Never Missed

The tent was warm.

There were oil lamps hanging from the poles and a kettle going on a little stove in the corner. On a long table there were eight Warden helmets, eight coils of rope, eight water flasks and eight short knives in leather sheaths, laid out in a row. At the far end of the table was something big and square under a canvas sheet, with one polished brass foot showing at the bottom.

Behind the table stood a man in a Warden coat. Under the coat he had on a brown knitted cardigan.

Wardens don't wear cardigans. Wardens wear the coat buttoned to the throat. This man had his coat open, and reading glasses on a chain round his neck, and short grey hair. He smiled as soon as we came in, quick and easy, like he was glad we'd come. Before he picked anything up, even his cup or his pen, he tapped it twice with one finger.

"Come in," he said. "Shut the flap, you're letting the warm out. There's tea. It's terrible."

Pim grabbed my sleeve.

"That's Saul Greaves," he whispered.

I knew the name. Everyone does. Saul Greaves is one of maybe a dozen Hollow-rank Wardens in the Union. He's been going into False Lands for thirty years. People say he's ended more than three hundred Falsehoods. People call him The Man Who Has Never Missed.

He was pouring tea into chipped cups.

"Milk?" he asked Bea.

"Please."

"Good. It needs it."

The other two came in while we were standing there holding our cups.

The first was a quiet woman of about twenty-six in a factory jacket with shiny cuffs. She said her name was Hester and that she worked a press at the button factory. She took a cup of tea and held it in both hands, and didn't drink it.

The second was a sharp-faced girl of about twenty with ink on her fingers. She didn't take tea. She took out a small black notebook and looked round the tent at each of us, one at a time.

"How old were you all when you passed the Doubt test?" she said.

"Why?" said Pim.

"I'm working out who's most likely to die."

Pim laughed. She didn't.

"It's not personal. I like to know. I'm Mags."

She went round the tent with her pencil. Pim told her. Bea told her. Tobin told her, and then told her his mother's maiden name, which she hadn't asked for. Ansel told her to mind her own business, and she wrote that down too.

When she got to me, I said, "Nineteen."

She looked at me for a moment and underlined something.

Her notebook was open toward me. There was a list of our names in neat small capitals. Above the list, at the very top of the page, there was one more name on its own, crossed out with a single straight line.

I didn't try to read it.

Saul sat on the edge of the table with his cup and looked at us like we were his grandchildren and we'd come to visit.

"I'll keep this short," he said. "The mine won't wait, and neither will my breakfast. Somewhere at the bottom of Pit Nine there's a lamp room. The lamps in it never go out. Bring one up, and you pass. That's the trial."

"And the rules?" said Mags, pencil ready.

"When the whistle blows, look busy. Pick up a shovel. Push something. The men down there don't mind you, as long as you're working."

"That's it?" said Pim.

"Don't try to leave the mine except at a change of shift. You'll hear a whistle. The cage won't come for you any other time." He sipped his tea. "There's a sign about it down there. Read it."

"What if we want to quit?" said Tobin.

"Quit at a change of shift. Ride the cage up and walk away. No shame in it. No license and no refund, I'm afraid."

"And six tomorrow," said Ansel quietly.

Saul looked at him, and nodded, as if Ansel had passed a test.

"And six tomorrow," he said. "The mine's open for three shifts. Six till two, two till ten, ten till six. At six tomorrow morning, Pit Nine sets. It closes until spring. Anyone still inside when it sets stays inside."

Hester's cup rattled against its saucer.

Everyone looked at her. She put the cup down very carefully on the table.

"My sister's husband," she said. "Three springs ago. He was a candidate, like us. He didn't come up."

Saul looked at her for a long moment. His face was kind.

"I remember," he said. "I'm sorry."

He didn't say anything else about it. Neither did anyone.

"I've run this trial for eleven years," said Saul, after a while. "I've never lost a candidate who listened."

Mags didn't look up from her notebook.

"How many didn't listen?"

Saul looked at her the way a teacher looks at a good question.

"Some," he said.

Tobin put his hand up.

"Yes, son?"

"Do we get paid?"

"For what?"

"The coal. If we've got to dig it. Do we get paid for it?"

Gus laughed out loud. Pim put his face in his hands. Even Hester almost smiled.

Saul didn't laugh. He looked at Tobin as if he was actually thinking about it.

"Only if you're on the books, son," he said.

Then he winked, and everyone laughed, and it was a joke.

Mags wrote it down. I saw her do it.

"Ah," said Saul. "Here she is."

The tent flap opened and a woman came in out of the cold.

She was about twenty-five, tall, in a black Warden coat buttoned all the way up. There was a pin on her collar with two silver bars, which meant Deep rank. Her dark hair was pinned back tight. She had leather gloves on, and she didn't take them off. Her face didn't do much.

"This is Tamsin," said Saul. "Your trial warden. She goes down with you."

"I observe," said Tamsin. Her voice was low and flat. "I don't help. That's the rule. If the land breaks containment, I deal with it. If you get yourselves killed, I write down how."

"She's wonderful at parties," said Saul.

Tamsin didn't smile. She looked along our row, one face at a time, the way you'd check a list. Gus. Mags. Ansel. Hester. Bea. Pim.

Then her eyes went straight from Pim to Tobin, as if there was a gap in the line where I was standing.

She didn't look at me once. Not then, and not for the rest of the briefing.

I told myself that didn't mean anything.

Saul came along the row with a list and a fountain pen.

"Name?"

"Augustin Pell."

Saul nodded slowly. "Martin's boy. You've got his chin." He wrote.

Mags. Ansel, who gave his name and then said "Last time" before Saul could say anything. Hester. Bea. Pim, who said "Pim Agbaje, sir, big fan," and went red. Tobin, who said his whole name, Tobin Edward Ashe, as if he was being knighted.

Then Saul reached me, and he was already writing.

"Marlow," he said. "Iven."

I looked at the paper. He'd spelled it right.

"How did you know that?"

"It's my job to know."

"Everyone spells it Ivan."

"Do they?" He blew on the ink. Then he looked down at my feet. "Those boots won't keep the wet out, son."

They were the only boots I had. That was the truth. What I said was, "They're lucky, sir. They've been down three mines."

I don't know why I said it. Sometimes my mouth lies before the rest of me has decided.

Saul looked at me over the top of his reading glasses.

"Have they," he said.

"Four."

He tapped his pen twice on the list and wrote something next to my name.

"Lucky," he said. "I'll put that down."

We got our helmets, rope, water and knives. The helmets had small oil lamps clipped to the front. Mine was dented and pointed slightly to the left.

"Teams," said Saul. "You don't have to. It helps."

Gus picked up his canvas case and walked out of the tent.

"I don't carry passengers," he said as he went.

Mags closed her notebook and went out after him, then stopped outside and went the other way. She was going alone, but she'd wanted to see which way he went first.

Ansel looked at Hester. She was holding her flask with both hands.

"You," he said. "With me."

"Why?"

"Because you're scared. Scared people get other people killed. I'd rather it was only you."

Hester nodded. She stood a little closer to him after that.

That left four of us.

"Well," said Bea. "I've got bandages."

"I've got sweets," said Pim.

"I've got a joke," said Tobin.

"Is it the ladder?"

"It's a different ladder."

The cage was an iron box hanging from a cable that ran up over the winding wheel. It had a sliding gate with an old sign on it, the paint almost gone: HARROW COAL CO. NO MORE THAN 12.

All eight of us got in. Tamsin came last, and stood with her back to the gate and her gloved hands folded in front of her.

Nobody was working the engine. The wheel turned on its own, slow and creaking, and the cage dropped.

It's very dark going down a mine. Our helmet lamps made small yellow circles on the walls of the shaft, black and wet and close enough to touch, sliding upward past us.

"Twenty," said Tobin quietly. "Twenty-one."

"What are you counting?"

"Seconds. So I'll know how deep we are."

"How deep are we?"

"I don't know how fast we're going."

"Then why count?"

"Because if I stop," said Tobin, "I'll have to think about it."

After a while, I started counting too, in my head. So did Pim. I could see his lips moving.

At a hundred and nine, the cage stopped.

The bottom of Pit Nine was a big brick room with an arched roof. Four tunnels ran off it. There were iron rails in the floor and coal carts on them, full to the top. Shovels and picks hung in a long rack on one wall.

It was completely quiet. No dripping. No wind.

Tamsin stepped out of the cage, walked to the far wall where she could see all of us, and took out a small book and a pencil.

"It's five to six," she said.

Nobody moved. Then Ansel limped to the rack, took down a shovel, handed it to Hester, and took another for himself.

"Get a tool," he said. "Everybody. Now."

We did. I got a shovel with a split handle. Pim got a pick he could barely lift. Bea got a shovel. Tobin got a small hand pick.

Gus, halfway to the left-hand tunnel, opened his canvas case and took out a long, narrow blade. He looked at it. He looked at the rack. Then he put the blade back and took a shovel.

"Good," said Ansel, under his breath.

At six o'clock exactly, the whistle blew.

Down here it wasn't a shriek. It was a deep sound that came up through the floor and into my teeth.

And down the four tunnels, one after another, small yellow lights came on.

Lamps. Helmet lamps, like ours, at the height of a man's head. Dozens of them. They swung as the men under them moved, picking up their tools.

Then every one of them turned toward us.

Forty men died in Pit Nine. Ansel told us on the train.

I counted the lamps. I got to ninety-one, and then I stopped, because I didn't want to know the rest.