Redoubt (22 page)

But what if it wasn’t a fever dream? What if this was real, and it was the mine that
was the dream?

He was in clothing, soaked in sweat. He was terrified. His head hurt. He was lying
on his side. He couldn’t open his eyes, or move anything.

Think!

It was hot, stifling hot.

He wasn’t hungry . . .

That realization lanced through him like being struck by lightning.
I’m not hungry.
At the mine, the only time you weren’t hungry was when you’d had some lucky accident.
Maybe you somehow found a patch of cattails or cress or poke or goose grass no one
else had gotten to, and you gobbled it all up there on the spot. Maybe the cooks had
had an accident with the ovens and a
lot
of bread was burned and intended for the pigs, but you got to it first. And you remembered
those times, because they shined out in your mind. But he didn’t remember a windfall
like that recent enough to make him full now, and of all of the parts of him that
hurt, his stomach wasn’t one of them. His stomach was entirely happy.

That only made him more frightened. If he wasn’t at the mine, where was he? Why was
he here—and where was
here
anyway? The surface he was on was moving, shaking a little—

He strained his ears, and he could hear the sounds of wheels, and hooves. Was he in
a wagon or a cart?

But
why?

He tried to remember . . . but the only thing he could think of was . . . a roof.
Or, rather, a rooftop.

That only frightened him more. He shouldn’t be able to remember a rooftop. Why would
he have been on a rooftop? Particularly a rooftop like the one in his mind, surrounded
by more of the same, under a cloudy night sky.

And his head felt so . . .
wrong.

Why? Why did it feel as if there was part of him, inside his head, that was either
missing or, like his uncooperative limbs, not working?

And why couldn’t he move?

That rooftop—had he fallen from it? Was he now lying in a state of paralysis, being
taken somewhere? Had he broken his neck? But if he had, why wasn’t he dead? If he
had, why could he
feel
his arms and legs, but not move them?

What had he been doing up there in the first place?

The surface he was lying on gave a great jolt, confirming that it was a wagon. But
he didn’t roll, or otherwise move. He was wedged in this position, on his side, curled
like a child. He could feel it, even if he couldn’t move.

And it was so
hot . . .

His stomach might be happy, but his throat was parched, dry, his tongue felt swollen.
His mouth and throat felt on fire with the need for a drink. Without even thinking
about it, he managed a moan.

The wagon or cart he was in stopped moving. He heard someone dropping to the ground,
then footsteps. The cart tilted a little.

There was a sound of cloth being whipped away, and a brief breath of cooler air. He
fought to open his eyes and succeeded, only to find himself in the dark.

A hand groped over his face and buried itself in his hair.

He was hauled up by the hair. There was someone there, who ruthlessly jammed a thumb
and forefinger into the hinges of his jaw to force his mouth open. The wooden spout
of a waterskin was shoved in between his teeth, and bittersweet water trickled over
his tongue.

He drank, because the burning of his mouth and throat would not allow anything else.
He drank, because some instinct told him that if he didn’t, it would be forced down
his throat in some very unpleasant manner.

But he didn’t drink fast. He didn’t gulp at the water, the way he vaguely recalled
doing earlier. He drank sparingly, only as much as would ease the burning thirst,
and the person feeding him didn’t seem to notice that he wasn’t sucking the water
down as fast as he could.

Maybe because it was dark. Or maybe the person was so impatient, in so much of a hurry
to get this over with, that he wasn’t paying attention.

There was a drug in the water, he was certain of it. Water shouldn’t taste like that.

Was he sick? Was that why he was being drugged?

But sick or injured, none of this made any
sense.
Cole Pieters would never have wasted real clothing on a mine-slavey, much less sent
one away to be treated for injury or illness. What had happened to him? Who had him,
and where were they taking him, and why?

He wasn’t dropped down, he was lowered back, even if it was by the hair, and curled
back up in that fetal coil. He felt boxes and bags all around him, arranged into that
shape to hold him there.

This time the person didn’t cover him up again. He felt the cart shift with the other
person’s weight, then heard him drop down to the ground, go around to the front of
the cart again, and heard him climb back up.

“Gabble gabble?”

“Gabble.”
A snort.
“Gabble gabble gabble.”

“Gabble.”

The cart began to move again.

Mags felt his head reeling. Had he lost all ability to understand speech? There was
not a single word there that he recognized!

But then, it didn’t matter, as he found himself back in the mine, crouched in the
mineshaft, hands wrapped numbly around his tools and waiting for the devil to come
for him.

8

T
he devil had found him. The horrible thing was coming for him, the devil that Cole
Pieters had sworn was his due. It had just popped up, in the middle of the yard, just
as they were all heading out of the mine.

Mags hid, hid in the place he knew the best.

The mine.

They were all terrified, even the Pieterses, so it looked as though claiming he was
a saint for taking in all the mine kiddies wasn’t doing any good. The devil had already
torn one boy apart, mistaking him for Mags, so maybe the thing wasn’t real good at
figuring out who his victim actually was supposed to be. But then again, the other
boy had been right next to Mags, so maybe the devil had just missed him and gotten
Davven by accident.

Or maybe the devil was here for a lot of them and would get around to him, sooner
or later. A devil probably wouldn’t care if he got a few extra on his way to the one
he wanted. Maybe the devil was just here to kill everyone. Depending on why it was
here—if one of the crazy cripples had gone to hell and sent it back, well everyone
was going to be dead. Even if they
liked
the mine-kiddies, the crazies all figured they were better off dead than here, and
they said so, often.

Mags didn’t know and didn’t particularly care. He ran, and so did everyone else who
saw the thing, which must have confused the devil even further about which of them
to chase. After all, all the mine-kiddies pretty much looked alike, matted mops of
dirty no-color hair on top of stick-thin, sexless bodies in rags. Once they began
to run, it would be even harder to tell them apart.

You couldn’t really make out what it was. It was sort of a smoke-shape, and sort of
a shimmer in the air, and sort of a black thing like a kind of burned-up skeleton
in the middle of all that. It kind of changed within the smoke, first one thing and
then another, and only bits of it visible at any one time. But you could sure make
out what it was doing. Mags had seen it shred that boy it had pounced on, just tear
off arms and legs and—well at that point, he’d been too busy running to look back.

Mags left it chasing after two of the Pieters boys, hoping it would catch them and
be sated. Or at least catch them and give them what they had coming. But he was pretty
sure it had marked him as a target; he could
feel
it, and he ran for the mine. His first thought was to hide in a place where the devil
would be at a disadvantage and he would not. By the time he got past the mine head,
he had a plan—not much of one, but at least it was some kind of a plan.

His arms and legs were aching, his back was aching, and his side was aching when he
finished working his way through the labyrinth of shafts to the latrine tunnel. He
ducked inside and kept running, keeping to the edge of the shaft. Most people didn’t
bother going all the way to the end to relieve themselves, so it stank hardly at all
by the time he got to the back of it where the seam of sparklies had died out in tough
granite. He had to crouch after a while, as the shaft narrowed and started to peter
out. Then he went to his hands and knees.

By that point the tunnel was only high enough to crawl along, which was what he was
counting on. There was a lot of fallen rock here, and that made it painful to crawl,
but it would be a lot more painful to get caught by the devil.

If the devil hunted by smell, the latrine-stink might confuse it. If the devil hunted
by sight, well, he had an answer for that too.

He stopped where he had a timber shoring up the roof, but a good amount of rock that
had either been shoveled in or fallen down all around him. Carefully, moving more
quietly than a mouse, he built up a wall between him and the rest of the tunnel. He
could hear lots of screaming off in the distance; as long as he heard that, he had
time to build his wall. Maybe in the dark it would look to the devil like the back
of the shaft. Placing the rocks stone by stone, he had wedged the final one in when
he heard someone come screaming down into the mine. Then he blew out his head lantern
and waited, trying not to breathe.

Wait, where did the lantern come from?

He brushed the irrelevant thought away. There were much more important things to think
about now, like living. There were lots of screams in the mine now, echoing through
the tunnels. He couldn’t tell if it was more than one person, but he thought it might
be. And he thought he could hear the devil now, too, making a kind of growling deep
in its throat and muttering to itself. “
Gabble gabble,”
it said, then answered itself in a second voice.
“Gabble gabble.”

He ached all over, ached not just with the aches of working all day and the aches
of running for his life, but with cold. Where before he’d been hot, now he was cold,
cold enough to shiver. He clenched his teeth to keep the devil from hearing them chattering
with cold.

Shivering, terrified, he huddled in on himself, arms wrapped around his legs, eyes
clenched tightly closed, and listened to the devil mutter to itself. It sounded like
it was having an entire conversation right outside the latrine tunnel.

And his head felt so wrong, as if someone had stuffed it with rags. Or cut pieces
out of the inside of it. What was the matter with his head? Why did it feel so wrong,
as if something was missing?

He was shivering so hard now that he couldn’t sit, he had to lie down, which wasn’t
going to help
at all
because the rock would be so cold. . . .

But the rock wasn’t cold, or at least, it wasn’t any colder than the air was . . .

. . . because it wasn’t rock.

It was wood.

And it was moving.

It wasn’t a devil that was muttering somewhere beyond his head. It was two men, having
a conversation, and he couldn’t understand a single word.

He was lying on his side in a curl, shivering with cold. His head ached so badly,
but now, for the first time, when he tried to move his arms and legs, he could, just
a little. That was when his mind cleared a little, and he realized that his last clear
memory was of being on that rooftop.

A rooftop in a city.

Haven. The city was called
Haven.

He remembered being up there, looking around himself. He was about to go . . . somewhere.
Somewhere important. And then, once he got to the important place, he would go home,
only “home” wasn’t the mine, and he didn’t belong to Cole Pieters anymore.

Something up there was watching him in the memory, and he was studiously ignoring
whatever it was, because it had been watching him for a long time now, and nothing
had come of it. Everyone said that eventually it would go away, that it wasn’t dangerous,
and nothing was going to happen. Except this time, something did.

Whatever it was that was up there in the darkness, whatever it was that had only been
watching him until that moment, had . . . done something. Something unexpected, catching
him completely by surprise. And then there was blackness, and he found himself back
in the mine.

How had he gotten to a city from the mine in the first place? And where was this place
that he knew was home, even though he couldn’t even remember what it was?

Little by little, fragments of memories came back. He clung to them fiercely.

That bittersweet taste in the soup and the water . . . that had to be a drug. And
the smoke—that must have been how they’d gotten the drug into him the first time,
after they hit him in the head. He was pretty sure he’d been hit in the head; it felt
as if someone had nearly cracked his skull open. He’d been burning hot for what seemed
like forever but had probably only been days, but now he was cold. What did that mean?
Had he been dreaming himself in the mine for weeks? Was it winter now? Or had he been
burning with fever, and now the fever had broken?

Maybe all it meant was that the weather had changed . . . the weather had been due
to change to colder. Everyone in Haven had been complaining that it hadn’t. He remembered
that, too, even though he couldn’t remember who the
everyone
was.

He couldn’t understand a word the two men were saying, and that sent him into a panic.
Had he lost his ability to understand speech?

Had he had that same thought before?

Was he going insane?

He huddled in on himself more, and despite his effort to keep quiet, his teeth started
to chatter.

The wagon stopped.

Oh, no . . .

Of all things, he wanted to hang onto this clarity. He didn’t want them to drug him
again! He squeezed his eyes shut, held as still as he could, breathing evenly as if
he were still unconscious, but allowed his teeth to chatter.

This time he heard two sets of footsteps coming around to the back of the wagon, two
men grunted as they pulled themselves up into the rear, and the wagon moved under
their weight.

And that was when he suddenly realized, with a touch of hysteria, that he
desperately
needed to urinate.

He felt boxes and bales being moved around him, and kept still and limp. But he was
not expecting it when he felt rough hands hauling him upright.

The men gabbled at each other in a grumbling sort of way as he debated—should he stay
limp? Or should he act like . . . like a sleepwalker?

He had about a fifty percent chance of guessing wrong; he guessed, and acted like
a sleepwalker . . . half-cooperating as they manhandled him down out of the wagon.
He almost wept when he realized this was what they were expecting.

He cracked his eyelids slightly. Sleepwalkers sometimes opened their eyes, so he didn’t
think it would matter, and it would keep him from hurting himself if he could see
where he was going.

Wherever he was, it looked nothing like the land around the mine. It
did
look like early fall. He could smell the leaves turning, and they were going colors,
here and there. The trees were more sparse than they were around the mine, the ground
seemed harder, barer. It was definitely hillier. He thought it was very early morning,
the sunlight had that thin quality to it.

The men walked him over to a clump of bushes and . . .

It took all of his control to keep from reacting as one of them, with a grunt of disgust,
pulled his trews down and took out his . . .

But the desperate need took over, and he let loose, even though it was someone else
doing the directing and all. His knees nearly gave with relief when the man pulled
his trews back up, roughly, making it crystal clear that he would rather have been
doing
anything
else.

That’s why they’re feeding me soup. So they don’t have to worry about getting me to
squat.

He let them half carry him back to the wagon, arrange him in a curl, but this time
on his other side. His teeth were still chattering; the men didn’t seem cold, but
his clothing wasn’t very heavy, and it was clammy and damp with sweat. Their clothing
was a lot heavier than his, and it looked a little odd to him, something like a padded
leather jacket over baggy trews wrapped at the ankles with thin strips of more leather.

They hauled him up, dropped him into what was evidently “his” spot, and curled him
on his side. He was almost grateful when one of them tossed a heavy blanket that smelled
of horse over him before they piled the bales and boxes around him and tossed a canvas
over the top of it all.

Now he opened his eyes completely. He still couldn’t move, much, so he concentrated
on trying to remember, instead.

My name is Mags.
That was easy, he already knew that.

The last thing I remember is being ambushed on a rooftop, in a city called Haven.

Why was he on the rooftop in the first place?

There was a man . . . Nikolas. He could see Nikolas in his head—nondescript, unmemorable,
and yet somehow he knew that this “Nikolas” was a very important man. He was doing
work for Nikolas. Work that . . . was also important.

He got another flash of memory, of a shop of some sort. A shop that sold. . . .

No, a shop that mostly
bought.

Pawnshop.

His mind supplied the name.

All right, he was there at that shop, in Haven . . . why? Doing work, but—what kind?
And the clothing he was wearing now . . . it was all wrong. It felt wrong. He only
wore this to do that work for Nikolas. It wasn’t his usual clothing.

All right then, what
was
his usual clothing? He tried to picture it, imagined himself getting dressed in the
dark, and when he came out into the light he would be wearing—

Trainee Grays!

And with those two words, everything he had not been able to remember, everything
he was, came flooding back.

He knew now that his dream of a devil was just made up out of fear and old nightmares.
What the “devil” really was, in that conversation that he
had
recalled correctly, the thing that had been frightening the life out of the Pieters
boys, hadn’t been a bad thing at all. It had been Dallen, a Companion, and they had
been frightened, not because Dallen was evil, but because the coming of a Companion
meant that their entire mining operation, based as it was on slavery, cruelty, exploitation,
and murder, was going to be exposed.
They
had known that there was no way that the Companion had come for one of them. Every
single one of them was complicit in how the mine-kiddies were mistreated and abused,
and no Companion would come for someone who would sit back and allow that sort of
thing to happen. That meant that Dallen had to be there for one of the mine-kiddies . . .
and eventually, no matter what threats held him silent before, as soon as the kid
knew he was safe, the truth would come out. Or else, if he remained silent and terrified,
they would work a Truth Spell on him, or have a Healer look into his mind and find
out.