Page 76 of While the Dark Remains
Ballast eases himself off the bed. He stands like a nervous child with his hands behind his back. “It is ... mostly better.”
“And the nightmares?”
Ballast clenches his hands into fists, tension radiating all down his spine. He doesn’t answer.
The physician sighs, turning from the shelf and offering Ballast the medicine. “Take it, Your Highness. It will help.”
Ballast nods, and his eye flicks suddenly to the ceiling. I freeze, holding my breath. Surely he can’t see me?
But then he thanks the physician and leaves the infirmary.
He returns to his room, and I follow silently through the vents. I watch as he considers the vial from the physician and then puts it on his nightstand with the others, untasted. He unties his eye patch, takes off his boots, crawls into bed. He curls up on his side, blankets pulled up to his chin.
His weeping is quiet, but it makes his body shake.
I am wrecked by his anguish, sick to my core. With everything in me I want to go down to him, to crush him close against me, hold himuntil he stops crying, lend him what comfort I can. But, Bronze God, I don’t know why he’s here, I don’t know how deeply enmeshed he is in Kallias’s schemes. And I don’t trust myself to keep my head around him. If Ballast asked me to, I think I would abandon all my plans, spill every secret, break every promise I’ve ever made.
I can’t bear to watch him like this anymore. I whisper a prayer for him. And then I force myself to crawl away.
The digging never stops, not even during the night. The workers take it in shifts, the shafts illuminated by Kallias’s electric lamps. There are no false ceilings down here, no safe hiding places, so it’s taken me a while to creep into the maze, ducking around corners and melting into the shadows as best as I can.
The vein Basileious told Kallias about is impossible to miss, a jagged line of pulsing blue in the rock. It fascinates me.
I watch a pair of workers, a man and a woman, attempt to dig into the vein. The woman swings a pickaxe at the rock, and when her blade snaps in a burst of red sparks, the man takes his turn with a whirring, grating drill that sits on what looks like an altered mine cart. But he drills for only a few minutes before the bit breaks and he has to change it for a new one. The woman swings a fresh pickaxe until it breaks, and they go on and on like that, sweat on their brows, stone dust sticking to their skin. But for all that, they’re making steady progress, and the vein seems to be growing thin.
Dread twists deep. It’s too soon, far too soon. We’ve counted on the Skaandan army having the whole of Gods’ Fall—all three winter months of Black, Gray, and Ghost—to make their way through the labyrinth of the Iljaria tunnels and take Daeros unawares. But if the weapon is found before then, if Kallias seizes it—as I have no doubt he means to—he will be far more powerful than any army, and all this will be for nothing.
I’m about to turn and slip back through the tunnel to report this to Vil and Saga when boots ring out on the stone. I flatten myself against the rock wall, praying that the god of darkness will conceal me.
Kallias sweeps right by my hiding place, flanked by Basileious and Ballast.
I press my nails against the stone, my heart slamming against my rib cage. Ballast looks impossibly weary, his face drawn, the ribbon on his eye patch tied in obvious haste. He stands tense beside his father as Basileious inspects the vein.
The engineer leans close to the pulsing stone but does not touch it with his bare hand. He turns back to Kallias, relief on his pale face. “We are close, Your Majesty. The progress is better than I hoped.”
Kallias gives a clipped nod. “How long?”
“A few weeks,” says Basileious. “No more.”
“Good,” the king says. He glances at Ballast, who tenses.
The two workers have paused with their axes and drill; they step to one side of the chamber, heads bowed.
Kallias dismisses them and shoves an axe into Ballast’s hand. “Dig, boy,” he says. “The blades last longer when an Iljaria holds them. Devils know why.”
And then Kallias turns with a flip of his cloak and strides back down the tunnel, Basileious on his heels.
My chest tightens as Ballast hefts the axe in his hands, as he turns to the vein and swings. He misses, the axe glancing off the bare rock and nearly gouging his shoulder. He tightens his grip, swings again. And then he’s hacking at the vein with reckless abandon, cursing as he works.
I want to go up to him. I want to ask him why Kallias is punishing him, and why in the gods’ names he is doing everything his father tells him to. But it scares me too much, because what if I cannot bear his answer?
So I wind my way back up to the palace proper and go report to Vil.
He’s up, though it’s the twenty-fourth hour. Weariness drags on my bones—I need to sleep, but there isn’t time, not now.
Vil pours me coffee, and I perch on the arm of the couch, sipping slowly. Saga is still in bed, and I don’t have the heart to wake her, not after last night’s vigil at the Sea of Bones. So it’s just Vil and I, with Leifur at the door.
Vil swears quietly when I’ve finished my report. “You’ll have to find a way to delay the digging. Can you do it, Brynja?”
