Lenore leant against the low wall and tried to take deep breaths as she felt the impact against the inside of her stomach. The little one was being especially aggressive today.

  “Easy now,” she muttered, hoping to calm her baby. It didn’t stop, and continued kicking aggressively.

  One of the guards snapped at her to keep moving. She and some of the other prisoners were being escorted back to their cells after she had spent almost a full day making clothes for the soldiers.

  She felt a pair of hands grab her under the arm. Her mother Gerry made low, reassuring noises as she helped Lenore continue walking.

  “Sorry,” Lenore said.

  “No need to apologise,” Gerry said. “I remember when I carried you. You hammered on me like you were trying to go to war with the outside.”

  “Mum,” Lenore complained. “There are people around. Please don’t talk about anything to do with my birth.”

  Gerry chuckled. “If you’re awake enough to be embarrassed, then you might just survive this place yet.”

  Lenore rolled her eyes at her mother’s seemingly endless optimism. They had been at the fortress for nearly three months now, and no matter how bad things got Gerry still insisted that things would all work out in the end. According to her, she had survived three husbands, eighteen boyfriends, and two cults and made it out alright, so there wasn’t much more the world could throw at her. Apparently that included brandings, because she even took those as just another thing that happened that day.

  Their cells were a number of open air cages placed just within the fortress’s wall. Lenore noticed that Tristan was already here, and her heart fluttered in joy, but then it returned to its normal rhythm when she saw the look on her husband’s face. Tristan’s eyes were red and puffy as though he had been crying, and he seemed even more worn than the mines usually made him.

  The guards shoved, Lenore, Gerry, and several other prisoners into the cage next to Tristan’s. Immediately Lenore went to the end, so that she could be close to Tristan. The two cages weren’t quite next to one another – there was about a metre in between, enough space that guards could walk in the space between them.

  “Tristan,” she said.

  He turned to look at her, and she realised he hadn’t even noticed her until now. Something was seriously wrong – usually he would sit looking around for her return like an eager puppy. Something had been drained out of him.

  “What happened?” she asked.

  Tristan’s voice almost cracked when he said: “Dorbin. He’s dead.”

  Lenore gasped, but she wasn’t the only one. Others around her heard, and quickly the news spread through most of the prisoners. Everyone knew Dorbin. Everyone liked Dorbin. Everyone had thought Dorbin would live forever.

  “How?” she asked.

  Tristan told her the story. How he had found a Deep Ruby, and how Root had come in and stolen it from him. How he had followed him to the elevator, and tried to get it back, but Root had refused, and how Dorbin had given him his own Deep Ruby to allow him to return to the surface.

  “So he could still be alive,” said a little girl named Currie.

  Lenore turned to look at her, but before she could say anything in response Gerry took her by the shoulders. “Of course he could be,” she said warmly. “If anyone can survive a few more hours in the mines, it would be Dorbin.”

  Sometimes, Lenore wondered how kind her mother’s optimism really was.

  “Where is Root?” someone said.

  From the far end of Tristan’s cage, Root stepped out of the shadows cast by the wall. It was incredible how well he had been able to hide, and Lenore might have been more impressed if it weren’t for how angry she was.

  “What?” Root asked calmly. “Am I to be placed on trial now?”

  Another man stood up in the cage. He had orcish blood in him somewhere that made him almost seven feet tall, and he had to stoop to avoid his head hitting the top of the cage. The man, whose name was Orid, pointed an accusing finger at Root. “You’re a murderer!” he said. “Dorbin is dead because of you.”

  “I only did what I needed to in order to survive,” said Root. “You know, I have a family that I would like to return to someday, and unfortunately my talents do not extend to, ah, mining. I know that Tristan is a good enough soul to share, and I didn’t know that the consequence of my actions would affect Dorbin.”

  “Murderer,” Orid pressed.

  “Am I any more of a murderer than Tristan?” Root asked.

  Lenore saw her husband stiffen. “Don’t rise to it,” she thought.

  Orid frowned. “Are you calling Tristan a murderer too?”

  “Not at all,” Root reassured him. “The murderers here are our captors. They’re the ones who allowed Dorbin to die, and would have allowed the same to happen to either I or Tristan. Getting angry at me is understandable, of course.” He took two steps forwards so that he was standing in front of Orid, so close that they would have been able to feel one another’s breath. Despite this, he spoke loud enough for everyone to hear.

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  “How many times in your life have you felt weak, Orid? With that huge body of yours, you must have never gone a day feeling threatened in your life. But now the people hurting you are people who you can’t stop. I don’t blame you for shifting your anger towards me, but in the end you’ll change nothing. Still, if you feel the need to take justice…” Lenore didn’t hear what he said after that. Whatever it was, it made Orid step backwards, his shoulder slumped in defeat.

  “Excellent,” Root said. “Now, everyone mourn Dorbin in whatever way they choose. I’m going to sit in that corner and eat stale bread.”

  Despite the obvious air of anger, no-one tried to stop Root. Lenore thought that they were just too tired – when there was this little energy to go around, spending any of it on anger was a way to get you killed. Maybe that was why Gerry was so determined to be positive.

  Tristan turned to face Lenore. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I haven’t even asked how you are.”

  “Fine,” Lenore assured him. “Tired, but fine. So is the little one.”

  She wanted more than anything to have Tristan be next to her, so that she could put his hand over her stomach and let him feel the kicks of his child. For him to know that the baby was there, and alive, and waiting to meet him. It wouldn’t erase his sadness, but it would be a comfort to him. But their cages were too far apart, and Tristan simply couldn’t reach that far.

  “Root is right, you know,” he said.

  Lenor shook her head. “He’s not.”

  “He is. I’m as responsible for Dorbin’s death as him. I could have made the choice to let him come back.”

  “I’m glad you did.” Lenore felt a deep knot of guilt even as she said it. She imagined the words being tossed back at her when she died, and Tiagem judged whether she would be sent to the hells. “It’s selfish I know, but I’m glad that I have my husband. If I had to choose between you and Dorbin, there’s no hesitation for me. Not at all.”

  She could tell that Tristan’s guilt was still great. It hung over him like a shroud, darkening him. “I don’t know how to keep my promise to him. I swore to Tiagem that I would make this up to him, but how can I now?”

  “I don’t know,” Lenore admitted. She wasn’t the type of person who could answer those questions. A few months ago, she had been a washerwoman. Now she was a slave. Neither of those were roles that positioned her to think in depth about philosophy.

  She could see Tristan’s disappointment. He had wanted her to give him the words that would absolve him, but she didn’t have them to give. He had known that, and still believed in her. She loved him for that.

  Gerry sit down next to her and leant against the wall of the cage. “That Dorbin,” she said. “He was a fine one – in more ways than one. Why, if we weren’t slaves…”

  “Mum!” Lenore protested.

  Gerry shrugged. “Oh, grow up Lenore. Your mother has her own needs.” She sighed. “Still, I’m going to miss him. A lot of people are. He was the kind of person who you could rally around.”

  Lenore nodded. She remembered the first time she had met Dorbin, the first night when she and the rest of the people from her village had been brought to the fortress. She had been shivering intensely, not from the cold – it had been late in the spring at the time – but from an illness that had been brought along from the baby she had only recently learned about.

  Dorbin had managed to find blankets for her, and then when she was all wrapped up he sang her a song in the dwarven language, a lullaby he said. Lenore hadn’t understood a word, and Dorbin didn’t exactly have the nicest voice, it being all scratchy and sometimes faint, but it had carried a comforting feeling that had let her sleep that night.

  “Still,” said Gerry. “Whatever the dwarven afterlife is like, he’s probably enjoying himself there now. A nice little bow for him on the end of everything he’s managed to do.” She looked over her shoulder at the corner where Root hid. “And for others, I imagine when that time comes it will be far less sweet. I wouldn’t blame yourself, Tristan. It sounds like Dorbin made his choice, and you can’t have a clearer absolution than that.”

  Tristan nodded, but Lenore knew him well enough to know that this would bother him for a very long time.

  The door of the cage opened again and another woman was thrown in with them. She was Kiara, a very tall elf. She collapsed to the ground, and Lenore saw that her back was covered in deep gashes, the ones that came from being whipped.

  Several of the other women came forwards to check on her. Kiara was barely conscious, but despite that she still tried to get to her feet. The movement caused one of her gashes to spurt blood, and the others held her to make sure that she wasn’t moving too much.

  “Water,” someone said. “We need water.”

  They didn’t have much water – the guards didn’t give them much at all – but it didn’t take much time for them to fill one of their small buckets. Midge, who was the closest thing that they had to a doctor, soaked a rag in water and started to clean Kiara’s wounds. The elf screamed in pain as her wounds were disturbed, but the others held her down to make sure she received treatment.

  “She just dropped a sword she was carrying,” someone said. “That was all. It was a mistake. And they did that to her.”

  Root’s words seemed all too obvious now. It didn’t matter what any of them did – they were all powerless here. Anything could kill them, the tiniest mistake or the tiniest failure.

  She put her hand over her stomach. Her baby had gone quiet for the moment. Earlier she would have been glad for the respite from his kicks, but now she missed them. It felt like there was something missing.

  When this baby was born, in only a few months – and she forced herself to think of it as a when and not an if, because the alternative was too horrible – what would happen to it. What kind of life could she give a child who was a slave from the very first moment it opened its eyes.

  Gerry put her hand on top of hers. “It’ll be okay,” she said, but the reassurance rang hollow against this oppressive, hopeless feeling that came from being at the bottom of the world.

  Tristan was reaching out his arm towards her through the bars of his cage. Lenore mirrored him, and in the empty air between their two cages their hands met. Her fingers wrapped around his and she thought that she would never let go.

  But it couldn’t last. A guard happened to be passing, and he stomped towards them. He pulled a small metal baton from a hook on his waist and slammed it into their hands, forcing them to pull away from one another.

  Lenore cradled her fingers, but refused cry out in pain.

  “Hey!” Gerry said, standing up. “How dare you –“ She released a soft gasp as the guard struck her across the face, and fell back to her knees.

  “Mum!” Lenore cried. She went to her mother. Gerry slowly pulled her hand away from her face and let Lenore look at it. Fortunately the skin didn’t seem broken. The guard must have not been using his full strength.

  “You know the rules,” the guard said. “Stay in your cages.”

  Just as he was turning to go, the noise of the fortress was split in half by the wailing sound of a siren. It was one of the largest things Lenore had ever heard in her life, and she clamped her hands over her ears to block it out but it didn’t even make a distance.

  She could see Gerry’s face with a strange smile, even as she was covering her own ears. She said something, but Lenore couldn’t hear what it was.

  “What!?” she yelled.

  Gerry leaned in close and pulled one of her hands away from her ear. She placed her mouth right against the ear and shouted: “The fortress is under attack!”

  Then the outer wall of the fortress exploded inwards and a man riding on an eighty foot long dragon flew through the open hole.