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The only luck I have—the only luck I can hope for, for us, is the truth I’ve known my whole life.
Sometimes the wicked are fools.
Sometimes they aren’t, and then there’s trouble. I’ve a mile of blood stretching behind me that I don’t look at unless I must, proving this very point. At the end of that mile, I’m still laboring under men canny enough to cut deep and cruel when they need to, or want to, or when they’re merely raging.
Be careful of the clever, and take a chance when you can.
I am not as much use as Russandol hopes I am, but I stay sharp.
We break our fast before the light warms the sky, and then I must be off to the woodland with my axe and my guard-dog.
The guard-dog, Russandol tells me, is called Murphy. He carries a gun.
I hate him. I hate all of them, but I hate this one especially because of what Russandol told me. Blinked his eyelashes like a moth’s wings, and said,
“I knew him—inside.”
Which just goes to make me want to tie his innards round his neck.
I don’t do it. I split kindling, remember that an axe can do a gun’s work well, but not as quickly. The forge runs through wood like a racehorse, and Murphy and I spend the better part of our days side-by-side, in a land I’m trying to map without his knowing.
I learn a good many things. I learn, for one, that he’s a fool.
“You’ve been saddled with a troublemaker,” Murphy says one day, fiddling with a pipe he is not particularly skilled at smoking. It is a long pipe, such as the natives use. Where he got it, I do not care to know.
I do not answer at first, and then realize that silence may brand me a troublemaker. Russandol and I have agreed not to cause a stir—yet. This agreement is more to bind him than me; the lad is always sticking his neck out where it doesn’t belong.
“Yes, sir,” I say. God, but the sir galls in my throat.
“What’s he like to talk to?” Murphy asks, taking the end of the pipe out of his mouth so he isn’t talking round it. “I’ve often wondered.”
I’ve often wondered why Russandol seems to drag every horrid attention to himself, like darts to a board. I can’t make head nor tail of it. He’s not even twenty-five. I heard—that day outside the smithy, I heard Bauglir speak of his father.
Russandol has never mentioned any family before, so of course that caught my ear.
“He doesn’t say much,” I answer, which is rightly truth. I took down a tree this morning—several, in fact, and now I’m returning to the first. I heave the axe up and over to split the core of its trunk. “Quiet one.”
“He screamed,” Murphy says. “First time he was thrashed.”
I’m not a man for weeping or whining. Not since—
Even over Haldar, I shed only a few tears, because I didn’t deserve to shed more. I shan’t make a peep of pity now, even though the thought of Russandol’s first brush with the lash makes me ache.
“Must have been long ago,” I lie, keeping my eyes on my work.
Murphy laughs. It’s a vile, gargling sound. “Not even six months past! They took ‘im apart, they did. When he first came—I used to cart him in and out of his cell. Saw him lose his hair first, then his shirt and trousers, then the skin off his back. So much mewling. He was like a frightened kitten, after Mairon had been at him with the whip. Little did he know he’d be a sight worse, for not talking.”
For not talking.
I’ll never be able to quiet my guilt.
The axe glances shy—no harm done, just a log split uneven.
“Not talking?” I ask. At least, it’s my voice.
“I think he talked later, when it was too late. Some fools are like that, you know. They wait until they’re ruined to make a peep.” Murphy’s voice grows hard.
“He is ruined,” I agree, hating the way the words taste in my mouth. I think he’d understand.
(Of course, Red never cares in the least if something ill is said about him. He says the worst things I’ve ever heard, about himself.)
(I do my best not to allow it, but he’s stubborn.)
“I pity you,” Murphy says, chuckling again. “I really do.”
I stack the wood pyramid-style, to collect later. Then I start walking, slow and easy, in the direction of the river.
Murphy follows.
He’s a fool, and he follows.
Here’s what I manage: to trail along the river-bed a mile or so, marking trees we might be able to use and take back.
Here’s what I learn, with Murphy talking all the while:
Bauglir kept Russandol like a caged thing, dragging him out to torture and interrogate by turns. Then he thought he’d mastered him, but something set Russandol off. After that, he was sent down to the compound.
It’s more than I’ve ever heard from the boy himself. I try to keep calm, to think of how I can make use of what I’ve heard, even though I’m seething with every kick and cuff that Murphy claims like a trophy.
I can’t ask as many questions as I would like, either. That’d draw his focus to me as a live listener, not just a block of the same wood I’m cutting for my masters’ use. I tell myself it’s not mine to press, not mine to defend Russandol. While Murphy prattles, I’m doing the work I promised I would: covering the lay of the land.
When he tells me how Russandol used to beg, I bite my tongue almost through anyway.
Sometimes the wicked are fools, but that makes the slave’s lot no easier.