Balanced on the Blade's Edge

by Lindsay Buroker

  Sardelle made a hard right, obfuscating her form so they wouldn’t see anything more than rock, albeit a moving rock, if they glanced over. They were more focused on the tunnel and the ore carts. She slipped into a different passage, the one that should lead to the newly opened area where the miners had found the crystals—and the books.

  Jaxi did the telepathic equivalent of clearing her throat. Speaking of those books…

  Yes?

  Did you know some of the annual rosters were in that pile? The ones showing where everyone who does field work is currently stationed?

  No.

  You should have let that soldier burn the books.

  Sardelle forced herself to keep padding down the tunnel, passing through the shadows between each lantern hanging on the wood supports, though she wanted to stop and spend a few minutes cursing and kicking things. They found something with me in it?

  Yes.

  Did… Ridge see it?

  Yes.

  So he knows who—what—I am now?

  He does. Everyone does.

  Oh.

  Sardelle kept walking though her legs felt numb. What else could she do? All that was left to her was to get Jaxi and go… where? She had no idea.

  Somewhere you won’t be hanged, drowned, or shot.

  Yeah? And where’s that? Sardelle remembered the shaman’s offer, but the thought of going off with him made her stomach twist in knots.

  I’m not sure yet. We’ll find it.

  Damn. Sardelle didn’t want to leave, not by herself anyway. She wanted Ridge to come with her. Or she would have stayed here with him if that abominable general left… and he still wanted her to stay. She could help defend the mountain from enemies. It wasn’t that different from the work she had done before.

  Are you sure you want to defend these people? People who would kill you if they got a chance?

  Ridge wouldn’t.

  When an answer didn’t come, the silence unnerved Sardelle. What did Jaxi know that she didn’t? Sardelle was tempted to reach up through the layers of rock and try to find Ridge up in that courtyard. He would doubtlessly be back at that aircraft. Or up on the wall if the Cofah were attacking.

  She jerked at the reminder that the enemy airship was up there. This wasn’t the time to worry about loves lost. She shifted from a walk to a jog, running between the iron tracks in the center of the tunnel. Only when the sounds of voices reached her ears did she slow down again. The bangs and clanks had grown much louder too. She sensed… no less than ten people working at the end of the shaft. Extra men must have been funneled into the area after the book discovery.

  Any ideas on how to get those men to take a lunch break, Jaxi?

  The owl is back.

  Er, the shaman’s pet?

  He seems to have sent it ahead. It’s harassing the men up top.

  While the airship sneaks in unnoticed?

  Jaxi didn’t answer for a moment. Sardelle crept farther down the tunnel, until a half-full ore cart came into view, along with the back of the man loading it.

  It’s still staying out of range, but that may change. It’s possible the shaman realized you’re not up in the courtyard anymore.

  Me?

  You’re probably the only reason they didn’t come in and try a more committed attack earlier. The fort’s defenses are paltry. It’s clear that when this place was built, attacks from the air weren’t common yet.

  Yes, they need someone to make it out of here to inform the rest of the military of this problem. Sardelle thought there was room enough in that partially filled ore cart for her to hide in, but she needed to convince all of the men to leave for a while.

  Methane, Jaxi suggested.

  That’s poisonous.

  Thus why it would scare them away, at least until their ventilation system could be extended down into these new tunnels.

  That… might actually work. Is there some down here we could siphon into the tunnel? Of course, I’d have to think about how to shield myself. The real gas would be rather poisonous to me too.

  Why not just make them think they smell methane?

  Sardelle grimaced at the thought of tinkering in people’s minds. That’s a little ethically ambiguous.

  Less painful than rashes.

  Sardelle sighed and leaned her head against the earthen wall.

  I’ll handle it. You can keep your ethics pure.

  Sardelle should have objected, but she didn’t. She didn’t know how much time she had and how long it would take to dig out Jaxi.

  She waited for the miner near the cart to move forward around the bend, then trotted up and hopped in. There was a box of dynamite next to the wall. If she couldn’t pry Jaxi out with magic, she supposed explosives were an alternative. Though she might end up burying both of them if she tried that.

  She curled into a ball and camouflaged herself to blend in with the rubble beneath her. I’m ready.

  Already working on them.

  “You smell that?” someone asked.

  The scrapes of pickaxes died away. “What?” A few noisy sniffs sounded. “Is that gas?”

  “It’s leaking out of somewhere. Back up, get back.”

  The thuds of boots approached the cart, then shadows fell across Sardelle as the men raced past. She held her breath. She knew she was camouflaged, but it was hard ignoring the feeling that she was in plain sight as they trotted past. One frowned down at her, opened his mouth as if he might say something, but the man behind him gave him a shove, and he continued on. That one might have a few drops of dragon blood running through his veins if he had sensed something off about her illusion. She hoped that wouldn’t come back to trouble her later.

  Just get me, and we’ll worry about it then.

  Feeling antsy, are you?

  It has been three hundred years.

  Everyone cleared out without further trouble, and Sardelle climbed out of the cart. She grabbed a couple of the sticks of dynamite before jogging toward the end of the tunnel. She hoped she could reach Jaxi without using dangerous explosives, but there were limits to what she could do against a mountain.

  I’m about two hundred meters from the end of their tunnel.

  Sardelle grabbed the last lantern hanging on the wall before the passage grew dark and narrow, fresh earth upturned along the sides, waiting to be shoveled into carts.

  You’re almost there.

  I’ll need you to lend me some of your power, Jaxi.

  That works best when you’re holding me, but you know I’ll try. I don’t want to be burned along with the rest of the artifacts those people pull out of here.

  I’m sure you could withstand the heat of their incinerator.

  Maybe so, but I don’t relish the sunburn.

  A low passage to Sardelle’s right made her pause, one that opened into a room. Ah, this was where they had pulled out the books. She ducked into the space and walked a few paces, holding the lantern aloft. She gave it extra energy, so the flame flared, and she could make out the smashed remains of what had once been bookshelves and carpets. The air smelled stale, and the ceiling had been caved in completely in places, but part of the room had withstood the quaking, thanks to a couple of sturdy marble supports still standing. Sardelle touched one, the stone cool and smooth. The miners had already removed most of the artifacts—odd to think of books and trappings she had passed by mere weeks ago, as far as her brain knew, as artifacts now—but there would be others in the mountain. She wished there were a way to recover them, to preserve them, instead of letting them be taken out to be destroyed, or perhaps carted off as quirky treasures.

  She climbed back into the main tunnel before Jaxi could remind her that one particular “artifact” was the priority.

  The ceiling lowered further, the walls raw from fresh pickaxe gouges, and Sardelle was crouching by the time she reached the end of the passage. She set down the lantern and touched the wall. She felt Jaxi’s aura through the rock, calling her hand like a beacon. Fift
een degrees to the left and about twenty degrees downward. The miners would have gotten closer, but they never would have chanced across the sword. That was, she reminded herself, what she had wanted.

  Here goes, she warned Jaxi.

  She burned into the rock with her mind, winnowing a small hole, as if she were a termite gnawing through wood. She would widen it later, but for now, she emulated water, finding the route of least resistance. At first, the way was easy. Some of this was, after all, rock that had already been excavated once, rather than the solid core of the mountain, so much of it was packed rubble rather than solid slab. But she reached a spot where nothing except several meters of granite lay ahead.

  The dynamite?

  I’d hate to cause a cave-in. Especially when I’m standing here. Give me time—I can burn through. Sardelle’s thighs ached, so she dropped to her knees. How long had she already been at it?

  You may not have time.

  The miners are coming back?

  Not yet, but something is going on up top. People gathering.

  All right… Sardelle inserted one of the cylindrical sticks into the hole she had created, then pushed it through with her mind. She had to widen the hole in places to maneuver it around bends, but she would have had to widen the tunnel anyway to get Jaxi out.

  Soon the stick nestled against the granite. She lit the fuse with a thought, then retreated to the wooden supports farther back in the tunnel. As the flame burned closer to the stick, a fit of panic washed over her. She imagined the mountain falling all about her, as it had that horrible day weeks—centuries—before. She almost sprinted all the way back to the tram, but there wasn’t time.

  With all that intervening rock, the explosion was muffled. A faint tremor ran beneath Sardelle’s feet, but the massive cave-in she had worried about didn’t come.

  Did that even do any good?

  Big hole, Jaxi replied. Come back. Keep going.

  Sardelle checked her termite-passage. “Hole” wasn’t the precise word, as it was still filled with rock, but now the granite was crumbled, and she could continue burrowing down. She wiped sweat out of her eyes. A dull ache had started in her head—though all she was doing was standing there, the mental work was wearying. She was thinking of telling Jaxi she needed to rest when a fresh wave of energy surged into her. Even separated, a soulblade had power to share if it wanted.

  You’re close.

  Sardelle came across something metallic sooner than expected, but it wasn’t Jaxi. Right, she had been buried in a training room among a lot of practice blades. Sardelle wagered the soldiers up above wouldn’t be so quick to destroy those types of relics. She weaved past what must have been a rack of swords and shields, and kept going, drawn closer until—

  Yes!

  Sardelle smiled. You see the light?

  No, but I got a draft of fresh air. Make that stale air.

  I didn’t know swords were connoisseurs of air.

  We’re not. I’ll take anything.

  Sardelle wrapped a mental hand around Jaxi’s hilt and began the task of pulling her back through the small tunnel. She was distracted midway by water dribbling out of the hole she had made in the main passage.

  Uh, are you wet, Jaxi?

  Yes, it’s ruining my stale air, but I’ll survive.

  The water turned from a dribble to a faster flow. Sardelle shifted away from the opening and returned to navigating the soulblade through the tight passage, though she let her awareness seep into the rocks around, searching for the source of the water. It seemed to be coming from behind that huge slab of granite she had broken up. Her first silly thought was that one of the pipes her people had installed to supply indoor plumbing had erupted, but surely that had happened long ago. This was probably some hidden spring she had stumbled across. A spring that—

  Hurry, Jaxi urged. Something’s groaning in here. It sounds like a dam about to burst.

  Great.

  At least they were close. Sardelle stretched out her hand, certain Jaxi’s sleek steel form would float out of the hole at any moment.

  But an alarming crack emanated from the rock first. The mountain groaned, not just from the direction of the granite, but all around her. A tremor ran beneath her feet, this one fiercer than the one the dynamite had caused. And it was followed by a second and a third, until Sardelle had to brace herself against the tunnel wall to keep from tumbling to her knees. Behind her, dirt shifted and trickled down from the ceiling.

  With single-minded determination, Sardelle kept her focus on Jaxi, on pulling the blade out, on—

  There. The soulblade flew out point first on a gush of water that spattered Sardelle in the chest. The sword might have struck her, too, but it flared with a silvery glow and pivoted in the air. The hilt came to rest in her hand, even though Sardelle had been focused more on flailing and staggering back from the gushing water than on catching it.

  Go, Jaxi urged, the word echoing in Sardelle’s head with twice the power now that they were touching.

  She would have sprinted away regardless. More than dirt was falling around her now. With the shaking of the earth, rocks flew free and smashed down from the ceiling with the intensity of meteors slamming into the earth. Thanks to Jaxi enhancing her mental energy, forming a shield around herself was a simple matter, but neither of them had the power to unbury themselves if the mountain fell on them.

  Sardelle leaped ore carts and abandoned tools as rocks and dirt bounced off her barrier, inches from her shoulders and head. A boulder as big as she was crashed down not three feet in front of her. She almost smacked into it—Jaxi did gouge a chunk of it away before Sardelle stopped. There was no way around it, so she climbed up the side. There was only a foot of space at the top, and she had to suck everything in to squeeze between the boulder and the dirt ceiling. Rocks clawed at her shield.

  The lighting grew dimmer—the lanterns behind her being shaken out or smother by dust. She glanced back, and her heart nearly jumped out of her chest. It wasn’t dust. A torrent of water was racing toward her, knocking off the lanterns and dousing them as it rushed closer.

  She scrambled the rest of the way across the boulder, tearing her fingernails in her effort to pull herself over faster. She tumbled down the other side, managing to land on her feet, then sprinted again. The open chamber at the base of the tram came into view.

  Almost there. Ten more steps. Five.

  At three steps, the river smashed into her back. Her shield kept it from hurting and dulled some of the iciness, but it didn’t keep the flow from sweeping her up into its grasp. The force knocked her into a wall and then tumbled her feet over head, mocking the power she thought she had.

  If not for the big chamber, Sardelle would have drowned in a tunnel flooded with water, but the flow spread out, its height diminishing. She scrambled to her feet as it gushed out around her. Thinking she would have to deal with guards, she lifted the sword, ready to deflect bullets if she had to. But nobody was there. A good thing, since Jaxi was glowing like a comet.

  Calm that down some, will you?

  Sorry. I’m excited to be out.

  It’ll be hard to sneak out of the fort with you outshining the sun.

  Is that the next goal? Out of the fort?

  Sardelle thought of Ridge. It pained her to say it, but she whispered, “I think it has to be.”

  Water continued to gush out of the tunnel they had exited. Some of it was being funneled into other tunnels, but the level was rising in the chamber too. Sardelle sloshed toward a cage resting at the base of the tram shaft. It would be easier to sneak out if she climbed up the long passage, but going up would be much harder than sliding down it had been. Even on the way in, it had been a tedious slog.

  Speaking of slogging… More water coursed toward the shaft, making the cage wobble on its track.

  Yes, I’m hurrying. Sardelle pulled open the cage door.

  She waved at the lever outside. It flipped upward, but the machine that powered the tram
groaned. Its big flywheels were half underwater.

  Uh oh.

  We might be climbing after all, Jaxi thought.

  We? You have some legs tucked under your hilt that you’re going to use to help?

  Hush. I’ll see if I can get that machinery moving.

  Sardelle had the engineering knowledge of an ox, so she was happy to leave that task to Jaxi. The ever-rising water level made her nervous though. “We can always get out and climb if we have to,” she muttered.

  She imagined the water rising up the tram shaft, threatening to drown her if she couldn’t climb quickly enough.

  No, numerous other levels existed above them with countless miles of tunnels. It would take an ocean to flood them all, and even if she had chanced across a spring that big, it would take a long time for all that water to fill in.

  A thunderous crack sounded, so loud Sardelle brought her hands to her ears for protection, clanging the sword on the roof of the cage. More cracks followed, each one like an explosion of dynamite.

  Jaxi, if you can’t get that contraption moving…

  The cage lurched. Sardelle couldn’t hear it over the snapping rock and groaning earth all around her, but she felt it. After a few awkward trembles that nearly hurled her into the walls, the cage started upward. It bumped and twitched, as if it were going over rocks on the tracks—and maybe it was—but it continued upward.

  You were doubting me?

  Who, me?

  All the lights disappeared below, swallowed by water and collapsing rocks. Jaxi didn’t know if the entire level had gone down, but she prayed that all of the miners had fled because of the ruse with the gas.

  Guess they won’t be finding and burning any more artifacts for a while. Jaxi sounded smug.

  Sardelle couldn’t summon a similar emotion. She hadn’t meant to create all that chaos. She was lucky to be alive.

  She lifted her gaze toward the top of the shaft. Darkness must have fallen while she was digging around, for she couldn’t pick out anything. Had the soldiers and miners above heard all the noise? Did they know she was down there? She stretched out with her senses… and cringed.

  No less than fifty people were gathered around the mouth of the shaft. She doubted they had come together to play card games. She also doubted that their presence had anything to do with enemy attacks—everyone would have been on the walls then.