Chapter 13
Light, then footsteps. Abass twisted the blade of his knife, now dull from use, and sent a shower of loose dirt to the ground. He had learned the hard way to keep his head turned. He clambered back down the set of crude handholds and took his place in the corner.
“Keep your mouths shut,” he reminded the other men.
The men’s reactions had been as different as they were. Ramat had not cared; if anything he had sounded faintly pleased that he would be less crowded come the High Harvest. Hash had, as usual, disparaged the idea, and then kept silent. Lat, however—Lat had been a surprise. The fat, ruddy-faced man had been furious; he had even threatened to call the guards. Only the edge of the knife had convinced him that a few days of life were better than none.
None of the men responded to his words. The tray clattered against the dirt wall of the pit, and Abass hurried forward to claim his portion. A piece of bread that was a week old, if it was a day, and a thin broth. He grabbed them and scurried back to the corner. Heartbeats later the tray was pulled up. The sounds of feeding continued for a while, and then the light moved off.
Abass ate quickly, not bothering to soak the bread in the broth. The food made a heavy knot in his stomach, but he paid it no attention. Food was fuel. Food was life. Food was escape. That was enough incentive to cram down things that, even when starving in the streets, he had not deigned to eat. The other men ate more slowly, and the sounds of chewing and slurping accompanied Abass as he climbed back up the wall.
The work was hard, and his wounds—especially his broken ribs, made it agony. Every breath felt like someone was jabbing a spear into his side. Abass gritted his teeth and started the next handhold. The blade was better than nothing, but not by much. Still, he chipped and dug at the packed dirt until his arm trembled from fatigue. When he could hold himself up no longer, Abass let himself back down to the ground. He curled up in his corner.
“Abass,” Hash said.
Abass started in surprise. The other man was right next to him, hidden in the darkness.
“What?”
“I want to go with you. Let me help.”
“Tair bless me,” Abass said, “you can climb on out as well as I can once these are done.”
“We don’t have time for that,” Hash said, his voice hard. “The High Harvest could be any day now; the tair only knows how long we’ve been down here.”
“You’re not counting days anymore?”
“Father take you,” Hash said. “Let me help. I can hear you whimpering the whole time you’re up there, and the tair only knows what would happen if you fell again. I’m fine; they didn’t rough me up at all when they brought me in.”
“Why’s that?”
“It’s an honor,” Hash said.
“Was that a joke?” Abass asked.
“Tair take me, I find my spirits revived now that I have a chance of not being slit open from crotch to mouth on an altar. The thought does wonderful things to a man.”
Abass hesitated. Giving the man the knife meant giving up everything—his chance of escape, his self-defense, his only power over the other men he was imprisoned with. But he didn’t know if he could climb any higher with only one hand; the pain in his side had made him collapse more than once, and the higher he got, the more likely he was to fall. Tair bless me, what do I do?
“Listen,” Hash said. “Lat’s getting anxious. He mutters to himself the whole time you’re up there. He’s not going to be able to take it much longer; the thought of your escaping is driving him mad.”
“That doesn’t make sense,” Abass said. “He can escape as well; tair around us, it’s the best thing that’s happened to any of us.”
“Well, he’s mad,” Hash said. “Why else would he threaten to call the guards on you?”
“And right now?”
“Sleeping, tair bless us. Or pretending.”
Father take me, Abass thought. So the fat fool was mad after all. That changed everything; if Lat called the guards, it would be death. Harvest victims were easy to find; no point in keeping a troublesome one around.
“Fine,” Abass said. He handed over the knife.
As soon as the blade left his hand, Abass drew in a sharp breath. His heart pounded as he realized what he had done.
“Relax,” Hash said. His voice sounded friendly for the first time Abass had heard. “You’ve got a partner now.”
A partner. Abass could not help but think of Scribe, and of Isola before him. Well, he thought, that’s never ended well before.
A dull thud announced Hash’s landing. Abass’s eyes caught the first sign of light a heartbeat later.
“Well?”
“Done,” Hash said. “Soon as they’re gone—” He cut off as the footsteps drew closer.
In the pit next to him, Abass heard the clatter and thud of the feeding trays, the rasp of the ropes. The sounds repeated themselves a moment later as a tray made its way into his pit.
They surged forward as a group; Abass was aware, in part, of his own desperation for the food—of the fear that one of the other men would take it. It was a race every time. Animals rushing to the trough. They had had broth at the previous meal, and their ceramic bowls clattered as the men hastily returned them to the tray. Abass grabbed a piece of moldy bread and fell back to his corner.
Hash crashed into Lat, his haste making him careless. The fat man stumbled and cried out, but Hash caught his arms and helped him to a seat. He even retrieved the fat man’s share and deposited it in Lat’s lap. Hash grabbed his own piece as the tray began to rise. Perhaps they were not entirely animals.
The tray disappeared and the torches moved on, sending them back into darkness. This was the time Abass feared the most, when his eyes were still adjusting to the darkness. Hash still held the knife; he had returned it every time before, but Abass could not bring himself to trust the other man. Not in the darkness, not in the pit.
He ate quickly, the mold bitter fire on his tongue and throat. Abass forced it down, forced back the bile that rose. It was easier now that he had a goal. So close, tair bless me, he thought. He finished his meal and found himself looking forward to the water that would come later. With a smile, Abass realized he would be free before the water arrived.
The lights rarely came from the other direction. When they had faded completely, when Abass could hear nothing but the breathing of the other men, he said, “Hash?”
The air in the pit was too still, as though the other men had quieted their breath in anticipation. Abass heard the brush of flesh on earth.
“Let’s go,” Hash said. He was nothing more than an outline, barely visible in the darkness.
“The knife,” Abass said.
“Tair around us,” Hash said. “You couldn’t even climb with it when you needed to dig; why would you try to do it now?”
He was right; that was why Abass had allowed him to help in the first place. “When we get to the top, then,” Abass said.
“Fine,” Hash said. “Go.”
Abass glanced at where he knew Lat to be. In the darkness, it was just one more vague shape among many, but it looked almost as though the fat man had not touched his bread. He sat in the same posture. Perhaps he was mad, as Hash said.
Nothing to do for him, if he would not come with them. Abass hated the thought of leaving the man behind, though. Lat had been kind to him, at least until Abass had started planning his escape. No one deserved to be in the pits, not even poor, mad Ramat.
“Just a moment,” Abass said.
He crawled over to Lat; it was hard for him to stand, and Abass wanted to save his strength for when he had to run. He reached out and touched the man shoulder, the fat man’s loose skin jiggling at his touch.
“Lat,” Abass said. “Lat, come with us.”
The fat old man began to fall sideways. Abass reached out and grabbed at him, trying to catch him. His hands slipped in something cold and wet, and the smell of coppery life
reached Abass’s nose.
“Leave him,” Hash said. “He would have called the guards when we climbed up. He said so more than once.”
“Father take you,” Abass said, “Father take you, he wouldn’t have done anything. He kept quiet until now.”
The blood dried quickly on his hands, and now they were sticky. Abass knelt there. He had seen dead men before, but always from a distance; on the streets, it didn’t pay to be found near a dead man, and the tair knew Abass had never killed anyone himself.
“Come on,” Hash said. “We’re leaving now, before the honored sacrifice over there decides he does want company after all.” He grabbed Abass’s upper arm and pulled him across the pit. Abass crawled and slid after him, still dazed. His hands were so sticky. Over and over again he saw Lat fall sideways before him, felt his hands slide across cooling flesh and cold blood.
Hash’s slap sent a line of fire racing in front of Abass’s eyes and jostled his broken nose.
“Climb, now,” Hash said.
Abass climbed. The pain of his broken ribs flared to life as he stretched and twisted to find the handholds, to pull himself up. Sweat poured down his face. His hands threatened to slip from the narrow shelves of loose dirt. Abass clenched his teeth and pulled himself up. Pain that flared like a lightning strike. Then the other hand, more smoothly. Again. Again.
He rolled onto the narrow walkway and clamped one hand over his mouth to silence the whimper of pain. With the same determination that had made him survive those first days on the streets—when he had lost everything, when dying would have been so much easier—forced him to his knees. By the time Hash cleared the pit, Abass stood as straight as he could.
“The knife,” Abass said as Hash got to his feet.
The light was brighter here, and Abass felt a moment of confusion. He stood face to face with someone else. The blond one who looked like someone out of a High Harvest painting. Face so pretty it would have sent Isola into weeks of sighing and scribbling love-notes that were never sent. The way she did with Qatal. Abass had read those notes in secret, though—during stolen moments when he sneaked back into his house to try and be part of his family again. He pushed the memory away.
It was Hash’s voice, though, that answered him. “You sure? You don’t look like you’re in much of a condition to fight.”
“The knife,” Abass said. It was hard to reconcile Hash’s face to the voice in the darkness, the voice that had killed Lat. It seemed incomprehensible.
“Sure thing,” Hash said with a smile. He passed it over hilt first. “Now what?”
Abass gripped the knife in his right hand. They stood in a high-ceilinged chamber—a natural cave, perhaps—with pits identical to the one they had left lining the walls. A narrow dirt walkway ran down the center and to irregular openings at either end.
“That way,” Abass said. “I heard them talking about tunnels that led out near Old Truth.”
“I heard them too,” Hash said. “They were talking about closing them, remember?”
“It can’t have been that long,” Abass said. “Whatever they’ve put up will be temporary.”
“It doesn’t take that long to mix mortar,” Hash said. “Or to hammer nails into boards. I don’t imagine the knife will be much help with either of those.”
Abass let out a sigh; he was already exhausted. “By the tair,” he swore. “The guards could come along any moment. Do you have a better idea?”
“No,” Hash said. “Just saying.”
They went single-file, although the ledge was wide enough to walk two men abreast. Being close to a pit, though, sent chills through Abass. He thanked the tair more than once that the darkness hid the occupants from him; he did not think he could bear to see them. Tair around me, he thought, how do I find Isola?
Only the occasional scrape of flesh on dirt told him that Hash followed. They made their way through chamber after chamber, the darkness broken only intermittently by oil lamps that did little to alleviate the darkness. Hash took one of the lamps and walked in front. The system of caves was vast, but it seemed that every chamber was full. In many rooms, Abass heard nothing but the rise and fall of countless unseen people breathing. In others, an occasional sob or mad shouts broke the whisper of collective breath. Too many pits, even for the tair; the High Harvests never saw so many people sacrificed. So what were they all doing here?
Despair settled over Abass. Tair bless me, there are so many. How can I find her? Fear kept him silent; the thought of returning to the pit threatened madness. And so they walked in darkness and silence through cave after cave of suffering.
“Tair fend,” Hash whispered. “I thought the rebellion took a lot of lives.”
“It doesn’t make sense,” Abass said. “This many people for a High Harvest—I’ve never heard of such a thing.”
“With the other gods dead,” Hash said, “perhaps it’s necessary.”
“Do you think it’s true? Can a god die?”
“The rebels seem to think so,” Hash said. “And there’s a reason the borders are closed. The priests say that winter will touch the edges of Khi’ilan for the first time in centuries.”
“Winter,” Abass murmured, but the terror of that thought remained distant. He couldn’t pay attention to the conversation; every thought found a path back to Isola, back to the caves, back to despair.
“Is this it?” Hash asked.
They stood at the edge of one of the large caverns. The dirt path led through the irregular opening into another room full of pits, but in the middle of the rocky opening Abass saw a rough stone path leading down.
“It must be,” Abass said.
Hash knelt and tapped the stone. “You’re not bleeding, are you?”
“I don’t think so,” Abass said. “Check.”
Hash brought the lantern back and checked his wounds briskly. “All scabbed over,” he said. “Just be careful you don’t break them open while we’re in there. I don’t have any interest in dealing with a stone-wight. You’re enough trouble as you are. Let’s go.”
Abass stopped at the edge of the stone. “I can’t,” he said. “My sister’s here. Somewhere, in one of those pits.”
“Tair bless us,” Hash said. “You saw what we just walked through. There could be a hundred more caverns like this one, and you’d not see a tenth of them before the guards caught you. We’ve had the Father’s own luck as it is, but they’re bound to be bringing the water around soon.”
The mention of water brought Abass’s thirst back to his attention; his throat still burned from the bitter, moldy bread. “Tair help me, how can I leave her down here?”
“And if you find her,” Hash said, his eyes hidden by the shadows, “what then? You don’t happen to have a ladder, do you? Or a rope? Or anything besides a very dull dagger?”
Abass had no response.
“Do what you wish,” Hash said. “I’m leaving while I can. Think about this, though—you leave now, and you can always come back. You stay, and you stay for good. Tair help you.” He turned to go, leaving Abass in darkness. It pressed in on him, like the darkness of the pit, swallowing him up.
“Wait,” Abass said. His cheeks burned. Tair forgive me, he thought. Isola forgive me. What else can I do? “Wait,” he said. He stepped after Hash, the stone cold and hard under his bare feet. “I’m coming.”
He could come back, as Hash said. He would come back. And when he did, he would have the information from Qatal that he needed to rescue his sister. Tair forgive me, Abass thought as they descended into the tunnels of stone. Isola, forgive me.