’ve weakened the mountain, like worms digging their way through a moldy apple. I’m surprised the whole place hasn’t fallen on your heads by now.”

Aethil shrugged prettily. “Sometimes there are cave-ins. But they’re very rare, and I try not to think about the ones who get hurt.”

Malden remembered to pretend to limp as she led them out of the tunnel and into a long hallway where mist wreathed the floor and the stink of manure was thick in the air. “In the early days there was no food down here,” Aethil told them. She wrinkled her nose but didn’t lift her gown from where it trailed on the wet floor. “We never had to cultivate crops before—always we lived on the produce and game of the forests up on the surface. Our ancestors had to teach us what kind of plants would grow down here, so far away from the sun, and how it could be done.”

She showed them endless racks of wrapped cylinders, and had an elf in a patchwork smock unpeel one to show the mushrooms growing inside. Other workers were busy cleaning up a mess in one part of the farm corridor. Malden saw manure splashed across one wall, and some of the racks had been knocked over. “What happened there?” he asked.

“Vandalism,” Aethil said, her voice thick with sadness. “It’s—not my favorite thing about our life here. But sometimes we get very bored, with so little to do. The soldiers and especially the nobles sometimes break things or make messes just to alleviate the tedium. And then, of course, my little friends have to clean up after them.”

One of the workers came over and knelt before Aethil. “It is our joy to work in your service, highness,” he said.

Aethil let him kiss her hand. He seemed near tears when he rose to his feet again and went back to work.

“They do work so very hard, and get so very little for their labors,” Aethil said. “I try to make their lives easier when I can. But with so many nobles and soldiers to support, there’s always more work to be done than we have workers for.”

“How many nobles are there?” Malden asked, frowning.

“About half of us come from ancient stock,” Aethil explained. “And of course, any elf whose ancestor was a lord or lady is exempted from all labor. Is this not the way in human lands as well?”

“Our highborns are shiftless parasites, yes,” Malden said. “But only one in a thousand, say, can make that claim. Are you saying, though, that an entire half of your people are doomed to endless servitude? Is there no way for them to improve their station?”

Aethil seemed confused by the question. “How would they do that?”

“By proving themselves in battle, perhaps.” That was the traditional way for commoners to become knights in Skrae, and once a man was a knight there was no limit to how far he could rise.

“We have nothing to do battle with down here,” Aethil replied. “Except our memories.”

Malden ignored the wistful look on her face. “But there are other ways, surely. In the city where I was born—it is called Ness—men are free to improve their lot through labor, and they can leave their wealth to their children, to try to give them a better life than they knew.”

Aethil gave him a smile that clearly was meant to be pitying. To Malden it just looked condescending. “Wealth. You’re speaking of money. I understand the concept from my books—and that it seems to be the main source of unhappiness among humans.”

“Fair enough,” Malden granted, “but it also allows us to better ourselves.”

“Such distinctions are unknown among the Elders. We are each born to our rank, as appointed by our ancestors.”

Malden thought of the elf soldier he’d spoken with, who said his father had been a soldier and his son would be one, too. He’d assumed the soldier merely hoped for his sons to take up the family trade, but it sounded as if they had no choice.

In Skrae they had the Lady—the Goddess Croy worshipped—who was supposed to place everyone in their appropriate station. It was a pleasing theology if you happened to be born to high estate. There was good reason why the poor of Ness tended to worship Sadu the Bloodgod instead, who judged both the high and the low. “This system leaves no room for ambition, for talent, for merit,” he pointed out. “The poor are all doomed to work like slaves, while the rich—”

“Quiet, boy!” Slag said.

Malden looked up in surprise. He saw for the first time that Aethil looked distinctly uncomfortable with this turn of conversation. He bit back angry words for fear of offending her. No good could come of that.

Slag quickly apologized for him. “You’ll have to forgive him. He’s from a poor family, and one not known for its wisdom. He doesn’t understand how hard it can be to be the one in power, the one who has to make all the decisions.”

The one with all the servants, Malden thought, but he kept his peace.

“Ah. Well, your race is very young, still. In time I’m sure you’ll all find a way to accept the natural order of things, as we have. Come this way—I want to show you our flocks.”

She took them down to the end of the tunnel, to a wide room that got very little of the red sun of the Vincularium. A herder lit torches for them so they could see better. They were on the lowest dry level of the Vincularium, and its gallery was half submerged in the pool of water at the bottom of the central shaft. Hundreds of giant cave beetles had congregated there, grazing on the green scum that coated the walls and floor.

“Can you imagine,” Aethil asked, “that before we came here, Elders actually considered insects to be inedible? They even thought they would sicken and die if they accidentally swallowed a gnat or a spider!” She laughed. “We would have starved centuries ago if that was actually the case. Our ancestors must have been very stern with us back then, to be able to convince us that we could actually eat beetle steak.”

Or her forebears were just that hungry, Malden thought. How desperate had that first generation gotten, he wondered—had they considered cannibalism? Had they come down here themselves and gnawed at the green stuff on the walls? He shuddered at the thought. Yet he knew that people would eat anything if there was no choice. He’d seen it plenty of times in Ness, where the poorest of the poor lived off the kitchen scraps of the wealthy, all the small bones and bits of stringy hide that proper folk considered worthless garbage.

“You’ve mentioned your ancestors a few times now,” Cythera observed, “as if they were creatures separate from yourselves. Do you mean the revenants we’ve seen? Were they the ones who taught you what was good to eat?”

“The revenants?” Aethil asked. She laughed uproariously. “You mean the undying bodies we use as guards? Oh, no! Those are only the empty vessels of the ancestors. I speak of the souls of those who went before.”

“Their memory, then, written down in books, or passed down orally from one teller to the next,” Cythera pondered.

“Hardly. I’ll show you what I mean, at the end of our excursion. It really is a wonder to finish with. First, though, come this way. I want to show you our nursery, where our little elf babies are raised and trained to their stations. They’re so cute!”