ONYX

Clang! Hiss. Onyx flung out her hand and caught the handle of a pickax. A young man was just about to bring it down for a second time on the rock in front of him.

“Bad idea, boy,” she said, her voice gravelly.

“What do you know?” He scowled, tugging the ax back.

“I’ve been slaving away in the red obsidian mines for seventeen passes of the comet. Didn’t you hear the hiss of steam escaping? If you hit that one more time, you’ll open a hole straight into the heart of the Dragon’s Maw. The air itself is hot enough to cook you where you stand.”

He swallowed and stepped back, staring at the pinprick he made. Red light shone through from the magma laying in wait below.

“Come on. This tunnel is no good to us now. Time to move on.” Onyx gestured for him to follow. They gathered the rest of their crew on the way to the entrance. The farther up they traveled, the cooler the air became until it canceled out the heat of the volcano.

The master's cabin sat just before the piece of wood that served as the door covering the hole out. It was nothing more than a room sized cave carved into the rock with tables, chairs, and shelving for extra tools. Hunched over at the table was a large man who glanced up as they approached.

“What’s this?”

“Master Packs, sir.” Onyx bowed her head to the man as he walked from the cabin. “We have hit the wall of the Dragon’s Maw. I request a new start.”

Packs grunted. He was tall for a tribesman and had twice as much hair. “Granted. The North End Mines asked for more slaves, anyway. Gather your belongings and I’ll send you up that way.”

“Yes, sir.” Onyx bowed again, keeping her head down.

“The North End? But it’s worse there! Colder and harder to find obsidian. We’ve done nothing to deserve it!”

Onyx elbowed the young man. His attitude hadn’t changed since he arrived, and it did no good. Packs eyed him, nostrils flaring and eyebrow twitching. He struck the boy, backhanding him across the face.

He cried out and hit the ground. No one moved a muscle to help him. A slave’s drive while mining on the Isle of the Dragon’s was about survival, nothing more.

“Have you forgotten where you are?” Packs stepped forward and hauled him up by the front of his shirt until they were face to face. “What’s your name?”

“Tiradel,” he whispered, his face pale.

“I don’t know who you were before, Tiradel. Some fancy priest's son, living in luxury, I’d guess, but someone sold you. You aren’t important and no one will care if you die right here, right now. Do as you’re told without complaint, or I’ll have your tongue.” Packs dropped him.

Tiradel scrambled backwards, clambering to his feet only when he was well out of reach.

“Anyone else have a problem?”

No one said a word.

“Good. Now scram.”

Onyx hurried out, leading the group through the crooked door and onto the surface. A freezing wind hit their faces, blowing back Onyx’s limp red hair from her face. She hugged her threadbare shirt closer to her thin frame and leaned into the wind. Snow swirled everywhere, but it never piled up on the ground. The heat of the magma below melted every flake that landed.

Other slaves marched around them, wearing warmer clothes. Onyx didn’t envy them. She would much rather toil away in the warmth of the mines with the threat of cave-ins or magma leaks than be stuck up here in the icy wind.

Tribesmen stood at every corner, wearing cloaks, hats, and gloves made of fur. Onyx never could figure out why they needed all the extra fur when they had enough on their face to keep them warm.

Most of the slaves following Onyx had split off to their own cabins by the time she reached hers. She shared it with twelve others, none part of her mining group. Once she was gone, they would fight over her bunk. It was in the warmest corner of the hut and she had fought tooth and nail to hold on to it.

No one was in the cabin now, so she set her pick ax, second pair of clothes, a tiny piece of red obsidian, and some food she had stolen onto her blanket. She tied it around the ax head and slung her only cloak around her shoulders, hefted her belongings, and made her way to the transfer station.

She was the first one to arrive, with each member of her group showing up by ones and twos. She recognized each of their faces, but barely knew their names. Groups changed, people died. It was no use learning everyone’s name just to have six transferred and two more die in a cave-in next week.

Packs checked them off as they arrived and handed the list over to the tribesman in charge of taking slaves between the mines.

“Gather ‘round, gather ‘round. Listen closely, I will only warn you once. Keep to the pack. Don’t stray behind. There are dragons in these parts and they’re getting hungrier by the day. Run if you want, but it’s your funeral. We have a two-day march to the North End, so keep your wits about you. Follow me.”

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The march was more brutal than Onyx ever imagined. In seventeen passes, she never once had to transfer, and she counted herself lucky. Wind howled. The sun sat in a perpetual twilight. They could only see as far as the person in front of them with all the swirling snow. When they stopped for the night, everyone huddled together on the ground, digging their toes into the warm dirt.

Onyx kept up by opening a cache in her mind she had sealed long ago. She had lost her family when rogue knights attacked their home. They had tried to take her son, and when she refused, they stuck her with a dagger and left her to die mere steps away from her front door. The last thing she remembered was her husband's tear-stained face.

When she woke up next, her wound was stitched and bandaged, but her hands were tied and she was surrounded by others in a wagon bound for the Seaside Port and into slavery.

Her kids would be grown now, eighteen and twenty-three. She spent the time imagining who they would be if they had survived. If she hadn’t run from her first marriage, her son would be a prince, in line for the throne. Onyx smiled grimly. If that had come true, she would have him go to war with the tribesmen, get rid of slavery for good. But it wasn’t meant to be. She hated the lord she was forced to marry. Twenty comet passes her senior and his hair was graying. Running from that marriage and settling down in an Unmapped had been the best choice of her life.

An immense weight lifted from Onyx’s shoulders when two pinpricks of light shone in the distance, flickering violently in the wind. She kept her eyes locked on them until a dark shape emerged from the snow behind them. The gate to the North End Mines.

Clanking accompanied the opening of the huge gate as guards in the towers cranked the chains to pull them open. The towering walls blocked some of the wind as they passed into camp. Onyx’s hair was a tangled mess, and her cloak fell limp over her back.

The leading tribesman stopped them outside a low building and ducked inside. Another came out and inspected the group. Onyx risked a glance at him. This man’s face was creased with lines, but they weren’t from laughter. The scowl he wore was ugly, and his black teeth did nothing to improve his image. He wouldn’t be quite so easy to work for as Packs.

“You may have been grouped together in your last home, but not here. Each of you will be assigned a partner to show you the ropes. Stick with them. If you are found without your partner in the first week, you will be flogged. If you are found disobeying in any way, your partner will be flogged. Wait here, until they retrieve you.”

Onyx prepared herself for a long wait, but was pleasantly surprised when another woman tapped her on the shoulder only moments later.

“Come with me,” she said. A hat covered her ears and hair, but she had a friendly face. Onyx followed, memorizing the camp as best she could. The woman led her into a cabin much like the one she had vacated, only smaller and with fewer bunks.

“You’ll be in here with me, Gram, and Liz. My name is Valia.” She stuck out her hand and Onyx gripped her forearm.

“Onyx.”

Valia smiled, and it changed her entire demeanor. She looked younger, less like a beat down slave and more like a person.

“Welcome to the North End Mines, Onyx.”

Onyx sat her stuff on her bunk, carefully pulling the red obsidian from the pack.

“How’d you get away with keeping that?” Valia asked, raising an eyebrow.

“Back when I was first brought here, when I was still young and beautiful, my master took a special liking to me. I discovered then the knife wound I had sustained a couple of weeks before messed up my ability to have children. I never thought I’d be so grateful for being stabbed.”

Valia’s smile faded and her face darkened. “Why do you keep it?”

“Two reasons.” Onyx closed her fingers over the rock. “To remind me no matter how much someone likes me, I’m still just an object, and because one day it may just be my salvation.”

“I’ve never understood what’s so valuable about it,” Valia said, glaring at the tiny rock.

“It protects against the Ghosts.”

“Are you serious?” Valia hissed, checking to make sure no one had overheard.

Onyx shrugged and slipped the obsidian into a pocket she had sewn into her boot. “That’s what they say. I’d rather not test it if I can help it.”

“Agreed,” Valia said. “We should hurry to the mess hall. If we miss dinner, we don’t get to eat.”

Onyx barely touched her stew. The carrots were soggy and the potatoes hard, but the taste wasn’t what curbed her appetite.

“What’s up?” Valia asked, sucking down her own stew as if she hadn’t eaten in days.

“It’s just…I turned off thinking of anything except the here and now for a long time, but the march changed that.”

“What were you thinking about?”

Onyx watched Valia slurp the last of the broth from her bowl and slid her own untouched stew to her. She attacked it ferociously.

“Where were you before the mines?”

Valia stopped eating and glanced at Onyx, the spoon halfway to her mouth.

“I’ve been here since I was twelve.” She dropped her gaze to the bowl, lowering the spoon.

“Maybe, but you weren’t in the mines that long. You’d look a lot more like me, scars, burns, and the like. And you’re obviously not used to the rations.”

She sighed and sat back, tapping the spoon against the bowl, lips pursed.

“Look,” Onyx said, leaning forward. “We’ve only known each other for a couple hours, but I’m not here to judge. We need someone to trust.”

Valia nodded, took a breath, and met Onyx’s eyes. “I was a bed slave, passed around from master to master, and we were given the same rations as everyone else. The problem is, it’s just not enough anymore.” Her hand went to her stomach.

“How long?”

“They discovered it two months in. I’ve been here for a month now.”

Onyx’s fists curled, her fingernails biting deep into her palms. “On that march, I remembered what it was like to live. To make your own choices. I lived in a world where I was unable to decide for myself until I was nineteen. I ran and spent the next six passes in bliss.”

“What happened?”

“My family was killed, and I was brought here. It’s taken me another seventeen passes to realize my worth again.” She lowered her voice, glancing around. “It’s time we take our lives back into our own hands.”

A slow smile spread across Valia’s face and she took another bite of stew.