I did as he said, and when we were both comfortable, he continued. “Product is mostly gold down this way, but there’s all manner of glittery things hidden in the mountain. The guild keeps track of where each gang is at and gives us the numbers at the beginning of each shift. If we make monthly quota, all’s good. If we don’t…” He shrugged. “Not so good.”

“What happens if you don’t?”

“If we don’t, then someone from the gang gets sent into the labyrinth as sluag-fodder.”

I hugged my arms around my middle. “They kill one of you just because you didn’t mine enough gold? How do they decide who goes?”

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.