“I found a new passage where the main shaft collapsed.” His eyes were pleading now. “Come on, we’re already here. I need you, Kal. We stick together, right? This could be it.”
They stared at each other, the unspoken truth hanging between them: they were running out of time. The mines took a piece of you. A little bite, every time you went down, until they’d eaten you whole. Kal knew thirty-year-olds who looked fifty. Bent and battered, with dirty creases that never went away. Even the ones with brown skin like her looked somehow pale underneath, spending most of their lives in the dark.
And they all had the cough. Every time you slammed that pick into the wall, it kicked up fine particles of dust. They filled your eyes and nose. In time, they’d turn your lungs to stone, too.
She did not want to end up that way.
“Fine,” she said. “But if anything looks shifty, we get out.”
Durian’s whoop echoed off the buttes. Kal shook her head and pulled a torch from her pack. “Lead the way, dumbass,” she said.
The first mile was easy enough, following a main shaft they’d explored many times before. Old tram tracks ran down the middle, steel rails pitted with rust. When they hit the cave-in that always marked their end point, Durian pointed out a new tunnel.
“Check it out,” he said. “Someone’s been busy.”
Kal examined the opening. The rock looked melted, not hacked. When the Sinn delved new tunnels, it sometimes unearthed new seams. A lucky few had made fortunes in the defunct mines.
Durian lit a match and held it to the gap. The flame wavered.
“There’s air coming through,” he said. “Might even be another route back to the surface.”
Kal considered the tunnel. It meant Sinn activity, but that was a risk they took every time they hiked into the Zamir Hills.
“How far to the garnet field?” she asked.
“An hour, tops,” Durian replied with his trademark cocky grin.
The passage was wide and smooth-bored. Every hundred cubits, they stopped and turned off their torches to listen for telltale sounds that meant they weren’t alone. There is no darkness like the darkness underground. It has weight to it. Kal heard nothing but silence, so they kept going, the circles of light casting long, misshapen shadows along the walls. Her grandfather, a lifelong rockhound before the lung rot killed him, always said the dead kept watch in the deep places.
Then she heard trickling water ahead. Another wider tunnel bisected the first. They forded a shallow river and came to a section where the ceiling had partially given way. Navigating the dark shaft beyond would require dropping to hands and knees.
“This is where I turned back,” Durian said, pointing to a spot on the rugged ground. “I found the garnet over there. Figured it got knocked loose. But you can feel the draft. I think there’s a bigger cavern beyond this. Anything could be in there!”
“That’s the problem,” Kal said, staring at the dark hole. “Anything could be in there.”
Durian flipped the hair from his face. “No risk, no reward.”
The crawl through the final passage was the worst. So tight in places that Kal feared they’d become wedged forever in the earth’s grip. But Durian’s hope was infectious, pulling her forward.
About thirty cubits in, the strap of his pack caught on a sharp protrusion. He wiggled and cursed until she ordered him to hold still. She managed to squeeze up past his legs and work it free. Then they were through, scrambling into a chamber that made Kal’s breath freeze.
“Travian wept,” she whispered.
The cavern was unremarkable save for what littered its floor. Hundreds of stones, scattered across the ground like seeds cast by a farmer. In the torchlight, they gleamed with vivid color: blue, scarlet, and violet. The weird part is that they weren’t even rough. All the stones looked cut and polished. Just lying there for the taking like some lazy afternoon daydream.
“Serpent’s eye!” Kal cried, scooping up a teardrop-shaped stone. She squinted into its luminous depths. Serpent’s eye was worth a fortune. A cache this size would be enough to buy a merchant cutter three times over.
Durian danced a lopsided jig. One leg was shorter than the other, twisted after a childhood fever, and he always joked that he’d fit in perfectly with sailors and their rolling gait. “Told you!” he crowed.
Kal took a closer look. “Hold up, I might be wrong. The colors aren’t banded. The facets shift in the light.”
Durian examined another stone, muttering to himself as it morphed from blue to violet to red in his palm.
“Plus, it’s cold,” Kal added. “I’ve heard serpent’s eye is warm to the touch.”
They stared at each other. Kal’s mind raced. New gems were rare, especially ones this unusual. It might be worth as much as serpent’s eye—or even more.
“We need a name for it,” she said, gathering more stones from the ground and filling her pouch. “Something that sounds expensive.”
