by Jenny Moyer
I disengage the transmitter protecting the tunnel and wave my arm once, a signal to Dram. We fold ourselves into the shadows, him holding his flash rifle, and me with my gloves off, ready to grasp a bead from my bracelet if I need to conjure.
A termit lumbers into a dim patch of light from the passage. I feel Dram tense beside me. It must be worse than he imagined. I want to tell him this one’s small—a female. I reach into my ore pouch and lift a handful of earthworms.
Please work, I think, dropping them along the ground. Please let this work.
Dram makes his way to the other side of the cavern, scooping worms from his pouch, and I feel every step he takes away from me. It’s one more step I’ll have to take if I need to get to his side. The shadows hold him, and I can only see him through the infrared of my goggles, his shape and biometric reading separating him from the termits.
Three of them. My tech registers the signatures of three—no, now four of them. Two mothers, two younglings. I drop more worms. Come on, I think. Come get them.
If Val is right, the moles sense even the barest of seismic shifts: like a transmitter pulse that’s no longer a barrier or fat earthworms exposed for the taking. The ground shifts near my foot, and a mole tunnels up. It hesitates, scenting the air, then zips past, a blur of motion. I don’t even see it catch the earthworm; I just see it hunched over, chewing.
A termit lifts its head. They too, sense a shift in their surroundings. They scent the air. A low growl rumbles up from a mother’s throat. The sound must be a cue to her young, a sort of warning. Her skin ripples, and her fur changes to the slate color of the rocks. The youngling yips, sniffing the ground. Its skin shivers, but it can’t seem to match its coat to its surroundings. The others disappear. The light is frail, but there’s enough for me to see the ground erupt around them as dozens of moles surface in pursuit of the worms. They don’t see the camouflaged termits watching. I empty the rest of my pouch.
My goggles illuminate with the signatures of three more termits approaching.
We have to get out of here. Now. A meal of gorge moles will only distract them for a time.
I can’t risk conjuring in here. Any shift of rock would draw attention. This cavern is craggy, with sharp overhangs of rock and ledges we have to crawl beneath. These are like the caverns Dram and I grew up with. Stone slides beneath me, and it is so familiar, it’s almost a comfort. This is not the first time we’ve sneaked past deadly creatures. We developed a talent for it, instincts that will help us evade what no one else could. I tell myself this as more termits enter the den, their claws clicking over stone. They already have them out, poised to attack.
I hold my breath as I pass within meters of them.
Do whatever Ferrin would do.
Somehow, deep inside myself, I know she’s done this. Maybe she didn’t make it all the way to the eludial seam, but Mom made it this far. And she lived.
I reach out and carefully place the pulse transmitter. We need this passage to hold. I look across the cavern, my movements slow, and confirm that Dram is in place, awaiting my cue. Once I engage the transmitter, the moles will try to burrow and tunnel away. If the termits haven’t attacked by then, they will.
And then we will run. Dram holds his rifle at the ready. I hold the earth of the provinces in each hand. From here on out, we will shoot and conjure as needed. There will be no hiding our trail after this.
I engage the transmitter.
The termits roar.
We run.
* * *
The curtain thrums in my head. I can’t think. I can barely breathe. Whatever connection I share with the flash curtain—the ability to sense its elements or its call—is detrimental to me down here. We wade through eludial soil; it covers our boots and coats us in glimmering dust. Still, we haven’t reached the heart of the seam. The mapping devices won’t function until we get close enough.
Our coms don’t work. Our earpieces are useless this close to the seam. Dram and I have used hand signals for the past hour, but I can’t lift my hands any longer. When he has a question, he grasps the sides of my headpiece and stares at my eyes.
Is this the right way, Scout?
Blink. Yes.
Do you need to stop?
Stare. No.
I lose track of time. There is only one breath to the next. An orbie pool. Massive. So many, their orange color bathes us in luminescent light. Dram helps me sit.
He presses his face shield to mine.
Worried blue eyes meet mine. Do we have to cross it?
Stare.
His brows lift.
We made it, I tell him.
He shakes his head, like he can’t understand. I’m probably squinting too much from the pain. Slowly, I lift my pack of mapping devices. It lightened as we approached the pool, the tech responding to the elements. I push it into Dram’s hands.
We made it, I tell him again with my eyes.
He smiles.
* * *
We stay only long enough to open the pack and watch the disks lift free of their own accord, dozens of them, shooting across the orbie pool toward the seam, faster than pulse trackers. Meredith said they could transmit data back to Central Command in Alara, and that techs could map the eludial seam down to millimeters. Within days, we’ll be ready to send an autonomous mining device to scour the seam.
I’m not sure I will live to see that happen. I taste blood, and I’m not sure if it’s dripping from my nose or my eyes. Dram carries both our packs and hauls me up through the passage. I conjure when we need a path, but even that is getting to be too much for me. If we had to climb our way back, I’d never make it.
“Let’s go, ore scout,” he says. I can hear him again in my earpiece, but we still haven’t regained communication with the techs at Fortune. I stare down at the ground, bewildered, until I realize Dram’s carrying me over his shoulder. How he’s managing my weight plus our gear—
“I ditched the tent,” he says, like he’s reading my thoughts. “And your pack. My rations will have to be enough. I’ve got ammo and a medkit.”
“But…” I think of all the supplies we used getting here.
“It was you or the skanty flash blankets. You were the less smelly choice.” Dram usually jokes when our situation is most dire.
“What aren’t you telling me?” I ask.
“Something in the seam zapped our equipment. Everything that wasn’t protected inside our suits. Our comlink to Fortune is fried—same with the infrared goggles. We won’t be able to see any termits—not if they’re camouflaged.”
The termits. How will we camouflage ourselves when we crawl through their den? And now we’re going through blind.
Dram shifts me on his shoulder, but as the minutes pass, I feel his body shake from the strain. We’ve gone too long without rest.
“Dram. Put me down.” I can’t walk more than a few meters, but I can conjure. I conjure a tree, with a winding bower of leafy branches for us to sleep in. Then I conjure a wall of rock to shield us.
I fall asleep conjuring.
* * *
Dram and I ditch our remaining gear. Whatever particles we encountered near the eludial seam, they took our strength with them. We haven’t spoken today, not since he handed me our last nutri-pac a kilometer from the termit den.
We stand outside it now, reluctant to enter, but knowing we can’t afford to delay. We’re out of rations, out of time. We dosed ourselves with our daily ration of my father’s cure, but I feel like we need Radbeds. I still hear the echo of the curtain in my head.
There are things I should probably say to him. In case. But fear sends tremors rioting through my body. I can’t even unclench my jaw enough to speak.
“I wish I could kiss you,” Dram says. “Before we, you know, encounter the invisible cave lions.”
I smile. “Kiss me after.”
We turn off all our lights and crawl inside.
* * *
We make it through. We’re so
jubilant, we actually remove our headlamps and kiss. We follow the passages back; hungry, exhausted, but alive.
It’s the termit just outside Fortune that we’re not prepared for.
The one we don’t see coming.
TWENTY-EIGHT
7.2 meters from flash curtain
I DREAM OF freedom.
And fire.
I wake inside the Box, to utter darkness. My only light shattered when they forced me inside. But that fire. It stirs within me—worry for Dram formed of molten fear. I roll a wooden bead in my palm, over and over, and all the while that fire blazes, builds, expels from me—
I conjure fire.
I stare at the flames in my hand—light that illuminates the cirium walls around me. This shouldn’t be possible. Not even Forgers can conjure within this prison. But still the flames burn, and the energy swells within me, fed by something more powerful than fear.
I used to wonder if Conjies needed to feel an exchange with the elements, the way Naturals need air and light. Now I know. We do.
And so my flames burn, burn—
Burn.
And when I sleep, the fire is there again, awaiting me in my dreams.
* * *
The door vibrates at my back, and I stir. In the haze between sleep and waking, I think it’s Dram, knocking on the metal, reminding me he’s just a wall away from me. Then images invade: a termit leaping … biting.
The door slides open, but I don’t turn. I’m paralyzed with dread.
“Dram’s all right,” a man says. Something about the voice triggers a feeling of recognition. “His armor caught most of the termit’s bite. Did you hear me, Orion?” Whoever he is, he doesn’t breach my solitude with anything more than his voice. I roll over and see his boots, just beyond the cirium floor. “He said to tell you you don’t need to take his axe to the Sky.”
Tears leak from the corners of my eyes, and I laugh into the floor with a sound like sobbing. I push myself up, my stiff muscles protesting the movement. It doesn’t feel like my arms shaking under my weight, or my head throbbing and dizzy from lack of food, lack of everything.
“I tried to get you to the infirmary, to see him,” the man says. “I’m afraid that not even I can get a Ghost that close to Fortune.” There is gentleness in his tone that seems at odds with the forceful command of his words. I know this voice … I look up.
“Jameson?” He doesn’t answer, just stands there, holding my questioning gaze with one of his own.
“Meredith tells me it’s been four days. Four days since you’ve been in the light or heard another voice.” There’s anger in his tone. Anger at the commissary. He steps inside the Box, eyeing the doorway like he’s stepping into a gulls’ nest.
Slowly, he crouches beside me. His eyes track my features like he’s reading a map, and when he finally meets my stare, it’s with the shadows of memories lingering there. “Four days in this hell,” he muses. “The longest I ever went was five.”
The words hang between us, his admission like a bridge to a place inside me. A place I didn’t know was there.
“You were a Forger?”
He nods. For the first time, I see that his eyes are not dark, as I’ve always thought, but the sort of hazel that changes depending on the light and the color one wears. He wore black in the outposts and cordons, but his uniform now is a muted green, and his eyes—
Are like mine.
“I saw you on the screencom,” he says, handing me water and rations. “Meredith didn’t use your real names when she reported your commissioning status. I think she was afraid the council would insist on sentencing you for treason or perhaps hold you to gain access to Arrun. But she forgot that I’ve seen you and know you well enough to recognize you from a brief glance during the commissioning.
“At first I was shocked. We’d lost you, and then there’s Dram, a Prime Delver. I couldn’t make sense of it—I kept waiting to see you standing before one of the other quadrants…” He looks at me with sorrow in his eyes.
“I had to pretend I wasn’t feeling anything.” He laughs, a sharp bark of sound. “I’m sitting there—in the council’s high chamber, this objective commissary, and I didn’t know where you were. I knew nothing could keep you from Dram’s side. So I looked away the whole time Meredith prattled on about her new Prime, thinking you were dead. But then she dropped her grand surprise. A new Forger.
“And I … flash me, Orion, somehow I knew before I even looked. There you stood, brave and foolish, with that damned collar. It didn’t seem possible you’re a Conjie and Subpar both—but then I realized … it is possible. I had to get up and leave the chamber, because I was afraid that someone would see the Conjie inside the commissary.” Tears gather in his eyes. His hazel eyes that look just like mine.
Neither of us says it.
Mom is our link, and she is gone.
“What happened to you?” I ask. “After they sent my mother to Outpost Five?”
“Few people had seen my face besides her. I’d been a Forger since I was twelve. After she and I…” He swallows. “This is hard—sorry. I’ve never talked about this with anyone.” He sits beside me and leans back against the cell wall. “Meredith hired a tech from Ordinance to upgrade the security down here. He asked me to plant a monitoring device close to the seam so Ordinance could run their own tests. In exchange, he smuggled me out of the Overburden, gave me a new identity, and shielded me inside Alara. When I was older, they arranged my commissions—I held various posts on both sides of the curtain—until I worked my way onto the council.”
“Did you know about me?” I ask. “When you came to Outpost Five—was it because you knew who I was?”
“I knew you were Ferrin’s daughter. I didn’t know … that you were mine.” He sighs and drags his hands over his short hair. I wonder if he used to wear talismans. “You look just like her,” he says, a sad smile playing about his lips. “Not … me.”
“I guess the parts I have of you are on the inside,” I say, lifting my hand.
He makes the laugh sound again, but it is filled with pain. He scrubs the heel of his hand over his eyes. “Ah, flash me,” he mutters. “I’m a glenting weeper-lily.” I wonder if he realizes he’s slipped into his accent. He swallows hard and looks up, his face red and blotchy.
It surprises a laugh from me. “I get the same way when I cry,” I admit, gesturing to his face. He smiles, and I realize it’s the first true smile of his I’ve seen. The commissary didn’t bring his mask into the Box with him. This is the man my mother knew.
“Before you became a Forger, who were you?” I ask.
“Carris Imber.” He hesitates, like he’s waiting for a barrier—a protective guard on his history—that doesn’t come. “Bade’s my brother. My youngest. He was a baby when the Congress put me in here.”
Bade.
Bade is … my uncle. So many questions storm my mind, but the one that makes it out is—
“Can you make fire too?”
His brows lift. “No. Can you?”
I smile, and he laughs.
“No wonder Meredith’s afraid of you. My father—your grandfather—could do it. Of all the Conjurors, only he and Bade … but now…” He looks at me, shaking his head like he still can’t believe I’m real. Then he looks at the Box, and his brow furrows. “But forging all the way to the seam … No one, not a single Conjie could do that. That part of you comes from Ferrin.”
Mom’s name. Spoken from him to me. There is something to it that feels like more than word, or breath, or sound. It feels like the last scrape of chalk on the circle drawn beneath her name.
“Because she was a Subpar, you mean?”
He shakes his head. “Because she could do impossible things.”
“You’re the Ghost who became a commissary,” I murmur. “Maybe I get some of that from you, as well.”
“I guess we’ll find out,” Jameson says.
“What do you mean?”
“The devices th
at you delivered worked. They’ve transmitted back the data, and techs have mapped the seam. We’re ready to proceed with the next step.” He stands and helps me to my feet. “Time for you to meet the Luna.”
* * *
A sleek metal craft fills the tunnel outside my cell.
“The Congress named it for the moon,” Jameson says. “Since it’s the only way we can hope to control the flashtide.”
“How do we mine eludial soil with a ship?” I ask.
“We don’t. The Luna’s just a vessel to drop this off at the seam.” He presses a code into a panel, and the floor of the craft slides away, revealing a narrow pod. “The real technological marvel is this: the SAMM. Semiautonomous Mining Module. Just get it to the eludial seam, and the SAMM will take care of the rest.”
“Get it to the seam…” I touch the side of the craft.
He opens the door, and I clamber inside as he directs me to the control panel, discussing technology that I barely understand. He trails off halfway through his explanation of underground altimeter readings. “You won’t have to know these things. Techs in the city will monitor the instruments.”
I touch the throttle. “You want me to fly this?”
“The Luna practically flies itself.”
My gaze skips over the illuminated screens. “This isn’t what I know. I was raised to rock and earth and instinct.”
“So was I,” he says. “But we adapt, Orion.”
“What do you think my mom would say?”
Something shifts in his eyes. He looks past me to the hold of the ship, and I wonder which version of her he’s remembering. “She’d tell you that nothing is impossible—unless you convince yourself it is.”
Tears prick my eyes. She used to say that all the time.
“When do we start?”
Jameson steers me into the seat before the console. “Right now.”
* * *
Instead of tunnels and termits, my days fill with belowground flight training.
The Congress prepares Dram and me both. I’m the lead on this mission, but any good plan has a backup. As Dram recovers from his injuries, he logs hours in the Luna, testing, prepping for a mission we’re not likely to survive.