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)
“Explosive!” she howls.
The rock walls of Old Prell move and shake above us, and then something hits my head. Everything goes black, and the tunnel collapses around us.
THIRTY-SIX
HAWK
Something about this is all wrong.
I can’t quite shake the feeling of wrongness even as I continue to dig in Drop Twenty-Seven for hours on end. It’s definitely collapsed in on itself—even now there’s the occasional rumble of stone indicating movement in the rocks. Cave-ins happen all the time. It’s a hazard of the job. I’ve dug out dozens in my time…but something isn’t adding up and I can’t quite figure out what.
It bothers me as I dig through rock, tossing boulders into the magic portal held open nearby by Master Siskin’s partner. He’s not as high ranked as Siskin, but Siskin shares his toys with his lover, and so Tern has been here at my side all night long, keeping the portal open so I can remove the rubble.
The thing that strikes me the oddest about this is that we’re the only two here.
Cave-ins are always a threat when dealing with the cavernous ruins. Old Prell fell into the earth, and so it stands to reason that it would keep collapsing in on itself without much prompting. That’s not the strange part. It’s that no one else has arrived to assist. The other Taurians I normally work with on rescues are out of the city, of course, but someone else should be taking their place. There should be a handful of us here, trying to keep it together despite the moon’s near rising.
If someone is in danger—buried under the rubble—shouldn’t someone care enough to send more than just one tired Taurian down into the tunnels?
But perhaps they’re just late in showing up. I continue in my rescue efforts, tossing great slabs of rock out of the way and rolling a boulder into the portal. I work until I’m sweating and covered in a fine layer of dust, and then pause to take a sip from my canteen. As I do, I glance over at my silent, yawning companion. “Where are the others?”
He blinks at me, sleepy. “What others?”
“The others coming to assist with the rescue.”
“Oh.” He ponders for a moment. “I don’t know. There are usually more Taurians for a rescue, aren’t there?”
“Usually,” I agree. I wipe my brow and get back to work, but I can’t shake the niggling feeling that something about this is off. After a while, I notice dawn light streaming in through the portal, and still no one has arrived to help. The rocks are getting larger, to the point that even a Taurian can’t lift them, and the only other one here, Tern, isn’t going to be much help, physically. I wipe my sweating face and fight the feeling of annoyance rising through me, because mistakes happen. Paperwork gets lost. “The rest of the rescue team still hasn’t been diverted this way.”
“It does seem so,” Tern agrees. “Someone should be coming by to spell us.”
I nod, eyeing the collapsed tunnel. I don’t want to leave if someone is trapped in there, but at the same time, I can’t dig out the entire thing on my own. “What team is assigned to this drop again?”
“Grosbeak’s team,” he says immediately, pulling out a parchment roster and eyeing it. “His Five fledglings.”
A fledgling team. A nightmare scenario. “And no one is here to dig them out except us?” I take the roster from him and read down it carefully. Surely not everyone is deployed in the tunnels because of the lordling and his bounty? I’m used to being called in on rescue missions but not everyone goes into the ruins. Even so, I scan the list, looking for a team that might be working a nearby drop so they can come assist…and then I pause. “Grosbeak’s Five are at Drop Seven. This is Drop Twenty-Seven.”
“But—it’s caved in? This is the right drop tunnel.” Tern leans over my shoulder, looking at the roster, and points a dusty finger at the bottom of the page even as the portal sputters out behind him. “They’re listed on here twice.”
So they are. I skim the roster list, looking for anyone else who might have been assigned to this particular drop, but there’s no one else. Just Grosbeak’s Five, and they might not even be here. “Who exactly reported this tunnel collapse?”
Tern digs in his pocket for the message and holds it up to the lantern we have sitting on a nearby rock. “Ah. Here it is.” He glances up at me. “The tunnel collapse was reported by Guild Master Magpie.”
Magpie? What’s she up to now?
And why does she want me out of the way?
* * *
ASPETH
I wake up to a small, sticky hand patting my face, and a throbbing pain above my ear.
Everything aches. I open my eyes, whimpering when it’s just as dark with them open as it is with them closed. The tunnel collapsed on us. Magpie turned against us. Barnabus tried to kill us. Maybe he succeeded. Maybe I’m in the death god’s entrance to hell.