Some Superiors just worked there. Others, two or three, joined to soften the pain. One of those few gave Samir incense to burn in exchange for extra work. He was burning it then.
"Peace, Samir," Faraji tried. He placed breakfast in front of his friend on their rocky Barracks balcony. The northerner had been praying since it was still deep night, and was watching the glow of daybreak with glazed eyes.
"None to be had," the man whispered.
He was watching the bright sea past the walls. It was cruel that the Barracks had thirty-two stories.
"Today starts Kanaloa's Third."
"Ah." Faraji wrapped a hand around his friend's tense shoulder. "A new slave shipment, then. Samir, these men—"
"No. The Husbands come, too. Every other year, same month."
Faraji nodded, slow and heavy. "Samir…Atiena isn't old enough."
"Not to carry, no."
Faraji's breath caught in his throat. He turned and looked at Atiena, humming as she arranged dolls of sand and fabric into family units on her bunk. He said nothing.
"...People will die tonight, Faraji," Samir husked. He was a joyous man, always sad. "It cannot be us." The northerner stood and yanked in a breath like it could revive him. "For her sake." He took up his biltong and millet pancakes and left.
"Yes…" Faraji muttered.
* * *
On haul days, all six stations ran all four trains up all twenty-four spiraling tracks. And almost all seventy thousand slaves worked. Four out of five days were haul days.
"You! Ben-Ayurr! Northerner! Stop talking and take your post!" The Superior had called Samir three times.
"Okay— Alright!"
He started walking backwards and shoving blindly through the large crowd. Ninety-six hundred were amassed outside the Barracks' station under creeping sunlight. They were split into thirty-two groups of three hundred according to their housing sector, each with their own familiar presiding Superior. A gargoyle circled every station high in the sky, gobbling up stone ravens.
"Nandi!" Samir called, back towards the rest of 29F. "...So, then— Did I say the cow thing already?— So then, the man says, 'I'll have the steak…'"
It was important to Samir that pretty Nandi found him funny.
"And the bartender says—" The Mchangan Superior yanked the slave by his turban and threw him onto the rocks.
The soldier stood over him, blocking the light. "Sorting." The man double-checked his written schedule and snickered. "You get to play Orosion up here in the sun all day, Northman."
"Ah. Is that what we do? I had no idea." He flashed a cocky smile at Nandi and got kicked in the head.
Atiena and Bhekizitha had already left for one of the other upper stations. Unloading was always hectic, but it was easy for the little girl to unhook the carts, and the roof kept them cool.
The majority of the crowd still stood there, never named like the lucky others. The leftovers always had the same job. The remaining nine thousand would fight to enter the station and go down together, the same scene as at the other six. The Superior didn't have to say it— hauling.
Naturally, Fortus and Faraji were the last ones to squeeze into the last cart. On haul days, bodies had to half-hang out of the cart to fit all one hundred and eleven.
"Wait! God in heaven, can't you people at least brief your workers?!" He was not from Mchanga.
A fat white man barreled through the arch of the doorway in a panic. His blonde curls were brunette then, pasted to his full forehead with red wrinkles and dripping sweat. He wheezed over to the cart and stared up at Faraji and Fortus.
"Well?! What is this, tourism?! Are you going to help me up or not?"
All one hundred and nine saw his build and started to moan and complain, warning Faraji by name. Fortus picked at his scabs as he stared him down. The Orosian had an inflated stomach, underchin, and shoulders. They were packed to the bursting point with wines, olives, cheeses, and flavors the slaves had never tasted. His skin was white. More than beige— he had no cuts, no bruises, no scars, no pores. He was white, overwhelming, and perfect, like the Sun had never touched him.
Fortus fought to pry his eyes off the man's exposed stomach, bare with his hairy chest beneath a black leather jerkin. He looked like a fool without the accompanying fluffy ruffs and collared doublet for an underjacket. The boy's eyes landed on a golden Trinitarian necklace tangled in his chest hairs, three overlapped circles forming a pyramid. He pointed a finger from the cart.
"They're going to kill you and steal that," he stated.
"Fortus!" Faraji scolded as he smacked down his son's hand.
The white man's eyes flew open like he had seen a pack of rabid dogs, and he took a few steps back. "Sir," Faraji covered, "I'd be happy to help you." A chorus of groans.
Faraji offered his arms, and the Orosian poured into the cart, snaking between bodies until he slushed into place. His chest was leaking over the edge, and the slaves leaned out from under him so extremely that it looked from atop like a flower blooming from his yellow head.
The trains started, Obi & Zabu Co. stenciled proudly on the side of every rickety locomotive.
As they grated down that soft spiral of iron tracks, Faraji stared down onto the sweat-matted hair of the short man shoved against him.
"What's your name, my friend?" He smiled and placed a hand on the Orosian's bare shoulder.
The man pushed it off. "Do you take this animal pen for a sitting room? What more? Would you like that I pour us some tea as we go over the details of the Midsommar festival?"
Faraji held a stare for a moment, waiting for any justification, and the man just stopped talking. The Mchangan tensed his jaw and exhaled hard enough to flap the man's blonde curls. He looked over to Fortus and shook his head.
The Orosian held the rim of his tall, buckled capotain hat in his hands, kneading it over and over. Faraji could see his hands shaking as his soul was bitten by the sight of three thousand feet of work over sixty years. The fat man stared out at the promise of another few hundred over his remaining thirty years. Faraji breathed out, and his anger atrophied.
Fortus watched too, and saw a man deathly allergic to discomfort. He scoffed and leaned over to his ear.
He whispered, "Don't talk to my father like that."
There was something in him, shaking, wild, and excited.
"I don't know where you come from. But there are no rules here, no protection."
Faraji smacked Fortus so hard on the back of his head that his teeth almost got chipped on the wall of the cart. He hadn't heard him, but it was obvious. The Orosian still stared forward, like Fortus never said anything at all.
"Merek Corbin," he finally answered, never turning.
"Faraji," the man responded, flashing his son a look sharp enough to draw blood.
"Fortus," the boy mumbled.
Merek stepped out of the cart first. He balanced as he stretched his legs over the wall, wrapped in silver skin-tight leggings under a great billowing pair of patterned pumpkin hose trousers, like black balloons at his hips. They were pinned down the center by an embroidered and exaggerated codpiece over his groin.
On the working grounds, it was a heat like a sauna, the kind where you have to breathe from your stomach to get any air at all. As soon as Merek touched the stone, he slid off his inflated pumpkin hose trousers. He was left in a close-fitting pair of leggings that seemed obscenely immodest to any non-Orosian.
"Don't throw away everything, my friend," Faraji advised, coming up beside him. "It is a wet, muggy heat down here, but we cannot forget the demon in the sky."
It was true. Merek had already seen that sweating may be preferable to burning, at least in Mchanga. The sun was a different god there, one that burrowed into your skin like a tick until it ravaged every cell.
The Orosian put his hat on tightly, making sure the brim was balanced with a bias over his face.
Merek took a shovel and wandered onto the detonated working grounds, gravel and cracked rock. Faraji went the opposite direction and called to the Orosian.
"Here, let's work in the center for a while. As the sun rises, we'll move to the edges. They'll be in shadow most of the day, while the middle cooks under strong sun."
"Ah," he grunted. They walked together.
He never says thank you, Fortus noticed, or even 'Oh! Alright.' The boy glowered.
"What nonsense," Merek whined. "How can it be that so far under stones we find ourselves hotter than on the surface?"
"Mbombo," Faraji warned. "We're close. My people say he doesn't want to be found. He's growing impatient with the work."
Merek rolled his eyes and stabbed his shovel into the rock.
"Yes, your people sound like great academics."
Fortus drew in a breath to start protesting, and Faraji threw out his hand. Stop, his five fingers demanded.
"In any case, your advice is well met, thank you."
The boy's eyes went wide, and he snapped his face towards his father to check if he understood the man's accented Kāpuran.
Faraji looked at his son and shrugged. See?
"It is true, I was not made to cook in this hellish heat."
There it was.
"And we were?!" Fortus growled, pushing past him.
Obviously, Merek would've answered, were he still in his magistrate's office. Fortus dragged his shovel behind him as he passed, and its blade happened to accidentally cut into Merek's leggings by chance.
"Daughter of God!" he screamed, lifting his knee to his chest and coddling the single drop of blood on his shin. "You stupid ninnyhammer dunce, you struck me! Idiot boy!"
"Have respect," Faraji commanded. Severity met Merek in the man's eyes, and it made harsh promises. He went back to shoveling.
"Why don't you keep asking the trinity for help?" Fortus mocked. "Maybe The Mother will give you a new leg that isn't so deformed and ruined."
"What is your problem with my gods, boy?!"
Fortus laughed. "I don't care about your gods. But you Trinitarians…Your Pope is one love-night away from being Mkubwa's wife. You people are white Superiors."
"The Church has alliances. Always has, or else there would no longer be one." He had still to lift his first filled shovel off the ground.
"Right. How else could it keep happy members like you safe, right, Merek? There's no baths here, by the way."
Haul days were simple. Fifty thousand slaves shoveled up two hundred pounds of debris, plopped it onto a sled-style Obi & Zabu Co. barrow with iron runners, wrapped themselves in jute rope harnesses, and marched for ten minutes to the loaders on the first rung of the stone benches. Again and again. The rest of the process was of no relevance to the haulers.
Somehow, it took Merek two hours to do that once, and while he was away, the boy and his father spoke.
"I hate Orosians," Fortus said, stabbing his shovel in perfect rhythm with his father. "It's a real miracle to be miserable and useless."
Faraji was running his shovel in at an angle with every scoop, and the edge became rougher and sharper. "Some judge you are, mtwana wami. You've met less than a handful."
"Thank god," Fortus joked.
Faraji laughed with him. "But you've heard the stories of their home, haven't you?"
"Of course, Baba, you told them."
"Then you know— forests of tall trees that never change, no matter how cold or harsh, mountains of purple stones and sparkling white snow all around."
Faraji put down his shovel and took his son's shoulders. "The man who raised me was born just miles from here, in Kusini. My best friend was born on the other side of the continent. Both of them were born free."
"My whole life, they told me how it killed the person they thought they were, to find slavery after a life of freedom.
"Weeeh, mwana, we were born here. It's different to have been something and hear that you are now nothing. I think Merek acts this way because he needs to think he is still something, or his heart will die.
"He's going through an unimaginable pain, Fortus. Please, understand him— and his imperfection."
Fortus looked down and picked at his skin.
His father was good.
When Merek came back, Fortus flagged him down and asked how the hand-off went.
"My word, boy, you would not believe it," he said, flipping up his empty sled to use as a cane instead of filling it.
"I arrive, and those mu—men ask for my help pouring it into the cart! It was easy enough to pull for one person, wasn't it? And neither of them could lift it? My help made all the difference?!"
He was guffawing then, smacking Fortus hard on his back. "In all seriousness," he finally sighed, "What do they even pay those loaders for? Really!"
Fortus rolled his eyes and looked at Faraji.
His father pursed his lips and shook his head, a silent order.
* * *
By the end of the workday, Merek was glowing bright red in every place his vest didn't cover. However, given the thick clouds of smoke and dust coating the working grounds and Faraji's strategic movement along the Sun's reach, there was no blistering.
"I'll get you extra clothes, Merek," Faraji said, as he followed with the man to deliver his last load. "We have tunics at the Barracks." "Ah."
As soon as Merek helped unload his sled, the day was done.
Faraji drifted off to the side, turned his back to the returning slaves, and began inspecting his shovel.
"What now, Fuhrawzi?!" the Orosian barked, snapping his gaze between Faraji and the packed line of haulers as he sweated over losing his luxurious seat in the minecart.
"You can always leave on your own, Merek," Faraji hissed from over his shoulder.
The second half of the day had been as grating as the first, and gentle Faraji was beginning to fray.
The Mchangan positioned the handle of the shovel so that it rested on the top of his foot, ran up his pants, under his waistband, and up again until the roughened blade scratched its earth-made serrations against his thin stomach. All things considered, he looked relatively normal, except for his conspicuous hobble and constant wincing.
Faraji waited for a moment. When the crowd of laborers passed him, he yanked his son by the arm and tangled himself in them. Merek followed and lost himself somewhere in the center of that uniform brown throng. A solitary head of blonde curls poked out from under the Orosian's tall capotain hat.
The three waited in the line, boarded wildly in a horde like everyone else, and by the end were stuffed in just as they meant to be. Faraji stared at the huge pile of returned shovels at one end of the station, his own still stabbing his stomach under his clothes.
* * *
There weren't always so many drums. Or such depth. Or so many slaves. The crater deepened by ten feet every five days, and each time it dropped fifty, a new bench was carved out to stabilize it. Initially, there was respectable housing for all the slaves, but fifty-six years later, order was secondary.
The Barracks, as they stood, were an unplanned mess of rammed earth and mudbrick encircling a central stinking pool, accused of being a bath. Every time new housing was needed, it was built right atop the old collapses, balconies added as they were wanted, and walls put up, until it became a dark maze of dim candlelight, false doorways, and stairs that went nowhere.
And it was always cracking.
Faraji finally got to waddle up those thin adobe steps when the ten thousand of his station started their turn to enter. He was paranoid of every whisper of falling sand, earth cracking, and stone moaning, as he felt the steps fidget under every foot. It was night by the time he started his ascent and slotted himself into the middle. In case the steps in front of them gave in, Merek was in front, because the Mchangan had to survive for Fortus. The boy was last, because he had to survive.
When they disappeared far enough into the brick maze, Faraji broke off into a side room and pulled his gnawing shovel free from under his clothes. He ran his finger across its blade. It wasn't sharp.
But it nicked him.
His face brightened. No, not sharp, but serrated, rough. That was just as well. Gripping his weapon, Faraji marched through the narrow halls lining the rooms. He came to an empty slope and paused long enough to scan for eyes. None met his. He climbed.
The trio arrived at a sealed wall, an outcropping hinting at the door it once was. The voices behind it—arguing, laughing, gossiping—betrayed its secrecy. At the bottom right, an opening had been carved two feet tall and three wide. Merek saw candles burning inside and shadows darting across the gap. Faraji sent Fortus in first, and the boy dove in without hesitation.
"Merek," the father called, motioning to the door.
The Orosian's face twisted with humor. "Ha! You surprise me sometimes, Fuhrawzi– Such wit in a shoveler."
Faraji offered a dry chuckle.
Nobody moved. "Oh. Merek, that's the entrance."
The Orosian crouched down with a huff and looked at it. "This slit, here? Do I look like a mole rat, Fuhrawzi?"
"That is the door," he sighed, rubbing his eyes. "The room is inside."
"And you expect me to fit—"
"Merek!" Faraji huffed. He tried to salvage it with a chuckle that came out as biting scorn. "Merek. There are other rooms…and other hosts. Go pick one, I'm busy."
Merek looked him in the eyes and snorted. The man shook his head, and his thick yellow beard rustled on his jiggling underchin. He plopped down and started sliding.
Faraji didn't start until Merek finally unhooked his vest from a rocky spike and disappeared inside.
The Mchangan started to squeeze between the railing and the wall, inching across the thin sliver of adobe used for walkways between the living spaces. Halfway between his room and his neighbors', Faraji stopped and ran his fingers along the wall.
They caught.
He pushed, and a three-foot slab thudded into its slot. The plate fell flush with the floor of a hidden hollow in the wall. It was bursting with shelves of tools, scrap, water, and old clothing. He had helped Young Bhekizitha carve it when he was seven.
Faraji pushed against the railing as he slid out a long, woeful shovel. Sāfil, Samir named it, which he claimed meant 'Hero.' It was an old shovel, sharpened to hell, splintered, and rotten. Every time someone died of disease or infection, Samir would smear their pus, blood, and rot onto the jagged blade and let it fester. Tetanus on a handle, stinking, rusted death in his hands.
Faraji held the shovel and breathed in the quiet dark.
Hooks crawled under his ribs, and the taste of his heart beat slowly in his throat.
If everything went as planned, Fortus would live to build a Sāfil of his own. And nothing more.
Faraji let his head fall onto the cold wall.
He tried to get up again and again.