“Why do you have sun finches in here?” she asked.
“The air can be funny below. Sun finches are more sensitive to gases than we are. So we take birds down, and if they stop singing, or fall from their perches, we know it’s time to go.”
Sorrow didn’t know if he was joking or not, until he reached up and took one of the cages.
“You can carry it, once you’re kitted out.” He put the cage down and crossed to a cupboard, pulling out a firm hat and a coat, passing them to her. He gave another hat to the soldier, and slipped one on to his own head.
“It won’t save you if there’s a cave-in, but some of the ceilings are low and it’ll stop you getting a nasty bump,” he explained as Sorrow pulled the coat on and placed the hat on her head.
She paused and exchanged a worried glance with the soldier. “Is there likely to be a cave-in?”
“Miss, it’s not like the moonrise. It happens when it happens. If we knew, we wouldn’t go down, would we? Right, grab your bird and let’s get to the cage.” He nodded at a second pair of doors, set back in the wall.
“The cage?” Sorrow asked.
“You’ll see.”
In the darkness of the room his teeth glowed ghostly white, and Sorrow shivered, knowing full well it wasn’t because of the chill.
As Below, So Above
The cage was every bit as horrible as it sounded. Suspended on a thick chain, and operated by a team of four, it was designed to lower between thirty and fifty men at a time down to the underground reserves of the white stone mined for construction in Rhannon. Once, the stone had been closer to the surface, but demand sent the miners deeper into the bowels of Laethea for it, and it was there that Sorrow was to go to see them at work.
The cage wasn’t meant to transport so few people at a time, and it swung precariously when Sorrow entered, forcing her to cling to the bars and the poor bird to go wild in its own cage, flapping its wings until yellow feathers showered the floor. Braith entered and slammed the door shut, frightening the bird again. He gave Sorrow a look as if to tell her to control it, then nodded to the operators. They each took hold of a large bar attached to a wheel, and slowly began to push. As they did, the cage jerkily descended, and Sorrow heard the soldier who was accompanying them whimper above the twittering of the bird. She didn’t blame him. Even Braith looked uneasy, fiddling with the lamp he’d brought, his face watchful as they lowered.
Her treacherous mind turned to Luvian then, imagining him here. His pompadour hair flattened by the helmet, dust on his pristine suit. She could see the way his upper lip would curl, hear the sarcastic quip that would both amuse and infuriate her.
Or was that all part of the persona he’d worn to trick her? she reminded herself, stopping the smile in its tracks. For all she really knew of him, he was like the guard with her, born to a family of miners.
It couldn’t have taken more than ten minutes, but to Sorrow it felt like for ever. She saw the layers of the rocks in the lamplight as they passed, the rainbow of colours in them, saw long-legged insects skittering over the surfaces away from the light, chased by pure white lizards that Braith told her gleefully had no eyes. Finally, the cage hit the ground, and Sorrow stumbled, banging her hip against the side as she tried to keep the bird in her arms. Braith pulled the door back, and all of them left the cage on shaking legs.
He led Sorrow and the soldier down a long tunnel lit at intervals by more lamps. Sorrow had expected it to be damp, but the air was clear, and clean, and the bird seemed happy enough, launching into song. She followed the miner towards the sound of metal against stone, and they entered a medium-sized cavern, where a group of twenty or so miners were busy hacking away at the glowing white rock in the walls. Five large columns of stone had been left, and Sorrow could see where a sixth was being formed by four large men carefully scraping at the rock there instead of hacking.
There were other birds down there too, dotted around in all the corners, and when Braith nodded to an empty one Sorrow carried the small cage over to a wooden crate and left the bird on it, its song mingling with that of the others.
She rejoined Braith and the soldier at a large drum full of pickaxes, taking one when it was offered and following him to a patch of wall where five other men were already working. They turned as one and looked Sorrow up and down. None of them looked impressed, and the largest of the men, towering a good foot over the next tallest, and thrice as wide as him too, went as far as to shake his head.
“Hello, I’m—”
“We know who you are,” the giant of a man said, swinging his axe and loosening a large chunk of white rock, which fell to the ground. He picked it up and dropped it in the metal bin behind them with a decisive clang, before returning and swinging the axe once more. “We don’t care.”
Sorrow waited to see if anyone else would speak, her cheeks heating, but when they didn’t she too began to hack at the rock.
Within five swings she realized she didn’t have the physical strength to keep it up for long. Already her hands felt hot from gripping the wooden handle of the axe, her shoulders beginning to ache. As if he could sense her discomfort, Braith turned to her.
“You can stop, if you like. I mean, this is it. This is what we do. Work for two hours, then a fifteen-minute break. Then back to it. Four cycles per day.”
“I can keep going.” Sorrow swung the axe again and a small chunk fell loose. Pleased, she went to pick it up, but the man who’d dismissed her earlier spoke.
“Too small,” he grunted, his own axe carving out a chunk three times the size of Sorrow’s head, which he hefted easily on to his shoulder, then into the bin.
“How is it too small?”
“No good.”
“Why not?”
The man paused, and wiped a layer of dusty sweat from his brow with a hand the size of a dinner plate. “Because I said not.”
Sorrow met his gaze. “I don’t accept that.” She picked up her small piece of rock and took it to the bin, making sure to meet his eye as she dropped it in. It didn’t make a sound, and her skin burned again as she waited for his response.
The man watched her, and the air between them became taut and brittle. The others around them had stilled, and the soldier moved closer to her, but the giant didn’t pay him any more attention than he would a fly, his stony gaze fixed on her, his expression betraying no hint of his intentions.
Then he shrugged, and the tension vanished as he turned back to his work. Sorrow’s heart was battering her ribs inside her chest, but all she did was take a deep breath and return to her part of the wall. She glanced at Braith and he gave her a brief nod of approval.
“How does the stone become homes and buildings?” Sorrow asked as she attacked the wall again.