“Not necessary,” I reply coldly.
His hand whips out faster than lightning. He grasps my wrist with incredible strength. “This finger has been reset. It’s almost completely healed. How?” His milky-white eyes narrow.
I yank my hand back. “You have your secrets. I have mine.”
“Yesterday, when you fought, you were protecting your ribs. My eyes may not function, but I still see in other ways. And now . . .” His fingers jab into my sides. I wince because I’m still tender. “No longer broken, I see.” He scowls.
“I have to get back.” I want to end this discussion.
“Report to your foreman for the day’s assignment.” He crawls back into his igloo.
I haven’t slept but two hours. I’ve eaten almost nothing for over a day. My stomach growls, my head feels light. I jog toward Picker territory. I arrive just in time to see the gang falling into line. I find a place behind the stocky man, Carrick.
“Where are we going?” I whisper.
“Quiet, fish!” someone shouts.
“I haven’t eaten anything,” I say, realizing I sound whiny.
Carrick shakes his head. “Perhaps you shouldn’t have spent the night helping an enemy. You dumb piece of—”
“Quiet back there!” Shank yells from the front.
We all load into a train, similar to the Banshee Rail, only smaller, packing ourselves inside the cars as the sonic engine hums. The train chugs into the darkness of a tunnel. Down, down into the caverns we go for what seems forever. Finally, the train doors slide open, and we disembark into the grime and filth of an underground mining tunnel. The cacophony of machinery echoes everywhere. I barely hear Shank as he commands the men to move deeper into a tributary off the main tunnel. We pass a station marked “Dungeon Thirteen,” where each member of the gang is issued a helmet with a fireglobe, a harness, and a sonic drill from a locker. Shank opens it via a DNA identification lock.
Only foremen have access to the tools, I note.
We hook our harnesses onto a massive arterial cable that has been bolted to the cavern wall. I’m told it’s the Recon Gang’s job to scout the caverns and set these cables so we may move into the depths. I spend my first day in darkness with only the dim light of my helmet to illuminate the labors. I hang on a vertical cliff face picking and drilling the wall, carving rock from ore. That’s what Pickers do, apparently. Chunks of debris fall somewhere below for the Sifter Gang to separate ore from rock. The Haulers, the biggest and strongest of us, oversee the delivery of the material to the smelter station, where it’s further refined for transport back to the upper cavern, from there through the shaft to the surface, and then picked up by a sondi for transport to Meridian.
Phaestion said our planet has little to trade, but it was House Julii who owned the largest fleet among the Pantheon and monopolized what little there was before the Fracture Point shifted. Since my father transformed the Wendigo from prison to labor camp, he has further advanced its production through a bargain with off-worlders. House Wusong-Leontes will use the metals mined here to craft rockets. Phaestion said that my father planned to save our people through becoming traders somehow. Perhaps Tao does not have significant resources of its own, but with a fleet of ships, her people could ferry the goods of other worlds. Such a plan, if successful, could change the dynamic of the Pantheon and the fabric of our culture. I think this is what Phaestion fears the most.
I have only these musings along with hatred and self-loathing in these long hours that first day. I think on what led me here.
Why didn’t Edric try to marry Lavinia or Phoebe to Phaestion instead of me to Miranda Wusong? Perhaps it’s not an either-or proposition, rather an “and.” Why not choose to ally with a powerful rival as well as the imperial line? Maybe the choice wasn’t his. Maybe the enmity is from the other side?
My mind flashes back to the day Phaestion arrived on Bone, the day he showed me his siren swords. They were made for my brother, Augustus, he had told me. Augustus had died in the Combat. Who would have been strong enough to fell the brother of Phaestion Julii? The picture suddenly seems clearer.
Edric may have been spurned for his low birth or for having killed the Julii heir. Then didn’t Phaestion try to turn Edric’s own sons against him by indoctrinating them as Companions? My father allowed this. Why? Perhaps he thought that if I died or turned it might be easier to rid himself of me. Then again, Edgaard was also a companion. Perhaps Edric thought that we might turn Phaestion just as well as he could turn us? Vendetta is a funny thing, I marvel.
I ache from exertion and stop for a moment to shout to the Picker on the line next to me to ask whether we stop for lunch.
“We don’t break, fish.”
How do they expect us to stay alive without food? I wonder.
We work hour upon hour. Finally, the arterial cable is yanked at the end of an eight-hour cycle, our signal to return to the upper caverns. We give up our harnesses, helmets, picks, and drills. We load back onto the train, which returns us to the firelight and cold of the cavern. My body no longer throbs from injury, but from sheer muscle exhaustion. I follow the line of Pickers through the village. I head for the Ration Bar, where the Foodies hand out food packs to inmates. I need sustenance, I need sleep, but I remember my friend still in the care of Faria. I secretly grab an extra pack from the counter and break away from the lines.
Toshi is waiting for me outside Faria’s hut when I arrive. He stands. I see that he can’t put much weight on his leg, but otherwise looks fine.
“Edmon! You made it.” He smiles.
After the ordeal of the last forty-eight hours, it feels like there’s finally some bit of peace that’s taken hold when I see his face.
“Toshi! You okay?” I feel ready to collapse myself.
“Thanks to you. And to the old shaman.” He uses the island word for medicine man. Faria is indeed a scary son of a bitch medicine man.
“What’s wrong?” Toshi asks.
“Hungry, tired, freezing, in prison. By the twisted star, what isn’t wrong with me?” I laugh, the kind of laugh that’s so bone weary, I no longer can control it. “I brought you this.” I hold up the food pack. We lean on each other and trudge through the village, a pair of friendless wretches. At least we have each other.
“So how was your day, dear?” he asks.
“Hanging in utter darkness. Picking all day at rocks. Who could ask for more?”
Toshi laughs, too. Then we walk in silence. He’s been brought back to life from the brink of death. It’s nigh a miracle.
“How did he do it, Toshi?” I ask. “You were almost dead when I brought you in. You seem almost good as new.”