Chapter 2

The guards drag him through the workshop, past the rusted machines used for producing farming equipment, and out into the open air, where the brightness almost blinds him. He shuts his eyes tight and feels the gravel under his torso. They shove him on a wheelbarrow, wheeling him along prisoners walking in a direction far away from their workshop. People coming from the opposite side, most of them gaunt, frail, and exhausted, look on with sadness. They only cheer up to point at him.

The procession eventually reaches another massive building. There is a commotion at the entrance. The guards stop as a decorated carriage pulls up. Out of the door comes a man with a mustache, a curly wig, striped silk shirt, and wide pants. Once he steps down on the gravel, he looks shorter than he initially appears to Renzo. All the men around salute him. "Lord Thredmore."

An official, wearing a ruffled collar and a black jacket comes running from within the building. "Lord Thredmore, it’s an honor."

"Why aren’t these men working faster?" Thredmore asks, looking around.

"My lord, we have our men working as fast as they can."

"Well, work them harder," Thredmore insists. "You haven’t been meeting the quotas for the past three weeks. The campaigns in the north and west need supplies!"

"Lord Thredmore, I–" the man hesitates.

The nobleman looks at him with disgust.

The man shrinks away a step. "We shall redouble our efforts. I’ll tell our supervisors to whip harder."

"The Kingdom's counting on us," Thredmore says, waving his hand around. He notices Renzo and winces when he spots his leg stumps. He climbs back into the carriage, which whisks him away and around the building. The official waits until it fully disappears before relaxing.

"Right. Get them to work immediately," the man tells the guards.

They bring the prisoners into a large hallway. The area is dark and smells of soot.

The guards wheel Renzo down another series of corridors to a room only slightly less dark than the others he's been in. The floor here is lined with white tiles, and besides a shoddy desk and chair, a drawer, and a metal table, the room is completely empty. The guards leave him sitting in silence for a moment, before the door on the other side of the room opens and in walks a man with robes that bear streaks of dark red substance. He looks middle-aged, balding at the crown of his head, and wears thin wiry glasses on his beak-shaped nose. From behind them, eyes with bags that look like they haven't shut for a week peer at Renzo, stopping at his work pants that drop straight down from the chair past the hint of his leg stubs.

Out of a drawer he produces a black book he sets on the desk with a loud thump. Out of his pocket, he draws a small piece of parchment which he unfolds on the page.

"I'm Serinas Derwick. I guess I'm the closest thing you'll have to a healer," he introduces himself without taking his eyes off the paper. "Renzo Hashima... You've lived over a year, working the farm workshops..." he says, pointing his finger at tiny handwriting. His eyebrows rise. "Astounding." He raises his head to look at Renzo again, "that's longer than anyone else. Why do you believe that is?" the man asks.

Renzo blinks. "I have big plans for the future."

The man chuckles, but has to clear his throat almost immediately.

"You were a guard, up in the castle in the capital?" he puts his hand on his wrinkled throat, massaging it.

"A chief of guard, the Grand Distinguished," Renzo says and sighs.

"Well, Grand Distinguished Renzo Hashima, you look healthy enough, and so for the foreseeable future, I suppose you will be working in Lord Thredmore's mines," the man concludes, shutting the book. "May you find rest soon."

Serinas knocks at the door and guards come to whisk Renzo away and soon unload him at his work location: a steel chair propping him up in front of a belt running at waist level between two openings in walls.

"So you’re the new sorter, huh?" A man almost as burly as Renzo greets him as they wheel him in. He tries not to notice his missing legs. "I'm Grenn, I'm here to show you how to do it and whack you in the head when you get it wrong," he says, adjusting his suspenders.

"What is this place? What are you mining?"

"That'd be terronite ore," Grenn says.

Renzo raises an eyebrow.

"Mages use it, technomancers use it. Magic rocks," the man says nonchalantly, speaking with a coarse drawl. "All you need to know is Lord Thredmore has his hands on one of the biggest lodes of the stuff, and we are here to extract it and make sure he can make a profit. So that’s what you’ll be doing," he says, pointing.

A series of metal plates start moving. Renzo sits in front of the primitive conveyor belt, and his new task, working in the unbearable heat beaming from the furnaces behind him, is to separate the right types of rocks extracted by those even less fortunate than him into those that will be smelted and those that will be discarded.

The task is mind-numbing yet dangerous. A couple of times, his clothes catch in the mechanism, and he barely wrestles free with all his strength to avoid being turned into minced meat.

"We had a guy recently who wasn’t able to push the rocks off onto the right pile fast enough, so he started walking on the conveyor belt. Last time we saw him, he slipped into the furnace," his overseer says.

Renzo only furrows his brows and continues sorting the rocks. In his mind, he can hear Anatira chuckle. By the end of the day he cannot feel his arms.

"You'll get used to it," Grenn says.

On the road back, Renzo sees lines of men working in the warm glow of the enormous smelting furnaces and blacksmithing machines. They make metal rods, plates, bolts, and assemble them in all sorts of tools, and a separate line cuts the raw gemstones separated from the ores. Men with whips stand over them, and every now and then there is a sharp crack and someone yelps in pain. The machinery never stops, and some of the men look like they're starting to merge with their devices. Renzo sees metal hands pushing and pulling levers and metal visors scanning over the items sliding on endless conveyor belts.

The new cell is no different from the old one, aside from the water leak on one wall. The inmates barely raise their heads and stay silent as Renzo is thrown in. Renzo can smell their stench, mixing with the soot they're covered with. The faint red light from down the corridor fades. Renzo shuts his eyes, drifting off to sleep before the phantom pain in his legs sets in again.