Chapter 24
We came back up from the tunnel in silence.
Nobody asked what we'd seen, which I thought was odd. Maybe it was because Nicco said nothing, and people had learned — through a process of trial and error that had mostly cost them — that asking questions wasn't going to improve the situation.
I said nothing because I was still trying to make sense of what I'd felt down there, and I didn't have the words that I was willing to say out loud to anyone.
Not yet. Maybe not ever.
The basin had not been quiet in our absence.
I'd expected quiet. Instead, the basin had its own sounds, and after the stillness of the trek north, they felt almost aggressive.
The waterspouts erupted without warning or pattern.
One moment, the snow on the basin floor was undisturbed.
The next, a column of steaming water shot fifteen or twenty feet upward into the gray sky, hung there for a breath, then fell back in a curtain of warm droplets that froze on contact with the surrounding cold air.
The result was a fine mist that drifted across the basin floor in slow, rolling banks, catching the flat light and making the gemstone seams in the rock faces glitter briefly before the mist passed on.
It was almost beautiful.
It was also immediately and obviously dangerous.
Sergeant Gralen had sent two soldiers into the basin ahead of the main group to begin what they termed "cataloging.
" I watched from the edge as the first waterspout caught the nearer soldier full in the chest. The blast of warm water knocked him sideways, and he went down on one knee in the snow, drenched and already beginning to steam in the cold air.
The second soldier had the presence of mind to step back. The spout subsided. The first man got to his feet with the expression of someone trying very hard to pretend we hadn’t all watched him get knocked on his ass.
“Move in pairs,” Marson said. “One watches, one works. You see the snow shift, you move.”
It was a reasonable instruction. The problem was that the warning signs were subtle. A slight depression in the snow's surface, a faint tremor underfoot, and a change in the basin's sound that I felt more than heard.
The soldiers were learning to read them, but learning had a cost.
By the time the group had spread along the rock faces to begin their work, four of them had been caught.
None seriously, the water was warm, not scalding, and the volumes were manageable unless you were directly beneath the spout's peak.
But wet clothes in Crystallese were a problem that compounded quickly, and I watched Marson make the calculation in real time, assessing how long he had before the cold began to harm men who were already damp.
“How long do they last?” he asked me.
I looked at the nearest active spout, the column of water rising and falling in that slow, rhythmic pattern. “I don't know,” I said honestly. “I've never seen them before.”
He didn't look pleased with that answer. I couldn't help that.
“Maybe ask Larana. She told me what they were.”
The weather above the basin wasn't helping. The sky had settled into a dark, oppressive gray that seemed to be building from the northwest, not a skarveld, but possible. The air had a certain quality, damp and electric, that made the hair on my arms stand up beneath my layers.
I looked up. Then at the basin. Then at the tunnel entrance in the far rock face.
We didn't have as long as Marson thought we had.
“Captain.” I crossed to him. “Whatever you're cataloging, do it quickly. The weather is turning.”
He followed my gaze to the sky. “How long?”
“Enough. If we're efficient.” I looked at his men. “They need to stop getting wet.”
He turned back to his soldiers and began redistributing them with a crisp efficiency I'd come to associate with him.
I stepped back and let him work.
Somewhere to my left, a soldier cursed as another spout caught him across the shoulders. Someone else laughed, briefly, their laughter cut short when they were the next one to be doused.
I stood at the edge of it, felt the pull in my chest, the weather building above, and the thing in the tunnel below, and thought that of all the places I had ever led a group, this one was the most insistent on being left alone.
“We’ll lead them from the mouth of the tunnel, far enough away from the basin to get dry, but not too far to get distracted,” Nicco said to my left. I turned my head and saw he was talking to Larana. “They can’t go any farther in,” he stressed.
“I’ll let them know.”
She slipped past him to talk to the others, and I watched him quietly as he stared out across the basin.
His eyes flicked to mine. “Anyone ever tell you staring was rude?”
“Anyone ever tell you that you’re a pain in the ass?”
I saw him smile briefly. “Every day, bunny. Stick to the front of the opening. I want to see you at all times.”
“I’m not interested in stealing ice rocks.”
Nicco walked closer. “Why? You don’t want money?”
I gave him a flat stare. “You’ve seen my kingdom and the people who employ me, right?”
“Yes.”
I shook my head. “Then why would I need a diamond? Who in the shades in my line of work could afford to buy it from me?” I shook my head as I looked at the gemstones in the rock. “I wouldn’t even be able to give them away. They’re worthless to me.”
He looked amused and confused. “You need to broaden your horizons, think bigger.”
“I like the way I think.”
He chuckled. “Stay where I can see you. Tonight, we may actually stay dry.”
Now see, staying dry, that was worth something.
The storm passed, and we stayed dry. It had been nearly impossible to sleep at first at the entrance without going farther down into the mine. Nicco and Baxley had slept awfully close to me, almost boxing me in. I hadn’t commented on their proximity, and neither had said a word in their defense.
In the morning, the soldiers resumed cataloging the rock faces, moving along the basin walls with the careful efficiency of men given a task and carrying it out without understanding its purpose.
Captain Marson was directing them with a watchful eye.
They’d also learned to stay away from the basin.
Instead, they crept along the edge, pressing against the walls to avoid the spouts.
I stood at the edge of the basin and looked at the column's location — or where I imagined it to be, beneath us in the dark — and felt the pulse still resonating in my chest, a rhythm that wasn't quite my heartbeat and wasn't quite not.
“Amarya.”
I turned to Baxley.
He stood at the edge of the basin near the northern opening, looking at something on the ground. He had an air of stillness around him and looked as if he’d found something completely unexpected and was still deciding what to do about it.
I crossed to him.
The snow at the basin's northern edge was disturbed.
Not by wind. The pattern was wrong for wind, too deliberate, too directional.
Footprints, but not ours. Older than ours, bigger than ours, partially filled by the light snowfall of the past few days, yet unmistakably present.
A lot of them. Coming from the north, stopping at the basin's edge, and then… nothing. No return tracks.
“They came here,” I said, tracing the markings.
“Yes.”
“And didn't leave.” I looked up at him.
Baxley looked back at me steadily. “Not this way.”
I straightened and looked back at the group.
Marson had seen us crouching. He walked over to us with Gralen at his shoulder, and the moment he looked down at the prints, his expression turned to one I hadn't seen from him before — neither the administrative calm nor the clipped efficiency — but something older than that. The look that recognized danger.
“Those aren't ours,” Gralen said. A fan of stating the obvious.
“No,” I said.
“Animal?”
“Not one I know.” I kept my eyes on Baxley.
Behind Marson, the soldiers had stopped cataloging. They were watching us the way people watch when they realize the conversation ten feet away is going to change something about their immediate future. Edran had his hand near his sword without seeming to notice he'd put it there.
“How many?” Marson asked.
I looked at the prints again. The overlapping pattern, the varying depths.
“Several? Moving together.” I paused. “Or one, many times, but I don’t think so.”
Nobody responded, and the silence that followed felt so telling — it was the kind that comes when men suddenly realize they don’t quite know what or who was here before them.
“The tunnel,” Marson said quietly.
“Most likely,” I said. “There’s nowhere else.”
I crouched and examined the nearest print. Large. Deep. Whatever had made it had been heavy or moving fast or both. The shape was wrong for a boot — too wide at the toe, too shallow at the heel.
“It doesn’t look human,” I said.
“No,” Baxley agreed. “It wouldn’t because it’s not.”
I gradually rose to my feet, glancing northward where the basin opened up to the vast landscape beyond.
A wide white expanse that stretched endlessly, unmarred and smooth, under the flat gray sky.
Whatever had created these tracks must have come from that direction, heading straight here.
They arrived right here, stood at the edge of the basin, and then…
gone down? Into the tunnel? Before we got here.
And was still down there…
The thought arrived with a particular chill that had nothing to do with the temperature.
“Nicco,” I said, not loudly.
He was already walking toward us.
I pointed at the tracks without speaking. He looked at them for a long moment, crouching the way I had, examining the print, depth, and shape. When he straightened, his face adopted its careful expression again, and his eyes shifted from the tracks to the tunnel entrance and then to me.
“How long ago?” he asked while Captain Marson and Gralen listened attentively.
“Days. Not quite a week.” I looked at the sky. “The last heavy snowfall was four days ago. These are partially filled.”