Chapter Nine

‘The Nine Wardens were said to have guided the shaping of the world. They then removed themselves from the workings of humankind. They would be the guards of the afterlife, but to the world, they left only the Wardens.” 

Alis led them underground, back into her labyrinth under the city. Neither of them spoke. They had stopped for some time on the scaffold, long enough for Caid gather enough bearings to make the trip back.  

The time left him wondering how long Maddog would be out cold, or how he would feel after he awoke. Not nearly as bad as Caid felt, he was sure of that. Alis had pulled him back to reality and then down the paths, neither wanting caught by the slavers who pursued them.   

Once underground, they slowed. Caid drew in a few deep breaths, standing with his hands upon his hips and tired from the daliwin’s pulling of the energy back. Caid marveled at the young girl. Impressed with her overall ability even when he had lost track of it all. Not once did she complain.  

The cool air of the tunnels helped Caid catch his breath quicker than the thicker air of Cros. How many years of his life had he lost breathing the smog into his lungs? To think, he had avoided pipe smoking all these years only to inhale all the fumes from burning coal.  

Alis wound around corners and through smaller sets of tunnels running off the larger ones. Caid figured he would save his questions of navigation until later. He assumed they headed back to the room they stayed in the night before. After having gotten very little good sleep, Caid wished for nothing more than to lie down, even on the floor without a mattress.  

Alis stopped at a darker section of tunnel walls. She tapped the bricks, making them move inward, revealing another room. This wasn’t the same room as the night before. This room was enormous, filled with hundreds of stacks of papers and hundreds of weapons.  

“What is this place?” Caid asked, stepping through the door.  

Alis followed him in, tapping the wall again to shut the door behind them. Caid doubted anyone could navigate the passages or follow them through the tunnels, but it was still reassuring when the door shut.  

“This is my workshop. Sometimes I like to come here to think.”  

Alis walked over to the corner, pulling out two large blankets and a couple pillows. She threw a set to Caid and kept one for herself, then stretched them out upon the ground. Caid did the same with his own set, plopping down onto them.  

Caid stared around the room, realizing this could have been the quarters of the Envoy or a guard house on the outer city walls. Caid had never spent much time with the standing army, but he knew they had weapons at their disposal he had never dreamed of.  

“What do you plan to do with all of this stuff?” he asked, trying to fathom what a twelve-year-old girl could do with such mass artillery.  

Alis stayed silent. She stared at Caid as if she stared into his soul; he broke eye contact with her.  

“I want to know what is next for me,” she said, pulling the vial from inside her shirt pocket. The sweat from her brow sloshed around safely inside. The sweat she earned knocking Maddog out.  

There were too many things to consider after the mine. What was Alis hiding from him? She was presumably young, what could she possibly know that would be useful for him? Still, something felt off about her entire story.  

“I want to know how you knew your way around the mine tunnels,” Caid said.  

Alis paused, her face turning to a mask with an unreadable expression. She came closer to Caid, her shoulders slumped as if the life had been forced from her small frame. 

 “I want to know how to become a warden,” Alis answered.  

Caid could almost hear the desperation, but he wanted to know the story behind everything Alis knew.  

“I will finish once I know who I am training.”  

Alis bit her lip; Caid figured it was to keep from crying. He played her game, staying silent.  

Alis blinked out the tears, holding back the emotion from her face. When she opened her eyes, the pain disappeared, replaced by her old determination. For the second time in one day, she surprised Caid, making him question his own ability to judge others.  

“I will trade you the story for the training,” she said.  

“We have a deal. You continue to teach me the pathways and tell me who you are, then I will train you.” 

He intended to keep his part of the deal, though he doubted she could free all the slaves with it.  

Alis took a deep breath and then jumped into a story weird enough to be straight from legend.  

“I used to be a slave,” she started out, pulling the ribbon from her hair and letting it fall to her shoulders. She used her fingers to part the sides of her hair, showing portions of the red X above her temple.  

Caid was caught by surprise, but he kept his face passive.  

“A year ago, I left that life, becoming something else. Something no one else has ever been. First, though, let me start at the beginning to get it completely right the first time.”  

Alis scooted away from Caid before closing her eyes.  

“I was eight when I realized what it was to be a slave. Up until eight, even slaves aren’t forced to labor, so I had lots of time to play. I felt I was a normal child. I had nothing special about me and I lived from sun-up to sun-down with a smile on my face and not a worry on my mind.”  

Alis was completely still as she discussed her story. Caid, on the other hand, found himself fidgeting and picking at the tips of his nails. He had never thought about the impact of slavery.  

“On the morning of my eighth birthday, I awoke not to my parents but to a slave master. His eyes were squinty, and his breath smelled of sour ale. He didn’t seem excited, but I was. I hopped out of bed and proclaimed it to be my birthday. Up until then, I had always celebrated my birthday with my parents in the evening, when they arrived home from the mines. For my eighth birthday, I celebrated a bit differently. The slave master grabbed me by my shirt and forced me down onto the ground. Seconds later, he was chopping off my hair in clumps. Of course, I cried, but I did not struggle. There was no use in struggling against him; he was much too strong for an eight-year-old girl. The man took all my hair, and when I thought the worst was over, he made my childish dreams into nightmares. The red X’s on a slave’s head represent a life of servitude to those who see them, but to a slave, they represent the end of innocence. The pain I felt that day as the tattoos were engraved into my head was excruciating. It wasn’t only the needles driving into my skin that pained me, but also watching as my father stood helplessly in the corner. Knowing now that we were nothing at all, my life became hopeless.”  

Alis took a deep breath. Caid watched quietly as she struggled against her emotions.  

“I joined my parents in the mine that morning and every morning after for three entire years. But that experience changed something in my father. He said watching his baby girl lose her hope had given him back his own. Then something amazing happened¾he stopped being afraid. That was when the meetings started. Every night, after mining, he would gather groups of slaves and plan a way to survive without the need to mine every day. Others joined and rallied behind my parents. My father began building the tunnels under the city and I helped.” Alis took a breath and continued. “That was when I realized I was good with machines and built things to help us dig farther into the earth. My father ordered slaves to steal as many bricks as they could, and for three years, we secretly built the tunnels under the city. We built them under every portion we could, and then when all was ready, my father disappeared. The slaves stopped meeting because they were afraid he had been found out, but others disappeared as well, including my mother. I grew scared again, kept my head down, and continued to mine, but I noticed whisperings of the slave meetings never reached my ears. Did that mean the slave owners didn’t know?”  

Alis opened her eyes.  

“I noticed something about a year ago that made me decide that my father wasn’t taken because of his role in an uprising. He was taken for something entirely different. It was to work on a secret the seers didn’t want us to know. The portion of the mines we entered today was where all the slaves went to disappear. It was where I had been taken the last day, I ever mined those mountains. No one heard about the girl slave who got away, but I escaped back into the tunnels I had helped build. I have been here over a year now. Growing my hair, stealing food and ribbons for my hair, and saving my life.”  

Alis took another deep breath, staring back across the room at Caid. Caid took his own deep breath. Even his betrayal and subsequent reveals didn’t compare to Alis’s story.  

Caid and Alis sat quietly staring at one another. Caid had nothing to offer Alis¾no advice or words for her aching heart. He struggled with his own ordeal. Even though he had just lost everything he had ever known in his life, at least he was grown. Alis had lost it all as a child. Yet hadn’t he as well? What was his life before the Wardens? When he was taken, had he missed his previous life? He would never recall those memories.  

“I don’t know what to say,” Caid said, breaking the silence between them.  

Alis shook her head. “I don’t need words. I need to be trained as a warden. I need to get back into those mines and find my parents and the reason they were taken.”  

For the first time, Caid felt Alis’s anger. He wished he could help, but he needed more time to clear his mind and think.  

“I think we should turn down the lights for the night. We can discuss it all in the morning.”  

Caid felt his breath catch. He turned away, curling up on his makeshift bed. He closed his eyes and heard Alis moving to turn down the lights. Even after they went out, he did not sleep. He sat there in the dark, seeing nothing but the life he used to know.