“Why are they still breathing?” Lucious asked.
“Your highness,” the man begged, “please. My family have always been the most loyal subjects of your father. We have nothing to do with the rebellion.”
“So you’re saying that I’m mistaken?” Lucious asked.
“We are loyal, your highness. Please.”
Lucious cocked his head to one side. “Very well, in view of your loyalty, I will be generous. I will permit one of your children to live. I’ll even let you choose which one. In fact, I command you to.”
“B-but… we can’t choose between our children,” the man said.
Lucious turned to his men. “You see? Even when I give them commands, they don’t obey. Kill them all, and don’t waste my time with any more like this. Everyone in this village is either to be killed or put on the slave lines. Don’t make me repeat myself.”
He rode away toward the sight of more burning buildings while the screams started behind him. It really was turning out to be a beautiful morning.
CHAPTER SEVEN
“Work faster, you lazy whelps!” the guard called, and Sartes winced at the sting of the whip across his back. If he could have, he would have spun and fought the guard, but without a weapon, it was suicide.
Rather than a weapon, he had a bucket. Chained to another prisoner, he was expected to collect the tar and pour it into large barrels to be hauled back up away from the pits, where it might be used to caulk boats and seal roofs, line the smoothest cobbles and waterproof walls. It was hard work, and having to do it chained to someone else only made it harder.
The boy he was chained to wasn’t any larger than Sartes was, and looked far thinner. Sartes didn’t know his name yet, because the guards punished anyone who talked too much. They probably thought they were plotting revolt, Sartes thought. Looking at some of the men around them, maybe they had a point.
The tar pits were a place where some of the worst people in Delos got sent, and it showed. There were fights over food, and simply over who was toughest, although none of them lasted long. Whenever guards were watching, the men kept their heads down. Those who didn’t quickly found themselves beaten or thrown into the tar.
The boy who was currently chained to Sartes didn’t seem to fit in with so many of the rest of them. He was stick thin and spindly, looking as though he might break under the effort of hauling tar from the pits. His skin was filthy with it, and covered in burns from where the tar had touched it.
A plume of gas drifted off the pit. Sartes managed to hold his breath, but his companion wasn’t so lucky. He started to hack and cough, and Sartes felt the jerk on the chain as he stumbled before he saw him start to fall.
Sartes didn’t have to think. He dropped his bucket, lunging forward and hoping that he would be quick enough. He felt his fingers close around the other boy’s arm, so thin that Sartes’s fingers fit all the way around it like a second shackle.
The boy tumbled toward the tar and Sartes hauled him back from it. Sartes could feel the heat of it there, and almost recoiled as he felt his skin burning. Instead, he kept his grip on the other boy, not letting him go until he’d pulled him safely back to solid ground.
The boy coughed and sputtered, but seemed to be trying to form words.
“It’s okay,” Sartes assured him. “You’re okay. Don’t try to speak.”
“Thank you,” he said. “Help… me… up. The guards – ”
“What’s going on here?” a guard bellowed, punctuating it with a blow of the lash that made Sartes cry out. “Why are you lazing about here?”
“It was the fumes, sir,” Sartes said. “They just overcame him for a moment.”
That earned him another blow. Sartes wished that he had a weapon then. Something he could use to fight back, but there was nothing other than his bucket, and there were far too many guards for that. Of course, Ceres would probably have found a way to fight them all with it, and that thought brought a smile to him.
“When I want you to speak, I’ll tell you,” the soldier said. He kicked the boy Sartes had saved. “Up, you. You can’t work, you’re no use. You’re no use, you can go into the tar like all the rest.”
“He can stand,” Sartes said, and quickly helped the other boy to do just that. “Look, he’s fine. It was just the fumes.”
This time, he didn’t mind the soldier hitting him, because at least it meant he wasn’t hitting the other boy.
“Get back to work then, both of you. You’ve already wasted too much time.”
They went back to collecting the tar, and Sartes did his best to collect as much as he could, because the other boy clearly wasn’t strong enough to do much yet.
“I’m Sartes,” he whispered over, keeping a watch for the guards.
“Bryant,” the other boy whispered back, although he looked nervous as he did it. Sartes heard him coughing again. “Thank you, you saved my life. If I can ever pay you back, I will.”
He fell silent as the guards passed by again.
“The fumes are bad,” Sartes said, as much to keep him talking as anything.
“They eat your lungs,” Bryant replied. “Even some of the guards die.”
He said it as though it was normal, but Sartes couldn’t see anything normal about it.
Sartes looked at the other boy. “You don’t look much like a criminal.”
He could see the look of pain that crossed the other boy’s face. “My family… Prince Lucious came to our farm and burned it. He killed my parents. He took my sister away. He sent me here for no reason.”
It was far too familiar a story to Sartes. Lucious was evil. He took any excuse to cause misery. He tore families apart just because he could.
“So why not get justice?” Sartes suggested. He kept scooping tar out from the pit, making sure that no guard would come close.
The other boy looked at him as if he were mad. “How am I meant to do that? I’m just one person.”
“The rebellion is far more than one person,” Sartes pointed out.
“As if they’d care about what happens to me,” Bryant countered. “They don’t even know we’re here.”
“Then we’ll have to go to them,” Sartes whispered back.
Sartes saw panic cross the other boy’s features.
“You can’t. If you even talk about escape, the guards will hang us above the tar and lower us into it a little at a time. I’ve seen it. They’ll kill us.”
“And what will happen if we stay here?” Sartes demanded. “If you’d been chained to one of the others today, what would have happened?”
Bryant shook his head. “But there are the tar pits, and the guards, and I’m sure there are traps. The other prisoners won’t help, either.”
“But you’re thinking about it now, aren’t you?” Sartes said. “Yes, there will be risks, but a risk is better than dying for certain.”
“How are we even supposed to do it?” Bryant asked. “They keep us in cages at night, and chain us together all day.”
Sartes had an answer for that, at least. “Then we escape together. We find the right moment. Trust me, I know about getting out of bad situations.”
He didn’t say that this would be worse than anything he’d dealt with before, or let his new friend know just how bad the odds were. He didn’t need to scare Bryant any more than he was already, but they did need to go.
If they stayed any longer, he knew, neither one of them would survive.
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