Nineteen Hours

The cage was cruder than he had expected.

A box of boards nailed over an iron frame, big enough for one grown man sitting with his knees drawn up. A chain at the top. The chain was about as thick as a thumb, and it ran over the pulley at the top of the tower and down to the winch.

Oxen turn the winch. Four of them. Nineteen hours to lower, nineteen hours to raise.

“The load may not exceed one hundred and twenty kilos. Beyond that, the chain cannot be guaranteed,” Silas said.

“I'm seventy-two kilos. Can I take anything down?”

“Water, a light, and tools. Eight kilos in total.”

“Food?”

“As you please. Within the eight kilos.”

Marlow worked out how to divide those eight kilos three times over.

＊

Drag objected on the night before.

“I'll go down.”

“That cage isn't built to take an orc.”

“It takes me if I fold my knees.”

“Your weight?”

Drag said nothing.

“You're a hundred and forty kilos at least. The chain breaks.”

“A hundred and thirty-six kilos.”

“The cage is forty kilos. That's fifty-six over.”

Drag stayed quiet for a while, then said it short.

“I came to look for my brother. I didn't come to send you down a hole.”

“I didn't come to look for your brother either. I came to look for the man who went east three years ago. Same place.”

Drag did not answer that.

Instead of answering, he took a metal name tag out of the pouch at his belt and pressed it into Marlow's hand. It was the tag from the ship on the city side.

“If you meet him down there, give it back.”

＊

Willa did not speak until morning.

She came all the way to the cage, helped lash down the load, and still said nothing.

Just as Marlow set a foot on the cage, she caught his sleeve.

“Hey.”

“What.”

“Back at the lighthouse, that sphinx asked you something. What you wanted to do with your seven days.”

“She asked.”

“Did you answer?”

“No.”

“What about now?”

Marlow kept hold of the rim of the cage and thought about it a moment.

He really thought. It was the question he had been putting off for more than thirty days.

“…Still nothing.”

“Okay.”

Willa let go of the sleeve. Having let go, she took hold of it again.

“Then come back up and tell me.”

“Tell you what.”

“The answer. Think about it down there, come back up, and tell me. That's the promise.”

“Cheap promise. All I do is say something.”

“It's not cheap. You can't say it unless you come back up.”

Marlow opened his mouth, and shut it.

In three years, it was the fourth time.

“All right.”

“You said it. You just said all right. Roslyn, write it down.”

“I have written it,” Roslyn said. “Down to the hour and the minute.”

＊

The cage started down.

The first ten meters were only the hole in the ground. Iron pipe all around him, gray rock showing through the gaps.

At fifty meters, the light above him became a circle.

At two hundred meters, the circle became a dot.

At three hundred, it was gone.

For light he had one small oil lamp. He had chosen it out of the eight kilos. The flame did not point upward. The speed of the descent laid the flame over on its side.

There were three sounds. The chain creaking. The cage striking the wall of the pipe. And his own breathing.

After about an hour, the color of the wall changed. From gray to a dark red.

At three hours, it turned hot.

At five hours, he stopped sweating. It was not that his body had dried out. The sweat was evaporating before it came out.

Marlow drank water. He felt no thirst. He drank anyway, because he remembered what Vesta had said. The things you cannot feel are the ones you count and manage.

＊

In the eighth hour, the wall went away.

The rock that had shown through the gaps in the pipe suddenly drew back. The lamplight did not reach it. The cage was descending through open air.

It took him a few minutes to understand that he had come into a large cavern.

He tried his voice.

“Hello!”

It came back. It came back four times. The fourth was a long time coming.

Wide. How wide, he had no way to guess.

After about ten minutes, a wall appeared again. This wall was not rock.

It was flat. He could see seams. Metal.

When he brought the lamp close, thin lines ran across the surface. The lines were set in regular rows, turned at a right angle partway along, and ran in rows again.

No rust.

Marlow has been a scavenger for ten years. There are only three metals in this world that do not rust. Not one of the three is something people can make.

＊

In the fourteenth hour, he got sleepy.

For the first time in twenty-odd days.

That frightened him. The pain had gone, the cold had gone, the thirst had gone, the sleep had gone. And the sleep was coming back.

If it was coming back, it was because he had come down here.

Marlow did not sleep. He pinched his own knee as hard as he could, confirmed that it did not hurt, and still did not sleep.

＊

In the eighteenth hour, the smell came.

Salt.

Not the smell of the Forbidden Strip, and not the smell of the dry hollow. This one was wet.

Not once since the day he was born had Marlow smelled wet salt.

In the nineteenth hour, the cage stopped.

The chain went slack, the cage tilted a little, and the boards of its floor touched something.

He lifted the lamp.

There was a floor. A metal floor.

And on that floor, one light was burning.

Not Marlow's lamp. A whiter light. Not an oil flame.

Beside the light, a person was standing.

End of Chapter 13