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  “I will go to fetch the doctor myself,” Yanko said, backing toward the intersection and lowering his arms. “I’m a poor swimmer. I’d be useless in the lake search.”

  “But—”

  “If he doesn’t appear in two minutes, you can tell my uncle it’s my fault. I take personal responsibility. My word.”

  The overseer’s lips twisted and writhed as if he were sucking a particularly vile lemon. Finally, without a word, he spun on his heel and stalked back the way he had come. Yanko hadn’t made a friend of the man today; he hoped a time would never arise when it mattered.

  He backed the rest of the way to the intersection, then sprinted after the women as soon as he was out of the overseer’s sight. When he reached the lift, Lakeo and Teesha were already inside, with Arayevo lunging in after them. She must have heard his footsteps, for she paused, her alarmed eyes round when she spun to check the noise. The dark brown orbs softened with relief when they spotted him. As exhausted as he was, the warmth in her eyes made him feel as if he were floating as he ran into the lift with them. She gripped his arm as she swung the gate shut. Why, oh why was she leaving?

  “They figure anything out yet?” Lakeo asked from the shadows of the lift. She had an arm around Teesha, holding the smaller woman up.

  “I don’t think so.” Yanko braced himself against the bamboo wall, needing the support, but not moving so far as to disturb Arayevo’s grip on his arm. “Who lit the blasting stick? That nearly—” he stopped himself from saying ruined everything or caused the gondolier to die and also tried to erase the accusation from his tone. “That surprised me.”

  “You seemed distracted, so I lit it,” Lakeo said.

  Distracted? He’d had a handle on it. He hadn’t needed her help. He kept the indignant words to himself.

  “I’m still amazed that you were able to do that,” Arayevo said. “I didn’t even notice you swimming out with a brand, and to get so close…”

  “Yeah,” Lakeo said.

  Yanko’s lips flattened. She must have used the Science to light the fuse, the same as he had meant to do. Remembering how secretive she had been about her gift, he didn’t say this with the others around.

  “I’m glad you were paying attention,” Lakeo added, the acclaim sounding a bit forced. “I hadn’t anticipated that they would have a man pushing their boat around with a stick.”

  “Indeed,” Yanko murmured. “That reminds me…”

  As the lift approached the surface, the cool draft of night air whispering down the shaft, Yanko closed his eyes for one last moment of concentration.

  Doctor Men Koo? Yanko called with his mind. He gripped his belly—a queasiness gathered there, from yet another effort required from him. Telepathy was easier and worked far better with those one had familiarity with.

  Works better for those who take the time to train in the field too.

  I know, I know, but there’s so much to learn.

  He shook away the mental conversation and tried again. Doctor Men Koo?

  This time, a questioning grunt drifted out of the ether. Yanko sent an image of the lake and the explosion along with a message: They need you.

  The return grunt had an element of Understood to it. At least he hoped so. He would go down to check as soon as he saw the women safely away.

  Away without him. He ought to—

  The lift stopped with a lurch, a lurch he had experienced on previous trips to the surface, but this time it added to the queasiness in his stomach. He reached for the gate and the fresh air beyond, but Teesha and Arayevo, oblivious to his discomfort, rushed out ahead of him.

  Yanko bent over and threw up on the floor of the lift. With his head throbbing in time to the heaves of his stomach, he could only grip his belly. The plum brandy had been a mistake.

  Yanko did not know how he managed to keep from collapsing into the pile of vomit, but he staggered outside, still on his feet. He gasped in the crisp night air. It was fresh with the scents of sagebrush, prickly pear, and dry earth. The cool closeness to nature helped him recover an iota, enough to grow aware of the three women staring at him, Teesha and Arayevo from the dusty road winding toward the distant mountains, and Lakeo from beside the lift. Such a heroic figure, I cut.

  “I’m fine.” A statement that would be more convincing if vomit was not decorating his sleeve. Yanko tucked that arm behind his back and pointed into the darkness. “Arayevo, there’s a bag of salt and some supplies behind that big tabletop rock formation a mile down the road. I don’t have any money, but the salt is almost as good for barter. It ought to get you to the coast. From there…” He shrugged.

  She nodded. “Thank you. Ah, your mother… did you find out where she might be?”

  Yanko hesitated, not wanting to send her off to some dubious life of danger and crime, not wanting her to go at all. But what else did Arayevo have at this point? She had just helped commit a crime—though he hoped it would never be identified as such—and even if nothing came of that, there was an arranged marriage waiting for her if she returned home. “My uncle thought the Mesuna Keys,” he finally said.

  “Thank you again.” She regarded the lift and the unpretentious shack squatting behind it with the sign out front reading: Sales Yoon Mine. “Is there any chance… I hate to think of you getting in trouble for this. Would you consider coming with us?”

  His heart soared, and for a moment, he forget about the chaos that had to be unfolding below, the warrior-mage tests awaiting him, and the career in the military that his family needed even more than he did. If he ran away with Arayevo, he would have time to show her that he had become a man, that he cared about her as more than a friend, and that he was worthy of her interest—her love.

  Lakeo cleared her throat. “Someone’s trying to access the lift.” She stood on the threshold, keeping the gate from closing.

  “Yanko?” Arayevo smiled. “It’d be an adventure.”

  Of that he had no doubt. At the very least, he would have two thousand miles of travel to convince her that seeking out his pirate captain mother was a bad idea. And that there were far better things they could do.

  “I’m sure it would be,” Yanko said, the words sounding distant to his ears, as if another uttered them, “and I thank you for the invitation. But my family is depending on me. I can’t leave now.”

  Arayevo’s smile turned wistful. “I assumed that would be your answer.” She lifted a hand in parting. “Take care of yourself, my friend. We’ll meet again, I’m certain.”

  Yanko returned the raised hand, though an idiotic part of him wanted to warn her against the dangers of dating pirates, buccaneers, and whatever other scoundrels rode the high seas. Another more salient warning wafted into his mind. If she became a pirate, and he entered the military, there was a chance that when they met again… it would be as enemies.

  He kept his mouth shut against all the warnings. He would simply hope that none of his worries came to pass.

  He watched as the two women jogged down the road, Arayevo sure-footed even in the dark, and Teesha stumbling over the hem of her robes but doggedly keeping up.

  “They’re trying again,” Lakeo said. “I have to get back to the chapel before anyone figures out I was wrapped up in this mess. And you… you better find a nook to hide in too.”

  “Hiding will not be necessary,” came a man’s voice from the darkness behind the shack.

  Yanko nearly jumped out of his robes. That it was a familiar voice didn’t comfort him, not at all.

  Uncle Mishnal walked out of the shadows, coming to stand by one of the two lanterns kept burning by the lift.

  “Uh oh,” Lakeo muttered and glanced down the road, doubtlessly wondering if it was too late for her to race off after the others.

  Yanko couldn’t do anything except stare at his uncle, all too aware that all of this had been designed to let the women escape without pursuit and all too aware that they had exactly a thirty-second lead now. All he could do was talk to his uncle a
nd try to delay him from sending guards out after them. As for himself, if he had hoped to get away without having his role in this discovered, he had been delusional. He could only guess what his fate would be, if his uncle would keep his knowledge to himself… or not.

  “Return to the chapel,” Mishnal told Lakeo, his tone impossible to read. “We will discuss your part in this later.”

  “Fantastic,” Lakeo muttered but didn’t tarry or show any other sign of disobedience.

  It surprised Yanko that she complied instead of racing after the women, but concern over his own fate dominated his thoughts. He waited as the lift creaked and groaned, descending from sight and leaving him alone with his uncle, a soft breeze blowing dust across the scrublands.

  That breeze tugged at Mishnal’s graying topknot, pulling a few strands from the usually perfect queue. Yanko shifted back and forth, waiting for his uncle to speak, but he was gazing toward the east. The women had disappeared into the night, so he couldn’t see anything beyond the black silhouette of the mountains against the starry sky.

  “Your tactics tonight were questionable,” Mishnal finally said.

  Yes, the vomit in the lift attested to that. Yanko waited, expecting the words to be the beginning of a lecture. Or a tirade.

  “But your choices were correct. I am shamed that I lacked the courage to make them myself. Perhaps once…” Mishnal tugged his gaze from the mountains and met Yanko’s eyes. “Your father, in believing only a certain type of son can bring back that which the family has lost, fails to see the honorable young man who has grown up before his eyes.”

  Yanko stared. A rocket blowing up in his face couldn’t have stunned him more. “I…”

  Mishnal waited for a moment, but when nothing more was forthcoming, he turned toward the lift.

  “Thank you,” Yanko blurted at his back. It seemed an inadequate response, but he had never thought his uncle would prove his ally, not in something like this, and he had certainly never expected to hear Mishnal speak with anything other than favor of his brother.

  This time, Yanko gazed toward the mountains. Maybe his decision to stay was a good one. Maybe there was yet hope he could become someone that his family could be proud of. Maybe, if his uncle thought he was worthwhile, he would succeed at the tests and at school and in the—

  “I want this mess cleaned up before you go back to work,” Mishnal barked from the lift before it descended.

  Yanko laughed softly. “One day at a time, boy.”

  ~

  Death from Below

  (Swords & Salt, Tale 3)

  Part 1

  Yanko dumped his five or six thousandth shovel of salt into the cart, hoping the dull ache in his back signified that he neared the end of his shift. If not, his work here might be aging him more than “hardening” him, the term his father had used when sending him to the mines to prepare for his warrior-mage tests. He imagined showing up before the pedagogues on the committee hunchbacked and with gray threading his black hair.

  “You’re muttering,” the woman on the other side of the cart said as she dumped a shovelful of her own. Clad in a fur vest that left her muscular arms bare, Lakeo had doubtlessly never had a sore back or any other type of frailty in her life. Her frizzy hair nearly brushed the grayish-white tunnel ceiling when she stood straight, which wasn’t often. She kept shoveling, toiling away without breaks. “It’s not about that girl again, is it?”

  “No.” Aware of the miners working farther down the tunnel, cracking their pickaxes into the marble-hard walls of salt, Yanko did not stop shoveling to talk. “Though she’s older than you, so it’d be appropriate to call her a woman, don’t you think?”

  “How do you know?”

  “That it’s appropriate to call her a woman?”

  Lakeo gave him one of the scathing looks she was so good at. “No, how old I am.”

  As always, Yanko wanted to give her an equally scathing return look, but he had been raised to respect women and his elders—or at least to appear to do so—so he pretended indifference to her grating personality. Secretly, he wished his uncle would stop pairing them together. He suspected it had to do with keeping all of the troublemakers in one place, rather than any perception of their compatibility.

  “You have that arrogant I-know-everything-about-the-world-even-though-I’ve-never-been-anywhere attitude that suggests a certain immaturity.” Hm, that hadn’t been entirely respectful. Yanko smiled so he could pretend he had been teasing.

  “I see. What kind of maturity would be suggested if I cracked you in the head with a shovel?”

  “Yanko,” came a call from farther up the tunnel.

  “Yes?” he responded, though he didn’t take his eyes from Lakeo’s shovel. Some dogs were all bite; this one wasn’t. But she had already returned to work.

  Uncle Mishnal walked into view, stepping around piles of freshly chiseled salt, his white and orange controller’s robes stirring the fine crystals as they brushed the floor. “You have a visitor. He’s waiting in my office.”

  Yanko’s belly twitched with unease. Father. It had to be. Had he come to check on his son’s progress? What else? The tests were only a month away. “Shall I see him now, honored Uncle?” Yanko lifted the shovel, silently asking if he could leave his shift early.

  “You’ve eight minutes to go until the hour, but I suppose I can be lenient in this matter.” The corners of Mishnal’s eyes crinkled. With amusement? Surely not.

  “Can I go too?” Lakeo asked. “The ore cart would get filled lopsidedly with just me shoveling.”

  “A catastrophe, no doubt.” Uncle Mishnal had either given up on making her use the correct form of address when speaking to superiors or he simply didn’t care today. Her gifted hands—she was carving a new series of salt statues in the chapel—gave her an interesting sort of protection incongruous with her peasant social status.

  “I’m thinking of the efficiency of the operation,” Lakeo said. “A lopsided cart might tip when it’s being hauled to the higher levels. The whole mess could overturn on the unsuspecting man loading the carts fifty meters below, causing severe injury or even death.”

  “Yes, yes, you’re dismissed as well.” Mishnal waved a hand at her, then focused on Yanko. “I hope you’ve been practicing the thermal science as diligently as your father wished. Your brother wants a demonstration.”

  “I have. I know it’s important for the tes—did you say my brother? Little Falcon is here?” Yanko had not seen his older brother in almost two years, not since he had joined the marines.

  “He is.” Mishnal smiled and extended his hand up the tunnel, toward the lift. “And I understand it’s simply Falcon now. Because he’s an adult. Or so he tells me.”

  Yanko grinned. “I thought his training instructors might have beaten the childhood nickname out of him.” His brother had been born Shun Chu, but Grandfather had come up with the avian sobriquet when his seven-year-old grandson had been going through a phrase where he screeched like a bird and leapt off roofs with his wooden sword, pouncing on bandits—also known as fellow classmates. One evening, he had accidentally “attacked” a group of the village elders this way. If asked, he swore the nickname was a result of his speed—and he was the only boy in the village who had always bested Yanko in foot races—but a few people knew the truth.

  Mishnal harumphed. “It’s clear training instructors are getting soft. It’s no wonder Nurian might isn’t what it once was.”

  Yanko jogged for the lift before his uncle could launch into a diatribe on the follies of the younger generation, though he did hope Lakeo might have lingered too long to escape the speech. But a glance back revealed that she had wisely disappeared as well.

  It didn’t occur to Yanko until he was in the lift to wonder why his brother had come to visit. As a second-year marine, he wouldn’t have much leave accumulated yet, and what he had, he would surely want to spend at home with the rest of the family. Why take the two-day trip to the remote mines to see h
is little brother?

  Part 2

  Yanko walked to his uncle’s office, excited to see his brother but nervous as well. Unlike many of his friends’ older siblings, Falcon had been more of a protector than a bully. But as Yanko had grown from boy to adolescent, he had come to… not resent but regret the fact that his brother felt he needed a protector, as if he were some frail flower growing by a trailside, always in danger of being trampled. He hoped Falcon would see that he had grown up and could take care of himself now.

  As he stepped through the open door, Yanko almost tripped over a duffle bag and sword belt left in the middle of the rug. He kept himself from stumbling but flailed a couple of times to maintain his balance.

  So much for showing how well you can take care of yourself.

  Falcon whirled away from the wall full of diagrams of the mine and caught Yanko in a bear hug before he had recovered.

  “I see you’re still leaving a mess wherever you go,” Yanko said, to avert attention from his clumsiness. “Grandmother is still finding toy soldiers you left scattered around the house.”

  “Those were models, not toys.” Falcon broke the hug, though he kept a hold on Yanko’s biceps, and smiled as they studied each other face-to-face. He had either gotten shorter, or Yanko had finally caught up to him in height. That was something anyway, though he continued to feel slight next to his brother’s broader frame, which included shoulders that would have given a Turgonian warrior pause. Falcon still had the arched cheekbones, thick black hair, and soulful dark eyes that had made the girls in the village nudge each other and sigh with longing whenever he jogged past. His face was leaner now, though, less that of a boy and more of a man, one who had seen hard times. Nuria wasn’t at war, but Yanko suspected whatever work he had been enduring in the mines paled compared to his brother’s military training.

  “As I recall,” Yanko said, “she didn’t use either term when she stepped on them barefoot on the meditation room floor.”