jeriendhal | Fic: Triumvirate 2: Prologue

Just a little teaser I've been working on for the eventual sequel to Triumvirate, once I get Shadow of the Red Vixen finished.

Warden Ha'riss hated her job.

Ha'riss was the Chief Warden of Mine #36, an unassuming name for the largest salt mine to be found in Pelligre, the nation of the People. She was responsible for five hundred and twenty-three guards, and twenty one officers, watching over six thousand six hundred and forty two hardened prisoners, assisted by two hundred auxiliary personnel. All hers' to command for the past fifteen years.

She hated them all.

She hated the high stone walls, topped with barbed wire, which surrounded the mine entrance. She hated the trains that rumbled out every day to take the salt that the prisoners had removed and cart it to the more civilized ends of the Arrowhead Continent to be used in the fine meals of proper People. She hated the trains that came in every week to drop off the new prisoners, the scum of society beyond hope of redemption.

She hated times like now, waking up to a rapid knocking on her front door, her heart racing because there was another damned problem that she had to take responsibility for.

"Coming!" she shouted, rolling out of bed while her husband woke up muttering and stumbling to the kitchen to put the kettle on while she shucked on her uniform, straitening her gold braid and setting her plumed hat between her ears. She came downstairs to find a runner standing at attention in her small home's sitting room, looking out breath, his ears flicked back and his tail curled between his legs in distress. He was a young Person, with no feathers in his hat yet and only a small handful of merit medals pinned to his uniform coat. Not that he was likely to earn many more in this place.

The runner saluted, then said breathlessly, "Begging your pardon for waking you Warden Ha'riss. Night Warden Abuja reports that there's been an escape."

"Escape? How?" Ha'riss asked. "Not through the gate, surely." There was a squad of guards at the front gate, the only gate, all armed with rifles and orders to shoot to kill anyone coming out without a proper pass, proper uniform, and proper reason to be in the mine in the first place.

"I don't know, Warden. Warden Abuja just sent me to fetch you."

"Right. Inform him I'll be along shortly." Ha'riss deliberately waited until the tea was ready, taking a cup from her husband and sipping it slowly. She drew in a breath and said, "I want a farm."

"You don't know the first thing about farming, luv," her husband answered. This conversation had been had been repeated, with variations, almost every day for the past five years, since she'd started hating her job, her life.

"It doesn't have to be a farm." She took another sip, listening to the grandmother clock as it chimed two. "Maybe a used bookshop."

"You're not shopkeeper."

"That's the beauty of it. No ever goes into one those anyway. The shopkeeper just has the place to put all of the books he already owns." She finished her tea and stood up. "Don't wait up for me. If this is as cocked up as it sounds I won't be back until this afternoon, even if I'm lucky."

"Be safe, luv," her husband said, then rubbed noses with her gently and let her out the door.

Ha'riss walked the half mile to the gate of the prison, which was also the gate leading to the entrance to the mine. There was no need to for more walls than that, the mountain over the prisoners' heads served well enough. Once you went in it, you didn't come out again until your sentence was up or you were wrapped in a shroud. She flashed her identification papers at the doubled guards at the gate. They checked them, even though she knew them by smell and name, and they knew her. She would have chewed their ears off otherwise.

The guards opened the heavy iron doors covering the entrance to the mine. Ha'riss raised her paw to cover her nose as the heavy scent of raw salt filled the air, making her eyes water. The door shut behind her as she walked inside, removing her hat briefly to light the safety lamp clipped to the brim. Not that there was much chance of sparking an unexpected fire. It wasn't as if it was an old coal mine, not that anyone used coal anymore with alcohol fuel plentiful. Still, a fire in the depths of a mine was any miner's nightmare, especially for these miners, who would not be permitted to evacuate.

She paced down the sloping corridor, following the hand cart tracks set in the rock which gradually gave way to a smooth salt floor that ended in a lift powered by two pairs of miserable looking prisoners locked in the lift wheels, dressed only in dirty loincloths and leg irons, their grey spotted fur encrusted with salt. There she met with Abuja, who was waiting for her along with two guards.

"All right, Ab, what happened?" Ha'riss demanded as she stepped into the lift with him. The Lift master shouted at the prisoners, who began crawling along the inside of the lift wheels slowly, lowering the car into the earth.

"A half hour ago we were moving Coffle 27 to Shaft 12, during the evening shift change" Abuja reported. The mine worked twenty-four hours a day, shift times mattering little with absence of sunlight so deep in the earth. The prisoners remained in the darkness, chained together with the rest of their work gang from the time they entered the mine's gate until their sentence, or their life, ended. "The third prisoner in the line had managed to hide a prybar or other tool, don't ask me how, and snap the links on his leg irons and hide the damage until he was in a good position to run for it. One of the guards got in close enough to try and stop him, and got a pickaxe in his leg for his trouble. The other guard stayed to staunch the bleeding and the prisoner got away."

"How bad off is the first guard?" Ha'riss asked.

"The blow was hard enough to snap his thighbone. He's been taken to the infirmary. Even if he keeps the leg, if a blow that deep gets infected…" Abuja shrugged. Not for the first time, Ha'riss wished she was one of those foolish among the People to trust God enough to pray to Him for the injured guard's aid.

"Where did the prisoner go? Why didn't any of the other guards see him and try to stop him?"

"The patrol at Crossway 2 did, Warden. They made a grab for him but he managed to dodge around them. Then he went up Shaft 14. It's a dead ender, closed off after that partial collapse we had two years back."

"I remember," she said. Six prisoners and a guard had been killed in the collapse, the latter the distant nephew of some minister back at the capitol. There had been an investigation, with much paperwork for her to fill out along with a visit by a pair of auditors from the Ministry of Correction. She'd been gulping stomach medication for a week afterward. "Which prisoner did this? Was it one of the malcontents?"

"No. This was one of the quiet ones. One of the Nameless," Abuja said.

Ha'riss' ears flipped back, her tail curling defensively, trying to suppress an automatic growl. There were less than six Nameless in her prison, kept in separate coffles, each on a different level of the mine. They were ones that would only leave in shroud, or more likely dumped in the middens, their crimes so heinous that their names were stripped from them before they even arrived at the prison, their only identification a set of numbers in their file. To let one of them escape…

"Show me where it went," she said with quiet venom in her voice. Abuja caught her tone and said nothing, merely leading her further down into the mine. As they walked, footpads crunching the salt floor, prisoners in their coffles watched them silently, minded by their guards, their tools taken from their paws and kept out of reach for now. A prison break was an excuse for a riot, and that would not happen on Ha'riss' watch.

They came to Crossway 2. At the entrance to Shaft 14 another squad of six guards stood watch, standing in front of the crude wooden barrier that had been erected there for safety, not security, partially knocked aside by the Nameless in his escape. "Is there anyone in there searching for him?" she asked the squad's sergeant.

"No, Warden," the sergeant replied, touching the brim of his cap in salute. "We're all out here."

"I told them to hold back," Abuja explained. "I didn't want to lose anyone in the dark with a ceiling that might fall down on them."

"Very well. Get the Chief Engineer for me," Ha'riss ordered.

Abuja gestured to the sergeant, who peeled off a guard from his squad and set them running. It was nearly forty-five minutes before the Chief Engineer could be roused from her sleep and persuaded that yes, Warden Ha'riss needed her Right Now, so could she get moving please? She arrived with her ears flicked back and wearing a hastily donned set of coveralls, her toolbag in her paw. "I was told about the escape, what by the damned God do you want me to do about it?" she demanded.

"I want to know if there's another way out of that shaft. Cross shafts, ventilation ducts, anything at all," Ha'riss asked.

The Chief Engineer closed her eyes, bringing up the mine's schematics in her mind. "Nothing," she said. She pointed to a round hole in the ceiling covered with heavy gauge wire. "That's the nearest ventilation shaft. About two hundred yards down the mine shaft there's an underground stream, which caused the original collapse, but he'd have to dig through twenty yards of dirt, salt and rock to get to it, and then hold his breath for three miles to swim to where it flows out. They aren't getting out that way."

"Thank you, Chief." Ha'riss held out her paw to the sergeant, saying, "Bullhorn." The sergeant unclipped the speaking horn from his belt and handed it to her. Stepping up to the hole in the barrier, she raised the horn to her muzzle and shouted through it. "Prisoner! Escape is impossible! Return now and you'll be taken back to your coffle without punishment!"

"Seriously?" Abuja asked in the silence that followed.

"Of course not. For crippling one our guards I'll have him whipped until he has more scars than pelt. But we have to get him back first." She waited ten minutes by her pocket watch, then called again. After another five minutes Ha'riss said softly, "I'm tired of this."

"I can mind the watch if you like, Warden," Abuja said.

"That's not what I meant." She sighed. "Chief, I want you to set charges to bring down the rest of that tunnel. It's a safety hazard after all."

The Chief Engineer looked at her in surprise. "You're not going after him?"

"I am not putting the lives of more guards at risk to capture a Nameless. Blow the flipping tunnel. Let it be its tomb."

"I... I'm not sure I could that, Warden," she replied.

Ha'riss stared at her, and the Chief Engineer backed up a pace. "Then get me a box of dynamite, a fuse string, and a match and I'll do the damned job myself."

Facing her with the possibility of an untrained amateur handling high explosives had the effect Ha'riss had been hoping for. The Chief Engineer's tail curled between her legs and she muttered, "I'll do it myself," before headed off to the dynamite shed.

Abuja looked at her warily. "You do know you're going to have to write a report about this and send it up to the Ministry of Correction, if only to report the death of a Nameless for their files."

"'The prisoner was killed trying to escape.' There, that was easy," Ha'riss said shrug. "It'll take all of five minutes and I might actually get back to my bed to curl up next to my husband this morning."

Abuja shook his head, ears flicking back. "I couldn't let it go at that. You're bringing down a tunnel, Warden."

Ha'riss sighed again, nodding. "You're an honest male, Abuja. How did you ever get into this line of work?"

"I had a passion for Justice, once upon a time." He gave her a pleading look. "They're going to judge what you did here, back at the capitol. They might force you to resign. Warden, I don't want your job," he said sincerely.

"Neither do I, Ab. Neither do I." She waited for the Chief Engineer to return, already shelving used books in her head.