Bortim and Kendry returned a short time later, and one of Kendry’s goons—or rather, owned—gathered up Keyla and Elion’s belongings, then left. He closed Snicker’s cage and didn’t mention that it was empty.

  “See them,” Kendry said, pointing as the man left with their belongings. “They’re well trained, just like you’re gonna be. Quiet and helpful.”

  Bortim produced the handkerchief and pendant, then handed them over to Kendry. “Here you go,” he said. “Have fun with them.”

  Elion scowled.

  “Awe,” Kendry said. “Why’d you have to use this necklace? I coulda sold that.”

  “I have to use the item he’s already the most strongly bound to for a Bondhold,” Bortim said. “If I bound him to something else, he could have used that strong bond to the necklace to resist.”

  Kendry sighed. “Ah well, I suppose it’s fine.”

  She turned to Elion and Keyla.

  “Sit,” she ordered.

  They sat.

  “Stand up.”

  They stood.

  “Tell Bortim he’s ugly and fat.”

  Elion flushed furiously, but spoke the words, in sync with Keyla. Kendry laughed uproariously.

  “Get them out of here,” Bortim grumbled, and Elion risked a glance toward Keyla. Her eyes darted toward his, wide with fear.

  “Okay, stop that, we’ve got to get down to business,” Kendry said. “Come with me. Follow along demurely, and keep your eyes lowered. Don’t say anything and don’t try anything funny.”

  Elion and Keyla followed Kendry out of the room, down the hall, and past the door where a woman still screamed.

  As he walked, Elion searched for some way around Kendry’s orders. She’d ordered him to follow, keep his eyes down, not to say anything…

  Did that mean he could say words, just not the word ‘anything?’ Elion doubted it, but he tried to form Keyla’s name as he walked. He could see her feet as she moved along beside him, but when he tried to say her name, he felt the restriction of the bond.

  Elion frowned. What about ‘don’t try anything funny?’ It certainly wouldn’t be funny if he were to tackle Kendry and take his pendant away from her, would it?

  As they left the building, Elion was unable to make a move against Kendry. The Bondhold restricted him. It must have something to do with my interpretation of her order, Elion thought. Just like how I could touch the chains but Keyla couldn’t, even though we had the same orders.

  They walked along the street, moving past buildings and people, but with his eyes held down to the ground, Elion couldn’t take in much. He saw legs, arachnatronic appendages, and trash beaten into the dirt of the street. In some places boardwalks had been constructed of salvaged materials along the edges, but Kendry kept them in the road.

  Elion began catching whiffs of something in the air. It reminded him of the school gym, which had been near the swimming pool. The smell of sweat and chlorine mingled together. The stench grew stronger as they progressed, taking on an acrid, metallic stench which burned at his eyes and nose.

  “Look at that,” Kendry said, gesturing. Elion looked up, grateful to be freed from the command to keep his eyes down.

  A chasm opened up in the ground before them. Pools filled with neon green liquid bubbled and flowed, draining down from tier to tier deep into the earth. Tracks, roads, and bridges laced the gaping hole, and people moved about, mingling with machines, arachnatronics, and vehicles.

  “The Acid Pit!” Kendry declared.

  They walked along the rim of the pit, and Elion caught whiffs of a toxic, burning odor. He watched people moving around near the neon pools, wearing silvery protective suits.

  They reached a large structure. Partially built into a cliff, it jutted out toward the pits. A long winding staircase ran down to the base, alongside a large open air cargo elevator. The rest of the building was made of yellow brick. Three large smoke stacks rose over it, stained black with soot along their brims as they pumped smoke up into the sky.

  “That stuff’s the liquid gold of New Kairn Tol,” Kendry said. “Boff’s going to train you for me, working down there. You’ll pump, process, and package up Acid, which we’re going to ship off to Erod. Lord Dorian Starholder loves the stuff. Even sent his own people to make sure we keep it flowing.”

  Kendry pointed, and Elion looked. He scanned across the Acid Pit and looked up the road. Just past the factory, in an empty dirt lot, a variety of tents had been pitched; a small encampment of warlocks. Dark robed figures and people in uniform moved between the tents. Elion wondered if this is where Venya’s people had come after he destroyed their skyskimmer.

  Purple banners flapped in the wind, with a black fist symbol on them.

  He sensed his knife in that direction, and knew the answer to his question. Venya had brought his knife here..

  Kendry pulled Elion and Keyla into a side door of the factory. They entered a small office area. “Brought you a few more, Boff,” Kendry said as they entered.

  Boff, a grimy man with thinning hair rose from a chair behind a desk to greet Kendry. He wore a dozen chains around his neck, each with a strange object dangling from it. More chains encircled his forearms, peculiar charms attached to them.

  “Coming to sell or just lending?” Boff asked.

  “Just lending,” Kendry said.

  “I’ve got room for a few more,” Boff said, grinning as he caressed his bracelets.

  “I’ll be round in a week to collect their wage,” Kendry said, rolling her eyes.

  “Less room and board,” Boff clarified.

  “Yeah, yeah,” Kendry said. She handed Elion’s pendant and Keyla’s bandana to Boff. “But I’m not paying for fancy meals or comfy beds.”

  Then she turned, marching out of the room. Elion and Keyla watched Boff warily.

  “Here’s the drill,” Boff said, tying Keyla’s bandana to Elion’s pendant chain and looping it over his head. He had to rebend the paperclip to complete the chain. “You sleep on bunks here, you get your meals here. You must be in the building from sun up to sun down. You aren’t allowed to leave the Acid Pits.”

  He held up a clipboard, referring to some notes. “You will not fight,” he read. “You will not attempt to escape.”

  Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.

  Boff looked up and eyed his new workers appraisingly. “If you last long enough, I’m sure you’ll come to like it here.”

  I seriously doubt that," Elion thought.

  Boff led them down a narrow corridor to a kind of kitchen. Several flimsy tables lined the room, and a variety of mismatched chairs sat around them. A pile of busted furniture leaned in one corner: splintered chair legs, shredded wicker weave, and a tabletop cracked in half.

  “I don’t think Roban is going to make it much longer,” Boff said, looking at the wreckage. “He’s starting to forget himself, losing his connection to humanity. It’s a good thing we’ve already got you to replace him. I hate it when Bortim uses bondholds from people’s pets.”

  As he spoke, Boff tapped on a dog collar wrapped around his wrist. A silver charm hung from it, in the shape of a gear.

  Boff led them through the kitchen and into a dark hall. The hall turned a sharp corner. In the corner, a man sat on a chair, a shotgun laid across his lap.

  “That’s Alven,” Boff said. “If either of you have second thoughts about obeying orders, he’ll blow your head off.”

  Alven watched them with beady eyes as they passed.

  They reached the door at the end of the hall, and Boff pulled it open, revealing a dark room beyond.

  “It’s lights out already, so be quiet. There should be empty bunks at the back of the room. Go find one, get in, and stay in your bunk until I come for you in the morning.”

  ---

  The following morning, Boff brought them down to the acid pools. Even though an elevator ran up and down into the pit, they had to take the stairs. Elion guessed they had descended more than ten stories. By the time they reached the bottom, the inside of his suit was slick with sweat.

  The thick, rubbery, full-body suits Boff had given them weren’t even that helpful. “They’ll protect you from small splashes, but that’s it,” Boff had said.

  The suits didn’t keep out the smell. Down in the chasm, the metallic, sulphureous stench of the green acid pools was overwhelming, permeating everything.

  The workers looked like astronauts, working on a distant planet. That’s actually true, Elion realized. This is a distant planet, from Earth.

  “Remember,” Boff said, “don’t dip yourself in the acid. It will ruin the suit, and probably you too. The suit also helps protect your lungs from some of the toxic fumes down here. So keep the suits on.”

  They reached a region near a large pool. In the dirt nearby a large area had been cleared and leveled. Lines of barrels filled with green acid sat in a row, waiting for lids. Arachnatronics gathered the lidded barrels and carried them over to the elevator up into the processing factory.

  “This here is a barrel mallet,” Boff said, shouting to be heard through the material of the suit. He held a wooden stick with a rubber ball at one end. “Place a lid on the barrel,” he demonstrated, “And hit it with the mallet, alternating sides, like so.”

  Another worker down the row from them moved quickly, capably, pounding lids onto barrels of acid with skill and finesse.

  “Work with Yaret over there, and when you have lidded all these barrels, clamp them in that machine and then put them onto those shipping pallets. Then you can come back up for lunch.”

  Boff left them standing there, holding barrel mallets.

  “Elion,” Keyla said as soon as Boff was out of hearing range. “I recognized some people this morning, at breakfast. People from Aterfel, who followed Prator.”

  “Here? We need to talk to them. If we figure out what happened here, maybe we can find out what happened to your mom.”

  “Yeah,” Keyla agreed. “But first we need to get this work done.”

  “How compelled do you feel?” Elion asked. “To follow his order?”

  “I feel like my mother needs me to lid these barrels,” Keyla said, walking over to the stack of lids. “I think I’m going to burst into tears if I can’t do this for her.”

  Elion resisted, waiting as long as he could. The sensation of abandoning Liora, leaving her in Dorian’s hands forever surged up through him. He needed to lid barrels, for her sake. He picked up a lid and placed it on a nearby barrel, hating the action as he did it.

  I’m going to start hating Liora. Wouldn’t that weaken the bond?

  “It’s strange,” Elion said, as he hammered the lid. “I know that I’m being manipulated. But I can’t resist the impulse.”

  “You could if you stopped caring about your sister,” Keyla said. “That’s how all manipulation works; people take what you care about and use it against you. If you just let go of her, gave up on the idea of seeing with her again.”

  Elion scoffed. “As if,” he said. Each time he struck the lid, it popped back open on the opposite side. He pounded harder, to no avail. Elion thought about all the times he’d wished to be an only child. Liora had a way of making his life difficult, even when she wasn’t around.

  She doesn’t need me to lid these barrels.

  But whatever Bortim had done continued to compel Elion. He pounded at the barrel lid.

  “Hey,” Yaret said, walking over. The worker was short, and smiled through the plastic mask of the suit. “Not like that.” He carefully centered the lid on Elion’s barrel, then began tapping it lightly with the barrel mallet, alternating sides of the lid. As the lid wedged into the barrel, Yaret began hitting harder, until the barrel sealed.

  Elion fetched a new lid and tried again, having better success this time.

  “Good,” Yaret said, watching. “So, you’re the new guys. Who’s your owner?”

  Elion recoiled at the term ‘owner.’ “We don’t have an owner,” he said.

  “Working for yourselves?” Yaret seemed surprised. “Down here?”

  “Kendry captured us, if that’s what you mean,” he said.

  “Ah,” Yaret chuckled. “Newly owned. Hasn’t fully sunk in yet. Maybe you have a chance then. Not me, I’m a lifer.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Boff’s got my bondhold,” Yaret said. “My daughter’s earring. It’s all I have left of her; all I could find after the fire. She’s the only thing I ever cared about, and I’m not going to give up my memories of her. So I’m working down here for the rest of my life. Unless Boff decides to make me do something else.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that,” Elion said, working on pounding another lid onto a barrel. He’d only been at this for a few minutes, but his arms were starting to ache. There must have been more than a hundred barrels left.

  “Well we’d better get cracking if we want lunch,” Yaret said, starting on another barrel lid. He closed four in the time it took Elion to get one. Keyla wasn’t faring any better, which comforted Elion slightly.

  “How long have you been doing this?” Elion asked.

  Yaret laughed. “I’ve been here for a few years. I was one of the first ones Prator and his Red Judge bound when they showed up.”

  “You were here?” Keyla asked, showing sudden interest in the conversation.

  “Yep. After the Breaking of the Sky, the dam near my town collapsed and the whole thing was washed away in a flood. I wandered around for a while, but eventually ended up here.”

  “You said you’ve been here for a few years,” Keyla said. “How many? I thought Prator only came here about a year ago?”

  “Naw, it’s been about six or seven years at least. Every year or so he goes out and collects more settlers, they show up all bright eyed and enthusiastic about the future, and then he and Bortim bond them and put them to work.”

  Keyla clapped a hand to the face shield of her suit, covering her mouth.

  “Prator lied,” she breathed.

  “Wow,” Elion chimed in. “Floods, fires, you’ve really been through a lot.”

  “Alas,” Yaret agreed.

  “How do you know you’ve actually been here for that long?” Elion asked.

  Yaret shrugged. “I keep track of my birthdays. I’m coming up on my seventh one here in New Kairn Tol.”

  Elion eyed the man suspiciously.

  “About a year ago, Prator came back with a bunch of people?” Keyla asked. “Do you know any of them?”

  “Oh sure,” Yaret said. “I’ve met tons of them. They’re all working down here, in the acid pit, or running the refinery. He managed to find a few with expertise there who helped get the whole thing running more efficiently. If you’re looking for someone, they’re all here.”

  “Not all of them,” Keyla said. Elion gave her a warning look. Better not to reveal what we’re trying to do.

  “What do you mean?” Yaret asked, interested. “You know someone who broke the bond? I heard a man did it, but they say he died. Killed himself a few days later because he couldn’t handle the loss. I always thought that was just propaganda, but you never know.”

  “No,” Elion said. “We don’t know anyone.” He pounded another lid onto a barrel.

  Yaret moved off.

  “Keyla,” Elion said. “Didn’t you come out scavenging this area? Wouldn’t you have known that there were people living in New Kairn Tol?”

  “No,” she said. “My mom only brought me here twice, when I was quite young. Things weren’t as dangerous back then. They’ve been getting worse. I don’t think anyone from Aterfel came this far into Kairn Tol in the last 10 years or so. Not until Prator came.”

  They kept working, sweating and stinking in the acid pits under a hot sun. Every so often Elion glanced up at the ridge line, where the warlock’s camp was. He couldn’t see much, just rippling fabric, and the occasional robed figure moving around.

  They eventually finished lidding the barrels, and started moving them over to the clamping machine. The machine gripped the rim of the barrel, spinning it around and crimping over a metal ridge to hold the barrel in place.

  Yaret demonstrated the procedure while Elion and Keyla watched. “Make sure the lids are seated all the way, or they might fly off, and then the spinning motion will spew acid everywhere.”

  Keyla took over operation of the machine, and Yaret used a specially designed hand cart to wheel barrels over to it. After they were clamped, Elion wheeled the barrels over to a shipping crate and stacked them on.

  By the time they finished, Elion was starving.

  “Welp,” Yaret said, surveying their work. “Let’s go eat. You kids are slower than Jodi was, but she doesn’t have arms anymore.”

  “What?” Keyla asked.

  “What happened?”

  “She ran that clamping machine,” Yaret said, pointing to a partially melted, corroded lump of metal nearby. “The lid was loose though, and it spewed acid everywhere. She’s lucky to be alive.”

  Keyla and Elion locked eyes. Yaret chuckled. “Come on, it’s lunch time.