Chapter 15
Kal
I shot a witch.
Kal still couldn’t quite believe it. Guns never worked against witches. It was the metal. They threw a spell at you and made the mechanism misfire. Her father said that was why the witches let miners carry sidearms. They were no threat. The witches still had the upper hand.
But Kal had seen the red stain blooming against the white of his coat. Watched him stumble back. It made her queasy, but she hoped he was dead.
The other witch—White Foxes, Bastian called them—with the piercings in her face had given chase, but Kal was faster. She’d slipped into an old mine entrance, a gap in the hillside no wider than her shoulders, invisible unless you knew exactly where to look.
Now the darkness embraced her as she moved deeper into the tunnel, breath coming in short, ragged gasps. At least the battery-operated torch was in her pocket, not her pack. Once Kal reached a safe distance from the entrance, she paused to click it on. Shadows jittered across the ceiling as she slowed to a walk.
Her savings was gone, scattered in the wind when the witch dumped her pack. With a sinking heart, Kal remembered that her identity card was in there, too. She couldn’t get across any borders without it, and now she had no money to buy a fake card. Not that she had any idea where you could get such a thing.
But she still had the Blue-killer pistol and the torch and the kaldurite. Plus Durian’s mining license. She kissed it for luck and replaced it in her pocket.
When the tunnel shrank to a crevice, she bit her lip, then dropped to hands and knees. Rough stone scraped her palms, but no way was she going back. The new plan was to get as far as she could underground before surfacing again.
Between the vast network of old mining tunnels and the new ones made by the Sinn, you could go a long way without ever seeing the sun. Kal plunged onward, praying that she wouldn’t hit a dead end. Thankfully, the shaft finally widened and met a crossing passage. She took that one, and then another, doing her best to avoid the tunnels that sloped downward. By the Trinity, she was thirsty. Sometimes you could find a trickle of water down the walls, but these mines had none.
She was at another intersection, pondering which way to choose, when a distant rumble echoed through the tunnel. Kal held her breath, counting the seconds. The sound didn’t repeat, but that meant nothing. The desert Sinn only made noise when they burrowed through rock. If they were moving through an existing tunnel, they could be surprisingly quiet.
Once, she and Durian had come across the remains of some miners caught unawares. The sight had haunted her for months.
She kept going, always choosing the widest tunnels and the ones that didn’t lead deeper into the earth. If she could walk upright, she did. But if there was no other option besides crawling, she did that.
The battery in her torch started to dim. If it died altogether, she knew this labyrinth would be her tomb.
Just keep going forward.
Her stomach twisted with hunger, but it was the thirst that worried her. She’d gone days without food before, but water—that was a much bigger problem. Time to find a way out.
Except she hadn’t a clue where she was.
The stirrings of panic fluttered in her chest as she kept hitting dead ends. Places where rubble filled the shaft or a seam had simply petered out. The torch dwindled to a sickly yellow glow. She decided to turn it off and use the walls as guides. The thick, impenetrable darkness made her chest tighten, but it was better than knowing the battery was dead for good.
When Kal stumbled into a low cavern, she nearly toppled into the pool at its center. Only the splash at her feet warned her to stop. Her heart raced. If she’d submerged the torch . . . It didn’t bear thinking about.
She flicked it on long enough to see clear water. The sight of it broke something inside her, and she fell to her knees. Her hands trembled as she cupped them, bringing the tepid liquid to her lips. It tasted of minerals, but she drank greedily. Then she sat on her haunches, flicked the torch on again, and looked around.
The cavern stretched into darkness, the torchlight too frail to penetrate its depths. Water bubbled up from beneath, forming a lake wide enough that she couldn’t see the far side. The sides of the cavern were high and jagged. The only way forward was to wade through.
She held the torch in one hand and the bundle with the gun in the other, raising them over her head. The surface wasn’t bad, but the bottom water was bitingly cold, rising quickly to her waist. She gasped in shock and clenched her jaw.
Just keep going forward.
Halfway across, a vibration sent wavelets rippling across the pool. Kal flicked the torch off. She stilled in the blackness, water lapping at her ribs. Just the mines settling. The Zamir Hills straddled some of Sion’s biggest leylines. A jolt every now and then was normal.
When the rumbles ceased, she pushed forward, her breath echoing off the cavern walls. She tried not to think about what might live in the lake. An ancient, patient creature that had waited years for some idiot to stumble into its lair . . .
“Stop it,” she whispered. “Get a grip.”
The water rose to her chest. She hesitated somewhere in the middle. If it got any deeper, she’d have no choice but to go back. She couldn’t risk soaking the torch.
But luck turned her way. The next few steps brought her up a gradual incline. When she reached the other side, Kal stood dripping, her sodden coat a heavy weight on her shoulders. Then she flicked the torch on and almost cried. The passage beyond twisted like a corkscrew, descending deeper. Definitely dug by the Sinn.
She glanced at the pool but couldn’t bring herself to retreat. She doubted that she could find her way through all the dead ends and cave-ins anyway.
