Tears prickled Kiva’s eyes, and she blinked them back, no longer having the cover of rain to conceal them. She looked ahead to see how far they had left to walk, relieved to find they were already passing the abandoned quarry to their right, with their destination in sight straight ahead.

Kiva had never visited the abandoned quarry. It had been depleted a few years before she’d arrived at Zalindov, the laborers relocating further north to the much larger mine where she and Naari were now headed. She’d heard rumors that while the abandoned one was smaller, the prisoners had been forced to dig so deep into the earth that numerous cave-ins had occurred, resulting in multitudes of deaths. Similar accidents happened in the newer quarry, though less frequently.

“How do you want to go about this?” Naari asked as the sounds of hammers and chisels meeting rock began to reach their ears. She indicated the bag Kiva had brought with her and added, “The quarry is huge. Do you know where you want to get your samples from?”

“We need to go where the largest concentration of workers are, places that lots of prisoners have access to or spend most of their time.”

Naari’s reply was dry. “You’re making this up as you go, aren’t you.”

It wasn’t a question, so Kiva didn’t answer, though her cheeks did warm slightly.

“This way,” Kiva said as the tracks came to an end. Rail carts were piled up, empty and waiting for the prisoners to load them and push them back to the depository once their shift was over. It was hard work, grueling on the body and mind. Quarriers, like tunnelers, rarely survived long at Zalindov.

There was only one watchtower overlooking the quarry, but there were plenty of guards on the ground making sure the prisoners were working—and providing motivation when they weren’t, their whips and canes stained with blood. The quarry overseer, Harlow, was the worst of them, and he scowled at Kiva and Naari as they approached where he waited at the base of the watchtower.

“I heard youse was comin’,” Harlow said, chewing with his mouth open and then spitting a wad of blackgum close enough to Kiva’s feet that she wondered if he’d meant it to hit her. She wouldn’t have been surprised, though it would have made her less inclined to ease his discomfort the next time he came to see her about his chronic venereal rash. Kiva couldn’t have wished such an ailment on a nicer man, and she took great delight in giving him remedies that stung and burned his nether regions, conveniently overlooking the solution that would heal him in a trice.