Chapter 21 #2
He trusted me. The thought opens somewhere under my ribs. It isn’t soft. Nothing on Tajss opens softly.
The far wall pulses again. Once. Pause. Again. And the black stripe cuts wider through the epis curtain. Kavor turns, breaking the moment.
Good. No. Yes, good.
“We move along the left ridge,” I say, because anything else would be dangerous. “High ground. Less fresh leavings. Better view of the structures. If the zemlja’s pressure changes, we need elevation.”
“And if the ridge collapses?”
“Then we improvise.”
“I dislike this plan.”
“You dislike most plans I make.”
“No. I dislike that they often work.”
That almost pulls a laugh from me. I let it out as breath. Small. Mine. And Kavor hears it. His expression changes, but he says nothing.
Good male.
Terrible thought. Again.
We start along the ridge.
The fresh zemlja leavings pull at our boots, soft in some places, slick in others. Mineral moss glows faintly under pressure, little blue sparks blooming where we step. I try not to think of all the times I’ve watched people count crumbs while this much life waited underneath us.
It’s not fair, but that thought is useless.
Fairness died on Tajss long before I was born. Probably long before we crashed here. Probably before the Zmaj burned their world over a plant that grows in worm waste and makes everyone stupid with wanting.
Still. My chest hurts with the size of it.
Kavor moves beside me, not ahead, though he should. His shoulder is bad. I see how he favors it despite trying not to. His wing stays tight. His claws flex toward the wall whenever the ridge narrows.
The cavern is enclosed, but vast. Too vast, maybe.
It opens above us in a way no tunnel is open.
The ceiling glows, yes, but it is far overhead, veiled with hanging strands and shadowed cuts.
I remember the little things I noticed earlier.
His ease in tight places. His tension beneath open sky.
How close stone steadies him. This place is underground, but still too large to read all at once.
“Kavor,” I say.
“Hm.”
A sound, not a word. Very him.
“Do big caverns bother you too?”
His steps slow, but he doesn’t stop. That’s answer enough.
I look ahead, not at him. Giving him the mercy of not staring while I pull truth from a place he probably prefers sealed.
“You don’t have to answer.”
“Yes, I do.”
“No, you don’t.”
His gaze brushes me. I feel it without looking.
“That is an unfamiliar rule,” he says.
“It applies to both of us. I hate it.”
His silence changes.
Then, “Open places are difficult.”
I keep walking.
“Even underground?”
“Yes.”
“Because there are too many directions?”
“Because there is not enough answer.”
I glance at him then. His face is turned toward the cavern wall, but his eyes aren’t on the glow. They are on the distance between pillars. The ceiling’s height. The black places beyond the blue.
“In narrow stone, sound returns,” he says. “Pressure speaks. Walls hold shape. A body knows where danger can fit. In open places, the world stops answering in time.”
I don’t expect to, but I understand it. The need for the world to answer before it can kill you.
“In the City,” I say slowly, “wide plazas are death in second heat. People think open space means freedom only if they’ve never watched someone faint halfway across it.”
His gaze shifts to me. I shrug with one shoulder. The uninjured one. I’m learning.
“I don’t like open either,” I say.
His eyes sharpen with recognition. There. Another thread between us, thin, glowing, and completely inconvenient.
We walk in silence for several breaths. Not an empty silence. The kind that has been given something to carry.
The ridge curves around a pool. The water is shallow, if it’s water. Blue light floats beneath the surface in thin strands like roots seeking darkness. Epis grows along the edges, heavy and bright. The reflection makes the whole cavern seem deeper than it is, an upside-down world under our feet.
I stop before I mean to, and Kavor stops with me.
“What?” he asks.
I shake my head. The answer is too large. I look at the pool, the hanging glow, and the old structures, and I feel something worse than hunger. Want. Not for food. Not only. For time.
For one hour where the City is not above me. Where no one is waiting for my hands to carry bad news, smaller portions, route warnings, death lists. Where the world doesn’t demand that I turn every breath into usefulness.
For one hour with Kavor beside me, not because we are forced together, but because neither of us has moved away. The wanting terrifies me so much that I almost step back.
Kavor’s voice is quiet. “Sera.”
“No.”
I don’t know what I’m refusing. Him. Myself. The cavern. All of it.
He says nothing. That’s the problem. He knows when silence is an open hand. I look into the pool until the blue reflection blurs.
“I don’t want this to end,” I say.
The words leave me before I can count them. Before I can decide whether they cost too much. The cavern hears. Kavor hears. I hear.
Stupid. Impossible. True.
My throat closes. “The mission,” I add too late.
A lie thrown after truth, like a cup of dust after spilled water.
Kavor doesn’t expose it. He doesn’t step closer. He doesn’t say mine, or yes, or anything that would make the words harder to survive.
He only turns his body slightly, placing himself between me and the widest darkness beyond the ridge, as if he can guard even the truth I’ve dropped.
“The mission is not over,” he says.
Soft. Steady. Merciful.
No. More dangerous than mercy.
I nod once, too fast.
“Good,” I say, the word barely there.
We move again.
The ridge narrows near the old arch. Blue strands thicken along the wall and force us closer to the edge. Kavor goes first because the stone is pressure-cut, and he can read where it might hold. I follow with one hand brushing the wall, careful not to touch the glowing growth.
The epis reaches anyway. Not with tendrils. With light.
It brightens as I pass, soft pulses traveling along the strands nearest my bandaged arm. Not flaring like the sample pouch. Not burning cold. More curious than hungry.
I freeze, and Kavor turns back. The glow moves between us. My bandage answers faint blue. The sample pouch against his chest answers, too. All three lights breathe once. Together.
Kavor’s eyes darken. They’re not red. This is worse. It looks like want with fear around it.
I should look away, but I don’t. The cavern pulses again. Not the wrong rhythm. Not the signal’s. Something slower. Living. Deep.
For one breath, I feel Kavor’s pulse through the glow. Or imagine I do. No. Enough.
“We keep moving,” I say.
My voice sounds scraped.
“Yes,” he says.
But neither of us moves for one breath. Then another. The signal pulse returns. Once. Pause. Again. And the spell breaks like glass.
Across the far wall, the black stripe suddenly widens, racing through a curtain of epis. Blue turns white, then gray. Then black. The corruption spreads quickly, following old channels toward the pool below.
The water shivers. Every blue root beneath the surface flares. Then something under the pool answers the signal.
A shape of white-gray light wakes beneath the blue. Long and angular. Not plant, not stone, not zemlja. Machine. The pool begins to drain. Not downward. Sideways. Into the old channels. The abundant glow around us flickers.
Kavor bares his teeth. I clutch my wounded arm against my ribs and stare as the largest epis source I have ever seen begins to be siphoned away.
The cavern isn’t a miracle. It’s a reservoir. And someone has opened the drain.