Sighing, Sordiko Qualm cavorted away-but no, from behind it was more a saunter. Approaching was a cavort, leaving was a saunter. ‘Sordiko Saunter Qualm Cavort, she comes and goes but never quite leaves, my love of loves, my better love than that excuse for love I once thought was real love but let’s face it love it wasn’t, not like this love. Why, this love is the big kind, the swollen kind, the towering kind, the rutting gasping pumping exploding kind! Oh, I hurt myself.’
Mogora snorted. ‘You wouldn’t know real love if it bit you in the face.’
‘Keep that armpit away from me, woman!’
‘You’ve turned this temple into a madhouse, Iskaral Pust. You turn every temple you live in into a madhouse! So here we are, contemplating mutual murder, and what does your god want from us? Why, nothing! Nothing but waiting, always waiting! Bah, I’m going shopping!’
‘At last!’ Iskaral crowed.
‘And you’re coming with me, to carry my purchases.’
‘Not a chance. Use the mule.’
‘Stand up or I’ll have my way with you right here.’
‘In the holy vestry? Are you insane?’
‘Rutting blasphemy. Will Shadowthrone be pleased?’
‘Fine! Shopping, then. Only no leash this time.’
‘Then don’t get lost.’
‘I wasn’t lost, you water buffalo, I was escaping.’
‘I’d better get the leash again.’
‘And I’ll get my knife!’
Oh, how marriage got in the way of love! The bonds of mutual contempt drawn tight until the victims squeal, but is it in pain or pleasure? Is there a difference? But that is a question not to be asked of married folk, oh no.
And in the stables the mule winks at the horse and the horse feels breakfast twisting in her gut and the flies, well, they fly from one lump of dung to another, convinced that each is different from the last, fickle creatures that they are, and there is no wisdom among the fickle, only longing and frustration, and the buzz invites the next dubious conquest smelling so fragrant in the damp straw.
Buzz buzz.
Amidst masses of granite and feverish folds of bedrock veined with glittering streaks, the mining operation owned by Humble Measure was an enormous pit facing a cliff gouged with caves and tunnels. Situated equidistant between Darujhistan and Gredfallan Annexe and linked by solid raised roads, the mine and its town-sized settlement had a population of eight hundred. Indentured workers, slaves, prisoners, work chiefs, security guards, cooks, carpenters, potters, rope makers, clothes makers and menders, charcoal makers, cutters and nurses, butchers and bakers the enterprise seethed with activity. Smoke filled the air. Old women with bleeding hands clambered through the heaps of tailings collecting shreds of slag and low quality chunks of coal. Gulls and crows danced round these rag-clad, hunched figures.
Not a single tree was left standing anywhere within half a league of the mine. Down on a slope on the lakeside was a humped cemetery in which sat a few hundred shallow graves. The water just offshore was lifeless and stained red, with a muddy bottom bright orange in colour.
Scented cloth held to his face, Gorlas Vidikas observed the operation which he now managed, although perhaps “managed” was the wrong word. The day to day necessities were the responsibility of the camp workmaster, a scarred and pock-faced man in his fifties with decades-old scraps of raw metal still embedded in his hands. He hacked out a cough after every ten words or so, and spat thick yellow mucus down between his bronze-capped boots.
‘The young ’uns go the fastest, of course.’ Cough, spit. ‘Our moles or so we call ’em, since they can squeeze inta cracks no grown-up can get through,’ cough, spit, ‘and this way if there’s bad air it’s none of our stronger workers get killed.’ Cough… ‘We was havin’ trouble gettin’ enough young ’uns for a time there, until we started buyin’
’em from the poorer fam’lies both in and outa the city-they got too many runts t’feed, ye see? An’ we got special rules for the young ’uns-nobody gets their hands on ’em, if you know what I mean.
‘From them it goes on up. A miner lasts maybe five years, barring falls and the like. When they get too sick we move ’em outa the tunnels, make ’em shift captains. A few might get old enough for foreman-I was one of them, ye see. Got my hands dirty as a lad and ’ere I am and if that’s not freedom I don’t know what is, hey?’
This workmaster, Gorlas Vidikas silently predicted, would be dead inside three years. ‘Any trouble with the prisoners?’ he asked.