Part 36 (1/2)

They were in the sweltering toadstool grottoes where they worked twelve hours a day, every day of the month, every month of the year. At times the drifting spore clouds were thick enough to clog the eyes.

'Stupid spores,' Tali lied. 'They gunk everything up.'

'You look terrible. Have a break; I'll do this row for you.'

'Thanks, Mia.'

Tali had woken in the middle of the night feeling as if a stone heart was grinding against her skull with every beat. And with each beat, brilliant reds and yellows swirled madly in her inner eye, like beams trying to find the way out of a sealed lighthouse until, with a spike of pain, they burst forth and she collapsed into sleep.

When the work gong had dragged her into wakefulness this morning, the inside of her skull felt bruised. She desperately needed to think, to plan, but now the colours were back, spinning like clay on a potter's wheel, and fits of irrational anger kept flaring. She had to restrain herself from smas.h.i.+ng the toadstool trays against the bench.

He's coming for me and there's no way out. They're going to cut a hole in my head, just like Mama. No way out, no way out!

Tali pressed her cheek against the wet wall and after a minute the colours faded, the headache died to a dull throb. Take deep breaths and stay calm. Don't do anything silly. You've got time. He might not come for months, even years. Mama had been twenty-six, after all.

Her racing heartbeat steadied and Tali wiped her face. 'I'm all right now.'

'Be careful. The Cythonians are really agitated today.'

'Why?'

'I don't know. Keep your head down and don't attract attention.'

Tali managed a smile. 'When did I ever do that?'

'I'm always getting you out of trouble.' Shaking her head fondly, Mia turned away to her work.

The grottoes were a series of broad, low-ceilinged tunnels linked by arched doorways. Cages filled with fat-bellied fireflies provided a bluish light that barely illuminated the walls, which were sculpted to resemble a forest by moonlight a a humid glen whose every surface was covered in fungi, like the grottoes themselves. The air was so heavy with their mixed earthy, fishy, foetid and garlicky odours that it made Tali heave.

The floor shook, grinding the stone trays against the benches. It had been shaking all day. What was the enemy up to in the secret lower levels? Was that why they were so touchy?

'Tali, try to look like you're working.'

'Sorry.'

Today's job, one of the worst of her slave duties, was de-grubbing the harvest. Tiered stone benches running the length of each grotto were stacked with trays of edible toadstools and mushrooms, dozens of kinds, plus leathery cloud ear fungi and giant red puffb.a.l.l.s as big as Tali's head. The puffb.a.l.l.s had to be cut and bagged carefully lest they gush clouds of stinging flame-spores everywhere. In the darkest corners, tiny toadstools sprouted in cl.u.s.ters like luminous white velvet, though Tali wasn't fool enough to stroke them. They were delicious when properly cooked, but deadly to touch in their natural state.

Reaching between the brown toadstools in front of her, she found a red-and-yellow girr-grub by feel and crushed it, wincing as the sharp bristles p.r.i.c.ked her fingers. After dropping the muck into her compost bucket she rinsed her hands under a wall spring. Last year she had sucked a sore finger covered in girr slime and spent the next three days throwing up the lining of her stomach.

Mia was humming as she worked. At least she could still dream. Tali's vow to hunt down her mother's killers had never faltered, but in ten years she had learned nothing more about them and this morning's revelation had extinguished all hope. This morning, her eighteenth birthday and coming-of-age day, Little Nan had given Tali the letter her father had written her mother only days before his own tragic death. The letter that made it clear Tali would be next to die.

Her hand clenched on the stone tray. 'It's not right!' she hissed.

'What?' said Mia.

'Our servitude! Living in terror every day of our lives. Sleeping on stone beds. Being flogged for a scowl or a sideways look. Torn apart from our loved ones-'

'Don't say such things,' Mia whispered. 'What if the guards hear?'

Tali's voice rose. 'Worked to death in the heatstone mines, killed for no reason at all.' The blood was pounding in her head. 'We've got to throw off our chains and cast the enemy down.'

'Shh!' Mia slapped her hand over Tali's mouth. 'They'll condemn you to the acidulators.'

Tali yanked the hand away. 'If they try,' she said recklessly, 'I'll smash-'

Mia shook her head and backed away, her eyes wide and frightened.

A ululating whistle sounded behind Tali and she sprang aside, too late. The chymical chuck-lash wrapped around her left shoulder and went off, crack-crack-crack.

She staggered several steps, clutching her blistered, b.l.o.o.d.y shoulder, and through a drift of brown smoke saw Orlyk, the bandy-legged guard, scowling at her. A fringe of chuck-lashes swung from Orlyk's belt like red bootlaces and she was raising another, ready to throw. Most of the guards were decent enough, but Orlyk was an embittered brute and she had been in a foul temper all day. And if she'd actually heard what Tali had said- 'Lazy, Pale swine,' Orlyk grunted, her blue-tattooed throat rising and falling like a calling toad. 'Come the day when Khirrikai leads us to take back our land and we don't need your kind any more. Oh, soon come the day!'

Tali's head gave another throb. She fantasised about tearing the chuck-lashes from Orlyk's belt, driving her to the nearest effluxor with them and dumping her head-first into the filth.

'Tali!' Mia hissed.

Lower your eyes and say, 'Yes. Master.'

Tali s.h.i.+vered at the hatred in Orlyk's bulging eyes, then managed to regain control and forced out the sickening words, 'Thank you for correcting me, Master.'

She bowed lower than necessary. One day, Orlyk, one day! Tali knew how to defend herself, for she had practised the bare-handed art with Nurse Bet every week since her mother's murder, but raising a hand against a guard was fatal.

Orlyk snapped the tip of a chuck-lash at Tali's left ear, crack-crack, grunted, 'Work, slave,' and headed after another victim.

The pain was like a chisel hammered through Tali's ear. She lost sight for a few seconds, the colours in her head swirled and danced, then her returning sight revealed Orlyk's broad back as she approached the archway. Scalding blood was dripping from Tali's ear onto her bare shoulder, and blood-drenched memory roused such fury that she s.n.a.t.c.hed up a chunk of rock.

'Tali, no!' Mia hissed.

As the guard pa.s.sed the puffball trays, Tali hurled her rock twenty yards and struck a giant puffball at its base. It disgorged an orange torrent of flame-spores, but then the shockwave set off a hundred other puffb.a.l.l.s and she watched in horror as the guard disappeared behind churning spore clouds. When they settled, Orlyk was convulsing on the floor, choking, her face and throat swelling monstrously.

'Are you insane?' hissed Mia. 'If she dies ...'

'I didn't mean that to happen,' Tali whispered.

'You never do.'

'Sorry, Mia. I'm really sorry.'