Page 63 of Stolen Songbird

Tips chuckled. “They don’t. Those maggot-gobbling guild members are too clever for that. They make us choose who has to go.”

Clever indeed. And cruel. “How do you choose?”

Tips picked up a rock, tossing it from one hand to another. Which struck me as an oddly human gesture, although I couldn’t pinpoint why. “If we’re lucky, someone will volunteer. There’s those who have had enough of the never-ending toil, the fear of cave-ins… Those who’d rather meet their end now than go on another day in the mines. And if we’re not fortunate enough to have one of those optimists in our mix, then we choose whoever is holding the gang back.”

“How often do gangs miss quota?”

Tips set the rock down. “Rare for more than a few months to pass where at least one gang doesn’t have to send someone.”

So frequent. I stirred a finger in the bits of rock by my feet, trying to imagine having to choose which one of my friends to send to their death. Not just once, but having to choose on a regular basis. The guilt would be overwhelming.

“Cover your ears,” Tips said abruptly.

I barely managed to clap my hands over my ears as the tunnels echoed with a loud boom. Dust coughed over us, but Tips didn’t look the slightest bit concerned. “We’re going to get all sorts of work done with Zoé here,” he said with a smile.

“If she’s so powerful, why isn’t she a miner?” I mused.

“You really don’t know anything, do you?”

Tristan’s words echoed through my mind.In Trollus, power is king. “It’s because she’s powerful that she isn’t down here.”

Tips nodded. “They know when we’re children how powerful we are likely to be, and when we get auctioned off, those like Élise and Zoé get picked up to be servants. Having more magic makes your presence…” he searched for the word, “desirable to the full-bloods. Then there’s those with little or no magic. All they tend to be good for is street cleaning and sewers. Dirty jobs that can be done by hand rather than magic. Everyone else goes to the mines.”

Down in the mines where death lurked at every corner.

“So, if you are half-blood, and you aren’t powerful, it’s better to have almost no magic,” I said, picking up Tips’s discarded rock.

“You’d think so,” Tips replied, raising one eyebrow. “Polishing sewer grates is lots easier than mining gold and a whole lot less dangerous. ’Cept if you were one to be noticing such things, it would have dawned on you that while plenty of half-bloods are born with little or no magic, there aren’t too many of them that live long enough to make it to the auctions.” He blinked. “Accidents happen.”

“I see,” I breathed. If you were at the bottom of the pack of miners, in regards to magic, then you would be first on the chopping block if your gang didn’t meet quota. It was better to be top of the pack of sewer workers, except that in order for there to be positions available, it meant eliminating the very weakest of them all. “The full-bloods don’t even need to dirty their hands,” I whispered. “You kill off your own weak.”

“When it’s your life, or someone else’s…” Tips shrugged. “Maybe you understand better now why we’re fighting for change. Cover your ears.”

The ground shuddered and another cloud of dust rolled over us. “How do you know when the explosions are going to happen?” I asked when the noise subsided.

“Been doing this a long time. I know the rhythms.”

I leaned forward. “And how have you survived down here this long?”

His face darkened, confirming my suspicions. He acted too human: trolls did everything they possibly could with magic. Even idly tossing around a rock. And I’d noticed that he was the only one that let his troll-light fade when we entered the mines. The man sitting across from me looked almost human, with his badly healed scar and eye more grey than silver. Tips was one of those with weak magic.

“I can smell the gold,” he said, voice chilly. “I always know where to dig. And since I joined this gang, not once have we missed quota.” He pointed a finger at me. “Despite what they think, a man’s value ain’t just determined by his magic.”

“Or a woman’s.” I met his glare calmly until he blinked.

“Or a woman’s,” he agreed. “Right you are about that, Princess. Now how about we go see what sort of progress our friends are making. If I leave them alone too long, they’ll dig in the wrong direction.”

We walked through the tunnels until we found Zoé and the rest of the gang sorting through rubble. I hadn’t missed Tips’s choice of words: “our friends”. Before tonight, helping Tristan had been primarily about securing my own freedom, but now I realized that my own freedom wasn’t enough. I wanted to help bring down the laws that forced the half-bloods to kill each other to save themselves. The half-bloods weren’t just my friends—they were my comrades. “You’re risking a lot telling me these things,” I said. “And bringing me down here—if we get caught…”

“The sluag would feast for days,” Tips said. “But it’s worth it.”

“Why?” The ground shuddered from a distant detonation.

Tips slowed his pace. “We are slaves caught in a cage within a cage, Princess. And for the first time in history, a future king is willing to put the lowest but largest caste of his people ahead of his own interests. Tristan’s willing to risk his own life to save ours, and there is nothing most of us wouldn’t do for him. But unless the curse can be broken…” He shook his head. “Power breeds power, and it ain’t going to cede to morality or what’s right for long. We need to be able to put physical distance between us and the full-bloods, it’s our only chance at being truly free. And that’s not something Tristan can accomplish on his own. It’s human magic that binds us, and it will be a human that sets us free. And we don’t need a stinking prophesy to tell us that.” He stopped and inclined his head to me. “We need your help.”

Put that way, the request was daunting. “I’ll do what I can,” I said.

“I know,” Tips replied. “Now cover your ears.”

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