Shadowbound

by Gage Lee

  “And we have numbers they don’t know about, either.” Biz gave Baylo a ferocious grin. The fuzzball on her shoulder mimicked her expression.

  “Move out.” I raised my hand overhead, fingers extended and spread wide. That was the signal to follow me that we’d taught the students. They all fell into a rough two-by-two column, and we moved out.

  Ylor and I had estimated a twenty-minute hike to reach the seam we’d targeted. But the map we’d based our guess on didn’t show every building that had collapsed or street that was clogged by debris or fissures in the cobblestone streets.

  If it had only been Biz and me on this trek, we could have fit through narrow spaces and clambered over fallen walls with ease. With the less-experienced students traipsing behind us, we had to pick our path more carefully. We stuck to the clearest roads, and those did not lead us in a straight line to our goal. It had been early morning when we left the Academy, and it felt like nearly noon by the time we reached our target.

  “According to the map, this is the place,” I said to Biz. We’d found a row of mostly intact buildings that must have been small houses. “Ylor said this is a long, shallow seam. It probably runs under this whole block.”

  That was unexpected. With only five minutes to mine before the bad guys showed their ugly mugs, we had to maximize the number of miners banging on the rock. The only way to do that was to put a team in each basement.

  “We can’t split these guys up.” Biz had come to the same conclusion that I had. “The drem will get lost for sure without somebody to watch them. And it’ll be impossible to coordinate if we’re all in separate basements.”

  The block was six houses long, with only a few feet of bare earth separating the neighbors. I did rough mental calculations based on the last basement we’d been in. The plan that bubbled up in my thoughts was sketchy, but my gut liked it.

  “I’ve got an idea,” I said. “Get everyone in the alley behind the houses. I don’t want them exposed out here on the streets while I do this.”

  “You’re not going to bring a bunch of scrats down on our heads, are you?” Biz asked.

  “I hope not.” I chuckled. “Don’t worry, I won’t touch the ghostlight. If there are any scrats close enough to hear what I’m about to do, they would’ve heard us marching in. We’d already be fighting.”

  At least, I hoped that was true. It was always possible that the Fell Lord’s scouts had seen us and were preparing an ambush.

  “I hope you know what you’re doing,” Biz said. She raised her fist, and we bumped knuckles. “I’ll post lookouts to keep an eye out for bad people. If we see anything, I’ll send one of the drem down to pull your hair out.”

  While Biz rounded up our allies and hid them in the alley, I headed into the leftmost building. The house’s front wall was still intact, though the door was nowhere to be found. The roof only had a few holes in it, and the wan light that fell through them guided me into the gloomy interior.

  Shadowed lumps of moldering furniture filled the entryway. A cramped room off to the left held a cracked clay oven surrounded by a pale halo of scattered ashes. The rest of the kitchen’s floor was covered in shards of cracked pottery and old stains. An archway to the right of the main room led into a hallway that ran from the front of the house to its back. Three doorways led off from that hall. I saw a broken-down bed and wrecked chest through the first opening. The second doorway was much the same, but the third held bowed, empty shelves and a staircase in one corner. I descended into the basement, harvester cocked over my shoulder and ready to swing if a threat suddenly popped into view.

  Fortunately, no scrat, kamarotz, or any other unpleasant beastie tried to kill me.

  Unlike the last basement I had been in, this one was almost entirely empty. The owner had carved shelves into the stone walls, but whatever they’d once held was long gone. The stark emptiness of the room made it easy to spot the ghostlight where it crawled across the back side of the basement. This seam was longer and thinner than the one Biz and I had first harvested. It started midway along the wall and ran to its eastern edge. There wasn’t space for more than two of us to attack this part of the deposit. We needed more room.

  Fortunately, making space was my area of expertise.

  I activated my newly upgraded Material Gaze of Discernment technique and focused my attention on the wall where the seam disappeared. The red marker appeared, and I went to work.

  The combination of my new core and more powerful discipline had turned my harvester into a wrecking ball. Huge chunks of stone fell away when I hit the mark. As the dust cleared, my jaw dropped at the sight of the destruction I’d wreaked on the basement. One swing had opened a five-foot-wide by five-foot-tall by two-feet-deep hole. Excited by my success, I repeated that process four more times until I had the beginning of a nice tunnel. It was cramped, but there was room enough to work. Satisfied with what I’d done so far, I headed upstairs to volunteer some people for a labor detail.

  “You three, and you,” I said, pointing to the varm and Xin. “Come with me.”

  “Yep, we’re fine, bro,” Biz said sarcastically. “Don’t worry about us. We got this covered. No sign of bad guys, by the way.”

  “No bad,” one of the drem called from its perch on the roof across the alleyway. The rest of them were scattered on neighboring buildings, their jewel-like eyes scanning for trouble.

  “Thanks.” I slapped Biz high-five. “We’ll be in business soon. Can you hear me banging on the walls down there?”

  “A little.” My sister shrugged. “It sounds like somebody slamming a door a couple blocks away.”

  “Good to know,” I said. “My plan’s working. It won’t be long before we get to mining.”

  “Good.” Biz faked a yawn. “We’re getting bored up here.”

  “Better than the alternative,” I joked.

  I led my work detail down to the mouth of my beautiful new tunnel. Xin jostled ahead of the varm to walk beside me.

  “Girlfriend,” she said confidently. “Here to help.”

  “Good,” I said. I’d given up on convincing her not to call herself that. “I need some strong backs here.”

  I pointed to the rubble strewn across the floor and instructed my people to stack the stones against the south wall of the building. I wanted the path into the tunnel clear because the last thing we needed was someone twisting an ankle or breaking a leg on the uncertain terrain.

  The four I’d volunteered jumped into action without hesitation. I guess all that time cooped up in cages had made them eager for action. While I meditated and circulated my breathing to restore my ghostlight for another round of excavation, they organized themselves into a line and handed rocks from Xin, at the mouth of the tunnel, to Darok, who’d taken up a spot nearest the wall. They worked with smooth, wordless efficiency until sweat rolled down their foreheads.

  >>>Core capacity of seven blades reached.

  Further circulation will replace oldest ghostlight with newer blades.<<<

  I blinked and stretched my arms overhead. Since advancing my core, my meditation seemed deeper. I’d hardly been aware of any sounds outside my circulated breath and hadn’t felt the passage of time at all, though judging by the pile of rocks stacked against the wall, more than a few minutes had gone by. I made a mental note to make sure someone was keeping an eye on me when I circulated from now on.

  “Coming through,” I said to Xin and squeezed past her to enter the tunnel.

  “Good swing,” she complimented me after I’d knocked another massive chunk of the wall out of my path. “Stronger than you look.”

  “Thanks,” I said. My cheeks felt hot. I had a sudden urge to explain that my discipline was doing most of the work.

  But I wasn’t sure that was true. If I hadn’t become an engineer, none of this would be possible. And I’d focused on cultivating strength in my body when I’d advanced. That investment in my spinal meridian really had made me stronger than I looked.

&n
bsp; I pondered those thoughts as I banged out another section of tunnel. And another, and another. Finally, after opening a fifteen-foot-long tunnel, I broke through into the next basement. The seam ran the full length of this wall, which gave us a good thirty feet of exposed ghostlight ore. I wanted people to have enough room to swing without hitting each other, so I estimated each of our miners would need about six feet of work space. That wasn’t too bad. In less than twenty minutes, I’d opened up enough of the ore for five of our people. I went back to hammering until I ran out of ghostlight, then sent Darok up to the surface to recruit more students to help clear the rubble. Whenever we breached a new basement, I had them stack the rocks in the stairwells. That would cut off some escape routes if we needed them, but it would also keep the scrats from pouring down the stairs on top of us. If we had to fight, I wanted to do it on as narrow a front as possible, and that meant making sure the tunnel only had one entrance.

  Plus, if things got really hairy, I could always hack a new escape route through the walls. That was handy.

  An hour and a half after I’d started, my tunnel had exposed the entire length of the ghostlight seam. The orange-and-black rock filled the cramped space with shifting light that reminded me of the flickering flames of a campfire. The ore’s glow let us see well enough to work, even if it wasn’t ideal lighting.

  Thirty minutes later I’d finished my work, the students had cleared all the rubble out of the tunnel, and we were ready to get down to business. I decided to leave the drem on their rooftop guard duty, and Biz stayed on the surface to keep an eye on them and warn the rest of us if they spotted something. I worked the edge of the seam closest to the tunnel’s entrance. If bad guys came down the basement steps, they’d have to deal with me before they could reach the rest of our crew.

  When I was satisfied that everyone was lined up and understood what had to be done, I raised my clenched fist overhead, then brought it down.

  “Go!” I shouted.

  The sound of fifteen people hammering away at the vein of ghostlight was like nothing I’ve ever heard before. A chorus of hums and pings echoed through the tunnel. The hairs on my arms and neck stood up, and I wasn’t sure if it was a premonition or a surge of energy from the ghostlight. It didn’t matter. We had five minutes to clear as much space as we could. I couldn’t waste even a second of it worrying about what might happen.

  My whole world shrank to the tip of my harvester and the rhythmic swing into the ore. My discipline definitely made it easier to knock chunks of the glowing ore free of the vein. It didn’t have nearly as dramatic effect as it had on the stone. That was all right. There were twenty of us down here. We’d harvest a lot of ore in five minutes.

  I became a machine with one job: mark the wall, swing the tool, do it again. I kept going even after I’d run out of ghostlight. There wasn’t time to circulate my breath and gain more energy. I swung again and again, enjoying the exercise even when my hands had gone numb from the repetitive impact. It felt good to use my strengthened body, and I promised myself I’d look into investing more of my ghostlight into it.

  “Time!” Biz shouted down the steps. “Let’s go!”

  I repeated Biz’s words, and the students closest to me shouted the command again. It took a handful of seconds for the order to roll through the rest of the miners and the sound of harvesters slamming into ghostlight to be replaced by grunts as they loaded the ore into their sacks.

  “No sign of the scrats,” Biz said as the team spilled out onto the street. “Not sure how long our luck will hold, though.”

  “Until we get back to the Academy,” I grinned. “Move out!”

  The ghostlight ore singing in our sacks made stealth impossible, so we jogged as fast as we could back along the same route we’d taken to reach the seam. Our return trip went by quickly, and soon the Academy’s ancient bulk rose up before us. Another hundred yards and we’d be back inside the gate, safe and sound.

  A cold hand brushed the back of my neck. Instinct made me duck my head.

  A shot missed my skull with mere inches to spare. I didn’t even know I’d almost died until a spray of dust and smoke from a building to my right blinded me. I frantically brushed at my eyes to clear them, unsure of which direction the attack had come from.

  “Behind us!” Biz shouted. “Go! Go! Go!”

  “Get them back to the Academy!” I yelled to Biz.

  More shots rang out, clogging the air with raining debris and blinding smoke.

  “You lead them! You’re the engineer. We can’t lose you.” Biz shoved me in the direction of the fleeing students. “Go!”

  The scrats had shooters on the roofs down the street. They hadn’t dialed in the range yet, but if they kept pouring shots at us, they’d eventually get lucky. My bigger worry was the crowd of blade-wielding hooded figures headed our way.

  “I’m not leaving you,” I growled. “Come on!”

  Biz glared at me. Her eyes burned with a bestial fire that raised the hairs on the back of my neck. She wanted this fight more than she wanted to be safe.

  Another shot smashed into the stones above our heads. A hunk of masonry bounced off Biz’s shoulder, and the fuzzball screeched in surprise. For a moment, Biz looked at the little guy like she was ready to murder him.

  “Biz,” I said. “Come on.”

  She shook her head, not in denial, but to clear her thoughts.

  “Right behind you,” she said, the burning ghostlight gone from her eyes. “We’ll outrun them.”

  We sprinted for safety, jumping from side to side as shot after shot barked from the scrat snipers. They were terrible shots, though, and none of the bolts came anywhere near as close to me as the first one had. We were going to make it.

  The students were through the gate when Biz and I reached the end of the street. The scrats on the ground were a hundred feet behind us.

  “Kai!” Biz shouted as she slammed into me.

  Our legs tangled, and we rolled across the cobblestone street, the heavy weight of our sacks throwing us off-balance. Blood splashed across my face, hot and sticky, stinging my eyes.

  I scrambled out from under my sister and rolled her onto her back.

  Blood spread out around her head in a ruby puddle, staining the cobblestones with her life.

  Chapter Nineteen

  THERE WAS NO TIME TO investigate Biz’s injuries on the street. The scrats, excited by their luck, rained shots down around me, and their ground troops were closing in. I scooped my sister up and slung her over my shoulder, wincing as hot blood soaked through my tattered T-shirt. I grabbed the necks of the sacks of ghostlight we’d dropped. They were heavy, but it wasn’t far to the school. I could handle the weight.

  Xin shouted for me to hurry. She held fast to the gate’s bars, her heels dug in to keep it from closing.

  I pushed blades of ghostlight into my legs to run faster. Biz bounced on one shoulder, the blue fuzzball on the other. The poor little guy chittered and cooed at my sister, willing her to wake up. His pathetic whimpers made my heart ache.

  “Hang in there,” I whispered to Biz. “You’re gonna make it.”

  I squeezed past Xin just before she lost her grip on the gate and it slammed closed behind us.

  “Inside!” she shouted and raced into the Academy. “Tribunal!”

  The scrats screeched behind me, frustrated their prey had escaped. I wondered if they’d attack the Academy right now and discovered I didn’t care. All that mattered was getting my sister inside and making sure she had the best treatment possible. Then I’d personally feed every scrap of ghostlight ore into the refinery and rebuild the school. If the scrats came at us before that, I’d kill them all with my bare hands. They’d made a terrible mistake shooting Biz.

  Ylor and Reesa met me in the great hall. They’d found a crisp white sheet from somewhere and had it spread across the table. They’d also gathered supplies and neatly arranged them atop the makeshift surgical covering.

  “Put her
here,” Ylor said. His face twisted with concern.

  I laid Biz down on her stomach. Blood bubbled from the small hole below her right shoulder. She groaned, tried to push herself up, then lay still.

  Reesa slithered up beside my sister and examined the injury with careful eyes. She didn’t touch Biz but leaned over so far her nose was only inches from the wound. She took a deep breath, clenching and unclenching her fists.

  “It’s not deep,” she finally said. The worm woman pointed to the rectangular case next to Biz’s head. “These sutras will help. Wash your hands in the bowl there. Tear her shirt open. You must expose the skin around her injury. Quickly.”

  The water fizzed and bubbled when I dunked my grimy hands into it. I scrubbed my fingers together until I couldn’t feel grit on them. When I pulled my hands out of the water, they were so clean my nails actually sparkled. I slipped my index fingers through the rip in Biz’s shirt and tore the cloth open. More blood pumped from the hole, staining the white cloth beneath my sister a terrifying crimson.

  “Take the sutra. No, not that one. The red one,” Reesa advised me. “Press it flat over the wound, with the lettering facing her skin.”

  I plucked the silk ribbon from the open box and unfolded it. My vision swam and my head went fuzzy when I caught a glimpse of the letters written on the cloth. There was serious power in the sutra, and just looking at it had taken my breath away. I flipped it over, stretched it out, and laid it over the wound in my sister’s back. I pushed down on it until Biz groaned. The fabric’s fibers writhed under my palm like a swarm of hair-fine worms. Biz shuddered and moaned, and the fuzzball stroked her hair with its skinny fingers. He laid down next to Biz, his face inches away from hers. His lips moved silently, as if he were whispering to her.

  Or praying for her.

  “Is it working?” I asked Reesa.

  “It is,” she said with a sigh of relief. “She was lucky. The bolt had lost most of its power before it struck her. If the shooter had been any closer, we would be having a much more serious conversation. You can release the sutra. I must gather my students and replenish what we’ve used here. If you need me, summon Monitor.”