With a bracing breath, Alie followed.
The shadows closed around her like water over sinking stone. A moment of panic, then the hiss of a spark; Lilia had clicked on a lighter, the tiny flame wavering to dispel the shadows.
“We’ll come across torch supplies at some point,” she said. “The poison runners leave them all over.”
She turned, headed deeper into the catacombs. Alie stayed as close behind her as she could without stepping on the back of her boots.
It took hours. Alie should have expected that, probably—of course the lair of the Buried Watch and the tomb of the Buried Goddess would be far underground. Eventually, Lilia found the materials to make a torch, and the halo of light around them grew enough for Alie to stop feeling nervous and start feeling bored.
At least, until they came to the collapsed tunnel.
“Please tell me that’s not the way to the tomb.” Alie spun Lore’s engagement ring around and around in her pocket.
“Unfortunately.” Lilia stepped forward, put a hand on one of the stones. “I’m not sure when it happened. Sometime after I left.”
Alie looked sidelong at the other woman. “Left the Watch, or left Dellaire?”
“The country,” Lilia murmured. “I made it to Balgia before Ifelt guilty enough to turn back. I’d told her to leave a rose if she wanted my help. But I only waited a week to see if she would.” Her fingers curled, then fell from the rocks. “I called her selfish, but she got it from me.”
“You came back.” Alie wasn’t sure why she wanted to comfort Lore’s mother. Maybe because she’d had few opportunities to comfort her own.
“I did, and it was too late.” Lilia scoffed softly. “I can’t make up for that. There’s so much I can’t make up for.”
The sentence hung like something should come after it. Nothing did.
Lilia stepped away from the wreckage, surveying the rubble with a shrewd eye. “This should be fairly simple for you, I think.”
“Maybe we can—” Alie stopped, shot an incredulous look at the former Night Priestess. “What do you mean, for me?”
“You’re the one with god-power.”
“So what are you suggesting I do? I have Lereal’s power. Air. The weakest of the bunch.” She hadn’t known she thought of it that way until she said it. And she didn’t like the way it filled her with… withresentment, as if this magic were something she wanted. As if she’d take more, if she could.
Lilia gave her a sidelong glance. “Subtlety is not weakness, Alienor. It’s a strength all its own.”
Alie straightened, flexing her hands in anticipation of weaving air threads. “This is ironic timing, certainly.”
She closed her eyes, dropping down into what she’d heard Gabe call channeling-space before opening them again. This wasn’t a necessity every time she used her magic—Lereal’s magic, she reminded herself,not yours—and the one time she’d done something like this, stopping that statue from flattening her in the storage room, it had been instinct, not something she did on purpose. But for clearing the whole tunnel, she probably needed a bit more concentration.
The black-and-white world separated itself slowly, the weave of it widening as she focused. Tendrils of iridescence curled through the empty spaces around the rocks, even those that appeared to have no gaps between them. “I’m still not entirely sure what I’m supposed to do here.”
“Have you ever seen a cannon fire without a ball?” Lilia asked. “At close range, it can still do quite a bit of damage, just from the force of the air.”
Trying to mimic a cannon deep in the catacombs, whether loaded with a missile or not, didn’t seem like a great idea. But Alie got the gist. If she harnessed enough air, made it go in the same direction, she could break the rocks apart enough for them to climb through.
With a twitch of her fingers, Alie coaxed the threads toward her, through her. It was never an unpleasant sensation, and that, too, was concerning. Channeling air and imbuing it with her will felt like stepping into cool water on a hot day, like a sky with the perfect balance of sun and breeze.
Her will was simple.Forwardandforceandthrough.
Alie pushed all those threads back out.
The sound made her want to slam her hands over her ears. The rocks broke with a grinding and squeal, like the teeth of an anxious giant, crumbling to the ground as a pattering of heavy raindrops. Instinctively, Alie covered her head.
But the tunnel itself remained intact. And when Alie shook herself out of channeling-space, a path through the tunnel was clear. Treacherous, maybe, and requiring more climbing than she’d prefer, but clear.
Next to her, Lilia took a deep breath and squared her shoulders. Then, without a word, she started forward.
Neither of them spoke as they made their way down into the catacombs, toward the home of the Buried Watch. Mostly because all their attention was spent on picking over the jaggedpieces of rock on the ground, but Lilia’s silence seemed heavier than simple concentration could explain. Alie supposed that was fair when you were venturing into the lair of the cult where you’d spent most of your life. The resting place of those who’d convinced her that the world needed her daughter dead.
