Chapter 31
Chapter
Thirty-One
“Say nothing.”
It’d been two days since Shadi bent over Kai’s bed in Quiet Rock following the aftermath of the attack.
“Let everyone see your patience and trust. I must act quickly.” Her mother had started to leave her side, then paused and cupped Kai’s head. “Brightest star, you have made me most proud.”
That was the last time Kai saw her mother.
Then, earlier, when leaving her healing bed, her father whispered a cryptic message: “Let Atsadi lead the way.”
That is how she and Fala came to follow Atsadi’s flame through eerily silent pathways. They were now covered in layers of so much dust that the natural bioluminescence was nearly absent. The occasional drip of water echoed down unseen passageways.
Low, arching beams of wood and iron lined the walls, though they were weathered and cracked. What symbols had once been carved with love into the walls were now barely legible.
Fala leaned toward Kai to whisper, “These were Iron Willow tunnels.”
Twelfth Clan was one of the lost clans that specialized in resource renewal. Much of their job had been allocated to the healers of Quiet Rock. They once farmed the underground gardens and provided herbs for healing and nutrition.
Atsadi ducked beneath the low hang of thick, rotting roots that dangled from a crack in the ceiling. “Not much farther.”
“Where is he taking us?” Fala asked.
Kai shrugged. “I have no idea.”
The dense air smelled like damp earth and rot, tinged by the lingering bitterness of herbs long past their use.
A central room opened up to them, and scattered throughout were broken pots and the remnants of rusted, cracked tools, half-buried in loose earth.
Atsadi entered another corridor. “I have been coming here for years,” he said over his shoulder. “Usti and the others won’t suspect anything. They think I’m finally revealing my gift to you.”
Fala flashed Kai a look of surprise. “Gift?”
“It isn’t finished, but when Shadi was looking for a place to hold the foreigner in secret, I suggested this.”
Kai’s attention perked at the revelation of information. “Which foreigner?”
Atsadi paused to glance over his shoulder. “The military commander. No one knows he lived.”
The pieces started falling into place. “My mother doesn’t trust Inola Rising Moon to keep the commander’s existence from Usti.”
“No. She doesn’t.” Atsadi started walking again. “You were right to spare him; none of his men know anything useful. They want the mountain, but they don’t know why. And they’re Perean.”
Kai didn’t want to think about what it meant for her mother to trust Atsadi with any information, let alone something as important as this.
Fala took a half-step closer to their husband. “This man is here?”
“Yes. No one ever comes to these tunnels,” he said. “It seemed the right answer at the time.”
“No one comes here except you,” Kai said.
He nodded. “I started roaming these halls as a youngling. My mother has a great mind for architecture and used these halls to demonstrate older techniques. She taught me to appreciate our history of craftsmanship and the necessity of thinking carefully about applying the ways of our past to our future.”
“What does your father do?” Fala asked.
“He’s a foreman in the mines. I followed in my mother’s footsteps. All of my sisters chose to work the mines with him.”
Atsadi pushed aside a tarp and stepped into a dark alcove. He paused to light a torch on the wall. “This is it.”
Fala followed first. Kai hung back to take in an incomplete archway with chisel marks and natural rock walls.
“This will be the entrance hall.” Atsadi stepped into another dark room to light more torches. “And here is the main living area.”
Fala turned inside the next room, viewing all angles. The walls were smoothed and polished to reflect the firelight, though the ceiling remained unfinished, exposing the rough mountain rock.
Atsadi lit more lights near a central hearth. “It’s not much,” he said. “I started carving it out years ago with the idea that I would one day start a family here. I’m just sorry you have to see it unfinished,” he added, hanging his head.
Fala took Kai’s hand and squeezed. “This is to be our home?”
“Someday,” he said.
Kai’s rapidly beating heart climbed into her throat, and she traced the lines of chisel marks on a partially finished wall. She and Fala lived in a single room with only their basic needs. This was already more than that and beyond all her expectations.
Atsadi motioned them to follow. “There’s more through here.”
He walked them through the kitchen area—again, only partially carved out—explaining the details as he went.
There were stone counters, built-in storage areas, and an area that would later house a stone oven.
The floor was uneven, and he guided them around patches of jutting rock toward even more rooms.
A small staircase climbed to hallways and connecting tunnels with what would become bedrooms for a large family. Temporary wooden beams supported everything until Atsadi could finish reinforcing the stone.
“This room,” he said at one entrance, tone full of anticipation, “is for Fala.”
The garden alcove inside glowed with bioluminescence. Water seeped from the far walls, and a small garden was already thriving underneath it.
“I have a lot of plans for this room,” he said. “Channels to guide the water and a basin. Meditation alcoves, maybe. Whatever you wish.”
“It’s like the healing pools,” Kai said, reminded of the day they met.
Atsadi met her eyes, and in them, he, too, recalled that day. “In miniature, yes.”
Fala glanced at Kai, and that brief look said everything. Fala could love him if she didn’t already.
Further down the corridor, he paused, and the gleam he had in his eyes dulled. “I thought this could be a training space. For now, it’s a prison.”
Kai tensed and pushed past him into another room of uncut stone and wooden beams. The room’s size and potential supported Atsadi’s statement.
The blond commander had been chained to the stone floor and stripped of nearly all his clothing. He shivered from where he was seated, knees pulled into his chest.
Atsadi began lighting the surrounding torches, then finally a hearth in the far corner.
The commander flashed his chattering teeth. “I was wondering when you’d come to see me.”
Kai motioned to the bandage on her side. “Someone sliced me open. I was a little busy recovering.” She would need more time before she could move without pain. His cut was deeper than she’d initially thought. “I’m here now, though. What do you think of my home?”
The question evoked pride for the man responsible for every detail within these walls, complete or not. Atsadi had done all of this for the family he would build. For Fala and her.
The Perean man made a show of taking in the room. “I heard tales of how you lived like beasts—”
Kai’s palm stung across his cheek. “This beast will happily carve pieces from your body until she gets the answers she wants.”
“Good,” Shadi said from the entry. “You’ve started. He’s refused to talk, and I thought a couple of days in the cold dark might loosen his tongue.”
Behind Shadi came Doli, Tse, and Misae White Spirit. Fala and Atsadi hung back in the pale shadows to watch, clinging to each other’s hands.
Kai approached her family and lowered her voice to ask, “Who else knows he’s here?”
“No one else,” Shadi said. “Misae is here because I don’t know who else to trust. The council is too divided, and we don’t have the time to waste.”
Misae said, “Inola has gotten into everyone’s ear, and they waver. Fear for her son has made her desperate.”
Back in the center of the room, the man shivered and stared down at his feet.
Kai asked, “Do we know his name?”
“Raphail Demas,” Tse said. “A commander in the Perean military. Their orders were to take the mountain and our mines for Perean.”
“Why? Perean doesn’t need more wealth, and certainly not from a country weeks from their doorstep by sea.”
“Those are the sort of details I want from him,” Shadi said. “Who gave these orders? Why us? Has he made contact with someone inside?”
Misae added, “Did Usti know he was coming, and does he know of any further plans to sabotage our way of life?”
Kai met Shadi’s steely brown gaze. “You should be the one to question him.”
“You are the Stormguard commander and First Daughter of Silver Wolf.” Shadi’s chin lifted.
“You are my heir and the future of our people.” She touched the underside of Kai’s chin.
“I have to let you lead if you are to learn.” A smile touched her lips.
“I will be here if you need me. Not that you will.”
Only a few weeks ago, Kai would have argued against this. She never wanted the role of Grand Matriarch.
Today, she thought only of protecting her people and would gladly take the lead her mother offered.
Kai faced the prisoner. Despite being chained and stripped and alone, he had yet to realize he was no longer in a position of power. It seemed the only logical place to start.
“Surround him,” she whispered to her parents. “At a distance, but in his line of sight. I want him to see your weapons.”
Shadi pulled the sword from her back; the sound rang through the room like death. She stood directly in front of the man at a small distance and looked him dead in his eyes, rarely blinking. Tse and Doli took the corners, while Misae stayed behind with Atsadi and Fala. She was of no use here.
Kai left her weapons sheathed but paced the pale, goose-fleshed man in a slow circle. He was covered in bruises ranging from yellow to dark purple.
Finally, she knelt in front of him, and he stared at her through lowered lashes.
“You honestly believed you could take my warriors? You think us beasts, but are we not known the world over for two things? Our gemstones and our strength. It seems to me that if you had considered that, you might not be here right now. You might have approached things a little differently.”