The Fade

21

Fortune favours me. Overseer Arachi's office is buried among a small tangle of badly lit and narrow corridors. I try the first door I come to, eager to avoid the returning slave. It's a storeroom, piled with dusty sacks of spores, pots of dried spice and barrels of wine. There is a torch in the bracket, but it's unlit. Perfect.

I close the door behind me. The line of light around the edge is just enough to see by. In the near-darkness, I strip and undo the parcel of clothes. It's a red dress, made of light material, the sleeves and collar decorated with gold thread. I slip it on and adjust it. The fit is good. Nereith even had them spray it with scented water in the laundry room. Nice touch. It's a little crumpled, but it's been well folded and the material doesn't crease easily. Gravity should iron out the rest.

I have to keep a low profile wearing this thing. There are a lot of new slaves arriving in advance of the Elder's visit, so strangers won't be suspected, but if the slave who owns this dress should catch me, it's over. That aside, my presence should remain unnoticed. What other possible reason could an Eskaran woman have to be in a Gurta fort, unless she was a slave? Also, my age gives me a certain seniority which should deflect any casual probing from the younger girls. Since slaves are exclusively taken when very young, it will be assumed that I have been one all my life.

Disguises work, in my experience, because people are not naturally suspicious. The thought of a prisoner walking among them is too far-fetched to consider; but if I should draw attention to myself, then the ruse will unravel.

I have slippers too. As I put them on, I notice that my nails need clipping.

Suddenly I'm struck by an absurd stab of nostalgia. For the parties, the balls, the concerts of the aristocracy; for Casta and Liss and all their bizarre and eccentric friends; for the lights of Veya. Wearing something nice, being even partially clean, leaves me with a desperate longing for home and for the life I had.

I can't believe how low I've fallen, that the faintest of luxuries is so precious to me. I take a breath, steady myself. Better. I bundle up my worn and stained black clothes and hide them in a corner of the room, then I untie my newly washed hair and comb it out with my fingers. Should be passable, at least. Gurta dress their slaves well and they like them neat: a slave's appearance reflects on her master. I'm a little ragged, but it'll have to do.

I open the door and step out, my stomach fluttering. I adopt a confident bearing as I walk, putting purpose into my steps. I'm a slave on her way to do something important. Don't bother me.

I walk through cramped corridors of bare stone, lit by torches. I pass more storage rooms, disused and cobwebbed. This is a neglected corner of the fort, then, little visited. The Overseer's task must really be a thankless one if his office is back here. I wonder who he offended in the past, whose sister he dishonoured, which of the Laws he broke.

I come to a door at the end of the corridor. My intuition tells me that the fort proper lies beyond: I'm leaving the safety of these forgotten thoroughfares. I open the door, step through, and I'm immediately accosted with a sharp demand for attention.

~ Slave! ~

Though my heart jumps, the surprise doesn't show on the outside. I calmly halt and turn. There's a young Gurta scholar approaching me, long hair framing narrow, sly features. A velvet robe sways around his ankles. I suddenly remember Nereith's warning about the complex rituals of the slave girls, their particular Gurta dialect. If you're caught, they'll see through you in an instant.

I feel a quick tremble of panic run through me. Then it's too late to do anything about it, and I have to act.

I sketch the Form Of Abject Subservience with my hand, bobbing down a little on my knees and ankles as I do so. ~ Ruler Of My Will, I exist to meet your command ~ I breathe, eyes lowered.

He peers at me closely. ~ I don't recognise you ~ he says, but the tone is curious rather than suspicious.

~ I arrived only last turn, Master. It is my honour to attend the dignitaries arriving for the Elder's visit ~

His authority asserted, he dismisses my reply. ~ I sent one of your companions to fetch me fresh ink and paper. She hasn't returned yet ~ he says, indignantly. ~ My work can't be delayed like this ~

~ I am shamed by my sister's failure ~ I tell him. ~ I shall investigate immediately. You will not be delayed any longer ~

~ See that I'm not ~ he snaps, and walks away without waiting for the Affirmation of Obedience.

I head the other way. My pulse is gradually slowing. I have no intention of attending to his problem. He's simply impatient. Whichever slave he charged with the task would rather cut her own hand off than fail him; I've little doubt that she's already at his door, waiting for his return.

But my disguise worked. I'd hoped it would, but I'd still had grave doubts. Maybe I wouldn't remember the rituals, maybe my dialect was rusty, maybe things had changed in the twenty-eight years since my rescue.

Impersonating a slave isn't so hard when you used to be one. Confident now, I begin to search. I've primed myself with the names of various scholars and dignitaries that I learned from the guards, so I can concoct false errands if anyone questions me. And I can always pretend to be lost: I am new here, after all. But I found out a long time ago that the best way to stay unmolested is to appear busy: most people won't interrupt you if they think you're in the midst of a task for someone else. So I balance my demeanour between stridency and submission, and I begin to scout out the world beyond my prison.

Farakza isn't the height of Gurta luxury. It's a fort: crude and bare. I've served in places of embarrassing opulence, towers in the sky like frozen paint-drop splashes, one within another, reaching higher and higher and dotted with lights. There, everything was marble; golden ewers glittered by the side of steaming baths; circular libraries rose, balcony upon balcony. I remember attending music recitals that made my skin prickle with the emotions they inspired. They have such an eye for beauty, these people; yet for every admirable aspect of their society, there's an ugly one. Cultured in some ways and backward in others. They both crush and adore their women. They write poems and lays of wrenching beauty and yet they are the most savage and brutal and callous people I've ever known.

For all that this is a functional place, some areas have been built with a little more elegance. These are the scholars' quarters: studies, bedchambers and tiny libraries. Here they're more given to flourishes: decorative panelling, smart cornices, fluted stone jambs. There are shinestones in sculpted brackets, held in the hands of stone Elders.

I start to see people in the corridors: scholars, guards, slaves. It's the slaves who worry me most. Running into the owner of this dress would be bad luck, but I'm afraid I might meet the zaze, the slave matriarch. As a new slave, I should be reporting to her for assignment and not wandering the corridors. If I'm stopped, awkward questions could be asked.

Safer to avoid the slaves altogether. I'll not stay in the dormitory, and I'll keep out of their communal areas. They'll assume I'm the personal slave of a visiting dignitary and that I sleep in their quarters, or even as their bed-partner. In a society where men's urges towards their own women are strictly repressed, Eskaran slaves are a valuable commodity. No laws of propriety apply. They can do what they like.

My first order of business is to explore the area around the Overseer's office. Getting the others out unseen is going to be the hardest part of this whole affair. Whatever route takes us away, it has to be quick and close. There's no disguise they can use.

Opening random doorways is a dangerous way to explore: slaves don't barge into rooms. So I'm forced to rely on observation, sticking to the less travelled routes, not straying too far. The difference in corridor styles – narrow and winding compared to wide and straight – leads me to believe that much of this fort has been built around an older structure. The older corridors form the shell of the prison, and they're dark and tight and will suit me well. The newer sections surrounding them are the domain of the scholars, and not too heavily trafficked. There's little need for guards here, and scholars spend a lot of time engrossed in their work.

Not too far from the Overseer's office, I find a door. Its very innocuousness attracts me. It's tucked into an alcove, small and hidden. I barely notice it as I pass. Behind it I find a tight spiral staircase leading down into darkness. Taking a lantern from its bracket in the corridor outside, I risk investigation, wondering what unlikely excuses I might give if anybody should catch me.

At the bottom is another door. Old and heavy and locked. I listen at it, and hear nothing. There's the faintest trace of light beneath it. I put the lantern aside and press my face to the floor to try and see under. Dusty. Nobody has been here for a long time.

Just for an instant, there is a breeze, soft and warm, like breath. Then it's gone.

I can't see anything through the crack. But that tiniest stirring of air against my face excites me. That's air from outside.

I hold the lantern up to the lock and examine it. It's basic and crude, made for a large and simple key. Give me two long hairpins and a little time and I can have it open.

Hairpins, then. I want to know what's behind that door. Not long afterward, I find all the fresh air I want.

At the top of a staircase there's a doorway to a balcony. I hesitate for an instant before going through, weighing the dangers: a slave shouldn't be seen loitering. But there's no real choice in the end. Out there is the world that I have been shut away from, and shut myself away from. Gentle wind teases my face. I walk to the parapet and look out.

After so long hemmed in by the walls of the prison, the moment is magnificent. The cavern isn't anything special by normal standards – in fact, it's fairly barren – but I drink the view in all the same.

The balcony is on the flank of a tower, looking out over the battlements of the fort. Farakza stands on an uneven island of bare stone, scarred and rucked with age, in the midst of a slow river of spume rock. The ground around the fort has been flattened by the power of an Elder, stripping away the cover for two hundred spans. Anyone trying to cross that would be seen and killed. That presents a problem.

Manta-like shapes float on the thermals above the river, membranous wings stretched between rayed fingers of chitin, poisonous tails trailing. Beyond the river, scrub fungi and boilstone stalagmites have begun to reclaim the land. Hardened lichens grind through their mammoth task of breaking up solid stone into mineral-laden dust, and thorny plants rise on the river bank, leaching sustenance from the sluggish flow. I can't see to the far side of the cave: Farakza's lights are too bright. They drown out the faint glow of phosphorescent algae, the sparkle of tiny insects, the shine of plankton in pools.

The sense of space is exhilarating. I know Feyn would laugh at that, as one who lives fearlessly beneath the sky, but to me existence has limits: the roof of a cavern, the wall of a chamber, the length of a rockworm-bored tunnel. Existence is full of holes and passageways, drilled uncountable ages ago by vast beasts who have left nothing but their fossilised skeletons. This moon was hollowed by their industry. Long after they were gone, we descended, hiding from life above.

I'm assaulted by a strange feeling of claustrophobia. I feel trapped. I've always been trapped. Not by my surroundings but by circumstance. Enslaved at five, Bondswoman by ten, Cadre by seventeen and mother by twenty. I've prowled to the limits of my leash – I know every inch of Veya and I've been all over Eskara – but I'm always constrained. Loyalty, affiliation, duty: I hold them as virtues but they bind me like tomb wrappings.

Something like panic threatens. It comes fast, springing on me from nowhere. I want to get away. To scream and run in terror, in any direction, I don't care which. Not just from here, but from everything. My needs, my ties, my lack of choices. And even as I think that, I know that there's nothing I can do but continue on my course.

As fast as it came, it's gone. I'm left dizzied. Must be the excitement of being outside for the first time in I don't know how long. And yet I sense it's only lurking, not departed. My emotions have been unreliable since Rynn's death: they come in jags and spikes, shocking me.

I look along the battlements at the towers of Farakza. A few guards patrol the walls, but nobody's watching me. The fort is old enough that it's crumbling at the edges. It's brutal and functional and simple. It's seen wars. Right now we're far behind enemy lines, on the Gurta side of the Borderlands; but once this was a bastion against ancient invaders. Probably us.

I walk to the other end of the balcony as it follows the curve of the tower. Now I can see the shinehouse that rises above the fort. A narrow tower of stone, topped with a segmented bulb of magnifying lenses. Within lies a huge shinestone, pale light diffusing across the cavern, flattening the shadows to a cower. It's a small and basic affair, not like the five enormous, ornate shinehouses that illuminate Veya, but it does its job. It's a little dim now. The Elder will recharge it during the ceremony of his departure.

The yard below is more interesting. From where I am I can see a wide, flagged space directly inside the main gates of the fort. Buildings and stables crowd around the edges. A pair of chila are pulling a cart through the gate as I watch; they chirrup and toss their heads as they come. They've got pug faces with small, vicious teeth, brown sinewy bodies, long front legs that used to be wings when they were young. But they're strong, fast at a run and they stand shoulder-high to a man. I've never liked chila. They smell horrible and they remind me too much of enormous, land-bound bats.

The cart is met by guards, a few casual questions are asked, and then the yard-workers move in to unload the cargo. Suddenly, the yard is aswarm. Doors to storage silos are hauled open. Dainty menservants appear and begin to direct operations. The guards stand back and watch.

The preparations for the Elder's arrival are controlled chaos. I overheard two scholars talking about the other dignitaries who have arrived for the event: generals whose troops are drilling nearby, local Lawkeepers and so on. It must be an Elder of some importance, to generate this kind of interest. I'm almost sorry I won't be around. I'd have a go at killing him if I thought I could get away with it.

It would be so easy to leave here now. On my own, with this disguise, an escape would be child's play. I could bluff my way onto a carriage. Once beyond the river, disappearing would be simplicity itself.

But I daren't stay on the balcony any longer. An idle slave rouses suspicion. Reluctantly I turn my back and return to the closed-in world that, just for a few moments, I dreamed I was free of. Finding something to pick the lock on my mystery door turns out to be harder than I thought. Hairpins are in short supply in a fort, and I've always found they're the only decent substitute for the specialised lockpicks I'd otherwise have with me. Slaves don't wear ornaments or make-up of any kind: they're supposed to be neat and plain. That leaves the Gurta women, and the only Gurta women here are the Entwined of the dignitaries.

I hear the tolling of the bell, louder here than below. By now my shift in the forge is long over, and no alarms have been raised. It seems I've not been missed. The tension inside me ratchets down a notch.

Buoyed by this, I decide to push my luck and talk to a slave. She gives me directions to the quarters where the dignitaries are housed. The arrangements are makeshift at best, and aside from a slightly increased slave presence, it's hard to tell the difference between this and the scholars' area.

I make myself look busy until I catch sight of one of the dignitaries leaving his room, his Entwined on one arm. He's middle-aged, muscular for a Gurta, hair plaited and sporting a white beard and moustache. A general, no doubt. The woman wears layered robes in an immaculate array of colours, and a fantastically impractical arrangement of jewelled flowers in her blonde hair. She goes masked, as they all do; the mask is white, brushed with yellows and pinks. Only her eyes are visible behind the veneer. Gurta women don't show their real selves in public, but they put a lot of effort into illusion.

Once they're out of sight, I slip into the room. The door isn't locked: there's no need. It wouldn't ever enter their heads that a slave would steal from them.

I walk past the open trunks of clothes and raid the vanity table. In a drawer I find an assortment of hair ornaments, including several sets of pins. I pick two simple steel ones, like slender knitting needles. If they're missed, then they're not valuable enough to suggest a theft.

I walk boldly out of the room just as another slave is coming in to tidy: the same blonde girl who I saw attending to the Overseer earlier. She automatically pardons herself and I sweep past without a word of explanation. I'm an older slave, even if I am a stranger. She defers, but I feel her puzzled look following me down the corridor.

I head back to the mystery door, taking care to avoid the Overseer's office nearby. The chances are slim, but he might recognise me from the forge. By the light of a lantern I borrow from the corridor above, I fiddle at the lock with my hairpins. It's clumsy work, and it takes me a while to get the bends in the hairpins just right, but eventually I hear the click I've been hoping for. Leaving the lantern at the foot of the stairs, I push the door open.

The room is unoccupied, and has been for a long time. Even with the warm draught slipping in through the broken window, there's a sense of desertion. Desultory cobwebs drape the faded junk pushed against the walls. Chipped clay crockery, ancient practice dummies for the soldiers, bits of disassembled furniture. A room where things end up, condemned to be forgotten by the hoarder who thought they might eventually have a use.

The window is narrow, but not so narrow that I couldn't get through it. It faces out into darkness, but when I peer closer I realise that it's the corner of a yard, hidden in the angle of the walls where no light reaches. The window has been shattered and a piece has fallen away. I open it and crane out. It's about fifteen spans from the ground. A person could drop that distance if they hung from their fingertips.

I can see out into the yard now, where torches burn and the light of the shinehouse is not impeded by other buildings. It takes me a moment to realise that it's the same yard as the one I was looking down on earlier: the yard in front of the main gate.

Now I've got a plan.