The Silver Door

17 - The Diggings

Rye saw the Diggings long before the wagon reached it. Light thick with smoke and dust filled the horizon to the right of the track, crawling upwards to meet the clouds, oozing through the wire mesh of a high fence like soup through a strainer to pool on the tortured earth of the Scour.

And there was sound. The Diggings never slept, it seemed. From where he sat, perched on the jell safe beside the silent Bean, Rye could at first hear only a dull, pulsing clamour. Then he began to pick out individual sounds—the clanging of metal on rock, the rumbling of wheels, the roaring of rough voices, the cracking of whips.

His mouth grew dry. He shifted awkwardly on the hard metal box, trying to calm himself. The long, dark coat Bird had made him put on was buttoned stiffly to his chin. His hair was covered by a close-fitting black cap that prickled his scalp. In his hand was a note written on thick grey paper and bearing the symbol he had first seen on the sign at the edge of the Saltings: the mark of the Master.

‘Bell and the others were not taken without a fight,’ Bird had said grimly, as she handed the paper to him. ‘It was a fight we had no chance of winning, but at least this came out of it. The slave-hunter in charge of the pack that invaded the farm must have dropped it in the scuffle before we were quelled. It is the cornerstone of our plan. It will persuade the guards to release our people to us.’

Her mouth had twisted wryly. ‘Release our people to you, that is. The guards would never believe that farm rats, as they call us, would be sent on such a mission. We were going to force Four-Eyes to do the talking, but as a stranger to the guards you will be far more convincing.’

Rye tossed a hoji nut to the clink chattering in the shadows at his feet. The little creature had come begging the moment he sat down. He had been feeding it ever since, for what did its greed matter now?

‘Do not hurt it!’ he had burst out, when he saw Bird frowning at the pink nose poking hopefully around the corner of the jell safe.

‘I wouldn’t harm a clink!’ Bird had exclaimed. ‘What do you think I am?’

A savage, Rye had retorted in his mind. A barbarian! Yet he knew it was not as simple as that. Bird was the leader of a desperate mission. Dirk had suffered at her hands, but Dirk might well have acted just as ruthlessly if he had been in her place. Perhaps, Rye thought uneasily, even I might have done so. Just a few days ago it would have been impossible for me, but not now.

The world outside the Wall had changed him. Just as, according to Annocki, it had changed Sonia. Annocki had said Sonia seemed “more alive” after her time beyond the golden Door.

She would not say the same now, Rye thought grimly, glancing at Sonia lying huddled on the floor of the empty wagon with Bird, Itch and Chub crouching beside her.

Sonia had fared better than Four-Eyes who, after being given another whiff of myrmon, had been stuffed into a sack and now lay hidden behind his captors. But this was only because Bird wanted Sonia under her hand, in case Rye was at the last moment tempted to betray them.

The light of the Diggings was glaring now. The corner of the fence was very near. Not far past it, a pair of tall mesh gates flanked by large, white-painted marker stones faced the track. There was a notice on one of the gates, but Rye could not make out what it said.

Trying to calm himself, he looked down at the note in his hand and read it for what must have been the twentieth time.

‘Itch added what was needed,’ Bird had said, pointing a stubby finger at the last line. ‘He’s an artist, and good at copying. The forgery isn’t perfect—we couldn’t quite match the ink—but it should do.’

Rye had frowned in confusion. ‘But this says nothing about releasing—’

‘That doesn’t matter. The only things that matter are the paper and the signature. At this time of night there’ll be no one in authority at the Diggings who can read. The guards can recognise numbers, but that’s all.’

‘Who is Brand? Is he the—?’

‘Don’t pretend ignorance, Spy!’ Bird had hissed. ‘The time for foolery is long past. Now, do you remember what you have to say?’

Rye did. He had repeated it so often that it was burned into his brain. But Bird would give him no peace until he had repeated it one more time.

‘They’ve seen us,’ Bean muttered from the driver’s seat. ‘Be ready!’

Jerking his head up, Rye saw that the gates were being dragged open by a grey-uniformed guard. The wagon chugged on, out of the dimness of the Scour into a sea of light.

‘Steady!’ Rye heard Bird hiss as the corner of the fence loomed large beside them.

Bean’s heavy face did not flicker. His left hand moved over the panel of levers and buttons in front of him. The red pointer on the dial began to crawl backwards. The wagon slowed. Bean swung the wheel hard to the right.

Roaring and creaking, the vehicle left the track, trundling between the white marker stones. It rolled through the gateway and stopped with a long hiss of steam.

The gates swung shut behind it. And from his high seat Rye looked down on the nightmare that was the Diggings.

There were people everywhere—people and their leaping shadows.

Broad pits, their sides studded with tunnels, teemed with labouring figures. The shortest of the slaves hammered and dug in the tunnels, which were all brilliantly lit by some means Rye could not see. Taller slaves hauled buckets of earth and broken rock out of the pits, tipping the spoil into carts drawn by grunting beasts that looked like miniature, hornless bloodhogs. Other slaves hauled at the neck chains of hogs with filled carts, urging them towards a waste pile that towered over a cluster of sagging, flat-roofed huts.

Guards in grey patrolled the pits and the dusty ground above, cracking whips, bellowing commands, lashing out at any slave who fell or stopped work for an instant. Closer to the gate, off-duty guards sprawled around a great bed of glowing coals set on a slab of blackened stone. A huge chunk of meat turned on a spit above the fire, but the guards seemed to have lost interest in it. They were all looking eagerly at the wagon.

‘Hoy, trader!’ a coarse voice shouted. ‘You’re late!’

The flap beside the driver’s seat was pulled aside and the guard who had opened the gates peered in.

Rye took one look at the brutish face with its flat, cold eyes and felt a creeping horror. For an instant the urge to cringe back and cross his fingers and his wrists was almost irresistible.

Nothing Bird said had prepared him for this. The man walked and talked like a human. He even looked like a human. But there was nothing human behind those flat grey eyes. The guard was … empty. A being without a soul.

Ignoring Bean, the guard stared at Rye, then glanced around the wagon. His jaw dropped as he saw that the storage space was empty except for a few shadowy figures huddled against one wall.

‘Where’s Four-Eyes?’ he demanded. ‘Where’s all the food?’

‘The Master needed the trader’s wagon to move slaves to a new source of jell,’ said Rye in the cold, impatient voice Bird had told him to use. ‘I have picked up some slaves already. The other twenty are to come from here.’

‘What?’ the guard exclaimed. ‘But we can’t spare that many! We’ll have trouble making this week’s jell quota as it is!’

‘That cannot be helped!’ Rye snapped. He leaned across Bean and thrust the grey paper into the guard’s hand. ‘As you see, you are to supply the twenty mine rats who work in Tunnel 12, and sleep in Hut 16. Fetch them from wherever they are, and be quick about it.’

The guard stared blankly at the note, then turned towards the fire.

‘Hoy, Krop 1!’ he bawled.

A guard who had been sitting at his ease with his back to a withered tree stump stood up with a groan and began walking to the wagon. The first guard went to meet him, holding out the grey paper. As they came back, muttering together, Rye saw with a shock that they were identical. They had the same flat eyes, the same straight, almost lipless mouths, the same smooth, hairless skin that looked as if it would be cold to touch.

The guards both bent their heads over the note, their fingers pressing on the numbers in the last line.

Bird, Chub, Itch and Bean were absolutely silent, but the tension in the wagon was so thick that Rye felt his head might burst with the strain of it.

‘It looks all right, Krop 4,’ the second guard said grudgingly.

‘Of course it is right!’ barked Rye. ‘Are you questioning the Master’s orders?’

‘No, sir,’ Krop 1 gabbled. ‘We were just—’

‘Then get the slaves! Make haste!’

The other guards had left the fire now, and were coming to see what was happening. There were eight of them, and a chill ran down Rye’s spine as he saw that they all looked exactly the same as the two already at the wagon.

‘Bring the mine rats from Tunnel 12,’ Krop 1 ordered, turning to the approaching group. ‘They’re wanted elsewhere.’

After that, there was nothing to do but wait. As the minutes ticked by with agonising slowness, Krop 1 and Krop 4 stood murmuring together by the wagon. Rye sat stiffly, staring straight ahead, pretending not to listen.

‘We’ll never make our week’s quota now,’ he heard Krop 1 mutter.

‘We wouldn’t have anyway,’ the other guard replied. ‘This area’s finished. Soon it’ll only be fit for Scour scum. The tunnels are caving in, and even up here the surface is sinking. It’s taking out all the jell that does it. They should leave some of it in the ground.’

‘We’ve told them that,’ said Krop 1. ‘But they never listen to us. They just—’

Suddenly he started, turned, and thrust his head through the open doorway of the wagon. Rye’s heart seemed to leap into his throat.

‘The jell scourings, sir!’ the guard said, pointing at the metal box. ‘Did you bring them, at least?’

Rye’s face felt frozen as he nodded. Bird had told him the guards would want the trader’s jell, but he had forgotten all about it.

He stood up and, awkwardly crouching, felt in the pocket of the stiff coat for the key he had been given. Trying not to fumble, he unlocked the padlock on the metal box and threw open the lid.

Inside was a large pottery crock, tightly corked. Rye struggled to lift it. It was extremely heavy.

‘Wait, sir!’ shouted Krop 4. ‘That’s a job for mine rats. I’ll round some up.’

‘No!’ snapped his companion. ‘We’re losing twenty workers tonight as it is. We can’t afford to take any more off the job. You get the jell—I’ll bring the replacement jar.’ He turned and marched briskly away.

His face impassive, Krop 4 moved around to Rye’s side of the wagon. One of the figures huddled in the storage space drew a sharp breath—Chub, Rye guessed. The tension in the wagon had risen sharply. For some reason Bird and the others were fearful of what the guard was doing.

And suddenly Rye realised why. Suddenly his mind was filled with images of dots and crosses inside a circle, dots and crosses inside a square.

The little patterns on the side of the wagon and on the metal box were messages. They had been put there by the jell-wet fingers of the slaves from Nanny’s Pride farm, when it was their turn to unload the trader’s jell crock at the Diggings.

And this afternoon, when Four-Eyes’ wagon had stopped at the farm, the messages had been seen and understood.

This was how Bird and the others had known which numbers to write into the false orders.

The circle meant ‘tunnel’. The square meant ‘hut’. The dots and crosses were simple sums that disguised the numbers. Three multiplied by two multiplied by two—twelve. Tunnel 12. And the sum inside the square equalled sixteen. Hut 16.

Krop 4 seized the heavy crock and lifted it with ease. As he stepped back he caught sight of the little square painted on the side of the jell safe. He squinted at it in dull puzzlement. Rye’s stomach fluttered.

Then he heard the thudding sound of hurrying feet. Twisting his neck to look through the front window of the wagon, he saw that Krop 1 was jogging back with an empty crock in his hand. Close behind him were twenty small shambling figures with guards marching beside them.

‘Stop dithering!’ Rye barked, swinging back to face Krop 4. ‘My cargo is here at last!’

The guard jumped back just as Krop 1 arrived at his side and jammed the new crock into place. With a snort, Rye slammed the lid, sat down on the box and pulled the hide curtain back over the doorway.

Bean crouched forward on the driver’s seat as the slaves were tossed carelessly into the wagon behind him.

Rye watched, his face a stern mask but his heart wrung with pity, as one by one the stolen workers from Nanny’s Pride farm crawled into the dim storage space. They were ragged and exhausted. But none of them showed surprise at seeing Rye, or happiness in seeing Bird, Itch, Chub and Bean. They knew better than to show any emotion at all. They simply crouched together on the hard metal floor as if there was no fight left in them, as if they had no hope.

‘Very well!’ Rye barked when the last of the slaves was on board. ‘Open the gates!’

Two guards hurried to do his bidding. Steam billowed upward as the wagon began to ease backwards through the gateway.

Rye heard pebbles crack and snap and felt a jolt as the back rollers reached the edge of the track. Bean hauled on the wheel and the massive, chugging vehicle began turning to face the way it had come. The Diggings gates closed.

We have done it! Rye thought, dizzy with relief. We have—

He jumped violently, almost falling from his seat, as there was a deafening bang, and the huge white rock beside the wagon’s left front roller exploded into dust. Bean yelled in shock, and the wagon came to a shuddering halt.