Her assigned quarters weren’t nearly as nice as what she’d had in her own residence, but after the last—how long had it been?—however many weeks, a broom closet of a room would have looked palatial. In the mine, she and the others were locked into the same room for their sleep period, and very often the guards forgot to replace the thin pallets they were supposed to be allowed to sleep on. Forgot on purpose, most of them believed, the lousy, rotten— Allestine stopped short for a moment, which allowed her to swallow the rage which was with her most of the time. She’d tried to manipulate the guards the way she’d always manipulated men, but they’d actually laughed in her face. She’d been filthy from the coal dust and had been dressed in rags, and one of them said he’d rather do without than use a woman who looked like her. One or two of the men on her assigned gang hadn’t felt the same, but the indignity they’d forced on her hadn’t been repeated very often. It was almost unheard of for anyone to have enough strength for anything beyond work, food, and sleep, and she’d quickly learned why that was.
