Chapter 4
SERA
“No,” I say, too fast and too loud.
The Cavern Zmaj’s gaze stays on me, and somehow that makes it worse. It’s not that his look is cruel. Cruel, I understand. Cruel has shape. Cruel takes what it wants and leaves bruises behind. This is different.
He looks at me like I’m a route marked on a slate. A narrow path through heat and stone and hunger. Something already half-decided by the shape of the problem. My hands curl against the edge of the table.
“No,” I say again, quieter this time, because if the room is going to stare, at least I can give it less to feed on. “Absolutely not.”
“No one has asked you anything,” Marut says, exhaling sharply through his nose.
“You were going to,” I answer.
His mouth tightens. I hold his gaze. The terrible thing about surviving around leaders is that eventually you learn the sound of being chosen before anyone says your name.
Rosalind’s gaze moves between me and the Cavern Zmaj. Thoughtful and quick. I hate that most of all. What right does she have to a say in my decisions? Newcomer. Outsider. She brought these problems to us. She can go.
Adran studies me with the same expression he uses on ration slates, weighing what can be spent and what cannot. Virn is still. Syin’s eyes are narrowed, but not at me. At the Cavern Zmaj.
That’s interesting. Dangerous, probably. It’s been my experience that everything interesting is dangerous.
“You know the eastern approaches,” the Cavern Zmaj says.
His voice is low, rough-edged, and far too calm for a room choking on the possibility of worms and war. I hate that too. He has no right to be this calm. This matter of fact.
“I know them from the City side,” I say. “Not from the inside of a zemlja’s mouth.”
A few people shift, but no one laughs. Apparently humor is another thing that dies in council chambers.
“You know where the old sinklines are,” he says.
“So do the route maps.”
“Maps don’t feel heat through stone.”
My throat tightens because he’s right. Because he shouldn’t know enough about me to be right. I force my gaze away from him, toward Adran. Safer. Familiar betrayal instead of unfamiliar pressure.
“I’m a lower-route runner,” I say. “I deliver rations. I guide fever cases. I’m not a scout.”
“You are more than that,” Adran says.
Heat flashes up the back of my neck. There it is. The kind of compliment leaders use when they’re about to turn a person into a tool.
“No,” I say. “I’m exactly that. That’s the point.”
“Sera,” Marut says.
I ignore him, which is probably stupid, but definitely satisfying.
“I know corridors,” I say. “Collapsed storage chambers. Inner shade paths. Cistern access. Which lower walls hold night-cool air. Which upper passages still breathe hot after second dim. I know the City because the City is where I keep people alive.”
The Cavern Zmaj’s gaze does not move from me. Not once.
“I don’t follow zemlja,” I say.
“No,” he says. “I do.”
The words settle hard. Simple. Implacable. Like a stone dropped down a dark shaft and never heard hitting bottom.
“What is your name?” Rosalind asks, leaning forward.
The Cavern Zmaj finally looks away. The air changes when he does. I hate that I notice.
“Kavor,” he says.
Kavor. Fits. Hard consonants. Deep center. It sounds like a cave mouth, or something under stone.
“Kavor,” Rosalind says, as if setting the name carefully on the table. “You believe there’s a reachable source?”
“No.”
That stops the room.
Rosalind’s brows draw together. “No?”
“I believe there may be growth,” Kavor says. “Reachable is a different question.”
“At least you still understand caution,” Syin says, the words low in his throat.
Kavor looks at him, though not sharply. Worse, he keeps that same implacable calm.
“Caution is not refusal.”
“And death is not courage,” Syin says, his wings flexing and tail scraping over the floor.
“No,” Kavor says. “Death is often poor listening.”
Something in my stomach turns over. It’s not exactly fear. More a strange, unwilling spark of recognition. That sounds like something the City could have taught him, if the City knew how to speak with fewer stones in its teeth.
“Explain the risk,” Virn says, stepping closer to the table.
Kavor’s claws shift once against the floor. The small scrape travels up my spine.
“Zemlja trails change quickly,” he says. “Too new, and the worm may still be near. Too old, and heat, collapse, or rot may have destroyed the growth. Or the cavern could be a nest for guster, sismis, or both. The sign beyond the eastern sinkline sits between those dangers.”
“Convenient,” Marut mutters.
Kavor turns his head toward him. Marut goes silent. Smart man.
“There is no convenient path through a zemlja tunnel,” Kavor says. “There is only the path that kills fewer fools.”
My mouth almost betrays me. It’s not a smile, but something smaller and more treacherous. I press my lips together until the impulse dies. Rosalind catches it. Of course she does. I look away before she can turn that, too, into evidence.
“If this is possible at all, we need a team,” Adran says, leaning onto the table.
“No,” Kavor says.
The word carries more weight from him than it did from me. Maybe because no one expects obedience from a Cavern Zmaj. Or maybe because everyone in the chamber can feel that he isn’t refusing from fear. He’s refusing from knowledge.
“A team creates too much vibration,” he says. “Too many footfalls. Too much breath. Too many heartbeats. Too much panic when the ground shifts.”
“People can be trained,” Adran says.
“Not quickly enough.”
“We have disciplined hunters.”
“You have hungry hunters.”
The room stills. Kavor doesn’t soften the words. I should dislike that. I do dislike it. I also trust it more than false comfort.
“Hungry bodies misstep,” he says. “Weak legs drag. Fear makes rhythm sloppy. Sloppy rhythm draws attention.”
My attention snags on the word rhythm. He talks about walking the way I talk about rationing. As if survival is math the body does whether pride approves or not.
“One Zmaj, then,” Virn says, dropping his gaze to the slate.
“One Zmaj who knows zemlja sign,” Kavor says.
“You mean yourself,” Syin says, eyes narrowing.
“Yes.”
No hesitation. No performance. I hate it less than I should.
“And one City guide,” Rosalind says.
No. My pulse kicks. No, no, no.
Adran’s eyes turn to me. Virn’s, too. Even Ila looks my way, lips pressed into a thin line. I wish the fever row would open and swallow me whole.
“I’m not the only guide,” I say.
“No,” Ila says. “You’re the one who knows the eastern lower approaches best.”
I stare at her. Betrayal apparently has many faces and most of them are elderly.
“So does Penr,” I say.
“Penr is limping,” Dannel says. “He hid it badly this morning.”
“Then Lysa.”
“Lysa has two children under fever watch,” Ila says.
“Send Marut,” I say.
Marut’s eyebrows lift, but I don’t care. A tiny vicious part of me enjoys it. Kavor looks at Marut once. Only once.
“No.”
“I know the eastern gates,” Marut says, bristling with pride.
“You know doors,” Kavor says. “She knows where heat goes after the doors.”
The chamber quiets. My skin prickles. That is too specific. Far too specific.
“You don’t know that,” I say, looking at him.
His bronze-gold eyes meet mine. Calm. Steady. Heat rushes over my skin.
“I watched you enter.”
My mouth goes dry. Not because the words are tender. They aren’t. They’re worse. They’re precise.
“You came from the lower bend,” he says. “You kept left against the cooler wall until the last turn. You paused before the arch where the stone carries night chill longest. You were dizzy, but you did not lean where others would. You chose the mineral seam instead.”
My breath goes shallow. I don’t like being seen. Not like that. Not in pieces I thought belonged only to me.
“That doesn’t make me qualified to chase a worm,” I say.
“No,” Kavor says. “It makes you qualified to survive the path to its tunnel.”
No one says survive like that. Not in the City.
In the City, survival is assumed until the body proves otherwise. It is expected, extracted, used up. No one talks about it like a skill. No one looks at the act of continuing and calls it skill. My throat tightens, and I hate him for putting that there, whatever it is.
“Sera,” Adran says. He’s watching me closely. Too closely.
“No.”
“This may be the only chance we have.”
“There it is,” I say. “The sentence that turns a person into a sacrifice.”
Rosalind flinches, just a little. Good. Let it hurt someone else. I know where this ends.
“You are not being sacrificed,” Adran says.
I laugh, and it comes out dry and ugly.
“Everyone says that before they start counting how useful your death would be.”
Silence crashes over the room. Too late, I realize what I’ve said. Not because it isn’t true. Because truth spoken in council chambers has consequences.
Marut’s face goes hard. Ila’s closes. Dannel looks away. Adran doesn’t. Neither does Kavor.
Rosalind’s expression changes in a way I don’t have the strength to name. Pity, maybe. Respect, maybe. I don’t want either.
Kavor steps forward. Only one step. The guards tense anyway, but he ignores them.
“You misunderstand,” he says.
My anger finds him because it needs somewhere to burn.
“Do I?”
“Yes.” His voice is calm. Damn him. He’s infuriating. “I do not need someone willing to die. There are too many of those. I need someone who refuses to waste a life.”
No one breathes for half a second. Neither do I. Kavor’s eyes do not leave mine.
“You count portions,” he says. “Steps. Heat. Breath. Risk. You hate waste.”
I swallow. It hurts.
“So do I.”
The terrible little space beneath my ribs opens wider. Not softer. Wider. Like the ground before it gives way. I look away first.
At the slate. At the columns. At the impossible numbers. At all the mouths attached to those marks.
Mira’s shaking hands. Tal’s narrow wrists. Jessa’s baby. Orin’s fever-bright skin. Anik’s bandaged feet.
Five portions. Six tokens.
Food. Heat. Strength.
Epis.
Zemlja.
I hate the shape of the answer before anyone says it. That’s how I know it’s already closing around me.
“When?” I ask.
My voice sounds as if it belongs to someone else.
Adran exhales. Rosalind closes her eyes. Marut mutters something under his breath. Syin’s gaze sharpens with satisfaction or suspicion. Maybe both. Kavor doesn’t move.
“Before first heat,” he says. “If we go.”
If. One small mercy. A fragile word, thin enough to see the knife behind it. I straighten. The silver at the edge of my vision pulses, then clears.
“If,” I say, “then I want the eastern maps, the last three route ledgers, the sinkline reports, and the names of every person who died within sight of that trail.”
Ila’s brows rise. Dannel looks surprised. Good. Let them remember I’m not only a body to send into the sand. I’m the person who reads what the dead were trying to tell us.
Kavor’s gaze changes, barely, but enough for me to feel it. Respect. Or warning. With him, they might be the same thing.
“Done,” Adran says.
Of course he agrees quickly. Leaders love competence most when it walks willingly into danger. I look at Kavor again. This time, I don’t let myself look away.
“And if I go,” I say, “you do not command me like I am some warrior.”
A faint shift moves through the room. Kavor’s claws scrape against the stone.
“No,” he says. I wait. He understands the waiting. I see the moment he does. “No. I listen.”
I don’t know what to do with that. It isn’t comfort. It isn’t safety. It’s worse. A promise shaped like risk.
Somewhere deep in the City stone outside the chamber, a tremor whispers through the floor. Not loud. Not violent. Only enough to make the table shiver beneath my fingers.
Every Zmaj in the room goes still. Kavor lowers his gaze to the stone. His breath leaves him slowly. Too slowly.
“What?” I ask before I can stop myself.
His eyes lift to mine.
“Tajss is answering,” Kavor says.