‘But how will they get out again?’ Teddy says, looking worried. ‘I don’t like this, Radnor. I don’t reckon they’ll have time to –’
‘They’ll have time,’ Radnor cuts in. ‘Haven’t you ever filled a bucket from a water-pipe? It doesn’t happen in seconds. All those tunnels . . . it’ll take a few hours, at least, to fill up again.’
‘You don’t know that for sure.’
‘No,’ Radnor says. ‘But it’s the best chance we’ve got.’
‘Easy for you to say!’ Clementine says. ‘It’s not you risking your neck.’
Radnor raises an eyebrow. ‘Not you either, last time I checked. I’d say it’s up to Danika and Maisy.’
‘She’s my sister! I’m not letting her go off and –’
Maisy places a hand on her shoulder. ‘Clem, I’m coming back. I swear it.’
‘I don’t care what you promise, Maisy, I won’t let you –’
And that’s when the tent flap swings open. A woman is silhouetted against the moonlight.
‘Well, well,’ she says. ‘All that shouting . . . doesn’t sound like a united crew of heroes, does it?’
And with that, Sharr Morrigan steps into the tent.
Sharr holds her pistol with both hands, its barrel staring down into my face. Even so, my gaze is drawn to the woman behind it. Dark hair. Red lips. Cold eyes.
‘It’s taken me a while to find you,’ Sharr says. ‘But you must have known I would eventually. I’m a hunter, Glynn. I always get my mark.’
She wears an army uniform – no doubt stolen from a dead soldier, just like our own cloaks. And too late, I remember the second rowboat. The rowboat that seemed to follow us across the lake. The boat with only two passengers: female soldiers whose faces were obscured by darkness . . .
The tent flap moves again, and another woman steps into view. She also wears an army uniform, and it takes me a moment to recognise her. Then I see the braided black hair, the raccoon makeup.
Laverna.
Beside me, Maisy sucks down a sharp breath. The shock is bad enough for the rest of us, but it must be a double blow for her. Laverna is the one who nursed her back to health and cared for her throughout the storm.
‘What are you doing here?’ Maisy whispers. ‘Where’s Quirin?’
‘That old fool?’ Laverna says. ‘Oh, I reckon he’s back on his boat. Gave up looking for you lot when we found Silver’s body.’ She grins. ‘I would’ve given up too, if I hadn’t run into my old friend Sharr.’
‘But you’re a smuggler!’ I say. ‘You can’t be working with Sharr, that doesn’t make sense . . .’
‘I’m no smuggler, dearie,’ Laverna says. ‘Only been with that clan for a few years. Didn’t you know? Latest in a long line of Quirin’s gals, from what I can gather.’
My skin tingles. ‘You’re a spy. You’ve been working for the hunters all along.’
Laverna laughs. ‘Quirin’s always blustering on about how his people don’t concern themselves with no kings. But the king still keeps an eye on things, you know. Wouldn’t want the smugglers getting too uppity. And that damn fool Quirin lets a spy like me walk into his clan.’ She spits, then wipes her lips across the back of her hand. ‘Into his heart.’
With a jolt, I think of Quirin during the storm: panicking, terrified for his family on the Forgotten. Afraid for his wife. For his son. But to Laverna, the entire family – even her child – was just a charade. Just a ploy to worm her way into Quirin’s inner circle. The memory of that little boy, splashing and laughing in the lagoon, leaves a sharp tang in my throat.
Sharr Morrigan takes a step towards us. ‘And when I found my dear old friend Laverna tramping through the wilderness on the trail of a group of teenagers . . .’ She gives a mocking click of her tongue. ‘Well, I knew at once who she was tracking. And I let her know how important it was that I find you – fast.’
Her finger wraps around the trigger of her pistol.
I open my mouth. ‘Wait!’
‘Yes?’ Sharr says. She looks cold, amused. She knows that she has us trapped, that she’s blocking the tent’s only exit. She’s been waiting for this moment a long time, and she’s all too happy to toy with us. To gloat. To make us squirm.
I wet my lips. I have to use this somehow, to buy some time. ‘I . . . I still don’t see how you found us.’
Sharr laughs, proud of herself. ‘Show them, Laverna. Show them what fools they’ve been.’
Laverna twists slowly and pulls down her collar. I catch a glimpse of her proclivity tattoo: just a flicker in the pallid light. Lines run across her shoulders, down her back. They weave and fork like veins. Tiny black droplets run and dribble between them.
Laverna’s proclivity is Blood. It’s a rare proclivity, and one I’ve never seen in person before. No wonder she became a healer. No wonder she was so valuable to Quirin, to the hunters, to the king.
‘Bloodhound,’ Maisy whispers.
‘What?’ I say.
‘That’s what they used to call people with Blood proclivities. Bloodhounds. Because once they’ve healed you . . .’
‘Very clever, dearie.’ Laverna smirks directly at Maisy. ‘I saved your life and I bonded our blood. And I can always feel the folks I’ve healed. I sense you. I close my eyes and you call to me. Run as far as you want, but I’m always gonna find y–’
A bullet hits her forehead.
But when I hear the bang, I think I must be dead. I can only see one pistol in this tent, and Sharr is pointing it right at me. But I’m still standing, and the shot rings in my ears while Laverna topples to the floor . . .
Someone smashes me aside. There’s a shrieking blast right where my head would have been, and I catch a whiff of Teddy’s breath as he falls on top of me. ‘Move, move, move!’
I don’t know what’s happening, but moving sounds like a pretty good idea. I roll to the side, glimpsing the scene in a blur before I get another faceful of floor. Radnor holds a smoking pistol. He’s still pointing at the space above Laverna’s body, which lies dead on the ground. And Sharr is aiming her pistol for a second retaliatory shot . . .
I jerk sideways. Sharr’s bullet whizzes through the space I’ve just vacated to impale the tent’s back wall. Shouts punctuate the night outside, then screams and running footsteps. I guess people must have heard the gunshots; a moment later, there are soldiers at the tent’s entrance. I pull out my knife and slash a hole in the back canvas. Then we’re out, pelting into the night.
I don’t know where Sharr is and I barely care. We run, stumble, trip through the dark. Soldiers are everywhere. There are bangs, shouts, crashes. More gunshots. Is Sharr shooting her way out of the tent? I feel sick at the thought, but self-preservation wins out, and I keep on running.
The crowd seems to thicken every second. People push and shove; soldiers elbow me to get through, to see what’s going on. Limbs fly everywhere, heads turn, bodies press together like fish in a tin. Any second now, someone will spot the smudged night sky of my proclivity tattoo, or ask me why we’re fleeing . . .
We need to get out of this crowd. There’s only one thing for it. The catacombs.
I dart to the side, heading for the nearest entrance. I can sense my friends behind me: Clementine’s breath sounds like gasping; Teddy’s is hot on my neck. Radnor swears to himself and I hear Maisy’s footfalls to my left. I sprint behind some tents, almost trip on a tent wire, and throw myself with a gasp into the dark.
The first thing that hits me is the smell. It’s dank and cold, heavy with the stink of mildew and damp earth. We scramble down in single file, with me at the front. The world inside is shockingly black. I keep my hands out to the sides, pressed against the chilly stone walls. Dirt crumbles at my touch and I shrink back, afraid that the tunnel might collapse.
‘Where are we going?’ Clementine whispers.
‘Away from Sharr.’
No one argues with that, at least. The tunnel opens into a shallow cavern lit by alchemy lamps. They flicker, bracketed above the gaping mouths of a dozen other tunnels. This must be a meeting point. Any of these paths could lead us back up into the crowd and the open night.
Each tunnel’s entrance holds a heavy iron door, all raised open to keep the pathways clear. They seem to be operated by levers located on the tunnel side of each doorway. Briefly, I wonder what the doors are for – to keep something out, or something in? My stomach gives a nervous jolt before I dismiss the thought. It isn’t important. They’re open now, and we have a choice of routes. That’s all that matters.
Only one tunnel leads down. It lies on the far side of the cavern: a dark hole shrinking into the deep. I can smell dead earth and musty air, and every instinct in my body yearns to back away.
‘Up or down?’ Teddy says.
I hesitate. Every moment we spend outside in the chaos, we increase our risk of capture.
‘This is our chance,’ Radnor says. ‘I say we go for it.’
‘But we haven’t got a plan worked out yet –’ Clementine begins.
‘Doesn’t matter,’ Radnor says. ‘We’re here now, and we’ll just have to deal with it.’
‘Will only the two of us go?’ I glance at Maisy. ‘Maybe the rest of you could –’
‘Forget about it,’ Teddy says unexpectedly. ‘I’m with Clementine on this one. If you two are going, we’re all going.’ He pauses. ‘We’re a crew, Danika. I reckon that’s what crews do.’
Radnor doesn’t look happy, but he can see he’s been outvoted. He gives a reluctant nod, lantern light flickering on his face. ‘All right, then. Let’s go.’
We choose the lower tunnel. I take the lead, prepared to throw up an illusion if we run into any soldiers. But there’s no sign of human life – just silence and dirt. Perhaps the night shift is working deeper into the catacombs, further out beneath the Valley itself.
I stumble deeper, fighting back my fear. The silence is broken only by the slap of our footsteps on rock, and the quiet huff of breathing.
Lamps are bracketed to the wall at wide intervals, but their flickering light is feeble at best. The deeper we trek, the further and further apart they seem to be spaced – until finally we step into blackness. With a pang, I realise that we must be just beneath the Valley – and within the reach of its magnetic field. The army can’t risk alchemy here. Not when magnetism might throw back the magic, causing gas and flames to explode in the dark. In this section of the tunnels, I suppose the soldiers must carry candles, or perhaps old-fashioned gas lamps.
Still, we don’t dare light a match. We have no idea how far the light might carry – and around every bend, soldiers might be waiting. If we’re caught down here, I doubt even Teddy could bluff our way out of it. So we scoot ever onwards into the dark.
As we descend, I hear something else. It’s faint – a distant whine, perhaps, from somewhere deep beneath our feet. We sneak around another corner, and I almost slip.
‘Whoa!’ Radnor whispers, grabbing my shoulder. ‘Steady on there, Glynn.’
The tunnel floor angles down sharply. I stick a hesitant toe out to take a step, and almost slip for a second time. ‘It’s steep,’ I warn the others.
We scramble down carefully, using the walls for support. Although we try to move without sound, the dirt is loose and slippery and our boots refuse to grip the stone beneath. All is black. All is cold.
It’s impossible to measure time down here. We might have been here for twenty minutes, or an hour, or even two. There’s just the endless descent – the ache in my hands, the rawness of my palms on the walls.
After a while, I start to feel dizzy. My lungs are strangely tight. Every breath is sharp in my throat.
If I were in the middle of our group, surrounded by my friends, it might be easier to keep a grip on my terror. But here at the front, every instinct screams at me that I’m lost, I’m in danger, I’m plunging into the unknown. Any scoot forward could be my last. There could be a steep drop, a hole in the floor. A soldier. A bullet.
Down, down, down we go. I can’t even pick out any shadows, because everything is shadow. My breath sounds hollow. It feels like the world has turned to black: a coal blanket, smothering my face, my limbs, my eyes.
I concentrate on my breathing. In the back of my head, a comforting rhythm stirs. ‘Oh mighty yo, how the star-shine must go . . .’
It’s funny how the song comes back to me in the moments I need it. Perhaps it’s because my parents sang it as a lullaby. It’s a memory from the start of my life – the only time I felt truly safe. It swims back into my brain, soft and reassuring. My breath shakes. My memory whispers. ‘Chasing those distant deserts of green . . .’
But suddenly the words change, and I don’t hear my mother’s voice in my head. I hear Quirin. He sits on the beach at Green Lagoon, as his son plays in the shallows, and that extra verse spills from his lips.
Oh Valley’s vein,
How we swim through your pain,
From the prisoner’s pit to the sky . . .
The prisoner’s pit. The place where that long-ago smuggler was entombed – down here, in the catacombs. It feels like I’m already there. Buried. Imprisoned. The earth presses in around me and the roof grows lower. Oh Valley’s vein . . . Does that refer to this tunnel? It certainly feels like a vein: a hollow tendril flowing beneath the skin of the earth. But instead of blood, it flows with darkness.
I feel a strange prickle across my skin. Night. My proclivity magic, breathing back into my flesh. We must be deep enough to use magic again – below the reach of the Valley’s magnetic field.
We lean backwards, straining to slide through a narrow stretch of tunnel. There’s no room to sit up, let alone stand. Just earth all around me. Stone and dirt and soil, and the sound of fingers scrabbling, and the constant weight of darkness pounding upon my chest.
And the sound. It grows louder the deeper we delve into the earth. I remember Private Riley, mad with drink and memories as she lurches around the camp fire. The sound! she cried. The sound, the sound! It filters up through the catacombs to reach my eardrums – and once it grabs me, it refuses to let go. A clank. A shriek. There is a faint ticking that underlies it all, like clockwork, but the screech of rusty hinges makes the whole machine sound alive.
‘We’ll have to get back up here,’ Maisy whispers. ‘After we burn the machine. All the way back up here.’
No one responds. To respond would be to acknowledge what she’s really saying – that if we go through with this plan, we are going to die. Even if Radnor is right, even if the water takes hours to fill the tunnels, how long will it take us to reach the surface? We will have to wriggle back up this path on our bellies. We will lose ourselves in the dark. Water will flow up around us, like blood pumping through a vein, and we’ll drown with our faces pressed against the ceiling . . .
I scoot another metre, and my fingers lose track of the wall. I stop. Radnor bumps into me from behind, and I hear muffled swearing as the others collide.
‘What’s wrong?’ Radnor’s voice is sharp, even in a whisper.
‘I think we’re at the end of the tunnel.’
The space opens up around me. I can tell from the movement of the air and the echo of my own breathing that there’s room to stand. I clamber to my feet and take a moment to balance, then step forward.
We’re standing in a chamber, that much is obvious. There are no walls to my side and no roof that I can touch, even when I extend my fingers above my head. I take a few more steps, blind. The others bumble along behind me, a troop of nervous breaths and bodies.
‘What’s that?’ Maisy whispers.
‘What?’
‘Up ahead.’
I squint. At first there is nothing – just more blackness. Then a
faint glow appears around a distant corner, before the full light of an alchemy lamp swings into view. And fifty metres down the next stretch of tunnel, a trio of soldiers.
We stumble back towards our previous tunnel, but we must have stepped sideways a few times, because we can’t find the entrance.
‘Illusion!’ I whisper.
We press ourselves into a tight knot. Desperately, I plunge deep into my mind to summon an illusion. We aren’t here, I tell myself. This is just empty air . . .
Nothing happens.
‘Danika,’ Radnor hisses. ‘What –’
‘I’m trying!’
The soldiers’ light is closer now: a bobbing glow in the dark.
I grit my teeth. Come on, I tell my powers, and fight to find them inside my chest. This is just a patch of stone . . .
I feel the twang as my powers catch, and I know it’s worked; any moment, an illusion should spill across my skin. But the magic shatters, ricocheting away into the dark. There is a wrench in my stomach and I double over, struck by a sudden tingling cold.
And with a lurch, I realise why.
We’ve travelled deep enough to escape the worst of the Valley’s magnetism. Deep enough to use magic without danger. But a thin seam of black runs down the wall, just half a metre from our position. It shines in the approaching lamplight, oddly metallic upon the surrounding stone.
My insides twist as I remember Silver’s words about the catacombs. Most magnetic seams lie near the surface, but there are a few weak strays down in the dark.
And unlike my own set of magnets, this is no perfectly laid circle. It’s not arranged to trap magic, bouncing it in an endless loop. It’s a single seam, with a single reflection. It’s pure luck that my broken illusion ricocheted into the dark . . . and not back into my skull.
‘Go!’ I whisper. ‘Run!’
We run. The faint light of the guards’ lantern is starting to hit the cavern, providing a rough idea of where the other tunnels lie. One of my crewmates bolts towards our right and I follow. I try to move quietly – to lift and peel each foot like it’s made of glass – but the need for speed wins out. I’m suddenly thankful for the clamour from below. With all the clank and rattle of the engine room, our footfalls are swallowed in its roar.
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