The prisoners start gathering even before the guard's baton raps on the doorway, and I follow the crowd as we file out into the tunnel. The guard carries a proper lantern, which dazzles my eyes after the dim cavern, but I try and keep sight of Margie's bulky silhouette. We herd down one of the larger tunnels and pass another mass of prisoners going the other way. Loud catcalls and insults erupt immediately from both sides.

  Margie fills her lungs and shouts, "Go stick your prick in a grinder, Arborough!"

  "Shove a pick up your twat, Margie!" a man's voice yells back.

  They disappear behind us, and we zig-zag down several more tunnels to a long, narrow gallery. Tools are stacked by the entrance -- hammers, picks and chisels, along with large woven baskets. The guard flops into a beat-up metal chair.

  "One of the grinders is down," he says. "You'll have to make do with the other. No change in quota."

  Low groans from the prisoners. The guard raps his baton against the chair.

  "Get to work!"

  I stick close to Margie while the rest of the prisoners file past and begin a well-practiced routine. Noise and the ozone tang of burning viscid fill the space as the big man, Drey, starts up some kind of hand-held machine.

  "You can start with chipping," Margie yells over the racket. "That's simplest. Take a hammer and chisel and chip out the axonite." Foreseeing my next question, she takes me over the wall and points. "That's axonite. The twisty little vein."

  It glitters in a way the surrounding rock does not, which makes it easy to spot. Margie picks up a hammer and chisel and flakes off a two-inch piece. To my surprise, the substance looks familiar -- it’s the same glassy black stuff as the dagger I found back in Gray's temple/tomb. The edge of the flake glitters menacingly.

  "Careful, it can be sharp," Margie says, handing it to me. I notice her fingers are covered in hairline scars. "Try and get big pieces with as little rock on them as you can. Dump them in the baskets. If you can't find any more axonite, come get me."

  That's it as far as instructions go. Margie strides off, yelling out orders as she passes down the line. Some of the others are working with chisels, some are sorting, and Drey attacks the wall with his humming, sputtering machine held in two hands, sending up showers of rock chips and an ear-splitting roar. I tear off bits of my shirt and jam them in my ears, as I see several other prisoners doing, and get to work.

  Work . The hammer is heavy and it needs to be swung with some force to chip the tough axonite, which quickly leaves my arm burning with strain. It's not as easy to get pieces off as Margie made it look, either; most of my swings produce tiny fractured shards the size of my thumbnail. After what feels like eternity I've only got a pile the size of someone's pipe leavings, and the frenetic activity around me isn't slowing. I see Peg, the older woman, heading to the baskets with an axonite nodule the size of my fist; she smirks when she catches me looking.

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  Welcome to the rest of your fucking life, Kal. Swing that hammer.

  ***

  Eventually, Margie gives a shout and we all switch jobs, which is a blessed relief to my aching arm. I join the sorters by the baskets, picking through the deposited axonite shards and separating them out from the bits of rock. This is less difficult labor, but constantly handling the shards quickly leaves me with cuts up and down my fingers. I sacrifice a bit more shirt to try wrapping around my hands, but the edges of the glassy stuff shred my protection in minutes. Everyone else has scarred, calloused digits.

  At least I'm sitting down, which gives me a good view when something new happens. A young girl, maybe in her mid-teens, scuttles into the gallery, followed by another woman with a walking stick -- she's not old, thirty or so, but she moves with a slight limp. The pair wear sturdy jumpsuits clearly a cut above prisoner's rags, but just as clearly not guard uniforms.

  Margie hurries over to meet the newcomers, their conversation inaudible beneath the grinder's racket. The woman and the girl follow her down the gallery to where another of the rock-crushing machines is lying unused. The girl produces a toolbox, and the woman settles down and starts to work.

  My curiosity aroused, I lean close to the sorter beside me, an older man with wispy gray hair. "Who are those three?"

  "Eh?"

  I pull the rag from his ear and repeat the question. He cackles.

  "Oh, . That's the queen o' the mine herself. Racnaea. She's the only reason anything works around here."

  "Queen of the mine? She's a technician?"

  "None of the technicals the City sends do fuck-all," my neighbor says. "She's one o' us. A pris'ner, like. But the guards let her do as she likes on account o' bein' the smartest person in the world. None o' us would ever make quota without her."

  "Who's the girl?"

  "Her servant, sort o' thing? Don't know her name."

  Sure enough, within fifteen minutes, the noise in the gallery redoubles as the second grinder roars to life. Margie bows to Racnaea like she really is a queen, and she and her assistant leave the way they came, the girl smiling beatifically at the rest of us as they pass. Racnaea herself wears a scowl, paying little attention to anyone, until her eyes light on me and she stops. She beckons me closer with an impatient gesture.

  "You're slightly completely new here, aren't you?" she says. Her eyes are hidden behind green-tinted goggles, giving her a bug-eyed look. "When did you come in?"

  "Today," I say. "This is my first shift."

  "You came on the supply ship? Where are the others?"

  "The ship was attacked by raiders. Only one of the guards and I made it."

  "Raiders!" She throws up her hands. "That is a little bit , I suppose! You didn't happen to see a class three visco-engine while you were escaping, possibly?"

  "I … don't think I'd know what that looks like, I'm sorry. But the raiders took all the cargo."

  "It was a special order, . All the way from the City, and it gets stolen by raiders who won't even appreciate it!" She harrumphs, not angry but frustrated, as though this is one more thing in a long list of indignities to be borne. "The auto-laundry won't last the month and then we'll see who's blamed. A little bit absolutely intolerable!"

  "We could clean the belts again, mistress," the girl pipes up. "And look for snags."

  "Don't interrupt me when I'm wallowing in self-pity, I suppose," Racnaea snaps.

  "Apologies, mistress."

  "If I could ask you --" I begin.

  "Sorry," she says, "no time, not even a little bit. Nothing ever works right, not ever, but do I complain?"

  "You do!" the girl says. "Constantly."

  "Sprocket!"

  "Apologies, mistress."

  They turn away.