State of Sorrow (Untitled #1)(107)
It couldn’t have taken more than ten minutes, but to Sorrow it felt like for ever. She saw the layers of the rocks in the lamplight as they passed, the rainbow of colours in them, saw long-legged insects skittering over the surfaces away from the light, chased by pure white lizards that Braith told her gleefully had no eyes. Finally, the cage hit the ground, and Sorrow stumbled, banging her hip against the side as she tried to keep the bird in her arms. Braith pulled the door back, and all of them left the cage on shaking legs.
He led Sorrow and the soldier down a long tunnel lit at intervals by more lamps. Sorrow had expected it to be damp, but the air was clear, and clean, and the bird seemed happy enough, launching into song. She followed the miner towards the sound of metal against stone, and they entered a medium-sized cavern, where a group of twenty or so miners were busy hacking away at the glowing white rock in the walls. Five large columns of stone had been left, and Sorrow could see where a sixth was being formed by four large men carefully scraping at the rock there instead of hacking.
There were other birds down there too, dotted around in all the corners, and when Braith nodded to an empty one Sorrow carried the small cage over to a wooden crate and left the bird on it, its song mingling with that of the others.
She rejoined Braith and the soldier at a large drum full of pickaxes, taking one when it was offered and following him to a patch of wall where five other men were already working. They turned as one and looked Sorrow up and down. None of them looked impressed, and the largest of the men, towering a good foot over the next tallest, and thrice as wide as him too, went as far as to shake his head.
“Hello, I’m—”
“We know who you are,” the giant of a man said, swinging his axe and loosening a large chunk of white rock, which fell to the ground. He picked it up and dropped it in the metal bin behind them with a decisive clang, before returning and swinging the axe once more. “We don’t care.”
Sorrow waited to see if anyone else would speak, her cheeks heating, but when they didn’t she too began to hack at the rock.
Within five swings she realized she didn’t have the physical strength to keep it up for long. Already her hands felt hot from gripping the wooden handle of the axe, her shoulders beginning to ache. As if he could sense her discomfort, Braith turned to her.
“You can stop, if you like. I mean, this is it. This is what we do. Work for two hours, then a fifteen-minute break. Then back to it. Four cycles per day.”
“I can keep going.” Sorrow swung the axe again and a small chunk fell loose. Pleased, she went to pick it up, but the man who’d dismissed her earlier spoke.
“Too small,” he grunted, his own axe carving out a chunk three times the size of Sorrow’s head, which he hefted easily on to his shoulder, then into the bin.
“How is it too small?”
“No good.”
“Why not?”
The man paused, and wiped a layer of dusty sweat from his brow with a hand the size of a dinner plate. “Because I said not.”
Sorrow met his gaze. “I don’t accept that.” She picked up her small piece of rock and took it to the bin, making sure to meet his eye as she dropped it in. It didn’t make a sound, and her skin burned again as she waited for his response.
The man watched her, and the air between them became taut and brittle. The others around them had stilled, and the soldier moved closer to her, but the giant didn’t pay him any more attention than he would a fly, his stony gaze fixed on her, his expression betraying no hint of his intentions.
Then he shrugged, and the tension vanished as he turned back to his work. Sorrow’s heart was battering her ribs inside her chest, but all she did was take a deep breath and return to her part of the wall. She glanced at Braith and he gave her a brief nod of approval.
“How does the stone become homes and buildings?” Sorrow asked as she attacked the wall again.
“It’s ground down, and mixed with a binding paste, then baked, to form bricks,” Braith said, cutting out a medium-sized rock and carrying it to the bin. “The bricks are used for building.”
“So size doesn’t actually matter,” Sorrow said as she swung again and loosed another small piece.
The giant who’d decided she was his enemy stopped mid-swing, driving the handle of his axe into the ground and leaning on the curved iron top of it. “What do you want, little girl? Why are you really here?”
Sorrow lowered her axe, and mimicked his stance. “Because I don’t see how I can be the chancellor of a country if I don’t know how it works. How it’s built. Who does the building, and the mining. Because I saw the way my father governed, from a palace miles from here, a place he barely left, and I don’t think it was right. In fact, I think everything my father did was wrong. And I think I can do better. To me, that means I have to start from the ground up. No – from beneath the ground up. I have to see what the foundations of Rhannon are built on. So I’m here to learn. You don’t have to like it, but it’s happening anyway.”
She picked up her axe and swung it, carving out a decent-sized rock. Thanking the Graces for her fortune, she went to pick it up, only to find it was too heavy. Swearing under her breath, and aware she had an audience, she tried again, managing to haul it to her knees.
A large pair of hands took it from her, and carried it to the bin.