The Kingdom of Radkka.

The Bo Ssin Mountains

I wiped my sweat-drenched hair off my brow with a blistered hand, and rested for a moment, leaning against the mountain of rock I still had yet to penetrate. My breath was hot inside my mouth and in my nose. My throat was parched, and I wished for water above everything else.

The bell sounding our last water break for the day was more beautiful than the most glittering coin.

I knew the Radkkan who brought around the water bucket. I knew every scar on his face; I knew every foul word he spat; I knew his hands from every time they struck me. Most of all, I knew his whip, and the vicious, sickening crack in the air just before it touched my skin.

Akmira was his name, and if there was ever a man I could watch being killed, and take pleasure from the experience, it would have been him.

His blue eyes were dead oceans when he brought the bucket to me. “Drink up,” he snapped. There was no ladle. We could drink from a cup made from our own two hands, and then only as much as those hands could hold in one scoop.

The surface of the water was coated in the blue dust of ground stone, turning the liquid a pale, murky grey. Akmira waited for me to complain. He waited for me to shout and demand something better.

Instead, I dipped my hands into the bucket and brought them back up, cupped to my lips; and I drank the foul water, looking him straight in the eyes as I did it.

I didn’t bother to wipe the trace amounts that dripped down my chin.

Akmira was one who thrived on others’ cries for mercy.

‘Perhaps I won’t strike you—’ he would say, a grin glittering with gold stretching across his face, ‘—if you bow down and beg for my mercy.’

I would never. Not at the expense of myself, nor anyone else. In the end, when a man is stripped of everything, pride is all that remains. And I wouldn’t give up my last blessing for anything in the world.

“What do you say? You still plan on escaping?”

I heard Hadrik’s voice, but my eyes were fixed on Akmira’s retreating back. If I concentrated hard enough, and with a little luck, I could bury my hammer in the back of his skull.

No. No. The time would come. I must wait.

“Ho, James! Jameson! Jameson, son of—”

“Enough, I heard you.” I sighed as the bell sounded again, signifying that we were to return to our duties.

“Well? What’ll it be? Yes, or no?”

I gave him my attention at last, and my heart squeezed when I saw his weak body. When had he become so thin? But his eyes, they were shining; shining bright green with hope, and I patted him on the shoulder.

“Yes,” I told him. “Yes, I’ll be escaping.”

“And you’ll take me with you?”

“Hold your horses.” I laughed and bent down to slide a rough block of stone onto the lift waiting to pull the fruits of our labor out of the mountain. One day I would be on that lift. One day I would breathe fresh air and taste real sunlight again. “It’ll be some time yet before we’re ready to escape.”

“But when we do—” He squatted down to help me, and together we managed to push the stone in the right direction. “When we do, you’re going to find that girl, yes? The one you told me about.”

He nudged me with his boney elbow and grinned, a wide, gap-toothed smile. One of his front teeth was lost the day before.

“Yes.” This I was sure of, and I set my mind to my work with a renewed determination.

Two years, Judeth. Did you wait for me? I’ll find you, Judeth. I’ll come back to you. Just wait and see.