“Are you afraid he’ll come after you for revenge if you tell me?” Ridge asked.
“I’m afraid… he might have genuinely thought she was a witch, and in your—our culture, well, that would have made killing Bretta justifiable, wouldn’t it?”
Ridge leaned back, feeling the hardness of his chair against his shoulder blades. He had noticed her slip-up, and it put doubt into his assumptions all over again. More than that, he sensed she was lying.
“Who is it?” Ridge asked. “We’ll hear from him and decide the rest.” We? It was he, wasn’t it? He would have to be judge and juror here. A fact that hadn’t been mentioned on his orders.
“I don’t know for sure,” Sardelle said slowly. “Gossip and hearsay and who saw what, when, you understand.”
“Yes… ”
“But if you can find out if a man named Tace was missing from his shift yesterday afternoon when this happened, you might have your answer. He might have had help from a second man. I didn’t hear the other name.”
“Thank you.” Ridge wrote the name down. For once a number would have been easier, but Captain Heriton ought to be intimately acquainted with the archives by now. Maybe he would recognize the man. “I’ll find him and have him questioned.”
Sardelle nodded curtly. Her gaze was still out the window. Ridge waited for her to inquire about the map—she must have seen it rolled up next to his desk, but something was bothering her. All the animation she had shown when reciting the book summaries had drained from her. He felt an urge to comfort her, the same urge that had taken him to the laundry room the night before. This time, he made himself remain where he was.
“Is there something else I should know?” he asked.
Sardelle shook her head and pulled her focus back to him. “No, it’s just… a lamentable situation.”
“Yes.”
Ridge pointed his pen toward the map. “We made a deal. There’s the map. There aren’t many up-to-date copies around, so I trust you’ll understand if I don’t let it leave my office.” Not to mention how many vomit stains and dust bunnies he’d had to clean up to find it wedged against the baseboard behind the couch.
“I understand.” Sardelle still seemed subdued as she came forward and unrolled the map.
Ridge picked up his papers so she could lay it out on his desk.
She did so, using a couple of paperweights to pin down the corners and gazed at it for no more than thirty seconds before issuing an eloquent, “Huh.”
Ridge wasn’t sure what he had expected from her, but that wasn’t it.
“Is that where the ore is?” Sardelle waved toward the section of the mountain where the levels and levels of tunnels snaked around.
Ridge didn’t answer. He would let her look, but he wouldn’t provide intelligence. He was already worried his generosity—or perhaps it was foolishness—would turn into a regret. He had allowed the map deal in the hope that he, in observing her, would learn more about her than she did about the facility.
“All the miners mumble about crystals,” she added, looking up at him.
She seemed curious and faintly puzzled. An act? Wasn’t she here for the crystals? Whether she was a spy or some kind of archaeological bandit, Ridge had assumed she had come for them. What else was of value in this mountain? Silver was worth something, but it wasn’t that rare an ore. Even if she hadn’t come for the crystals, he found it odd that she could discover a murderer’s name overnight, but didn’t know about something all of the miners knew about. Granted, the women remained up top and handled the domestic duties, but Ridge would be surprised if most of them didn’t know what was in the mountain under them.
“The placement of the tunnels surprises you?” Maybe he could extract some information from her, though what he was fishing for he didn’t truly know.
“According to the books, the people who lived here before… before they were destroyed, they had their home in this part of the mountain.” Sardelle waved to a spot that was mostly off the map. “There were a few tunnels over here, I think, but they were more interested in, well, I suppose I don’t know, but the old road leading to the pass exited from the other side of the mountain. That was the road more traveled. There wasn’t much back here, except a few market stalls in the summers, and a private area for practicing… stuff.”
It was all Ridge could do not to blurt out, asking what she was talking about. People who had lived here? Maybe he was the one who needed to go around talking to the miners. But no, he had perused a lot of the operating manual, and it didn’t mention anything about former inhabitants. It specifically said the crystals were an unexplained phenomenon that had only ever been discovered in this mountain.
“In what book did you find this information? Because I’m certain it’s not one of the ones on my list.”
“No… something I read at one point. I can’t seem to recall the title.”
After the morning’s memory display, Ridge had a hard time believing she forgot much of anything. Did some university out there know more than the military did about its own secret? Or maybe someone in the military knew… and had forgotten to mention it to Ridge before foisting the command on him. If so, that seemed rude.
“And who were these people who, according to your forgotten source, lived here?” Ridge asked.
Sardelle opened her mouth as if to spout the quick answer, but paused and searched his face for a moment before shrugging and saying, “The Referatu.”
A chill ran through him. “The sorcerers.” The sorcerers who had tried to take over the continent, to enslave everyone who didn’t have their powers. He knew about the purging, about the war that had been fought against them three hundred years ago, but he had never heard that they had come out of a mountain base. Or that this had been it. True, he wasn’t a huge academic, having never been interested in more than the military and flying as a kid, but he wasn’t completely ignorant either. This was not common knowledge. So how did his little spy/thief know?
Sardelle spread her hands. “I assumed you knew. Or at least whoever started mining here knew.”
Was she being honest, or was this another lie? His head was starting to hurt. It wasn’t even nine in the morning yet; it was too early for headaches.
“These crystals,” she said, “are they—”
Footsteps sounded in the hallway, fast, urgent footsteps.
“Sir!” The captain knocked on the door, but Ridge was already on his way to opening it and caught the man, fist raised in the air. “The airship is back,” he blurted. “And it’s coming closer this time.”
Ridge cursed, grabbed his parka, and ran into the hallway, tugging it on as he went. “It’s still snowing, isn’t it? I thought that would keep them away.”
“It is, sir. And it’s not.”
“Wonderful.”
Chapter 5
Left alone in the colonel’s office, Sardelle debated whether to race outside after him or to take the moment to study the map further, in private. A glance had told her that the tunnels were several hundred meters from Jaxi’s location—it was only dumb luck that those miners had stumbled upon her. The mage shelters had been located in the deepest part of her people’s complex, farthest into the mountain core. A mistake, it had turned out, because so few had made it down there in time.
Only you.
I know. Sardelle touched the map, tracing the lower level tunnels with her fingers. I think this is about where I was discovered, though this doesn’t look like it’s been updated to include the passage Tace and his cohort were working on.
Thinking of them again made her wince. She had agreed to help Zirkander with his investigation on a whim, because she saw her opportunity to barter for a look at the map. She hadn’t expected to find out Tace was the murderer… or that Bretta was someone who had denied him sex in the past—and used her brawn to protect the other women from him as well. She certainly couldn’t have foreseen the chain of events that would lead him to accuse Bretta of giving him hi
s new and persistent rash. Sardelle might not regret defending herself, but she now wished she had found another way. At the least, she should have later sought the man out—from a distance—and healed what she had inflicted.
Unforeseen consequences. The elders had understood them well. That was why the Circle had never acted as judges over others and had insisted the Referatu be held accountable to the same laws as the people in the rest of the country. Until that handful of sorcerers had gone rogue, believing themselves above the law. They were the ones who had established the fear of magic in the population, a fear that had resulted in… Sardelle gazed out the window toward the mountain, her chest tightening with emotion she had been trying hard to distract herself from. But talking to Zirkander and realizing that no one even remembered the Referatu had been here… A few unforeseen consequences, and I’m the last of my people.
Perhaps noticing Sardelle wasn’t thinking of anything constructive, Jaxi directed her back to their current consideration. If you were to convince the miners to extend that shaft and angle downward approximately fourteen degrees, you would eventually reach my location.
And how do I convince them of that?
Keep working on the colonel.
The colonel is busy with—
A boom sounded in the distance.
“I thought he wasn’t going to use the cannons.” But even as she spoke, Sardelle swept her senses out, along the walls and confirmed what her ears should have told her. The explosion had come from farther away. The airship, what else?
Leaving the map on the desk, Sardelle ran through the building and outside. Daylight had come to the mountains, but the heavy clouds and the continuing snow made it feel like perpetual twilight. She struggled to spot the airship and wouldn’t have found it at all had she not seen a harpoon—no, Zirkander had called it a rocket—streak away from the rampart. It disappeared into the white sky, but by following its trajectory, she located the intruders. The enemy airship was up near the top of a snow-covered ridge, dropping explosives into the cornice she had noted the day before. Yesterday’s fear returned in a surge.
The rocket exploded in the sky below the craft’s wooden hull. Whatever force or shrapnel it hurled made the ship rock, tilting on its side for a moment, but the massive oblong balloon stabilized it. The captain must have had a good idea as to the rockets’ range and was staying out of it.
Well, he didn’t know her range.
Sardelle stepped into the shadows of a building and checked around to make sure nobody was watching her. The miners were down in the mountain, and all of the soldiers in the fort were busy grabbing weapons from the armory and running up to the wall to fight. This battle wouldn’t be won with firearms though.
Hating that she had to think of herself first, that she dared not be discovered, Sardelle waited long painful seconds so she could time her attack with the soldiers’ next one. While a second rocket was loaded and aimed, the airship dropped another bomb.
“Hurry,” she whispered.
Finally, the rocket flew away. Sardelle forced herself to wait until it exploded, to see if it might be near enough that shrapnel would account for…
There. Orange light burst against the gray sky, the weapon exploding even closer to the airship than the first. Shrapnel reached the hull, though not enough to give it more than a few dents and dings.
“Good enough,” she muttered. Sardelle drew energy from within and cut a long slash in that balloon.
The envelope was thicker than she realized—it might have held up to shrapnel even if the rockets had struck closer—but it wasn’t a match for her power. She wasn’t sure how long it would take to deflate, so she cut more holes, little snips and pricks that would appear as shrapnel damage later. With more time, she could have made sure the craft went down, but an ominous rumbling started up. It wasn’t coming from the airship but from the mountain behind it. From the snow.
A buzzing wail erupted from a horn at the corner of the fort.
“Avalanche!” someone cried.
I was afraid of that.
Don’t get caught, Jaxi warned. Snow is just as impossible to dig out from under as rock.
I know. I grew up around here, remember?
Sardelle ignored Jaxi’s snarky retort. She took several deep breaths and flexed her hands, like an athlete getting ready for a race. Cutting a hole in a balloon was easy, but this?
With a soulblade in her hand, her power combined with Jaxi’s, she might have handled it, but even then, she would have needed time to plan an attack. The snow was already falling, gathering speed, gathering more material as it tumbled down the steep slope. That high up, there were no trees to slow its momentum. Sardelle tried to create invisible barriers to slow it down, but it was like sticking her fingers into a dam to plug up holes as more and more burst open. Then that shelf of snow collapsed completely, rushing down too fast, too powerfully. All she could do was partially divert it away from the fortress, to angle it off to the side, but the installation was at the lowest point in the valley, and even a sorcerer couldn’t defy gravity for long.
The tail end of it crushed into the east wall, knocking men down, devouring them. The rocket launcher disappeared, too, and—Sardelle gulped, and whispered a plaintive, “Noooo…”—Zirkander, who had been trying to shove other men away, to push them toward the back side of the fort, was swallowed too. The wave of snow crested the towers and crashed halfway across the courtyard, burying that eastern wall and two of the tram entrances, before tumbling to a stop.
Only vaguely aware that the wounded airship was limping away—and losing altitude as it did so—Sardelle raced for the mountain of snow.
A shovel, Jaxi warned.
What?
You need a tool. Don’t do anything—anything else—that could get you noticed.
It was good advice, even if she didn’t want to heed it. Already she had hesitated, protecting herself instead of simply attacking. If she hadn’t, she might have stopped that ship before it dropped that last explosive.
“Shovels,” someone yelled. “Get those men out of there!”
Sardelle clambered up the slope with a surge of soldiers, all of them slipping on the ice and snow but desperate to save the men. “The colonel went down here,” she yelled. “I was watching, I saw.”
She didn’t expect anyone to listen to her—Zirkander was the only one who treated her as anything other than a prisoner—but maybe the confidence in her voice convinced them. Three soldiers scrambled over to join her. She pointed, then grabbed a shovel from someone who had brought extras. She had seen Zirkander go down, the wave sweeping him from the wall, but she could also sense him beneath several feet of snow. He was alive and not badly hurt, but confused, trying to figure out which way was up, and how much air he had.
Sardelle dug. She had never been caught in an avalanche but had heard from others who had survived. The snow became like cement once it compacted above a person, impossible to dig through. A man had to be dug out by others. She flung snow to the side, planning to do just that.
“You’re sure it was here?” one of the soldiers asked.
“Yes,” Sardelle said without looking up from her task. They had only gone down two feet. They needed to descend at least four more, but she kept herself from explaining that. Someone would later remember such unlikely precision.
“Because the snow would have moved him,” the soldier said.
“I know that. I’ve already factored it in. There’s a… mathematical model that I’ve studied.” There. That sounded plausible, didn’t it? For all she knew, there truly was such a thing.
“Just keep digging, Bragt,” another soldier said.
Sardelle’s hands were already growing raw from the shoveling, but she didn’t slow down. Two more feet. They ought to be close, ought to hear something soon. Zirkander should hear them soon and cry out, let them know they were close.
“Stay below,” someone’s voice came from across the fort. “Just stay down t
here. We’ll let you know when it’s safe to come out.”
The soldier next to Sardelle grumbled, “If those prisoners get out and try to use this to their advantage… ”
“I’ll shoot them, no questions asked,” another responded. “Sir! Are you down there? Can you hear us?”
A faint muffled groan came from within the jumbled slope of snow.
“I heard him,” the soldier cried.
“He’s here!”
Soon there were so many shovels digging in, that Sardelle could barely see the snow. Someone grabbed her from behind and pushed her out of the way.
“We’ll handle it, woman.”
She stumbled and almost fell. She hadn’t been digging slowly—there had been no reason to move her.
And you wanted him to see your face first? Jaxi raised a mental eyebrow. To know you were responsible for pulling him out?
No. That doesn’t matter. Sardelle scowled at the back of the soldier who had replaced her. She was done delivering rashes, but he might look good with his belt unbuckled and his trousers around his ankles. Maybe a little, she admitted to Jaxi.
Better he not have reason to later dwell on your uncanny ability to find him.
A collective gasp sounded, then a sigh as a hand reached out.
“It is the colonel.”
Everyone had joined in to dig him out. Though she hadn’t been here for long—and he hadn’t been here for… even longer—Sardelle thought she knew Zirkander well enough to guess that he would be annoyed when he realized they had stopped searching for everyone else to focus on him.
The hand was followed by an arm, with no less than four people grasping it. They pulled, and Zirkander’s head came next, snow sticking in his hair and frosting his eyebrows. With their help, he clawed himself out of the hole, then collapsed on the slope a few feet away from Sardelle. He dug something out of his pocket, a little wooden carving, and kissed it before returning it to its home.