Chapter 4
Chapter four
The Calling
The climb to my home is torture. My shoulder is sore, and my ribs aren’t doing me any favors either.
At least it’s only on the second tier. When I came of age, I took the hex cube right above my mother’s so I could keep an eye on her.
I reach the small balcony that lies before my front door and duck behind the dark blackout wool curtain.
Doors are heavy and cumbersome and rarely used outside the city proper.
The wool coverings block out the glow moss, and while noises carry in the caverns, they offer enough privacy.
I kick off my boots and strip down to my underclothes, swallow a full bottle of tonic—the peppermint stings my nose but does a half-decent job of covering up the medicinal taste—and collapse unceremoniously into my bed.
As much as I would love to bathe and eat, I have nothing left.
My eyes grow heavy, but just as I’m about to submit to the exhaustion, a little furry creature pounces on my chest.
“Och,” I rasp while throwing my arms around the little black fur ball, who immediately begins to purr. I relax my grip enough to scratch his head.
“Did you miss me?” I ask.
Bat butts his head into my hand in response, prompting me to scratch under his jaw; the soft purr grows to a rumble.
“That’s what I thought,” I say.
Bat is an aggressively loving stray cat who adopted me when he was little more than a half-drowned kitten.
The tunnels had flooded that season, and Bat somehow found his way into my bag while I was working on repairs with the rest of the tinkerers.
I found him later that evening when he crawled out of my bag and into my lap at supper time, begging for a meal, and with such an adorable face, how could I say no?
With Bat curled up on my chest, I finally let my eyes fall shut and drift off to the soothing vibrations.
Intense orange orbs take up my entire world, branding into my soul.
I stand face to face once again with the dragon.
But this time, I reach out my palm; she hesitates only a moment before she butts her nose into my hand.
Heat sears through my flesh where we connect.
Tearing through my veins and igniting my nerves, swirling designs paint tracks over my arms, the gold ink contrasted with my pale skin.
The pain is so intense I’m near blacking out when a rumbling voice tears through my mind: Oliviana.
I shoot straight up in my bed, sweat clinging to every centimeter of me. It’s pitch black with my shade drawn. But while the pain remains a faded memory under my skin, my thoughts sharpen and I realize it was nothing more than a dream.
“A dream,” I whisper.
Bat meows in response, and I tussle the fur on his head before sliding out of bed. I sidle over to the window and peek behind the curtains. It’s early still, the glow moss only just starting to fade from the pink hue of the night cycle.
I exhale a heavy breath and grab my things. There’s still enough time to bathe before Caius arrives. First shift! That man had it in for me, and I wasn’t sure how I was going to make it a full rotation like this.
All thoughts of Caius wash away when I sink into the hot spring. The bathing caverns are at the far west corner of the city, stretching on for over a kilometer, with plenty of stepped pools and side caverns to offer privacy.
The natural pools terraced into the side of this chamber glow a soft azure, fed by an underwater hot spring, soft tendrils of steam tangling toward a roof of wild glow moss in varying hues of blue, green and purple.
This pool is my favorite, tucked in the back corner, far from the main cavern.
It’s blistering hot, enough to scorch my skin and turn the flesh pink.
A welcome salve, the heat soothes my battered body.
I dip my head under the water and let everything wash away.
The meeting with the council, the meaning of this assignment, being saddled with Caius, all of it sloughs off in the water alongside the dirt from my encounter with the dragon.
The dragon. I had always known they were there, in The Above.
Rulers of land and sky. I had seen them in the distance.
My father had told me stories about the dragons.
Ones that no one else in the caves knew.
My father wasn’t born in Bǎodela. They found him at the bottom of a canyon, badly burned, broken, knocking on death’s door.
The Citadel healers saved him, and even at sixteen, he was already a talented Tinkerer.
He grew up here, made a home for himself here, fell in love, had a family, and died here.
I gasp for air as I push up from beneath the water, my thoughts having run away with me.
“You’re late.”
My heart stops at the sound of that voice.
I peer over at the cavern entrance to find Caius clutching my clothes with a smirk carved across his lips, though his gaze is trained on the rock wall beside him.
Without looking, he tosses the bundle at me, and I snatch the clothing out of the air, clutching my things to my chest, one sleeve dipping into the water.
I groan. “What’s your problem?”
“We said first shift. It’s first shift.”
“The shift must have just turned—”
“First. Shift.” He enunciates each word.
“Fine.” I push through gritted teeth. “Now, will you turn around so I can get dressed?”
Caius doesn’t smile now. He barely seems to register that I’m there. But he turns and folds his arms over his chest.
I slide out from the pool, already mourning the loss of the heat as I towel off. My eyes dart to Caius occasionally, but he is a statue, unmoving as the stone that surrounds us.
I quickly slide on my black hemp pants, filled with pockets and a reinforced structure for my built-in harness, then slip into my tunic, strap on my tool belt, hop from one foot to the other as I pull on my socks and struggle to slip into my boots.
My ribs ache, and I gasp at the sharp pain that lances through me as I try to lace my boots.
“Do you need some help?”
I glance up through wet strands of dark gold hair to find that Caius is exactly as he has been this entire time, staring out into the tunnel.
“I’m fine,” I wheeze out as I stuff my laces into the sides of my boots and shuffle over to stand beside him.
Only then does his head turn ever so slightly in my direction, his eyes sliding over me.
I can see the words sitting on the tip of his tongue, but he swallows them down, and looks back to the tunnel.
“We’d better get going then. It’s already a quarter past shift start.” Caius shoves a cricket bar into my hands.
I’m stunned by the gesture, so I focus on his words. “How do you know?”
“It’s one of my many talents.”
I snort. “What ever you say, Fox.”
The muscle in Caius’ jaw feathers but when we step into the tunnels, the glow moss has indeed faded from pink to yellow, no hint of the rose gold transition, and the traffic in the tunnels is already fading, and I am annoyed to admit that it probably is a quarter past shift start.
When we get to the main tunnel, Caius surprises me by turning left instead of right.
“Shouldn’t we start in the gardens?” I ask. Given that the flow of water to the gardens was the highest concern for the success of the city, I had planned on starting there and working my way back toward the source river.
“Given that we are already on the other side of Bǎodela and you have made us late, I believe it would be best if we started at source and worked our way through.” Caius continued his brisk pace in the opposite direction.
“Are you the Tinkerer?” I ask as I jog to keep up with his long legs.
He gives me a look that both says: obviously not, and I will not dignify that with a response.
“I really think that we should—”
Caius stops abruptly, whirling around to face me. His face is so close to mine that I feel the heat of his breath on my lips.
“I don’t want this assignment any more than you do. We are already stuck together for a full rotation. And that is if things go according to plan. One day late. One slip-up. And then it’s an extra phase, and then who knows how long I will be stuck babysitting you.”
I’m stunned silent by his reaction.
Caius straightens, looking down his nose at me. “There are much more important things I should be doing with my time. Do not cost me a second more than is necessary. Is that understood?”
I gulp down the lump in my throat and nod, not trusting the words I might say.
Caius keeps his gaze locked on me before giving a nod of his own and turning back to the path. We walk the rest of the way to the source river in silence.
I have much more important things to do with my time. What did he mean by that? Normally, I would think that was just Caius, pompous and self-important, but this time it doesn’t ring true. No, there was something else going on.
We come to a vast, dimly lit underground cavern.
No one tends the glow moss here, and the only light comes from the wild patches that wind haphazardly over the stalactites, colliding in prismatic fashion, untamed by the gardeners, sculpted by time.
Streaks of blue swirl into purple and stretch into green with pops of pink and swaths of gold.
I forgot how much I loved this place. I stopped coming after my father died.
We spent so many afternoons here whispering of dragons and snacking on wild berries that stained our lips a softly glowing pink; it had felt like magic lived in the very walls.
But with him gone, the magic had died too.
I blink back the whisper of tears threatening to build in my eyes and set my pack by the main hub that serves as the split for the various aqueducts that feed the entire city.