At Canal Street, Luke reined Gallant in the opposite direction than the professor had taken the day before, away from the Old City. The power canal and rows of mill buildings stretched in this direction as well. They passed a wagon full of cotton bales and a pair of well-dressed men chatting on a bridge that spanned the canal and led to one of the mills.
Karigan tried to imagine again all the industry that must take place in the mill that she could not see with the sun reflecting off the windows. And then the midday bell rang. Raven acted predictably by attempting to bolt. This time it took Luke’s help to hold him back.
“Will you settle?” she demanded of Raven.
Raven canted his head as if considering, then shook it. But he settled.
Karigan sighed in relief. When the bells finished tolling and the last tone faded away, she had a moment or more to observe the doors of the nearest mill complex opening. Men with cudgels and whips exited, followed by workers in worn garments with ankles shackled. They shuffled out of the mills, chain links scraping the paving stones, jingling almost musically. The mill slaves were male and female. Many were children, few were old. Many looked Sacoridian, others had the skin tones and features of other nations: Hura-desh, the Under Kingdoms, the Cloud Islands, and even the desert folk of the Unclaimed Territories. Many peoples of many origins had come under the empire’s rule, and the empire had not discriminated over who it forced to serve.
“Hurry up!” one of the guards yelled at the slaves. “If ya want yer midday rations, you’ll hurry up.”
The slaves did not alter their pace. Most just watched their feet to avoid stumbling over the shackles. Some bent double with harsh coughing.
“The brown lung,” Luke muttered, following her gaze. “From breathing all the cotton dust.”
A guard prodded his group of slaves along none too gently with his cudgel. A boy fell to his knees, looked too tired to stand again. The guard grabbed him by the hair and hauled him to his feet, shouting worse obscenities at him than Karigan had ever heard on the docks of Corsa Harbor.
Karigan touched the sleeve of the jacket she wore. It was used and faded, yes, but was well-made. She thought about how its cloth, and that of all the fine dresses she wore as Kari Goodgrave, were made by the labor of slaves. Slaves dressed in rags. As the line of workers made its way across the canal bridge to the street, one of the guards waved his whip threateningly, causing Raven to sidestep and snort.
“Best that we move on,” Luke said. “They’re making Raven nervous, and you don’t need to see this.”
Karigan thought she did. She did not want to see it, but she had to witness what the emperor, Xandis Pierce Amberhill, had wrought, what he’d done to his people, and those of other nations. She couldn’t look away from the gaunt faces, misery etched in their expressions, the children looking as defeated as the adults. No, they were not children. The youth had been worked and beaten out of them. They would not know joy or play. But Luke urged Gallant into a trot, and Raven was so eager to follow he burst into a canter. Karigan had no choice but to look away and contend with the stallion.
They passed only one more mill complex, and it was the same scene, with hundreds of exhausted, shackled slaves shambling along the street like some parody of a parade. This was the future, Karigan thought, that she had to change.
• • •
The canal dog-legged to the south and the hooves of the horses thudded across a bridge that spanned the dark, quiet water. Only subtle ripples revealed that it flowed with any current. Karigan felt herself ease, breathe more freely, as they left the mills and slaves behind. Luke kept them at a trot, Gallant’s tail swishing as though they were finally getting down to business.
The city extended well beyond the canal, breaking up into neighborhoods of small houses and tenements. It was a rather sorry looking area with smashed windows, overgrown gardens, and broken fences. Trash rotted in the street. It was not the tidy, well-kept neighborhood the professor lived in.
“I don’t linger in this quarter,” Luke told her. “Most folk here aren’t bad, but the few who are won’t hesitate to murder you for a pair of boots.”
And so they trotted on, crossing another bridge over the river, the water here glimmering with a swift current. Once they were across, space opened up between buildings, and eventually habitation became sparse enough that trees grew freely, and the people had small plots of land to farm.
Eventually Luke slowed Gallant to a walk and Karigan did likewise with Raven. While still energetic and eager, the stallion had calmed down quite a bit.
Karigan tried to place the location in the context of her own time, but the land was too changed. They were well east of the city now, that much she knew. “Where are we?” she asked.
“Well, I like to take Gallant out to the Big Mounds where there is a lot of open space,” he said. “Good for riding, a breather from the city.”
The Scangly Mounds, she thought with a thrill. At least this one familiar landmark remained.
But when they reached the mounds, several had been flattened—mined for gravel—and others that Luke pointed out, had been mined for artifacts by archeologists who found only . . . gravel. Karigan used to ride Condor to the Scangly Mounds when she needed to get away from the castle. She was dismayed by the destruction. But even their remnants lent her some comfort, another link to the past, and several of the mounds still stood. She rode Raven up the biggest, which appeared to be more a granite outcrop than a mound. Scrub alder and grasses grew out of its crannies, and lichens studded the nubbly rock. She gazed at the panorama that surrounded her. While the landscape was familiar, something . . . something beyond its current condition was out of place. The mounds couldn’t have moved, could they? She scratched her head, puzzled. Maybe she wasn’t remembering correctly, or perhaps the forces that had created a river where Sacor City once stood had also changed the topography.