A Forest of Stars - Kevin J. Anderson [177]
Jora’h stormed off, hearing none of the distraught words the Mage-Imperator shouted after him.
92
NIRA
Emergency alarms rang in the camp at dawn, summoning all the human and Ildiran work crews. Weary captives left their communal barracks—men, women, and children emerging in confusion, dutifully answering the summons. “It is a fire! Everyone must work!” Even the breeder barracks were opened up, fertile women chased out to assist in the emergency.
Two weeks ago, Nira’s body had expelled the warped result of her joining with the scaly kithman. She had spent five days confined with the dry-skinned reptilian man…but the miscarriage had seemed even worse. Looking at its distorted form, she considered it a mercy that her body had aborted the fetus. There was little enough mercy on Dobro…
Now, still weak and recovering, she joined all the others, but she did not stumble. The medical kithmen had pronounced her healthy enough, and she was expected to work like everyone else.
Accompanied by burly guards, Ildiran supervisors strode along the fences, using their kith’s innate organizational abilities to pull together labor groups that would normally be harvesting opalbone fossils, toiling in mines, or digging irrigation channels. Today, they had more important work. It was the dry season, and wildfires were igniting everywhere.
As dawn began to paint the sky, Nira could see black smudges across the eastern hills. She smelled the acrid charcoal odor of thick smoke drifting through the air. She desperately missed the comfort of the worldtrees, touching their golden bark and letting her mind fall into the sprawling forest network. Meditating with the great trees had always been a source of strength. Right now, she needed that strength.
When the prisoners were assembled, the Dobro Designate came to stand on his observation platform outside the fences. He looked at them with a cold, expressionless face. “The wildfires have begun again, worse than they’ve been in a long time.”
Nira despised Udru’h, but she lifted her chin and stared at him. Despite her repulsive encounter with the scaly kithman, the most horrific rape she’d endured so far had been by the Dobro Designate. He had seemed downright angry with her, determined to dominate her—as if by forcing himself upon Nira, he could prove that he was somehow superior to his elder brother.
Worse, he was raising her beloved daughter, Osira’h, her Princess, as if he could fill the role of benevolent father. Did Udru’h take such an intense interest in her other half-breed children as well? Even his own son by her?
As the sky grew lighter, muscular Ildiran workers came from supply sheds carrying tools, shovels, and picks. The supervisors and guards wore fire-protective clothing, but they gave the human breeders only facecloths to block out dust, smoke, and fumes.
“You will be our line of defense,” the Designate said, his voice brittle with command. “You must dig trenches to block the flames so that the fire cannot escape beyond the hills to destroy our agricultural areas and this camp.”
The Dobro Designate expected human captives and Ildiran workers alike to follow his orders, even if they dropped dead from overexertion or exposure to the flames. Nira had done the dirty and exhausting work before, and she knew how vital it was. But she would do it for the plants, not for the Designate.
Ground vehicles and hovering platforms carried groups of firefighter slaves off to the sweeping flames in the hills. Fliers would cruise above the fire zone, dumping chemicals and water in an attempt to stop the blazes from spreading.
The hot air was full of smoke. The winds picked up, whistling over the stony ridges, snatching up sharp mica and chert particles that blew into her face like tiny bee stings. Nira adjusted the cloth over her nose and mouth, but her eyes continued to burn.