After the two jail guards pulled Hilko from the cell, they bound his hands to one of the cell bars before giving him a vicious beating. Intended for his fellow prisoners to witness, the guards nearly killed him. When Hilko flopped down on the filthy stone floor back inside the cell, he had broken ribs and a concussion. None of his fellow prisoners bothered to help him for two days, although they were happy to strip him of his clothes. He lost his dagger as well.
Hilko learned later that the jailers needed space in the cells. Because he looked close to death, they had prisoners Hilko carried out of the building. As luck would have it, one person ordered to carry him was Silna. They dumped him in the alley to die. Silna later told him there were skeletal remains of other prisoners in the alley.
Later that day, the jailers released Silna when the Amryno merchant failed to bring his case before the lord sheriff. Her accuser was too cheap to pay off the authorities to let her rot in jail.
Fortunately, Silna went back to the alley where Hilko lay in the misty rain for reasons he never really understood. She got the injured smuggler to his feet before she half-carried him to a safe place that he knew. The woman nursed him to recovery and eventually became his roommate and friend.
Silna’s big dark eyes looked him over as she slid onto the bench across the grimy table from him. Her expression no longer held the sense of innocence like the first time he saw her.
“Alright, what happened?” Silna asked, giving him a toothy smile. The woman’s round reddish-brown face had a few pockmarks from a childhood disease. The woman’s curly black hair was short.
“Wolk chased me again. He thinks I did that last lift on the Faters,” Hilko explained before he glumly took a sip of the harsh drink out of the clay mug.
Hilko hated the mix of tunnel water and soured grape mesh. He sniffed his mug again with a scowl, then put it down. When he looked up, he grinned as her drink dribbled down on her simple white peasant shirt with a high collar and long sleeves. The woman plopped the mug on the table and used her sleeve to wipe her face.
“Sure, it tastes like crap, but it leaves you warm,” she told him.
Silna grabbed his drink, the half corset around her abdomen, accentuating her large breasts as she leaned over the table. While most women on the island wore hopped skirts, Silna liked the men’s clothing of knee-length leather pant and long stockings. Besides, the woman recognized that her muscular, almost male frame, along with a plain face and enormous nose, made her unattractive. Suitable to her work, Silna carried a club topped with an iron hood hooked on her belt. The brutality inflicted upon her in jail forever changed the woman.
Hilko introduced Silna to Regaar, who immediately invited her to work for his organization. She controlled the harlots who worked in a section of the tunnel. It was a place where the women and boys sold their bodies to customers to keep Regaar in hamar.
“You’re always getting chased by him. He don’t like you,” Silna reminded him while brushing the stain on her shirt. “I’ll bet he was hoping you had the jewels so he could keep them for himself. He’d look good putting you on the dock as a condemned smuggler.”
“Yeah, tell me something else I already know. But that isn’t it. You know it’s that cursed Regaar. He’s been giving me nothing lately. My pockets are nearly empty, and he knows I’m better than the rest of his guys.” He played with the empty clay mug.
“Anyway, he needs a runner since that snatch. He didn’t tell me or even warn us the last time I was at the wheelhouse. He let me hang out for the baiters, no good pufta. Someone should put out his other eye.”
His friend frowned, a shadow of concern crossing her round face.
“Keep it down. He has ears around here. You still need him to survive,” she stated. “Calling him names will get you put in a tunnel with no return. You ain’t no Fater, so quit acting like it.”
Hilko returned to playing with his mug while glancing around the room. She was correct; the leader of their underground world was not a man to have as an enemy. Rumor was the leader of the tunnels lost one eye in a sword fight with one of his henchmen trying to take over the operations. During the battle, the henchman lost, and Regaar had the man tortured to death, leaving the body hanging in one tunnel. The rumors were probably true from what he knew about Regaar.
Hilko thoroughly disliked the brutal leader; it was better to work for him than starve or end up a bed slave inside the tunnels. Still, he didn’t like how Silna followed the same ruthless thoughts as the one-eyed leader of the tunnels.
Silna noticed Hilko turning quiet, and she let him stew on her warning while she focused on her thoughts. Despite his thin build, she found the man somewhat attractive with dark brown eyes, far darker than his tawny complexion. She smiled as she watched him glance toward the back of the room. His goofy stern look did not intimidate because of his big ears, barely covered by long, wavy black hair. Silna recognized Hilko had an uncompromising attitude, but he lacked the killer instinct. Deep down, the smuggler was a good person at heart.
He’s just too soft for life in the tunnels.
Still, she had to admit he was a great smuggler for Regaar. Hilko was as fearless and resourceful as they came. He could get in and out of the tightest spots with stolen goods while running items to the Colony where the lepers lived. That he would go into their homes gave him a leg up on anyone else trying to work for Regaar. While he had the skills of a talented thief, something inside of Hilko kept him from stealing from others, even the Chara.
Silna recognized that her weakness around him primarily came from Hilko’s resemblance to her dead brother. While they were partners and occasional lovers, she knew they were only two misfits trying to fit into the world of Charax. The relationship certainly meant nothing more to her.
“Are you done feeling sorry for yourself? I got better things to do than to watch you cry about your problems. I’ve got the night away from work, and now you’re pulling this.”
Hilko glared at her as he pushed the finished mug away and got up from the bench.
“Ok, let’s find that one-eyed rat,” he said. “Maybe he needs something carried through the wall.”
They left the tavern, walking across the road to enter the prominent tunnel entrance called the Ancient Path. Before they entered, each took a filled oil lamp that hung on the wood dowels lining the cave wall. After lighting the lamp by striking a flint stone on the metal of Hilko’s dagger, they followed the heavily worn footpath through the stone tunnel.
Originally carved out of the rock after the first settlers arrived on the island, the main shaft entered near to the sea. Over the years, the small tunnel expanded and branched into a maze of twisting and winding tunnels and many other shafts. Each shaft was a miner’s attempt to get rich by finding the rarest of minerals found on Charax.
Secadem came from nowhere else. Coveted by the seers, alchemists, and spiritualists, the pale white crystals became a miner’s dream lode. It left Charax interspersed with shafts. When the first profitable tunnel started leaking water from the sea in the lowest area of the island, the authorities abandoned it. They put the next mine higher on the mountain of rock. Over time, the island became woven with twisting and intertwining tunnels, seemingly made by a drunken ant colony.
The lowest areas became home to the Guryos in those tunnels while other tunnels, lost to memory, became deadly traps.
The upper classes finally took full control of working mines on the island, now halfway up on the other side of the island. A single shaft, closely guarded by the island authorities, followed the seam of the secadem. Only handpicked miners went into the mines, moving them up the social ladder. Unapproved digging became a crime punished by death for the people without work. The Faters used the wealth to maintain their quasi-independence. By bribing the pirates and raiders who controlled the waters, Charax kept their opponents away. It was a strategy that worked until the necromancer came to power.
While they walked, Silna glanced over at her partner. She believe he remained envious of her. Unlike him, Silna knew her mother and father. She grew up the daughter of the few miners allowed to work the single shaft. Unfortunately, after he died in an accident, her mother worked as a harlot before catching the death disease. She and her brother became slave laborers for a merchant family. Overworked and underfed, her young brother died in her arms. Only a few days later, the woman fought off an attempted rape. Silna became a Guryo with a single lie, condemned to live and die inside the old mining shafts.
Still, I’ve got it better now!
Silna recognized her role as an enforcer for a place called the Pleasure Tunnel gave her freedom over those forced to work the brothel. She knew her place and her natural inclination to control people made her a perfect fit. Silna recognized she could never aspire to live up to her name, which meant a fair one. Instead, the woman became hard and cold, like the rock walls of the shafts.
Silna might feel a thrill at beating those who got out of line with her girls, but Regaar also incentivized her to rough up the women who tried to skim his money. Her position also allowed her to see the innermost workings of Regaar’s methods.
To start the vicious cycle, Regaar provided desperate people with loans. Inevitably, as the families fell behind in their payments, Regaar turned nasty. His thugs would break legs or threaten to rape wives for those who fell behind on their loans. Eventually, Regaar forced the families to give him their best-looking young women and men. As slaves for the Pleasure Tunnel, the harlots never made enough to pay the debt. She knew that someday, what she learned would help her achieve her dream.
