“I’m going after him!”
“You are not.”
“Faelan—”
“What makes you think he’s incapable of leaving? We’re talking about Patch. Now get going, Lapis!”
“What if he’s injured? His family—” She trailed off at the hard glint in her brother’s eyes, then firmed her lips. She would not leave Patch to suffer under his family’s evil hands. She turned, straining; she needed to race to the rescue, but Faelan needed to release her wrist, and by his tightening grip, that would not happen anytime soon.
Flashes of light came from the tunnel on their right. The five of them buried themselves as far into the corner as they could, turned off their lights, and covered the reflective metal with their shirts and jackets. Brander and Jetta drew knives and crouched, waiting. Lapis set her free arm across her chest; she would fight, to protect Faelan and Caitria.
Her heart thudded a lively tune in her ears as she held her breath, expecting discovery. Scenarios of tech beams burning holes in her raced through her brain, and she reminded herself that she won previous encounters by cutting the tips off the weapons. She would do so again.
Gangly shanks streaked by, uncaring about anything but escape. They carried a nasty scent with them, the same odor that rose from the burnt keltaitheerdaal. They disappeared down the tunnel, the stench lingering behind them.
“That stuff is disgusting,” Caitria murmured, cupping her nose in her hand. “I wonder if there’s some sort of impurity in the keltaitheerdaal that causes it.”
Brander motioned to the opening with his knife. “We’re too exposed here, and the next batch might not be shanks. There’s a larger room not that far. It has a lot of pillars and dark corners.”
“Let’s go,” Faelan said.
Screams and shouts echoed down the passage and grew louder as they raced to the hiding place. Lapis jumped at every one, and no amount of silent chastisement overrode her fear. Relief flashed when they reached their objective without encountering anyone, though a small part of her had hoped they smacked into Patch.
The space contained tall, smooth sandstone pillars and more godly carvings. Robed figures paraded between half-sized, nude ones bearing food bowls, musical instruments, torches and spears. The procession proceeded to the left and ended at an old-fashioned mound Lapis had read about in histories. The Jils, during the ancient ceremony now celebrated as Fools and Ghouls, poured communally collected blood to solidify kin and community ties, a practice outlawed by the Taangis Empire because they saw it as barbaric.
Words hovered over the robed figures’ elaborate headdresses, which ranged from ungulate horns to sophisticated long hats worn by landed gentry. The lights cast odd shadows, making the text unreadable—as if she could understand such ancient words.
They moved to the left-hand side, stuffing themselves into the corner behind a pillar twice her width. Just in time, to avoid another group running from the destruction. While difficult to tell in the jiggly torchlight, yellow dust coated them, and all of them hacked hard enough to stagger. Dammit. If that dust hung in the air in the room, rescuing Patch became more dangerous. Who knew what the long-term effects of breathing it might be?
Brander nudged Faelan. “I can scout ahead,” he whispered. “It just depends which way you want to go. We can follow those shanks back out and hope no one runs up our ass. If we go the grate way, we’ll be swimming.” Lapis winced; paddling in dark waters held no appeal. “One of the ways Lady Thais mentioned intersects a Beryl syndicate tunnel. I’d rather not deal with them. And then there’s the room you just blew up.”
“Mighty fine choices,” Jetta said, glaring at her lover. Faelan raised an eyebrow, then glanced back into the room as a slower group entered; shanks held tech lights, which illuminated the ground and faces. Lapis gritted her teeth; she glimpsed The Gods’ Hands, limping along with four men who looked like they wore Dentherion tech armor, Damara between them.
“Surely you conducted inspections?” she gulped, her shrillness echoing painfully off the walls. “How could you not?”
“Lady Damara—”
“Do you know what my father is going to do to you?” she demanded, tears thickening her voice.
“The ropes were fine this morning!” a resentful man protested. He sounded like the craftspeople who hailed from the Reeds. “Everything oiled, nothing worn. I don’t know why they snapped!”
If no one below noticed Faelan’s shot, that worked in their favor. The enemy would have no reason to search for someone with a tech weapon, and the explosion probably obliterated any evidence to the contrary.
“Do you know how much money those crates were worth?” Damara yelled, overwrought. “Do you? You’re lucky the cradle crystals survived. Do you know how much money he would lose on those?”
Caitria looked away from the pillar, staring into the room, her mouth open in abject shock.
“You should thank the stars he is not here. He would have left you splattered across the crates.”
Pleasant woman. Lapis strained to hear her ranting, but nothing more important than Damara’s overwrought whining and the snarly replies reached her ears. The light moved on, dwindling until the room fell into darkness.
“I can’t believe it,” Caitria whispered. “Cradle crystals?”
“What are they?” Faelan asked.
“They’re a rare mineral once found in a handful of mines in Abastion. The Taangis Empire emptied most of them before they retreated to Pelthine. The crystals were ground into a powder and packed around aquatheerdaal. The combination triggered a reaction that generated huge amounts of energy; a fist-sized chunk of aquatheerdaal, coated in cradle dust, could power moving vehicles for a couple of years. It’s not used anymore because there’s only one active mine, in southern Abastion, near Estersjion. They spend more resources pulling the crystals out than they get in return, and the finds are small. Wealthy Dentherion backers buy it for jewelry, because of the beautiful, refractive violet color, and well, there isn’t enough to do much else with it.” She scrubbed her hands up and down her upper arms. “We’re lucky they didn’t interact. I never read anything about the reaction being explosive, but I’d rather not test it out.”
“So another depleted resource that’s back in circulation,” Faelan murmured.
“Yeah.”
“Did you bring any filter masks?”
“There were two already in the bag, and I didn’t think we’d need them, so didn’t pack more.”
“You want a sample?” Lapis asked.
“We need something to analyze, to make certain that’s what Damara’s talking about,” Caitria said.
“Brander, you know how to get to the room?” Faelan asked.
“Yeah.”
Lapis’s heart leapt and fell simultaneously. She desperately wanted to go, but if they only had two masks, she knew Brander and Caitria would don them. “You have to check for Patch,” she whispered.
“Of course,” the thief said, firmly enough the other rebel would have to hit him over the head and drag him away if she wished to leave before he did so.
Louder talking alerted them; a group of seven shanks hurried into the room, gloating. While also covered in yellow dust, they had cloths tied around their noses and mouths and carried boxes and bags, one so overladen Lapis thought he might trip over his own feet because he could not see beyond the stack. Three had torches for light, the flames flickering a saturated orange.
“Why’re yeh takin’ that?” Typical shank accent, someone from the Stone Streets. He smacked the loot, which wobbled, and the man holding it had to stop to adjust the balance.
“Weren’t tied down,” another hazarded.
“Pissed at Miss Snobby’s the reason,” a third grumbled as they headed for the opposite corridor.
“Blamin’ us fer Tomin’s shit,” the first agreed. “But Diros’s cruel. He’ll take it outta yer hide.”
“Won’t have the money t’ find me,” the loaded shank gloated as he juggled the armful of stuff. “This here shipment’s s’posed t’ fix some debts he’s got. Now it’s gone, an’ he’s goin’ t’ need t’ make sorry t’ someone. Keep him offen m’ back til I’s outta the city.”
“Iffen what you got’s worth anythin’,” the third said, sarcastic.
“They’s treatin’ it like glass!” the loaded shank protested. “It’s worth somethin’!”
His words coincided with losing control over the towering load, which crashed to the floor. Louder grumbles, and the men with him helped scoop up a jumble of glittery objects that Lapis thought might be gemstones back into the cracked boxes. They reloaded his arms, tucked the excess under theirs, and hurried after the first, who already fled the room and whose torchlight jiggled dimly down the corridor.
They waited until they no longer heard the prattle. Jetta clicked on her light, scurried to the place several broken pieces of wood lay, and scampered back.
She had retrieved a brown bag of supple leather, something the shanks could never afford. Faelan held out his hands, and she dumped the content into his palms; pretty purple chunks of an unknown crystal and what looked to be smoother yet not cut yellow and blue topaz and amethysts.
Caitria picked up a purple crystal. “This is a cradle crystal.”
“If the crystals fetch the same price in Jilvayna as they do in Abastion, then I can see Diros smuggling them in,” Jetta said. “He’s eager to make money, and something rare like this would send a lot of it his way.”
“Mercenaries with nasty tech guard the cradle mine,” Caitria shone her light through the stone; the surface glimmered with bright purple and blue refractions. “They inspect the workers after every shift. Someone would have to sneak the crystals out and get them into the underground’s hands without the inspectors noticing. And this is a beautiful raw crystal. No one could casually walk out with it.”
“That sounds like a syndicate-aided endeavor,” Brander said.
“Yeah. I don’t think average workers would risk their lives for a foreign noble.”
“Beryl got its name from gemstone smuggling.” Faelan reminded them as he dumped the items back into the bag. “And I wonder if that’s who the shanks plan to sell these to. Quite the payday, if so. I wonder how long it will take before they miss this bag.”
“They looked to have plenty of other things,” Jetta disagreed. “All stuffed into boxes. I doubt they know what they took, and just grabbed the nearest containers small enough to carry. They won’t come searching for it.”
A low thrum rocked the air, vibrating the pillar, the wall. Small bits of stone and dust rained down, and a larger chunk of rock broke free from the opening Diros’s people fled from. It landed in the center of the way with a dull thud, kicking up dust and cracking in half. Rough commands echoed to them, shouting about something something tech. Brander hissed to catch attention and scampered from the hiding place. Faelan and Caitria followed close, Jetta taking the rear and blocking Lapis from racing to the collapsing tunnel.
Dammit, they needed to get to the smuggling room! She did not care if the ceiling fell or who else came from that way!
The thief took a side entrance after they passed the room with the ceiling tunnel, and into a long, long corridor with gaping square holes on each side that led to small, undecorated rooms. Nothing in any of them, which Lapis thought odd. Some shank or syndicate should use them for storage, and if not, they made a perfect, out-of-the-way spot for those without a home.
They encountered no one else as they trotted over the dusty ground. Lapis found that strange; dozens worked in the hideaway before the explosions. They must have taken other ways out—or not survived. Her stomach churned; desperate shanks accepted meager pay from criminal enterprises like this, and they did not deserve an explosive end because they attempted to pull themselves up from the Grey and Stone Streets.
Neither did Patch.
Jetta’s hand settled on her back; she looked over her shoulder at the woman.
“Patch is fine,” she said. “I know he hasn’t told you much about some of the missions he’s done for Faelan, but trust me—this is sweet berries compared to it.”
That did not make her feel better. Grumbling internally did not help her mood, and the darkness sank into her, pulling her deep into the despair she hated.
What was she going to do if her partner, her lover, was gone? She dreaded he might become injured during stakes, and she worried about his death when she knew he completed the more dangerous ones without her, but facing the prospect of him already dead . . .
He had kept her from hopelessness after her family died. He guided her back to a semblance of normalcy when she wandered through a mental wilderness of helpless pain. A foundation, a rock, someone who gave her stability when she needed the prop. She clutched at her necklace, the edges digging into her palm, knowing the distraction of physical discomfort would not remove her fear, but it might keep her tears where they belonged—behind her eyes.
“There’s a light,” Brander said, slowing his step. “A green one.”
Green?
The deep thrum echoed around them, and Lapis thought the ground shuddered in response. Faelan clapped Brander on the shoulder, and they moved on. Lapis did not remember him being so proactive; caution described him. Caution once described her, too, but ever since her brother re-entered her life, the meticulous chaser she had become crumpled into dust as she reclaimed the adventurous spirit of her youth.
They reached a larger room intersected by three corridors. The green light came from the right-hand wall, peeking out from numerous tiny holes in the rock and spraying the room with blooming-flower green.
“Have you seen this before, Brander?” Faelan asked as he stopped to study the sight.
“I’ve felt the thrum, and seen white beams with sparkles in other places, but nothing like this. The rays are much brighter.”
The air vibrated to a lower sound, and Lapis winced, clutching at her chest. Her body shook, and she fought to breathe until it dissipated.
“Warmth is coming from the wall,” her brother said, shuffling towards it.
“Faelan!” Jetta hissed.
Another low thrum, and the green rays jiggled in a nauseating way. Stone rattled, and Lapis thought the light peeked out around long slits that formed door edges before disappearing. Tiptoes of fear inched up her spine as Faelan touched the rock.
Nothing happened. “What do you think is causing that?” he asked.
“Definitely tech,” Caitria said. “Those kinds of deep vibrations can wiggle eyeballs, and make people think they’re seeing things moving, like walls and pillars. If there’re ghost stories about these ruins, I’m betting that’s responsible.”
They heard shouts from behind; Jetta hissed, and Brander ran to the opposite corridor. They streaked through just as another thrumming erupted, and the green brightened. Dust filled the air in cloud puffs. Concerned the ceiling might collapse, Lapis shone her light up; she saw nothing but a large black pipe running the length of it, shuddering in time to the vibration.
She hustled her step and hoped to the non-existent gods that stars’ luck followed Brander’s footsteps, because it never caught her.