Total pages in book: 179
Estimated words: 169943 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 850(@200wpm)___ 680(@250wpm)___ 566(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 169943 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 850(@200wpm)___ 680(@250wpm)___ 566(@300wpm)
“Everyone out! Don’t forget your gear.” Magpie sounds cheerful, as if she has great affection for the tunnels. I can’t blame her. I’m excited to explore down below. Who knows what wonders we’re going to see? Anticipation makes me twitchy, and I almost leap out of the basket after Lark, eager to get started.
One by one, we get into the tunnel and have a look around. It’s one of the smaller tunnels that we’ve passed and yet it’s still large enough that Mereden could stand on my shoulders and not touch the ceiling. There are layers of rock here, the walls striped horizontally with different layers of sediment, but it’s all been cleared enough that we can walk comfortably.
“Formations please,” Magpie calls out, and then makes a strange noise.
“Did you just belch?” Lark asks her, suspicious.
“No.”
Gwenna nudges me, an “I told you so” look in her eyes.
Great. She’s drinking, and that means we’re probably on our own with barely enough training. I wish Hawk were here. He can yell at me all he wants—I just feel safe when he’s around.
But he’s not here, and we’ve got to make the best of things until we get back to the surface. I’m torn between wanting to find something so we can emerge in triumph…and not wanting to find anything at all, because fuck Barnabus.
“Formation,” I echo. “All right, should we tie ourselves together now? The sword goes at the front of the line, right?”
“No need to tie yet. See that rope?” Magpie moves to the wall and tugs on something I’d missed—there’s indeed a rope bolted to the wall here, spaced-out metal hooks holding it in place. “Once we run out of handrails, then we’ll be in proper digging territory. Then you can rope yourselves together.”
“So this isn’t where we’re digging?” Gwenna asks.
Magpie laughs. “Oh, gods no. This is the entrance. We’ve got to go much deeper in if we expect to find anything at all. It’ll take a few hours to get to where we’re headed.”
Instead of being dismayed, I’m rather excited. Several hours means a lot of ruins to view. I’ll take it. Kipp trots ahead of me and I take my place behind him in formation, as the bulwark. The shield I’ve been assigned is still strapped to my back, holding my pack in place, but I guess we get that one out when we tie together? It feels strange to have to trust Magpie…and I come to the realization that I don’t really trust her at all.
That’s depressing. My childhood hero is utterly tarnished.
Nothing to do about it now. I grab the rope on the wall—and squeal in disgust because it’s damp and feels gross to the touch. Mereden also makes an unhappy noise about the rope. “It’s wet!”
“Don’t be such a baby,” Magpie chides. “You’ll be wishing for that rope in a few hours.”
TWENTY-FIVE
ASPETH
It feels as if we’re walking forever into the shadows. The artifacts lighting the way get fewer and farther between, and the rope handhold leads us deep into the tunnels. It slopes ever downward, and at one point the descent is so steep and slick that Gwenna almost falls, and it’s only the rope—and Lark’s hand grabbing her pack—that keeps her from sliding ahead of us.
The caverns are wet and drippy. I’d always wondered why there were so few textiles and books from Old Prell and now I know—nothing would survive in this constant damp. Our clothes are warm at least, and I’m grateful for the layers I have on—the trousers and the skirt over them, as well as my corset, my blouse, and my thick cloak. I’ve taken to wearing skirts over my trousers on the rainy days, because my arse clings to my pants when the fabric’s wet and Magpie said it was indecent. So far she hasn’t said anything about my modification to the uniform, which is good. Neither has Hawk—I wonder if he thinks my arse is too obvious when it’s wet outside, too.
There’s not as much to see as I’d hoped, either. Oh, there’s the occasional bit of a broken building jutting from a wall, but around it the rock has all been hollowed out, like a cored apple, and there’s nothing left to investigate. True to Magpie’s word, though, there are plenty of cornices and broken statues and bricks littering the rubble. After a while, even those aren’t exciting, especially when you can’t stop to investigate them.
The tunnel opens up into a large bowl, and then the cavern splits two ways. Off to the left side, there’s a bright green flag hanging in front, the tunnel cordoned off. There’s a 32 on the flag.
“We go right,” Magpie tells us.
“Why are they Thirty-Two and we’re Thirteen?” I ask.
“The tunnels were dug out at different times.”
Oh. “Is Thirty-Two unlucky also?”
She snorts. “I wish.”