Chapter Twenty-Five
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.”
Strange. So one tunnel in the same area is a good one, and ours is a dud. Great. I eye the differences in the tunnels. Thirty-Two seems to be larger, the walls of the tunnel itself a little more smoothly hewn. Thirteen is rough, the entrance low. I hope that’s a good sign, but something tells me it’s not.
Kipp pulls the rope from his pack and holds one end out to me. Right. I loop it through my guild belt the way I’ve been shown, and pass the end on to Lark, who’s going to be our navigator. She belts herself in and as she does, I shrug my pack off and pull out the shield that’s part of my assignment. I’ve got my short staff for a weapon, but I can’t use it while holding a shield. As the bulwark, my job is to protect, not strike, so I strap it back to my pack again.
When we’re all roped together, Kipp pulls out his tiny sword. He grins up at me, and then licks his eyeball. I think that’s a sign that he’s ready to go. We all look ready, with our packs on our shoulders and Gwenna at the rear. I glance back at Magpie to see where she’s going to be as we head in…
Only to see that she’s dropped her pack. As I watch, she sets down her lantern and unrolls her bedding. She reclines on it with a yawn, her pack working as her pillow.
“What are you doing?” I ask. “I thought this wasn’t the place!”
Everyone turns to stare at her.
Magpie flicks a hand down toward our tunnel. “You’re going to want to head that way for about another hour or two and see what you can find. I’ll wait here.”
I stare at her in shock. The others do, too. I’m pretty sure that’s not what our leader is supposed to be doing.
“You’re not coming with us?” Mereden asks, voice timid.
“Nope. I’ll stay here and guard camp. Keep a light burning for you and all that.” She gestures at the cavern. “When you’re ready to retire for the evening, come back in this direction. You can drop your packs here, too. Lighten your bags.”
I’m not sure I like that suggestion, but when Lark shrugs and tosses her pack down, I do the same. I pull out my sleeping pallet and a change of clothes and set them down. My bag feels deflated and half-empty like this, and I’m pretty sure Hawk would have disapproved.
But Hawk isn’t here.
Once our bags are settled and I’ve got nothing in my hands but my shield, Magpie holds out the flag. “Tie this across your tunnel. It means that if another team comes by, they can’t dig where you are. You’ve claimed it already.”
Gwenna takes the flag and gives me an uneasy look. “What’s the point of doing this if we don’t expect to find anything?” she asks, her voice carefully neutral. “Wouldn’t it be wiser to continue our lessons up top?”
“Oh, we get paid simply for the attempt,” Magpie says, folding her hands over her belly and getting comfortable in her makeshift bunk. “That’s the beauty of it. In a situation like this, these lords are paying for the number of teams sent out, not what we retrieve. We can waste our time and his money as much as we like, and you guys get to practice. It’s a great system.” She reaches into her belt without opening her eyes and holds out her stick. “Don’t forget your dowsing rod.”
Lark takes it from her. “Do we say anything to activate it?”
“Hell if I know.”
I frown. “Let’s just go, see what we can do. If nothing else, we’ll gain experience.”
Kipp tugs on the rope as if in agreement, gesturing at the tunnel awaiting us. I nod and head after him, and the others follow.
We’ve practiced walking while roped together so we’re not as bad at it as we could be. No one stumbles into one another, and we keep enough slack between us that we can walk comfortably. Our new tunnel—in Drop Thirteen—doesn’t have a guide rope to hold on to and the floor is wet and slick and slopes downward. We move carefully, and I’m glad that Kipp is in the lead—even with the wet floor, his steps are sure-footed.
We lose all light and then we have to pause as Lark readies a lantern for us. She holds it aloft on a stick, but the ceiling is so low that it bangs against the rock, sending a rain of pebbles down onto our heads and making Gwenna yelp in surprise.
“Sorry,” Lark says, but she sounds on edge. We all are. This is our first experience in the tunnels and I can’t shake the feeling that we’re not quite ready.
Well, maybe Kipp is ready. He trots into the encroaching darkness with confidence, little sword at his side. If he’s as rattled as the rest of us, he doesn’t show it.
“I didn’t realize it’d be so dark,” Mereden whispers as we move deeper into the tunnels. “I mean, I know we’re underground. I guess I just wasn’t prepared…for this.”
I understand what she means. The circle of light given off by our lantern feels small, the darkness at the edges oppressive, like it’s pushing in on us. Like it’s an ocean being held back by the flimsiest of barriers, just waiting to sweep over us once more. She’s right that our training in the darkness, at the river, didn’t quite prepare us. At the river there was moonlight and the stars overhead. Here, there’s only the ceiling overhead, so low I can touch it with an outstretched hand, and leagues and leagues of rock just waiting to collapse our tunnel….
I shove those thoughts out of my head. If large, hulking Hawk can do this—if dozens of other Taurians can do this—I can do it, too. I ignore the resentment that bubbles inside me. Magpie should be here. Hawk should be here. Someone should be at our side, guiding us. Instead, Hawk’s busy trying to save the guild from itself, and Magpie’s taking a nap. We’re on our own.
We’re silent as we creep along in the tunnel, until it opens up. Then, suddenly, it goes from a cramped passageway into a warren of side tunnels. There’s a discarded pickaxe off to one side and a broken rope, proof that others have been here in the past.
Kipp stops, and Lark swings the lantern around to the entrance of the other tunnels. Five—no, six—spread out like a fan before us. “Which way?” she asks, looking at me.
How am I supposed to know? “You’re the navigator.”
“Shit. Right.” She makes a face. “I don’t feel much like a navigator, gotta admit.” She gestures at the nearest tunnel. “That one, maybe?”
We head down it for a time, only for the tunnel to twist and turn and branch off repeatedly. Some of the branchings go for nothing more than a few feet, but some descend into the darkness for quite a ways.
Lark gets skittish as we pass yet another deep, branching tunnel. “I don’t know that we should go down.”
“You don’t have a good feeling about it?” Mereden asks.
“I don’t have a good feeling about any of this,” Lark confesses. “I don’t want to be the one who gets us lost.”
“You won’t,” I reassure her. “If we get lost, Hawk will come and find us anyhow. They sent us down with a retrieval beacon, and Hawk knows these tunnels better than anyone. He’s always down here.”
My belly flutters at the thought of my husband. Not for the first time, I wish he was here with us instead of Magpie. He wouldn’t have abandoned us to take a nap in the larger cave. He’d be right here with us, offering advice. I try to imagine what Hawk would say if he was with us. “Let’s just consider today a scouting expedition,” I tell them. “We’ll get a feel for things, explore a little, and then return to camp to rest and check in on Magpie. Once we’re comfortable, then we’ll start looking for something to bring back.”
“How will we know where to start digging?” Gwenna asks. “You’ve read a bunch of books about this place. What did they say?”
I’m starting to realize just how much information my books have left out. Because everyone in those books always seemed to automatically know where to dig and how deep. They’d just stick their pickaxes into a wall and magical artifacts would fall out. Looking around me, I know that’s not the case. One rocky wall looks the same as the next, and the farther we go in, the less of Old Prell there is. There are no broken bricks here, no bits of pottery or statues, and I’m reminded that Drop Thirteen is considered unlucky. Bare, even. “We’ll know when we see it.”
We continue exploring for the next while, just to try to get comfortable with the caves. I can’t help but notice that every time I look back, Gwenna, Lark, and Mereden are all clustered together, holding on to one another. I don’t blame them. I want to do the same, but only Kipp’s brave exploration keeps me from joining their huddle. Somehow when I’d pictured myself as a fearless excavator, it had been more glamorous—and more well lit—than this. I’d pictured artifacts just falling into my hands with a bare modicum of digging.
This? This is going to be a lot of work.
“Let’s try one more tunnel before we head back,” I suggest after a time, when we make it back to the fanned array of passages. “We can tell Magpie that we were looking for the best place to spend our efforts. Lark, pick us a tunnel.”
She points at one, and Kipp heads off in that direction. I follow after him, holding my shield up even though it feels as if it’s made of lead at this point. Maybe Lark and I should switch, I muse as we head into the dark tunnel. The ceiling is a little lower here, but nothing we haven’t seen before. I’d rather be navigator, I think, than carry around a heavy shield all day long—
Something brushes against my hair.
I look up, and Lark’s bobbing light illuminates a maze of spiderwebs on the ceiling. Long black legs move, and then my hair twitches again. I raise a hand to the top of my head—and encounter something that shouldn’t be there.
With a shriek, I fling the spider off my head and onto the floor of the cave. It’s the size of my hand, the legs long and disgusting and with hairs so thick even my bad eyes can make them out. Another spider drops onto my shoulder, and then Mereden gives a horrified squeal, knocking one from Lark’s cloak.
“Back!” I scream. “Back the way we came!”
We race from the tunnel, crying out in horror and shaking out our clothes. The lantern bobs, making me dizzy as the light wobbles back and forth. But then we’re back at the fan of tunnels, and I drop my shield, shaking out all of my clothing over and over again in disgust. Hawk did mention he hated spiders. I should have listened. I glance over to see if Kipp has followed, since the rope between us is taut. He emerges a few moments later, a long dark leg disappearing into his mouth.
Eww.
“I think that’s enough for me tonight,” Gwenna says, raking her fingers through her now-loose hair. She shudders. “Can we please just go back to Magpie and decide on our next steps?”
I’m totally fine with that. I nod, and Mereden is in agreement, too. Kipp shrugs, and then puts a rock in the center of the tunnel entrance, marking it. Good idea, though he might be marking it for snacks while the rest of us want to mark it as NO, NEVER AGAIN .
Picking up my shield, I gesture that Gwenna should lead the way now, since she’s at the front of the line, and we head back the way we came. We’re all a little quieter now that the truth of what the tunnels are like is setting in. My thoughts are swirling, comparing the reality of the tunnels with what I had imagined. I’m not disappointed, not precisely…but I can’t help wishing that Hawk was here. Something tells me he’d understand more than anyone else.
Or maybe I’m just making excuses because I really want to talk to him.
When the caverns open back up and we see the faint, distant light of Magpie’s encampment, I realize I’m exhausted. Some of the dampness of my clothing is sweat, as we’ve been hiking through tunnels all day long. Gwenna looks as tired as I am, and Lark and Mereden, too.
“How long do you think we’ve been gone?” Mereden asks. “How do we tell time down here?”
“Well, my stomach won’t stop growling,” Lark says, patting her gut. “And I normally don’t get hungry until well past dinnertime, so I’d say it’s late. I’m ready to eat some shitty rations and go to sleep and…”
She stops, silenced, and I peer around her.
The camp is a disaster. Our bags have been tossed about, our food supplies flung onto the ground. The extra canteens we left behind are sitting in puddles of their contents. Our bedding is gone or slashed to ribbons, our changes of clothing equally destroyed.
Magpie is sprawled, face down, amongst the mess.
“Auntie!” Lark cries, surging forward. Immediately we’re all knocked off our feet—Lark included—as she forgets we’re all still tied together. She crawls forward as we struggle to stand upright again. “Auntie Magpie! Is she dead?”
Gwenna helps Mereden to her feet just as a loud, garish snore echoes in the cavern. “She’s not dead,” Gwenna retorts. “She’s fucking drunk.”
Lark goes to her aunt’s side, flipping her onto her back and shaking her awake. The rest of us focus on untying the ropes, not saying anything.
“Auntie Magpie?” Lark says, tapping her cheek. “Wake up.”
Magpie comes awake with a snort, then rubs her eyes. She rolls out of her blankets, and the sound of empty bottles clank overloud in the cavern. I exchange a look with Gwenna.
“Wh-whuh,” Magpie says, wiping her mouth. She peers at Lark. “Whuh is it? Whuh happened?”
“You tell us! What happened to the camp?”
Magpie sits up, blinking. It takes her a moment to realize our supplies have been destroyed. She picks up one chunk of hardtack and nibbles on it despite the dirt on the cavern floor. “Ratlings, mebbe.”
“Oh, come on,” Gwenna protests. “It’s not ratlings.”
Magpie flops back onto her pallet. “You don’t know that.”
“Would ratlings have left you alone while you sprawled, passed-out drunk? Or would they have attacked you?” Gwenna shakes her head and picks up a torn piece of blanket. “This was clearly someone trying to sabotage us.”
Oh gods. Is it Barnabus? Is he somehow sending his minions after us?
“Who would want to do that?” Mereden asks, handing me the unknotted rope so I can free myself.
“Literally anyone with a penis!” Gwenna exclaims, gesturing at our group. “Look at how they’ve been treating us since we’ve arrived! They don’t like the thought of more women in their precious guild—or a slitherskin—and they’re doing their best to let us know that we’re not wanted.”
Oh. Or that. It could be that. I pull the rope free from my belt and collapse on the floor, overwhelmed. I want my spectacles because I don’t want to run into more spiders. I want to lie down and rest my head but my blanket is shredded—or gone entirely. I want to eat and go to sleep with my arms around my cat and not have to worry about Barnabus, or about other men in the guild sabotaging us. I want to not have to worry about Magpie spending her time drinking instead of teaching us. I want to not worry if my Taurian husband hates me or if Barnabus is going to expose me to the guild or simply just try to take over my father’s hold.
I’m so fucking tired of it all.
“Seriously, Auntie Magpie, how could you?” Lark gives her aunt a disappointed look. “How are we ever going to succeed if you’re sabotaging us, too?”
“Oh, grow up,” Magpie snaps at Lark. “You think they’re ever going to let any of you in? They hate women in the guild. Trust me, I know. They’re going to let you play at being guild artificers and never pass you. I figured if I brought you down here, you could at least get a taste of things. Don’t fucking blame me.”
Her words just make the ache in my chest even worse. She’s right. The men of the guild have made it clear that they don’t respect us. Even if we did find something, what would be the point? It’d just help Barnabus.
I’m damned if I do, damned if I don’t.
Gwenna cleans up around camp while Mereden and Lark work on helping Magpie sober up. Kipp takes the waterskins and heads off to the nearest drip in the rocks to refill them, and I sit on my ass and feel sorry for myself, swiping tears as they fall down my cheeks. When things are tidied, Gwenna comes and sits at my side. “Are you done?”
“I feel pretty done at the moment, yes.” I sniff harder. “I don’t know why I ever thought I could do this.”
“No, no. I meant are you done feeling sorry for yourself?” She nudges me with her shoulder. “I recognize that look on your face. The ‘woe is me, I’m just a holder’s daughter, life is so hard’ expression.”
Shame moves over me. “I’m not—”
“Look. Is this a shit show? Absolutely.” She watches Mereden and Lark help Magpie do laps around the room, trying to walk off the alcohol and sober our teacher up. Then she turns back to me. “Is everything stacked against us? Undoubtedly. But when have you let that stop you before?”
I rub my brow. “There’s no way I come out ahead in any of this, Gwenna. I’m so tired of fighting against the tide.”
“You don’t give up. That’s not who you are, Aspeth. You make the best of whatever you’re given, always.”
“And the best-case scenario here is what, finding an artifact?” I spread my hands wearily. “And then it’s given to Barnabus, who’s going to use it against my father and steal his hold. I don’t want to help Barnabus.”
“Then we don’t,” Gwenna says, as if it’s that simple.
“What if we find something? A treasure of some kind? A magical artifact? We have to turn it over. That’s guild law.”
“We’re not in the guild yet, are we?” She gives me a pert look. “If we find something—and that’s a pretty big ‘if’ from where I’m sitting—we talk to Mereden and Lark and Kipp. We explain the situation and offer to compensate them in some way. Maybe we give up our shares for a few finds in order to pay them back.”
My eyes get misty. “You’d do that for me?”
“Of course I would. I think they would, too. You’re part of our Five. You’re our friend.”
I manage a smile.
“Or maybe we sell whatever we find and keep the funds and you can send those home to your father.” Gwenna brightens. “Or maybe it will all be made easy for us. Maybe we’ll find an Urn of Ever-Giving Nether-Pox and we hand it over to Barnabus after all. Who can say what the future holds?”
I giggle. I can’t help it.
“My point is, my friend, that you’ve come this far. Why would you let a man like him defeat you now?”
I gesture at our surroundings. At the dank cavern, where somewhere spiders are still lurking, waiting to drop onto our hair. Where another team is out there with our stuff, laughing and patting themselves on the back for screwing us over. “This just isn’t what I expected it to be, you know?”
“What in life is?” She nudges me with her shoulder again, the gesture friendly. “We’ll get some sleep and things will be better in the morning. We’ll rough it tonight like the professionals, and then we’ll wake up in the morning and we’ll go looking for artifacts like we’re supposed to. Like we want this job. Because I would much rather dig for buried treasure in a cavern than change out the chamber pots of spoiled nobles…no offense.”
“None taken.”
There’s a nudge at my other side, and then Kipp is there, holding out a chunk of hardtack. He offers it to me with a little smile, and I take it from him gratefully. He holds another chunk out to Gwenna. “This is marvelous of you,” she says. “Where did you have this stashed?”
He pats the edge of his house, as if that answers everything, and then trots away to share with the others.
“I love that little guy,” Gwenna says. “He’s good people. Or slitherskins. Whatever.” She takes a bite of her hardtack and watches the others. “You know, it’s not just your life that’s difficult. Mereden doesn’t want to go back to the convent.”
“Oh?”
“Her father made her join the church. She didn’t want to, but he’s very religious and felt that one of their children should be an offering to Asteria to bring fortune on their house. She told me once that no one at the temple would talk to her, though. That it was a sect of silence and they believed they were closest to the goddess when they were quiet. That’s why she pushed to come here and join the guild. She was desperate to get out of there.”
“It sounds awful.”
“I imagine it was. And has Lark ever told you about her parents?”
It feels a little like I’m being lectured, but it’s all information I should probably hear. “She hasn’t.”
“Their family was poor. Magpie joined the guild but her sister didn’t have the skills. She ended up working in a brothel. She named her daughter Lark because she was jealous of everything Magpie had. Wanted her to have a bird name so she could be as special as Magpie, too. Of course, we know that’s not how it works, but what can you do?” She shrugs. “The father wasn’t known. Lark almost ended up whoring, too, but she ran away when she was a teenager and joined a troupe of traveling fortune tellers. She’s pretty good with cards, by the way. Absolute shit with juggling. No idea how she managed to make a living at it.”
I had no idea about any of this. I’ve been wrapped up in my own situation…and, well, in my relationship with Hawk. “I didn’t know.”
“You’ve had your new husband monopolizing your time, so no one blames you.” She pats my knee and takes another bite of hardtack. As she chews, she continues. “Kipp…well, I’m not entirely sure what’s going on with him because he doesn’t talk. But I imagine it’s not perfect. My point is that everyone’s life has shitty aspects to it. You’re just getting all of yours piling on at once, but you’ll get through this.”
She sounds so confident, so certain. “What if this all goes horribly and I have no choice but to marry Barnabus after all?”
“Then we give you the Urn of Ever-Giving Nether-Pox and you make his life a living hell.”
I laugh again, but it’s sounding a little hysterical. “I’m already married, though. And Hawk doesn’t want me, either.”
Gwenna gives me an impatient look. “Why are you making problems for yourself, Aspeth? It’s a marriage of convenience, remember? It’s still convenient for both of you. Figure out what’s going on between the two of you once it’s no longer convenient. Until then, stop worrying about it.”
She’s right. Gwenna’s practical advice sinks in, and I can feel the truth of it. Why am I making problems for myself? Does it matter if Hawk likes me as much as I like him? He needs a partner for his Conquest Moon and I need someone I can point to and say is my chaperone.
Nothing else is needed.
I reach over and give her hand a squeeze. “You’re a good friend.”
“I’m a mediocre friend,” she corrects. “I’m an amazing maid, but I’d rather be a mediocre friend.” Her smile grows wider. “Or an even more mediocre guild fledgling.”
“New goal,” I agree, laughing. “We both shall strive to become the height of guild mediocrity.”
“Hear! Hear!” she says, and holds up her hardtack in a toast.