Free No Reprieve by Gail Z. Martin

No Reprieve
    “Not bad enough that it’s so cold it would freeze the nuts off a wolf,” Piran Rowse grumbled. “Not bad enough that we’ve got these bloody shackles. Does it have to be dark for half the year, too?”
    Blaine McFadden—Mick to his fellow inmates—grunted in reply. “That’s the point, Piran,” he said. “If you recall, we were exiled because they weren’t fond of us.”
    Piran’s curses were spectacularly creative. “I seem to remember exile was supposed to be better than a noose. Some days, I’m not sure about that.”
    It was up for argument whether it was colder and darker outside Velant’s ruby mines or down in their depths. At least in the mines , Blaine thought, there isn’t the constant, cutting wind, or the wild bears and wolves. Predators of another type ruled the deep places.
    The crack of a whip stung Blaine’s shoulder. “Stop talking and keep digging!” The guard glared at Piran and Blaine as if he were hoping they would be foolhardy enough to reply.
    Piran held his tongue until the guard was out of earshot, and then began a muttered litany of expletives that was remarkable even for him. “Shut up, Piran,” Blaine said. “For some reason, you mouth off and I feel the lash for it.”
    Piran shot him a crooked smile. “Just one of my many talents.”
    Chok the guard moved on, only to stop several paces farther down the tunnel to lash another prisoner who was not mining the rubies quickly enough, though Blaine suspected the inmate was nearly to his breaking point. Velant was Donderath’s garbage heap, its dumping ground for people it considered useless for anything except brutal labor. The prisoner went down with a whimper. Chok cracked him over the head with his staff for good measure, a sickening muted thud. This time, the prisoner fell silent. Most of the Velant guards were dangerous. Some were worse than others. Chok was one of the monsters.
    “You won’t get out of here that easily,” Piran said, with a nod toward their unfortunate fellow convict. “If anyone kills you up here, it’s likely to be Prokief himself.”
    “Compared to you, who’ve annoyed the shit out of nearly everyone, so you’ve got a line waiting to do you in,” Blaine replied, but his grin took the sting from his words.
    If I had to be shackled at the ankle to a fellow prisoner, there would be worse partners than Piran , Blaine thought. They had been paired by the guards because they were relatively equal in their reach and stamina, meaning they could swing their pickaxes and sledgehammers efficiently without knocking each other off balance, and march in and out of the mine without tripping each other.
    Three months ago, Blaine had been a free man, the son of a down-at-the-heels noble back in Donderath. But when his father, Lord Ian McFadden, dishonored Blaine’s sister, Mari, Blaine killed him in a cold rage born of years of abuse. Blaine had expected to hang for his crime. But King Merrill knew of Ian’s penchant for violence, and he had granted Blaine the ‘mercy’ of exile, to the arctic wilds of Velant on the island of Edgeland at the top of the world.
    Even now, Blaine felt no remorse, though he often thought that a quick death at the end of a noose would have been preferable to the prospect of spending the rest of his natural life in a frozen wasteland under the thumb of Commander Prokief and his vicious guards.
    “Just three years,” Blaine said. “We only have to survive three years before we can get out of this godsforsaken pit and earn our Tickets.”
    Piran barked a sharp, bitter laugh. “Keep on believing that, mate, if it gets you through the night. You know how many convicts survive three years? Not many. Not bloody many at all.” Tickets of Leave were granted to convicts who served their first three years without further crimes. It meant they became colonists instead of inmates, but no one returned home, not even the soldiers, who were as much prisoners as their