Stolen Songbird (The Malediction Trilogy, #1)(61)

“You can relax now,” Tips said. “Ain’t no one but us down here. Guild only comes down when there’s a problem.”

His words, I noticed, were not meant just for me. Everyone relaxed out of their postures of forced submissiveness. Where there had previously been slumped shoulders and lowered heads, I now saw straight backs and raised faces. I wondered if tension always ran high when they were around the guild or if it was only a function of my presence, hidden in their midst.

We left the crates in a pile and walked over to a long row of metal carts sitting idle on rails that led off down the tunnels. “Get in,” Tips said.

“I can walk.” I hadn’t grown that soft.

He grinned. “No one walks. Not when we can ride. Now get in.”

Zoé and I got into the dusty cart. “Hold on,” Tips laughed. Grabbing the handles of the cart, he gave it a hard shove. We started slowly, then picked up speed until Tips was sprinting. Then he leapt on the back of the cart and it surged forward. “Woo hoo!” he shouted, and shouts from the rest of the gang echoed after us as we all flew through the tunnels.

At first I was terrified. The cart seemed out of control, and with every turn I was convinced we’d all meet our dooms, but my fear soon turned to euphoria. I was having fun. The miners shouted rude jokes over the squeal of the metal wheels, and Zoé and I screamed and clutched each other every time we surged down a decline.

The ride ended all too soon. Tips pulled a lever on the side of the cart, and with the piercing wail of metal against metal, we ground to a halt. “Fun part’s over. Now it’s time to get to work. You ready to pick up the slack, Zoé?”

“I need to stay with Cécile,” the girl said, shooting me an apprehensive look. Clearly this had not been part of the agreement.

“And we need to make quota,” Tips said. His voice was conversational, cheerful, even; but the expression on his face was not. “Two of my gang are having the first and only days off of their lives so that her Highness can undertake this little excursion. She can’t help, but you can. Prissy as you are, Zoé, and I mean that in the most affectionate way, you’re still stronger than three of my boys combined. Might be we even get ahead of the game with you down here today. Cogs!” he shouted. “Get Zoé started on detonations.”

“What sort of quotas?” I asked, watching Zoé and the rest of the miners turn down another tunnel.

“Production quotas are what we live and die for down here,” Tips said, settling down on the floor of the tunnel. “It’s the amount of product each gang is expected to deliver each month. Lean against the magic girding the tunnel, girl, it will keep you warmer.”

I did as he said, and when we were both comfortable, he continued. “Product is mostly gold down this way, but there’s all manner of glittery things hidden in the mountain. The guild keeps track of where each gang is at and gives us the numbers at the beginning of each shift. If we make monthly quota, all’s good. If we don’t…” He shrugged. “Not so good.”

“What happens if you don’t?”

“If we don’t, then someone from the gang gets sent into the labyrinth as sluag-fodder.”

I hugged my arms around my middle. “They kill one of you just because you didn’t mine enough gold? How do they decide who goes?”

Tips chuckled. “They don’t. Those maggot-gobbling guild members are too clever for that. They make us choose who has to go.”

Clever indeed. And cruel. “How do you choose?”

Tips picked up a rock, tossing it from one hand to another. Which struck me as an oddly human gesture, although I couldn’t pinpoint why. “If we’re lucky, someone will volunteer. There’s those who have had enough of the never-ending toil, the fear of cave-ins… Those who’d rather meet their end now than go on another day in the mines. And if we’re not fortunate enough to have one of those optimists in our mix, then we choose whoever is holding the gang back.”

“How often do gangs miss quota?”

Tips set the rock down. “Rare for more than a few months to pass where at least one gang doesn’t have to send someone.”

So frequent. I stirred a finger in the bits of rock by my feet, trying to imagine having to choose which one of my friends to send to their death. Not just once, but having to choose on a regular basis. The guilt would be overwhelming.

“Cover your ears,” Tips said abruptly.

I barely managed to clap my hands over my ears as the tunnels echoed with a loud boom. Dust coughed over us, but Tips didn’t look the slightest bit concerned. “We’re going to get all sorts of work done with Zoé here,” he said with a smile.

“If she’s so powerful, why isn’t she a miner?” I mused.

“You really don’t know anything, do you?”

Tristan’s words echoed through my mind. In Trollus, power is king. “It’s because she’s powerful that she isn’t down here.”


Tips nodded. “They know when we’re children how powerful we are likely to be, and when we get auctioned off, those like élise and Zoé get picked up to be servants. Having more magic makes your presence…” he searched for the word, “desirable to the full-bloods. Then there’s those with little or no magic. All they tend to be good for is street cleaning and sewers. Dirty jobs that can be done by hand rather than magic. Everyone else goes to the mines.”