02_Chapter_One_—_The_Tower_Watch
Imperial Year 119, the thirty-seventh year of the Seventh Emperor.
By then few remembered that an emperor was a mortal thing, or that a throne had ever stood empty. Nineteen years before, Grig Orig had borne the Emperor, his ministers, and the Academy of Science away from the earth. Ever since, that palace, held in the sky by the works of the Ancient Age, had moved slowly above the Imperial dominions. When its shadow crossed a city wall, the banners upon that wall changed colour. When its scholars entered the wilderness, nameless rivers, mountains, and ruins received numbers.
The Empire believed that whatever could be measured, entered into record, and held by soldiers had thereby been returned to human hands.
Excavation Site Seventy-Four had no name.
It had only a number, a pit, and more than forty living men.
Before dawn had fully broken, Edge and Giddy lay against the timber rail of the watchtower and wagered how many times the overseer would descend into the pit that day.
“Four,” Giddy said.
“Three.”
“He’s having them wrap his boots.”
Edge narrowed his eyes. Before the white tent in the middle of the camp, the overseer stood with his arms spread while labourers bound cloth tightly about his sleeves and trouser legs. Another man knelt before him, brushing sand from his high boots. The overseer held up one foot with solemn dignity, as though he waited not to crawl into a hole, but to be crowned.
“Maybe he only wants his boots cleaned,” Edge said.
“For the fourth time today?”
“That’s why he’s an Imperial.”
Giddy considered this and, finding no answer, held out his hand all the same.
“Half a cake.”
“He hasn’t gone down yet.”
“Dressed like that, what else can he do?”
“Let’s see how long an Imperial can stand on one foot.”
“You don’t know how to lose.”
“I just don’t believe he’ll dare.”
At last the overseer walked towards the pit.
Giddy seized Edge by the shoulder guard and dragged him to the rail. Edge shoved him away, and the two boys collided in the narrow watchtower, their heels booming on the old planks. Someone below shouted a curse. At that moment the morning wind caught a rag thick with sand and snagged it on the muzzle of Edge’s pistol.
“Enemy attack!” Giddy cried to Edge in mock alarm.
Edge flicked the rag over the rail.
“Imperial standard.”
They laughed so hard they nearly pitched over the wooden rail.
Edge laughed too. He was fifteen, the youngest in the company, and had not yet learned the habit of older mercenaries: before you laughed, look about and see who must not hear you.
Two soldiers steadied the rope ladder at the pit. A labourer descended first with a lamp. The flame soon sank out of sight. The overseer’s newly cleaned boots hesitated at the opening, then vanished after it.
Giddy held out his hand again.
“Four.”
“We count after the watch changes.”
“Will the cake grow larger by then?”
“No. So why hurry?”
Every day, dozens of baskets of grey earth rose from Site Seventy-Four.
From sunrise until dark the lifting frame turned above the pit. At every turn of the windlass its wooden teeth gave the same complaint. The baskets came up laden with earth and shards of stone; they went down with water, lamp oil, braces, and newly sharpened tools. Sometimes they carried people upward—the injured, the fevered, or those covered from head to foot in cloth who would never again need to count how many mouthfuls of water remained to them.
All the grey earth was tipped west of the camp. In two months the mound had grown higher than the tents. Under the morning light it had the pallor of bone. The wilderness wind could carry off the red sand, but scarcely stirred this fine and heavy dust. It had none of the rank smell of soil and did not cling to a sweating hand. It seemed flaked from the vast remains of something long dead and never decayed.
The Imperial scholars forbade the mercenaries to approach the finds.
At times sealed wooden chests came out of the pit. Armed soldiers always surrounded them. Before they were carried away they received no names, only strings of numbers painted on their sides. Edge had once asked Doran what lay within.
Doran told him that anything worth an Imperial’s money to conceal was seldom worth a mercenary’s life to look upon twice.
Edge had not asked again.
Yet during the night watch he sometimes heard a faint scraping from the bottom of the pit. It was not the sound of a pick, nor the groan of timber bearing weight. It was more like something pinned beneath the deep stone, slowly turning its body upon the other side.
Bana said it was rock contracting in the cold.
Giddy said rocks did not sleep.
Bana answered that the Empire did not pay him enough to worry about the sleep of stones.
The watch signal sounded twice below.
Edge shook his flask. Two mouthfuls remained. He drank one and kept the other for afternoon.
At the sound, Giddy forgot the bread and held out the same hand for the flask.
“Trade me the cake,” Edge said.
“That half is mine already.”
“Then you have nothing to trade.”
They descended the rope ladder. Giddy deliberately stepped on Edge’s hand, and Edge kicked him in the calf. Squeezing together through the last few rungs, they nearly brought the ladder down with them.
Bana sat in the tower’s shadow pulling on his boots. He did not look up.
“Falling off the watchtower doesn’t count as death in service.”
“Will the Empire pay?” Giddy asked.
“Wear your mercenary tag wrong and they won’t even recognise the corpse.”
The Empire recorded no name for an untagged mercenary. The thin metal plate bore company, number, and compensation class. In life it took a man through checkpoints; in death it decided how much his body was worth. Bana called this one of the Empire’s rarer forms of fairness. At least it told every man in advance what price he would fetch when dead.
He worked his feet into his boots, stood, and stamped twice.
“If you two mean to fight, do it away from the lifting frame. If the cable breaks, the men below can’t come up. If your necks break, you can’t go down.”
“He owes me bread,” Giddy said.
“Then wait till he’s dead and take it.”
“Doesn’t a dead man’s gear belong to the company?”
“That is why you must be quick.”
Giddy looked as though he were giving the matter serious thought.
Edge raised his foot to kick him again, but Bana had already taken the ladder and begun his slow ascent. Halfway up, he looked back.
“Boy.”
Both boys looked up.
Bana pointed at Edge.
“The overseer’s gone down a fourth time. Give him the cake. It’s about time you two got to work.”
Giddy was on him at once.
The midday ration was being given out.
Hard barley cakes came out of a sack, one to a man. Salt meat went only to those who entered the pit that day, one thin slice apiece. When the cook had finished cutting it, he scraped the last grains of salt from the board back into the jar with the spine of his knife. The nearest well lay half a day away; the nearest town where supplies might be had was three days’ journey. Here, nothing was divided into new and old. There was only what could be used once more and what could not.
Halan had not come for his ration.
He crouched beside the lifting frame replacing a rope. The old fibres pierced his palm, and blood mingled with the dark-red sand. Edge carried over two cakes and set one beside his foot.
Halan lifted his chin in thanks.
He seldom spoke. At first the company had thought him ill-tempered. Later they understood that he believed most things could be said with the hands: one finger down meant lower the rope, a fist meant stop, two fingers crooked inward meant draw it back. If a man still failed to understand, Halan pointed once more with his chin. In any given day there were seldom ten matters that truly required a voice.
He passed the new rope around the post, took it twice about, drew it tight, and signalled for Edge to hold the other end.
Edge leaned back. The rope gave a low, taut sound. The post did not move.
At the last, Halan pressed his thumb once into the head of the knot.
The touch did nothing. The knot had already bitten deep into the timber; three men might have hung from it without loosening it. Yet Halan always pressed it, as though without that needless gesture the work were not truly done.
Edge helped him coil the severed rope. The lengths that could still bear weight were kept. Frayed pieces were parted into strands; the longer of these would mend canvas or leather armour, while the shortest would kindle a fire.
Halan took the coil, then suddenly laid his bleeding palm against the post.
Edge watched him.
“What is it?”
Halan did not answer.
Beside the pit, the windlass continued to turn, one notch after another. The empty basket descended. The meshing wooden teeth sent a tremor through the lifting frame, so faint beneath Halan’s hand that it was almost nothing.
He looked down into the pit and shook his head.
It was not nothing.
Only that the thing for which none of them yet had words was not yet great enough to make them lay aside their work.
Wages were paid that afternoon.
The caravan would leave at dawn. For a road fee it carried wages to villages, camps, and other excavations along its route. On pay day the clerk set a low table outside his tent, cut each mercenary’s name, money, and destination into a thin wooden tally, then sorted the purses into chests according to road.
Giddy stood ahead of Edge.
“Still the northern excavation?” the clerk asked.
Giddy nodded and pushed the purse forward. He tied its mouth with two similar knots. The first was drawn hard; the second left a loose tail of cord.
“Your brother knows it by that?” Edge asked.
“His second knot is uglier.”
“You haven’t seen him in half a year. Perhaps he’s learned.”
“Impossible.”
Giddy answered too quickly, as though he knew beyond doubt that the world must contain a few things that would never change.
He sent no letter. Neither brother knew many characters, and the caravan folk might not have agreed to read for them. If the money arrived and the sender yet lived, that was letter enough.
Bana divided his wages in two as always. One part went inside his coat. The other he rolled narrow and hid in a pocket sewn into the shaft of his right boot. As always, he first removed the left boot, searched it for some time, cursed, and changed feet.
“Why two parts?” Giddy asked.
“One for the living. One for the dead.”
“Which is which?”
“When I die, open them and see.”
When Edge’s turn came, the clerk asked him the same question.
“Where shall it be sent?”
“Give it to me.”
“I asked where your home is.”
Men were waiting behind him. Edge did not turn. He merely held out his hand a little farther.
“Just give it to me.”
The clerk struck the blank for destination from the tally and handed him the purse.
Edge sat beside the tent, brought out needle and thread, and sewed the wages into the inside of his belt.
The stitches must be short, and the thread not drawn too tight, or heat would split the leather along the holes. His foster father had taught him that. The hunter had used the same stitch to hide coin, close a wound, and sew shut a gutted animal so that the smell of blood would not bring other things upon the road home.
Since his foster father’s death, Edge had needed only the first.
“Hide it as well as you like. When you’re dead, the man who searches you will have it.” Bana leaned against the tent pole, picking his teeth.
Edge bit through the thread.
“Then why keep yours in your boot?”
“Because I won’t die that easily.”
Giddy crouched beside them with the half cake he had won.
“Can a mercenary decide that?”
“A mercenary decides three things.”
Bana looked elsewhere as he spoke, as though the words were meant for no one.
“Take your pay. Keep your mouth shut. Keep your life. Why the Empire digs, and what it finds, are none of ours to worry over.”
“What is the fourth?”
“There is no fourth.”
“Where does bread belong?”
“Ask again and I’ll eat it for Edge.”
Giddy hid the cake behind his back at once.
Bana bent to look for the sock he had just taken off. He searched the water bucket first, then dropped beside a wooden chest and reached into the shadow beneath it. His three rules remained there upon the afternoon sand, no different from any other complaint that did not need repeating once it had been spoken.
Edge did not remember them then.
When Doran emerged from the overseer’s tent, his pistol was already at his belt.
On an ordinary patrol of the excavation site, he carried only a short gun and a knife. A long gun caught too easily on the ropes and was awkward in the pit; and if a bio-engineered creature passed the watchtowers and came close enough for a man to make out its shape, it was usually too late for the choice of weapon to matter. Today, however, Doran had brought the long gun as well. He had even retied the holster so that its grip lay ready beneath his hand.
Halan noticed. He put the last of his cake into his mouth and began gathering his tools.
“They’re short of men on the third level,” Doran said.
Bana’s head appeared from beneath the chest.
“Living ones or dead ones?”
“We’ll know when we get down there.”
“Work like that costs extra.”
“Come back alive and we’ll discuss it.”
“So it doesn’t.”
Doran ignored him and looked at Edge.
“You’re with me.”
“I’m coming too,” Giddy said.
“You stay above.”
“Why?”
“Because I called for one man.”
Giddy opened his mouth to argue. Bana finally recovered his sock from under the chest and cuffed the back of the boy’s head as he stood.
“Captain says one thing at a time. If you don’t understand, wait for the next sentence.”
Doran came to Edge and tugged at his shoulder guard. The strap on the left had worked half loose during the morning’s horseplay. Doran fed it back through the buckle and pulled it tight.
“Take the guard examination in spring.”
“No.”
“Take it.”
“With a tag, I’d only be guarding a different hole for the Empire.”
“The pay is a tenth better.”
“Doesn’t buy me another life.”
“If you die, there’s compensation.”
Edge looked up at him.
“For whom?”
Doran’s hand stopped upon the buckle.
Someone dragged two empty water buckets past the tent. The scrape of their bottoms over sand and stone moved slowly away between them. The lifting frame brought another basket of pale earth into the daylight. A labourer caught it and tipped its burden upon the mound that rose higher every day.
Doran smoothed the strap flat.
“Then stay alive until you find someone.”
He turned away to inspect the gear for the descent.
Edge touched the buckle at his shoulder. The strap was too tight; when he raised his arm, it chafed the side of his neck. He waited until Doran had gone, then loosened it by one hole.
Giddy broke a corner from the half cake he had won and pushed it into Edge’s hand.
“You can owe me.”
“I’m the one who lost.”
“You haven’t even got anyone to collect from you.”
Edge lifted a foot to kick him.
The first impact came from beneath the earth.
Every rope upon the lifting frame trembled at once.
The sound was not loud. It was less than the blow of a loaded basket against the wall of the pit. It entered through the soles of Edge’s boots and climbed the bones of his legs; by the time it reached his chest, only a dull vibration remained.
Halan was already running for the windlass.
He kicked the brake wedge between the wooden teeth. The reversing handle swept round and struck a labourer in the chest. The basket stopped in mid-air, and several lumps of pale earth spilled over its rim and fell back into the pit.
Everyone waited for them to strike the bottom.
A long while passed. No echo came.
One by one the sounds of the camp fell away. A knife hung above a cut of meat; water waited at the lip of a cup; halfway down the rope ladder, a man remained with one foot raised. Even the wind against the overseer’s white tent seemed to have withdrawn into the distance.
The second impact came nearer than the first.
A skin of fine ash slid down the western mound. The overseer’s tent flap burst outwards, and an Imperial scholar stumbled through it clutching plans he had not had time to roll.
The alarm bell rang.
Three short strokes.
Doran drew his gun.
“Halan, hold the line. Bana, take the second party. Giddy, guard—”
A scream rose from the bottom of the pit.
It ended halfway, taken up by another sound.
None of them had ever heard its like. It was as though countless hard shells buried in the strata had begun to grind together, or some vast living thing without lung or throat were borrowing the whole ruin to draw its first breath.
Doran changed the order.
“Everyone down.”
The camp broke into motion.
Bana kicked aside the wooden chest and dragged out his gun. Halan released the windlass and wound the safety line about his forearm. Giddy clenched the rest of the cake between his teeth so that both hands were free for the rocket launcher. Imperial soldiers crowded towards the opening. The overseer’s cries reached them from below, no longer sounding like the man who had ordered others to clean his boots that morning.
Edge snatched up his gun and ran after Doran towards the rope ladder.
As he crossed the lifting frame, the corner of cake fell from his hand and rolled into the shadow of a timber post. Giddy called after him. Edge could not tell whether it was a warning or merely a demand that he make way.
For one hundred and nineteen years, the annals of the Empire had recorded emperors, wars, and conquered nations. They had recorded the year the palace rose into the sky, and every ruin to which the Empire had given a new number.
They would not record that piece of bread.
Edge did not turn back.