Rebellion

CHAPTER 85

“Tali, can we talk about this mad plan of yours?” said Tobry, moving his horse alongside hers.

It was the day after she had rejoined the chancellor’s company at Nyrdly. Tali and Tobry were riding across the plain of Reffering, the site of an ancient battle a few miles from the chancellor’s camp.

“Not now,” she said. “I’m trying to think.”

“I don’t want you going back to Cython.”

“Neither do I, but I swore a blood oath.”

“Nobody could hold you to it. Not for this.”

“The point of a blood oath, as you well know, is to hold oneself to the purpose.”

“Even so — ”

“My friend Mia was executed in Cython for using magery — magery she was only using because of something stupid I’d done. I swore to make up for what had been done to her, and my mother, by saving the Pale. I can’t break that oath.”

“It doesn’t mean you have to go back. We should be looking for the circlet.”

“There isn’t time. Lyf’s planning to put the Pale to death. I heard him say so.”

“If you do this, you’ll either end up dead, or enslaved again.”

“Do you think I don’t know that?” she shouted. “Do you imagine I don’t think about it constantly? Go away. You’re only making things worse.”

Tobry whirled his horse and rode off. Tali immediately regretted her outburst, but she felt relieved, too. He radiated anxiety and she could not deal with it as well.

If they caught her, and they probably would, they would make an example of her to rival the greatest horrors of the war.

When she returned, the chancellor was alone in his quarters, a large space created by stretching tent canvas over four walls of the ruined fortress at Nyrdly. He spent all his time there these days. The old chancellor would have punished her for riding off after Grandys’ attack, but when she had returned with Rannilt all he’d said was, “You’re back! About bloody time.”

His poisoned arm had been amputated but it had not cured what ailed him. He was in great pain and increasingly withdrawn. If it came to war, how could he hope to lead his troops?

“My army still hasn’t arrived and now I’m worried,” he said as she entered.

“The weather’s been bad.”

“Not that bad. And few of my former allies have answered my call. There’s anarchy and rebellion in the south-west, around Rutherin. Lyf holds Bleddimire, and the centre and the south, while Grandys will soon have everything north of Lake Fumerous.”

“That still leaves the Nandelochs.”

“For how long? My army, if it gets here, comprises only nine thousand men, and I’m struggling to recruit more because they’re all flocking to Grandys.”

“Nine thousand makes a fine army,” Tali said more stoutly than she felt.

“The Cythonians have crushed bigger ones, and they’ve got ten times that many, most dug in, in cities where it would take many times their number to get them out. I can’t beat them, Tali. I have to face that.”

“So you’re saying Hightspall is lost.”

“The Hightspall we knew, yes.”

“What about Grandys?”

“He’s recruited an army of ten thousand in a few weeks and led them to a succession of brilliant victories. Their morale is so high that in a month he could double that number. But he’s not going to do anything for us.”

All the more reason for Tali to go her own way — to Cython.

“This plan is lunacy,” said Tobry that night. “The matriarchs have had months to put new defences in place.”

Tali, Tobry and Holm were in a large tent on the far side of the encampment from the chancellor’s quarters. In his increasingly reclusive state there was little chance of him catching them, but Tali was keeping as far away as possible. If he heard about her plan he would have her locked away. Though he had threatened to send her to Cython months ago, Tali now knew that he could not have been serious. Not for a second would he risk the loss of her master pearl.

“I know,” said Tali. “But if I can’t save the Pale, who can? Will you come with me — just until I get inside? I… I know it’s a lot to ask, but I need magery to get in — your kind of magery.”

“If you’re determined to go, I’ll go with you, all the way. What have I, a doomed shifter, got to lose?” There was no bitterness in Tobry’s voice now. He had come to terms with his fate.

“I’m coming too,” said Holm.

“No, you’re not,” said Tali. “I couldn’t possibly ask it.”

“You’re not asking. I’m offering.”

“You’ll probably be killed.”

“I’m an old man, and I’ve got much to atone for. It’s my choice.”

Tali wiped tears out of her eyes. “Thank you.”

“How many enemy are there in Cython?”

“Um, before the war, there were about three hundred thousand. But a hundred thousand troops came out, men and women.”

“And most have been joined by their families,” said Tobry. “It’s said that more than a quarter of a million Cythonians came out, all up.”

“So there might be thirty thousand left in Cython,” said Tali, “and a third of them trained guards and soldiers.”

“Ten thousand isn’t many to guard eighty-five thousand Pale,” said Holm. “No wonder Lyf wants to get rid of them.”

“The Pale are unarmed,” cried Tali. “Untrained! They’ve got no leaders and they’ve been bred to be docile and apathetic. I don’t see the threat.”

“But you must see the problem. How the hell are you going to get them to rebel?”

“I don’t know?”

“And if they have to fight — ”

“I’m hoping not to fight — just to make a break for the closest exit.”

“If you don’t mind me saying so,” said Holm, “that’s not a very good plan.”

“I know!” cried Tali, “but it’s the best I can come up with.”

“Putting the escape plan aside for the moment,” said Tobry, “how are we to get into Cython? The defences are supposed to be unbreachable.”

“Holm’s already thought of that.”

Holm went out, shortly returning with a little old man whose back was as curved as a bow. When she’d first met the fellow, Tali had assumed that he never washed, but he was not so much grimy as encrusted with dark grit. His cracked hands and arms, his gnarled and twisted feet, and even the top of his head, were embedded with particles of rock ground into him over a lifetime of labour.

“This is Aditty,” said Tali. His head was no higher than her chest. “He’s been fifty years a miner.”

Aditty did not shake hands, only nodded so stiffly that she heard his neck bones grind together. His breath crackled in his lungs.

“Where have you mined?” said Holm. “I’ve done a bit of delving myself.”

“Wherever there wuz work,” said Aditty. His voice was small, dry and breathless, as if his lungs were as encrusted as the rest of him. “Gold, coal, oil shale, copper, platina, you name it. Don’t pay much, mining. You got to keep going, going…” He trailed off, shuffling his battered bare feet.

“Ever worked in the abandoned mines of old Cythe?” said Tobry.

“’Course. Great miners, they wuz. Took the best ore, though.”

“If we were looking to get into an underground place,” said Tali, “a heavily guarded place, where would we start?”

“Like Cython, you mean?” said Aditty.

“Why Cython, in particular?” said Tali, exchanging troubled glances with Tobry and Holm. Could the secret have got out already?

“You didn’t say mine, you said place. There’s only one underground place I know of.”

“Suppose we did want to get in, secretly,” said Tobry, leaning close to the old fellow, “how would we approach it?”

“Air and water,” said Aditty.

“Can you elaborate?”

“Elab — elab — ?” He went into a fit of coughing that turned his face scarlet and made his eyes water.

“It means explain,” said Holm. “Tell us what you mean by air and water.”

Aditty wiped his eyes. “They got to have fresh air underground, and clean water. Got to get rid of the breathed air and the dirty water, or they die. Big problem, especially air.”

“Go on,” said Tali.

“Can be all kinds of bad air underground. There’s fire-damp: you can’t smell it, can’t see it, but one spark and,” he clapped his hands together, “bang! And there’s stink-damp, like what they burn in the street lights of Caulderon. Not so common, but it’s deadly poison, and it also goes off, bang.”

He paused for a moment, staring at his feet. “Then there’s heavy air, collects in low places. Put a group of people in a hole and they’ll breathe out enough heavy air to suffocate ’emselves.” He looked up, and Tali saw a keen interest in his tired eyes. “If you build a city underground, you got to have good air, lots of it. Where do you get it?”

“An air shaft,” said Tobry.

“An air shaft does for a small mine. But for a city, what runs underground for miles, you need lots of air shafts, one for each area.”

“Why can’t you have a fan in one entrance,” said Tobry, “and blow it through the city and out the other side?”

“Never seen a fan strong enough. Like I said,” said Aditty, “the heavy air builds up quick. You got to get rid of it straight away. Need lots of air shafts.”

“The problem is finding them,” said Holm. “They’ll be carefully concealed — ”

“And guarded,” said Aditty.

“- and the Seethings above Cython is Lyf’s territory. If we try to search it we’re bound to be seen. We’ve got to go straight to the spot.”

“What about water?” said Tali. “It’s not so easy to hide where water goes underground.”

“Water ain’t such a problem,” said Aditty. “Mines often got too much water, though you can’t always drink it. Can be salty. And in a lead or arsenic or cinnabar mine, it’ll kill you quick. But then,” he mused, “just mining lead or arsenic ore, or cinnabar, can kill you quick. Or coal, for that matter. Dangerous business, mining.”

“Can you read mine maps?” said Holm.

“Wouldn’t be in such health if I couldn’t.” Aditty coughed up grit into a grubby rag, inspected it and put it in his pocket.

Tali unrolled another map on the folding table. “This is Cython as it is now. At least, it’s the main level of Cython, where the Pale live and work. And the enemy live.”

“Reliable?” said Aditty.

“It was made for the chancellor before Caulderon fell, from details tortured out of enemy prisoners. I’ve checked it.”

“How did you get it?” said Tobry.

“Snaffled it from his chart room. He had a plan to attack Cython at one stage.”

They gathered around the table and Tali pointed out the main features of Cython — the enemy’s living quarters, the Pale’s Empound where the women lived, the farms, eeleries, toadstool grottoes, heatstone mine, the men’s quarters and the main Floatillery, an underground canal that ran all the way to Merchantery Exit.

Tali produced a second map. It had been drawn in blue ink on fine leather, but was now cracked and worn, and the ink was badly faded.

“I found this in the same place. It’s a two-thousand-year-old Cythian mine plan. It shows the workings of the labyrinth of mines underneath the Seethings, as they were at the time of the First Fleet. I’m not sure what all the symbols mean.”

Aditty bent so low over the map that his nose touched the surface. He moved his head around for several minutes, his breath crackling. He checked the Cythonian map, then returned to the mine plan. He stepped away, coughed more grit up into his rag and nodded to himself.

“Well?” said Tobry, impatiently.

“Here,” said Aditty, stabbing a dust-impregnated thumb at the left side of the mine plan.

Tali could only see meaningless lines and symbols. “What is it?”

“A forgotten air shaft from ancient times.”

“How do you know it’s forgotten?”

“I’ve prospected all through the Seethings. Seen no sign of it. I reckon it runs through to Cython, about here.” Aditty gestured to the other map.

“That’s at the water supply pondages,” said Tali. “Why would an air shaft run there?”

“Mines in that area make water, don’t they? When the old mine was abandoned, it would have flooded in a few years.”

“The enemy went underground five hundred years after the first war started,” said Tobry. “If the old maps were lost, they wouldn’t have known the flooded air shaft was there. Good place for the water pondages, though.”

“How deep would the water be?” said Tali.

“How far underground is Cython?” said Holm.

“The climb up the sunstone shaft is a thousand steps — three hundred feet or more.”

“The bottom of the air shaft could be flooded twenty feet deep,” said Aditty. “Or sixty.” He nodded and went out.

“If we go down the shaft to the water,” said Tobry, “we might be able to dive and come up in the flooded area.”

“Twenty feet we might manage,” said Holm. “I can’t dive sixty.” He shuddered.

“There’s magery for that kind of thing,” Tobry said vaguely.

“What kind of thing?” said Holm.

“Breathing underwater. I’ll start working on it.”

“I can’t swim,” said Tali, another of her personal nightmares closing in around her.