Chapter 10
KAVOR
Everything epis needs. Except there is none.
Sera crouches beside me, staring into the old zemlja tunnel as if looking harder might make blue-purple light appear where there is only darkness, mineral crust, and shadow.
It does not.
The tunnel mouth waits beneath the basin rim, low and smooth, its inner stone worn by something vast. Time does not make zemlja paths harmless. It only teaches them patience.
Old leavings cling along the lower curve of the wall, baked into the stone in dark bands. Mineral veins run through them like pale bone through old flesh.
Sera’s breathing stays measured. The kind a body takes when the mind has struck pain and chosen function instead.
“This is the place?” she asks.
I do not answer because she already knows. Her fingers curl against her thigh, not touching the tunnel lip. Good. The soil here is not soil. It is memory ground down. Waste. Heat. Old nourishment. The kind of richness epis should love.
The kind that once made worlds greedy.
No glow. No strands. No pulse. Sera leans closer.
“Sera.”
“I’m not touching it.”
“You say that about many things you should not touch.”
“That’s because you object to many things.”
“I object to death.”
“Death is very demanding on Tajss. You’ll need a better sorting method.”
The words are dry. Quick. Almost nothing. But she is still looking at the absence, not at me. The failed hope sits between us like a third presence, thin and starving and impossible to ignore.
I press two claws against the inner edge of the tunnel mouth. The stone is cool beneath the crust. Cooler than the open basin. The shape of the tunnel wraps around my hand, around my breath, giving sound shape again.
Close stone. Readable stone. Better. I try not to let my body show relief, but Sera sees. Her gaze flicks from my hand against the tunnel wall to my shoulders. I continue before she can ask.
“There should be anchor threads here,” I say.
“What are anchor threads?”
“The first roots. Not roots like surface plants. Epis holds to mineral seams. It drinks what zemlja leave behind.”
“Waste.”
“Yes.”
“Everyone in Council was very poetic for something that grows in worm leavings.”
I glance at her. Her mouth is flat, but there is anger under it. Not at the plant, but at the secrecy. At hope made holy after hunger made bodies smaller.
“It is still precious,” I say.
“Many ugly things are.”
True. I scrape gently along the darker band. Dust loosens beneath my claws, red and gray and yellow white. No blue powder. No blackened fibers. No brittle strands tucked into cracks. Nothing. Dead epis leaves remnants. Harvested epis leaves scars. This place has neither.
Sera stares at me.
“What?” she asks.
“I found nothing.”
“You were already looking at nothing.”
“No.”
She waits. It seems she is learning my silences are not all the same. I run one claw along the seam again, slower.
“If epis grew and died, there would be dead strands. If it was harvested, there would be cuts. If something fed on it, there would be torn anchor scars.”
“And?”
“None.”
The basin wind breathes over us, carrying heat into the tunnel mouth. It touches the darkness and leaves with the bitter scent sharpened. Sera’s face tightens.
“So it never grew.”
“That is possible.”
“You do not believe in possible,” she says, narrowing her eyes.
“I rarely trust it.”
“Useful.”
“Sometimes.”
She exhales through her nose. It is not quite a laugh nor quite despair. She points into the tunnel.
“But it should have grown here.”
“Yes.”
“Because the zemlja passed through.”
“Because a zemlja passed through, left richness, shaped the tunnel, opened mineral veins, and created a sealed place where heat and leavings could feed growth.”
“You make it sound deliberate.”
“No. Zemlja do not make epis. They make conditions.”
“Like death makes ration math.”
I look at her, the weight of her words like gravity forcing my attention onto her. She looks away first, but not because she regrets saying it. She does not, and that is worse.
I turn back to the tunnel.
The old passage slopes down beyond the mouth, widening into darkness. I cannot see far. Sight matters less than pressure. I close my eyes and set my palm flat against the inside wall. The tunnel speaks in layers.
Surface heat above. Hollow space below. Old scrape marks. Settled dust. Deep pressure farther east where something much larger cut through older stone. No movement close, which is good. But farther down, faint and thin, there is a memory of rhythm.
Once. Pause. Again.
The tunnel remembers being touched by something that was not zemlja. I press my claws harder, and stone flakes. Sera shifts beside me.
“Kavor.”
I open my eyes.
“What do you feel?”
“Old pressure.”
“That’s your entire answer?”
“For now.”
Her mouth tightens. “I hate for now.”
“You use it often,” I say.
“I hate many things I use.”
Another truth she does not know she has given me. I look deeper into the tunnel. No glow. No remains. No honest explanation.
“We need the second site,” I say.
She does not move.
“Sera.”
“One breath.”
Her voice is low. I wait. The first sun rises higher behind us, dragging more heat over the basin rim. Waiting is foolish. Still, I do it.
Sera stares into the dead hollow, and for that one breath, she lets herself look like someone who wanted something. It is not much. Only a crack in the mask. A glimpse, then gone, and she rises.
“Closest is rarely best,” she says.
The lie is poor, but she needs it. I let it stand.
She pulls the map from her side pocket and unfolds only the needed section, shielding the hide from the wind with her body. Efficient. Careful. Always spending less, even with motion.
“The second sign is farther along the western rim near a collapsed cistern channel,” she says. “The third is closer to the quiet place.”
“No.”
“I didn’t suggest it.”
“You thought it.”
“I think many stupid things. I don’t obey all of them.”
“That is fortunate.”
“Careful,” she warns, her eyes cutting to me.
I incline my head. She taps the map.
“Second site first. If it’s also empty, we decide whether the third is worth the risk.”
“No third site until we understand why the first failed.”
“Then we may never reach the third.”
“Yes.”
Her mouth tightens. “You’re very calm about returning with nothing.”
“I am not calm.”
She studies me closely. I turn my attention to the map before she can find more than I want to give. She turns the hide toward me.
“Show me where the tunnel runs.”
I point to the basin curve.
“The old passage likely came under here. It did not cross the surface. It would have pushed beneath the rim, followed softer stone, and then cut east again.”
“Toward the sinkline.”
“Yes.”
She frowns at the marks. “But the hollow behind us was north of this line.”
“Yes.”
“So either there are older branching tunnels under the basin…”
“Likely.”
“Or the zemlja disturbed passages it did not travel through directly.”
“Also likely.”
“You know, when humans give two answers, one is usually meant to be more helpful,” she says, glaring at me.
“Zemlja tunnels branch and collapse. Pressure travels through old voids. A body moving deep can wake weaknesses above without passing beneath your foot.”
She looks back toward the hollow where I pulled her from the sand.
“So it didn’t have to be under me.”
“No.”
“It only had to make the ground remember it could fall.”
“Yes.”
She absorbs that quickly. Too quickly for comfort.
“This place is a layered ruin,” she says.
“Yes.”
“City under City. Tunnel under tunnel. Dead path under dead path.”
“Yes.”
“And something changed the pressure.”
I do not answer. Her gaze sharpens.
“Still not ready to say it?”
“No.”
“Because you don’t know?”
“Because I do not know enough.”
“That’s not the same.”
“No.”
The wind moves between us, hot and dry, worrying the map edge.
Her fingers tighten to hold it steady. I set one claw near the opposite corner, carefully not touching her.
Close enough that the small scars across her knuckles are visible.
Close enough that I see the raw place near her thumb where a strap has rubbed skin open.
She should have told someone. She has not. I tighten my jaw. Sera sees my gaze. Her fingers curl.
“Don’t,” she says.
“I did not speak.”
“You thought loudly.”
“I will think quieter.”
A mistake. Her eyes narrow.
“Was that humor?”
“No.”
“It was almost humor.”
“It failed.”
“Most things do here.”
She looks back at the map before the almost-smile can become real. I look at the route because it is safer than watching her hide small living things.
“Here,” I say, pointing toward the western rim. “The second site may sit below this shelf.”
“The collapsed channel.”
“Yes.”
“It holds shade in the morning, but the floor is unstable. Records say no standing water. No usable shelter.”
“Can you read it?”
She pauses. There it is again: the strange stillness when I place weight on her knowledge instead of taking it from her.
“Yes,” she says. “I can read where it betrayed others.”
“Good.”
Her mouth parts slightly, then closes. I should not enjoy surprising her, but I do. The first heat thickens. Sera folds the map and tucks it away.
“We drink first,” she says.
I remove the water skin from my shoulder before she has to ask. Her gaze flicks to the movement. Suspicion first, then something smaller.
“Thank you,” she says, the words rough, as if they scraped her throat on the way out.
I hold out the skin. “Drink.”
“I just thanked you. Don’t ruin it.”
“You should drink.”
“There. Ruined.”
Still, she takes the skin. One measured mouthful. Too little. She lowers it. I do not take the skin back. She narrows her eyes.
“We’re not doing this again.”
“We drink first,” I say.
“I drank.”
“You taught the rule. Do not insult it.”
Her jaw sets. Anger. Good. Anger gets a second mouthful where need would not.
She drinks again. Longer this time. Controlled, but enough to matter. A drop clings to her lower lip before she wipes it away with the back of her hand.
I look at the water skin. Only the water skin. Mostly. She thrusts it at me.
“There. The rule has been honored. Try not to build a shrine.”
“Would a shrine require much stone?” I ask, taking the skin.
She stares, then a sound escapes her. Small. Reluctant. Alive. Not a laugh. Better.
I drink because she watches fairness as if unfairness has teeth. One mouthful. Then another, though my body does not need it. She will know if I perform restraint for her benefit. When I lower the skin, she studies me with suspicion.
“What?” I ask.
“You actually drank what you needed.”
“Yes.”
“Strange behavior.”
“You should try it.”
“I did.”
“Barely.”
“Careful, shrine-builder.”
I secure the skin before I do something foolish with my mouth, like smile.
“We move,” I say.
“Bossy.”
“Alive.”
“Fine distinction.”
“Important one.”
She starts along the rim. I follow.
The basin opens to our left, its pale center brightening toward white. Heat gathers there, exactly as she said. The air trembles above it. A foolish eye would call that movement. A dead fool would follow it.
Sera does not. She reads light like I read stone. A dark shelf: safe. A red-glass patch: not safe. A curve of fine cracks beneath dust: avoid. A shadow leaning west, useful. A shadow trapped beneath an overhang, dead soon. Again and again, she chooses before I ask. And again, she is right.
Respect grows. Not simple respect, warrior for warrior. Something more.
She is underfed. Angry. Stubborn enough to argue with death if it had poor logic. She moves through heat like a knife through cloth, not because she is untouched by it, but because she has been cut by it so often she knows the pattern.
The City did not make her weak. It made her precise. I hate the City more for that.
The collapsed cistern channel appears beneath a shelf of stone, a black mouth in the basin rim.
The channel is cut into old structure, half-swallowed by the basin rim and packed at the edges with red dust. Once, water, or something like it, moved there. Later, a zemlja tunnel must have crossed beneath it, warping the floor and cracking the underside. The channel mouth sags toward darkness.
Sera stops before I tell her. Her gaze moves over the roofline, the dust slope, and the edges where the stone has folded inward.
“Unstable,” she says.
“Yes.”
“Old collapse. New settling along the right side.”
“Yes.”
“Don’t look so pleased. It’s unsettling.”
“I am not pleased.”
“You are doing the quiet version.”
I crouch at the channel lip before she does. She makes a sound. I ignore it because the air rising from below has weight. I smell old zemlja leavings, faint but present. Mineral richness. Heat held under stone. The right conditions again. Underneath them, something empty.
Too clean. I press my claws to the channel floor to feel. There is no active movement close, but a faint vibration lingers in the stone. It is not the deep body-memory of a zemlja moving through earth. It is thinner. Sharper. Like the echo of a pulse that did not belong to anything alive.
I flex my claws. Sera crouches beside me, careful to keep her weight on the darker shelf.
“This site?” she asks.
“Yes.”
Her face tightens. She reaches for hope again. I feel it.
I scrape dust from the inner curve of the channel. The crust breaks away in flakes. Beneath it, the stone is dark with old nourishment. Pale mineral veins. Smooth tunnel-worn underlayer where the zemlja passage must have pressed near enough to change everything above it, but no glow. No strands.
Sera’s silence sharpens. I scrape deeper. There. A line along the seam. Not blue or purple. Gray. Ash-gray, threaded through the mineral where epis should have anchored.
“That’s not normal,” Sera says.
“No.”
“What is it?”
I rub the gray dust between my claws. No scent. Nothing. Impossible.
Everything has scent. Stone. Heat. Dead growth. Old leavings. Fear. Water. Hunger. Sera’s skin where my hand held her wrist. This has none.
My wings tighten. The channel mouth presses close in front of me, but behind my back, the sky is still open, wide and watching. I do not like this place. Not the open. Not the dark. Not the space between.
“I do not know,” I say.
For once, she does not argue with the answer.
A faint sound shivers through the channel. A tiny spill of dust falls from somewhere deeper inside the old passage.
Sera and I both go still. Then another sound. Farther in. Soft. Measured. Once. Pause. Again.
Sera’s eyes meet mine. She knows the rhythm.
“We leave,” I say.
She does not argue. We back away from the channel mouth, soft and slow, each step placed as if the ground has ears. The gray dust clings to my claw. No scent. No glow. No life.
Behind us, inside the collapsed cistern channel, the darkness gives one more quiet pulse.
And the ash-gray vein goes black.