Once, there had been a small town called Eregos, on the edge of the wastes. It had been founded by a group of refugees led by a man named Eregos, hence the name. It had been a lonely town, with solid walls and solid people. But it had been a happy town.

Almost eighty years after the founding of Eregos, surveyors from the Lord’s House had found an iron ore vein not a hundred kilometres away. The people of the town had decided that they would stay where they were. They were happy, their children were happy, and it had taken quite a long time to irrigate the land well enough to grow the crops that sustained them.

Besides, a hundred kilometres was a long way, wasn’t it?

Eighty-six years after the founding of Eregos, a girl was born in the town. She was not the first girl to be born in the town, nor would she be the last. Her parents named her Ora, and she was healthy and happy.

Ninety-two years after the founding of Eregos, the solid walls were broken open in the early dawn light by a catapult decorated with large, ornate suns. Twelve years was more than enough time to cross a hundred kilometres, after all.

Six-year-old Ora was huddled in the town hall with the other children and the few adults who were too elderly or infirm to fight. She did not see what happened to her parents, to the other children’s parents, to the families of the people who stayed in that hall.

She heard shouts and screams and crashes. Children and babies cried. Adults flinched and muttered soothing words. Eventually, the doors were broken down. Only the babies were not put in chains.

A hundred and thirty one people were captured from the town called Eregos. Eight of them had died of their injuries by the time they had made the nearly hundred kilometre trip to iron mine called Outer Light.

Three hundred slaves shared a routine in the mine called Outer Light. They woke before dawn to pray under the strict eyes of men with whips and books. They broke their fasts at dawn with bland, stale gruel. And then they went to work, digging stone out of an ever-growing pit.

Those children from Eregos under the age of five disappeared, after the rest were deposited at the mine. No one ever heard where they had gone, but those parents who survived hoped it was somewhere better than this.

The first time Ora was publicly whipped was when she was seven years old. She had a big cut in her left calf from where a wooden support had burst open, and so she couldn’t walk fast enough for the man with the whip and the book.

The last time Ora was publicly whipped was when she was fourteen years old. She was menstruating for the first time, and she’d not been enthusiastic enough about being someone’s fourth wife for the man with the whip and the book.

Escape attempts were common at the iron mine called Outer Light. Escapes, even, were common. The only option an escaped slave had was to go south, into the wastes where slavers roamed. According to some of the returned escapees, the slavers had positively salivated at the payout they would get from returning a slave to the Lord’s House.

All the slaves at Outer Light knew of the grand and shining city of Haven, somewhere out in the wastes, where everyone was free. Many claimed to know how to reach it. Some people liked to think that those slaves that didn’t come back to Outer Light had found Haven. Ora suspected they had died some other way in the wastes.

The prospect of getting married was enough that Ora was willing to risk dying in the wastes. Most of what Ora knew about marriage came from the various men with whips and books droning on during pre-dawn prayers. Everything else came from the women who had been second and third and fourth and fifth wives until they got too old to have more children.

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Ora knew enough.

So, with several conflicting routes to the grand and beauteous city of Haven in her head, Ora waited for night, climbed out a window, and left the iron mine called Outer Light.

There was more to it than that, but once she was away, it felt as if it really had been that easy. Men with whips and books didn’t care to consider that their subjects may just up and leave, despite the evidence. And there was nowhere to go, anyway.

Ora had had to crawl on her stomach in the sand. Had to press her hands over her mouth lest the sound of her breathing give away her position. Had stand in an outhouse for nearly half an hour so that the jangling chains around her ankles wouldn’t alert a patrolling proselytiser.

Even with the manacles on her ankles, the mine was well over the horizon by the time the sun started to rise. Ora considered saying some sort of prayer. She was supposed to, after all. But if the Lord of Light was really supposed to be so good, she figured he could cut her some slack right then.

As she trudged her way through the sand, Ora was surprised to find herself missing her morning gruel. She was hungry. She didn’t know how to hunt or forage. She hadn’t thought to bring any food with her.

Much more pressing, she hadn’t thought to bring any water with her.

The sun beat down on her as it did every day. But there had been shade in the mine. There had been water. There had been food. There had been company. There had been familiarity.

Ora wondered if that was why more people didn’t escape. Admittedly, it had seemed like it would be more difficult than it actually was. But Ora was struggling to think of any particularly good reason why she hadn’t just climbed out a window when she was six years old.

She had always worried that she would regret it. The threat of slavers, of more beatings, of dying in the desert had been enough conscious reason not to try it. And it was her home, she supposed.

The town called Eregos had once been her home. Others from that town still thought of it as home, still called it home. But Ora had lived in Outer Light longer than she’d lived in Eregos. And she couldn’t help but think of that village as gone.

Ora tried not to think about it as she slogged through the sand. She tried not to think of all the people from Eregos who she’d left in Outer Light. She tried not to think of all the people from all over who she’d left in Outer Light. She wondered about all the people who’d been taken away over the last seven and a half years. Taken to a better life.

There was sand in her mouth. There was sand in her eyes. There was and in her lungs. There was sand in the oozing sores around her ankles.

Stone shards clogged the keyhole on Ora’s fetters. The rest of the stone was gripped in her shaking hands. Just in case she ran into some slavers. Though she would have accepted running into a cactus.

The more Ora thought about it, the more she was realising how much time the slaves back in Outer Light had spent talking about escaping. Whispering in the middle of the night about escaping.

And yet she was still half tempted to go back and hand herself in. Maybe the beating wouldn’t be so bad if she handed herself in. Except that Ora was quite certain that drowning in sand would be preferable to getting married to some middle-aged citizen of the Lord’s House.

Luckily for Ora, she found cactus before she found slavers. Even luckier for Ora, she found one of the types of cactus that was supposed to be easier to eat. Looking at the ball of lengthy spines, she wasn’t convinced her information had been good.

Unluckily for Ora, she had no idea how to start a fire.

Ora was much more upset than she would have liked. Her dress no longer had sleeves and her ankles were showing. The fact that her hands weren’t bleeding any more should have been enough to reassure her, but it wasn’t.

At the very least, after managing to eat three prickly pears, Ora didn’t feel quite so much like she was going to drown in the sand.

The plan had been to bring some with her, to eat later. But it seemed only fair to eat them right away, given how much she’d gone through to make them edible at all. It felt like more work than escaping Outer Light had been.

When eventually night started to crawl across the sand, and Ora had seen no sign of Lord’s House soldiers or slavers, she decided to find somewhere to sleep. She was still far enough from the wastes to find some grass and trees, where the ground was a little prickly but not so coarse.

Ora woke before dawn, of course. Her mouth was dry and she was covered in a layer of fine sand. She felt like two days without a morning prayer would be pushing it. If the Lord of Light was going to punish her for impropriety, he would do it in the wastes.