Lucius, Sera Lynnfield, and Aisha arrived at the gold mine prison camp beneath the noon sun. The stripped mountain slope sat surrounded by a jungle rim, beholding the sun like a pottery bowl rooted into the island. A mountain peak had once reigned in the fog, but the cap had been blown off a few generations past, according to the local tradition. A hero with skin like a moonlit night is said to have slain the fire demon at the heart of the island, and forever stayed the molten rock, as though he had healed an oozing wound.
I never did corroborate the tale. In particular the description of his skin color is peculiar. All humans, even the most debauched and sunburned curs of the wastelands, keep a red hue to their flesh. A moonlit night implies he had perhaps something inorganic to his body, but no such technology existed in that primitive land. Regardless of plausibility, the legend persisted through the local psyche and let the workers toil in peace. They could dig up the earth and tunnel through the stone without fear they might break through to magma. Sulfurous gasses were a persistent problem however, forcing the laborious process of strip mining. Over the last years, they had dug up such a tremendous amount of waste they had built their own harbor with it. The ocean tides were shut out from the docks, and even a simple barge could shuttle between the mine and Aliston.
The grand effect was almost to undercut the immensity of the operation, to understate the raw value produced by the sweat of criminals.
Perhaps most importantly, the collection of houses to one side kept soldiers from Vassermark. A true enclave of northern civilization existed there upon the island. No translator was needed for Lucius to approach and call out, “My name is Lucius von Solhart, the new Lord Governor of the Misty Isles. Bring me the warden.”
Soon enough, the man was fetched. He was an older gentlemen with a wet cough he habitually covered with a filthy handkerchief. “Consumption m’Lord. I was stationed at Rackvidd first, for my health, but city life didn’t suit me much. Don’t worry, even should the disease rob me of my lungs, I won’t kick the bucket. The goddesses saw to that.”
“A stigmata?”
“I could breathe underwater if I felt the need, m’Lord.”
“I’m quite envious, but, please, show me around.”
The tour began around the rim, circling the operation so that they might view the labor from every side, up and down the mountain. The light clatter of metal as Lucius walked drew attention to them, and some wondered why the new governor had felt the need to arrive armed and girded to a prison.
The warden turned his attention from the pit to the staff buildings as they came down the slope. “The ledgers of production are kept in my house. I can show you them as we retire for some light refreshments.”
“I want to see the tunnels,” Lucius said.
That stopped the warden. “Into the mine? My lord, that’s no fit place for women.”
Lucius turned to Sera and said, “Take Aisha to his house and the two of you look over his ledgers. You’re competent at numbers, aren’t you?”
Sera grinned and nodded. “Competent enough to be paid properly, m’Lord.”
“Sending me from the fun part?” Aisha asked.
“Sending you away from the part where you might get shanked by an angry prisoner.”
The warden scoffed. “My lord, you should be concerned about yourself.”
“That’s precisely my plan.” The two men cut off down a gravel slope. They snaked back and forth, passing no wall nor gate nor barrier of any kind. It seemed the raw toil of the mine was all that kept the prisoners from picking up and stealing through the night. The men worked mutely, with pickaxe and shovels. They piled the dark, lifeless dirt into carts, burying what rocks existed within the volcanic soil. The dirt was nearly fertile, but had never been touched with life. The miners had scraped off the veneer of life and exposed mere possibility.
“What do you do with the dirt? Is it shipped to plantations?”
“What would be the point in that?” the warden asked. “Food grows well enough here. There’s no scarcity so long as there is a modicum of labor.”
“But this is volcanic soil. It’s verdant. What do you do with it?”
The warden shrugged. “The men take it to the ocean and sieve it out. We collect a pound or two a day like that.”
“Of?”
“Gold, m’lord. Whole nuggets big and small.”
“I don’t like it. I can’t tell you to change it yet, but I will mark off some plantations. I want the sieving done there as part of the irrigation. Lord Raymi will be leading a fresh expedition into Giordana soon, and I mean to sell him his food,” Lucius said, walking past one of the dirt carts with a shake of his head.
Some of the prisoners began to slow their work. They stood up like prairie dogs from the lifeless loam and watched the two of them traverse the island’s wound. The smell of sweat mingled with the growing sulfur haze, but also with a smoke undertone of kuku bud. “Do you have a drug problem here, warden?”
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“Depends what you mean by problem, m’lord.”
“In Aliston, the free economy has come to a halt because everyone is too busy smoking. This mine is the one establishment where a slowdown cannot be permitted.”
The warden nodded. “The productivity of the mine is strictly monitored by a quota system. The only slowdowns that occur are when a prisoner dies, and then that lasts only until the next shipment arrives.”
“Or finishes his term.”
“I’m sorry?”
Lucius turned on him. “This is a prison, isn’t it? The men here aren’t condemned to death. They’re condemned to hard labor. When their sentences are up, surely they must go home. We wouldn’t continue feeding men we can’t coerce into labor.”
The warden blustered and shrugged. “Well, I understand, certainly, sir, but you see, I don’t believe a man has yet to finish his term. We’ve only had the mine for a few years, and the men sent here are some of the worst. Decades of punishment.”
Lucius frowned and scrutinized the man’s eyes. “What about men who disappear?”
“Disappear? Where would they go? Sir, this is an island.”
“Do you mean to tell me that no prisoner has ever vanished?”
“Only those that died. Sir, there’s nothing to eat on the island. No farms, no villages, and the water has sharks. It’s why we can contain so many men productively here.”
Lucius nodded. Then he swept his arm around the pit. “Show me the tunnels.”
“Pardon?”
“The tunnels. You have to dig in to get the best gold ore, don’t you? I know a few things about engineering and would like to inspect how you’re managing. If there’s a risk of cave-ins halting progress, I want to remedy that.”
Quite unable to protest the fact, the warden produced a handkerchief from his pocket and daubed his glistening forehead. “Certainly, m’lord.” The tunnel was marked more by the rutted tracks leading into it than any proper construction, as though the carts had cut a tongue of mud to mark the mouth. As the two of them descended into it, the darkness light poorly by a faltering oil lamp, the stone constricted about them. Like a drawn out funnel, they were soon crouching and scraping their shoulders against the walls. Here and there, the stone glittered with gold, fleks of luster that caught the light like fireflies–always deep between the scrapings of chisel and ax.
The stench grew and the air turned stagnant as the tunnel spiraled about itself, a great corkscrew to burrow into the island. “Don’t you have flooding problems?”
“Not at all. The outflow of the rock created a sort of barrier. We’re like a ship at sea, nothing much gets in.”
“Except the gasses.”
“Except the gasses.”
“Do you have fire problems?”
“No, sir,” the warden said, leading him on and on. The two of them had to squeeze past a pair of ruddy miners, their eyes set back in their skulls like the hints of gold hiding in the crags of the tunnels. “Because the mine above is continually stripped, the tunnels are never very deep. Look, the end is here already.” The man gestured at a shadowy continuation so shallow the only way to enter would have been crawling like a snake.
Lucius bent down and peered. He could see the blistered feet of a prisoner beyond, chipping at the stone with hammer and chisel. “Not very pleasant work, is it?”
“Efficient though, and when the hole is that small…”
“It doesn’t collapse?”
“Indeed.”
Lucius nodded and sat squat, his back to the earlier tunnel. “You ask much of your laborers, and you do it with less soldiers than you might like. Your ability to maintain order is admirable.”
At last the warden smiled. “Thank you, my lord. We use shifts of cooking and cleaning as reward systems, and keep them fed well enough. The operation is quite peaceful in a sense. Perhaps now your curiosity has been sated?”
Lucius nodded and the two of them climbed back out. One of the earlier miners followed them out, staying to the shadows as the young governor filled his lungs with fresh air. At last, one of the malcontents took their chance. A wiry man, as foul tempered as a beaten dog, darted from behind Lucius. Padding feet across gravel without a sound, he dove. One of the guards whooped and charged towards them, but it gave him no more time than to turn and see the broken shank of chisel before it sank into his side. Steel bit through cloth and skin, tearing into muscle. Had it not struck a rib bone–fracturing it–the weapon would have plunged through to his lungs.
The attacker ripped the chisel free with both hands, frothing at the mouth as he held it overhead. Before he could slam it down upon him, Lucius caught the man’s elbow with his good side. “Got you,” he sneered, pushing back without even a grunt of pain. He locked eyes with the prisoner and found his pupils as dilated as a lover’s. He had known the mine would be infected, that at least some of the prisoners would be partaking of the spirit’s succor. Using a Vassish man against him was an obvious ploy to sow chaos among their ranks, and perhaps would have worked if Lucius were a man so easily killed.
When the assassin realized the game was up, however, he nearly turned the shank on himself. Lucius had to grapple with him, to thank hand and arm, before the bloody edge could open the man’s throat. The guard was nearly upon them to help when the assassin’s body shook and slammed into Lucius with an impact that nearly drove him to the ground. Blood fountained into the air from the back of the man’s head as he went limp and Lucius dropped the corpse, his mouth agape.
Another prisoner, still bearing the fat of free life in his cheeks, saluted him with one hand and held the bloody pickax in the other. “Commander Solhart, it’s good to see you again.”
Lucius looked at the corpse, at the man, at the weapon, pieced together the facts, and scowled. “You’re a deserter, aren’t you?”
The man paled. “Was, sir. I swear though, not following you was the biggest mistake I could have made. If you hadn’t come in and saved us from the lieutenant’s madness, I would have been dead in the ground.”
“And instead, you’re alive in the ground, aren’t you lucky,” Lucius said, glaring at the laggard guard.
“Please, Commander Solhart, sir, my lord. Please, I beg for your pardon. I can be of proper use to you. Let me serve again! The war was over after the battle. I got rammed through the court. I shouldn’t be here!”
“You shouldn’t have killed that man.” Lucius jabbed his finger at the assassin’s corpse. “You should have known he wouldn’t kill me.”
“But sir! He was attacking you.”
“Warden!” Lucius bellowed. “I don’t know what work you punish men with, but whatever latrines you have to dig out, I want him doing that for the next week… then send him to Aliston to report to me.”