When—

Thump.

She—

Thump.

Found—

Crack.

Tuft—

Crack crack.

She would—

Snap. Crash.

Lapis looked at the wooden leg in her hand, then down at the rest of the chair lying in a heap on the floor. Frost coated the back from contact with the transparent, blue ice wall, and while the stiles had pulled away from the seat, they had yet to break.

Screaming, she slammed the broken end into the ice. Fractures snaked in all directions, and shards fell from the damage, tinkling to the floor. Cold shot down the shaft and she hissed, dropped it, and wrung her fingers. Even through her gloves, the frozen bite hurt.

Linz gripped her shoulder and tugged her from the frozen wall. “I think that might have worked better than the entire chair,” they said, in a measured tone. “Maybe we should use it as a spike and try to hammer it through.”

She huffed and focused on the words rather than her fury. Hammer and chisel, basically. Good suggestion. She glanced at Rin, who pressed random things on the comm device, attempting to recontact Jhor, then studied the scientists. Aghast fear pulled their faces into ugly distortions, and she fought to bury her frustration. Worthless, the lot of them; they had huddled in a corner until the temperature became unbearable, then half-heartedly jumped, slapping arms and legs to create warmth. She understood they had not prepared for the deep cold Tuft produced, but neither had she. Giving up after doing nothing would not help.

Lapis triggered her blade, shaking. Without the heat activity brought, she shuddered and her teeth chattered. They needed to get out before someone succumbed to the freeze.

“Got ‘m!” Rin called as the comm device growled with static.

“Rin! We hear you!”

“Jhor, we’re in trouble,” Lapis said. “Tuft iced the entire room, and it’s freezing in here. We need to get out.” She refused to put the dirty scarf around her mouth, and the cold she breathed in after speaking made her lungs ache.

“Vision said something happened, but she didn’t know what. The priests with Luveth said Tuft took her away, and Dedi and his personal attendants followed. Those left behind sought shelter in a hidden room, and they’re not making much sense.”

Wondrous.

“Spring and Heven are leading the others to you. They’ll be there soon.”

They better be, or the only things they would rescue would be icicles.

Lapis carved the broken chair leg into a point, and shoved it into the hole she make with her last strike. It did not go far, and she glanced at Linz, at the metal box they struggled to heft to their shoulder, and glared. Where had they found that?

“Hold the spike at more of an angle,” the rebel said.

She pressed her lips together, slanted it, squeezed her eyes shut, and hunched her shoulders. If the box slipped off the top and broke her fingers, she did not want to see it coming.

The spike shuddered and sank deeper, larger chunks falling from the wall with hefty thunks. She moved the point, and they repeated; a piece as large as her head fell away. They beat a line of cracks across the doorless entry, chipping away as much as they could, though they still did not break through to the hallway.

“Lanth!”

“Patch!”

He sounded faint, but she heard him.

“Shit.”

The uneasy venom made her not want to see what Tuft had done to the attackers. The slit in the wall let them see blobby heads encased in ice, and she doubted the mercs breathed long in their frozen tomb.

“Don’t use tech!” Linz shouted. “It bounces off this version of his ice, and you’re going to hurt yourself.”

“Vision mentioned something about that,” Caitria called. “Heven said she can help.”

Shadowy images appeared on the other side, and one touched the blue stuff before jerking back.

“It’s cold,” Lapis said helpfully.

“Thanks for the warning,” Patch gritted.

“I will smash the wall,” the khentuaree said, and her smudgy form turned around. Lapis and Linz scampered to the scientists, who stopped their activity and squinted at the solid sheet that sealed the horizontal slash shut, as if they could make anything out through the wavery mass.

CRASH. CRACK.

Three strikes, and khentauree rear hooves broke through, sending a chunk careening into the consoles. It struck with a squeal and thumped to the floor, followed by the fluttery tinkling from smaller bits that dropped from the new hole.

Patch peeked in and studied the edge. “I think this is large enough,” he said. The scientists hesitated, so Lapis grabbed Reyanne and forced her to the door. She had to step through, duck, and cautiously raise her other leg, but she made it without touching the ice. Her colleagues, seeing freedom, rushed to the doorway, and each exited without freezing a part of themselves to the edge. Rin hopped through with typical rat vigor, and Linz motioned for her to precede them. She sucked in a breath and did her best to keep from scraping the edges, and Patch helped them both to safety, once he realized how hard they shook from the cold.

Crack.

Heven opened the way for the other room. The group Reyanne had left fared worse, each shuddering so hard they had difficulty speaking. Caitria and Mairin aided them into the not-much-warmer hallway. Lapis looked at the entrance to the cavern; solid ice, black smears of bodies inside. She did not study it; no point.

Other khentauree spanned the hallway steps away, their attention focused on the dimly lit passage beyond wooden poles added for structural integrity. Other corridors lacked the supports, and she wondered on it. Did the Cloister inhabit a natural cave system, so did not need them? Did the metal walls she had seen behave like braces? Or had the locals simply kept them away from those passages?

The scientists remained distant, distrustful, which, she supposed, made sense. If she had harmed beings, then got rescued by them, she would feel out of sorts, too.

“Thank you for your help,” she said, looking up at Heven. “You’ve endangered yourself to aid us. I’m sorry for that.”

Heven buzzed. “You help us. The code Jhor gave us freed us from Ree-god’s anger. So we help you.” She pointed down the hallway. “The room with the children is safe. We will take you there.”

Reyanne gasped and grabbed Lapis’s arm. “Children?”

“Your kids,” she confirmed. “Rin, Tuft and I rescued them and your husband. They’re hiding with khentauree—and we need to get you there as well.”

“Let’s go, people!” Patch said, his voice as sharp and cold as the ice.

“But—” One of the men pointed at the trapped mercs.

“They’re long gone. Move.”

The scientists’ horror and sobbing lasted as long as it took for Patch and Mairin to get their feet moving, then resentment took hold—a response, Lapis was certain, to the shock and dismay and helplessness that battered them. Did Ambercaast not teach them that khentauree had extraordinary abilities, and that being viewed as an interloper had terrible consequences?

“Yeah, we’s out,” Rin said into the comm device. “The khentauree ‘r takin’ us t’ the safe room with the kiddies.”

“Great.” The thick relief in Jhor’s tone nearly equaled Lapis’s own. Had he been that worried? “Once you get there, we’ll talk.”

Lapis understood the tears. She understood the children crying as they hugged their mother, she understood their father’s choked relief. But she discovered she could not watch the reunion, because her thoughts drifted to another day, another terror, the slash of Perben’s sword . . . and a far different outcome.

Heven clicked the door in place. “Sanna says Jhor must speak with us,” she said.

Patch slipped his arm around her and settled his cheek on the top of her head. “Come on,” he whispered. She nodded, though a part of her wanted to pull him aside, drown in his embrace, and forget the mine and the Cloister for a few moments.

After doling out food and water from Caitria’s pack, they followed Heven away from the scientists, who had no idea what to do now that they rested in the same room as the mechanical beings they desired to warp and send to silence. The khentauree offered blankets but otherwise kept clear of the new arrivals. Lapis had a twinge of guilt for leaving the situation to grow tenser and fester, but she would rather listen to what terrible thing Jhor had to impart.

She knew her luck had run out in relation to the good stuff.

The safe room was a suite, an odd collection of rooms for a mine. She decided it likely served as the living accommodations for one of the higher-ranked Kez adherents and wondered why they chose the mine and not the Cloister as a home. It had three front rooms filled with sleeping spaces that had knickknacks and lights surrounding thick pillows, an unused kitchen and two gunky bathrooms, a study with rotting books and a cracked desk, and five backrooms she guessed were bedrooms changed into khentauree workrooms. She well imagined the ostentatious display at its peak, considering how the Cloister looked, but the only thing that remained of rich décor were frame outlines on the brown wooden walls.

The khentauree turned on a tech light in the one furthest from the front rooms. It had metal cabinets, empty tables, and repair equipment in crates lining the dinged walls. She closed the door and accepted the comm device from Rin. She fiddled with the knobs before leaning her face close to it. “We are secluded,” she said.

“Good.” Jhor’s voice crackled. “I don’t want Reyanne and the others to hear. I don’t trust them.”

“It’s just us,” Patch assured him.

“Rin, take off your coat. I’ll look at that wound while we talk,” Caitria said, motioning to the rat. He slipped out of the outerwear as matching rustling sounds came from the device.

“So there are a few things going on. First, this code Fraze is trying to use is nasty. If that’s what set Luveth off, we need to eradicate it so it doesn’t infect more khentauree. Vision says Kez repurposed several guards from the military, and we don’t need them triggering defensive measures because Fraze doesn’t know what he’s doing.”

One fury-driven-mad mechanical being was enough.

“The khentauree say there’s some strange program attempting to force its way into their memory, but they’ve successfully ignored it so far. I’m betting his group broke into the main console room we were at and are using the equipment there. Sanna and I made certain it would be impossible to retrieve the important stuff without a huge amount of time and effort, but having physical access to the consoles will let them bypass some of what we did. We need to go back and stop whatever they’re attempting to do.”

Lapis did not look forward to the return. “How are we going to do that?”

“Down the shaft you cleared, enter through the doorway they don’t expect to be viable. There are other ways, but that one doesn’t have a camera presence.”

Patch nudged her before she opened her mouth and spouted what she thought of that so-brilliant idea. How were they going to get the khentauree down that? The ladder? And what about breathing whatever dust remained in the air? How smart was that?

“Second, Vision received a many-times removed report that Tuft iced someone to the wall and we’re supposed to retrieve him because he has important info.”

“Tirem,” Lapis said.

“Tirem?” Patch asked, anger and sour disgust flaring.

“Yeah. Apparently Hoyt sent more shanks than the group we rescued to the mines. Only Caardinva captured him, instead of us running into him first.”

“So he might have something useful.”

“Yep, which is why Tuft confined him. He’s in a hallway in the second story cavern with the mine carts.”

“They need to be cautious,” Linz warned. “That’s the way Luveth took to reach the entrance, and there might be a few mercs alive and scared in there.”

They heard talking, too garbled to understand, before Jhor’s voice strengthened. “Vision will tell the khentauree who are with Vory and her group. Mint went with them, so they shouldn’t have much trouble. They’ll get Tirem and head back here. We also have khentauree reporting about scientists who broke through a wall and into an office suite that Tuft kept off-limits. No one’s sure what’s inside, and it looks like Caardinva and his crew are headed there.”

“He was with the group in the mine cart cavern,” Lapis said. “They must have escaped Luveth and whoever attacked the entrance.”

“The red tridents,” Jhor confirmed. “They’ve split. Khentauree told Vision that a small group stayed in the Cloister, wandering around and trying to snag valuables, while the rest pushed to the entrance. They retreated when the scaffolding and cranes collapsed, and we’re not certain where they are. The Abastions are digging another exit door out, one that’s a little higher up the mountain than the entrance, and the Black Hats are going to go in and get who they can out.

“After that code scare, Tearlach and Vory were concerned about Caardinva getting his hands on anything Gedaavik left behind, and Lorcan gave the go to intercept him. The scouts, along with a contingent of Black Hats and Abastions, will meet Tearlach’s group on the way, and they’ll see what they can do about keeping the Meergevens ignorant of whatever Tuft tried to hide.”

“Vision can’t ask Tuft?” Lapis asked.

“He’s not answering her.”

Wondrous. Did that mean Luveth was even more of a problem than they thought?

“What about Scand?”

“He’s here with Ty, helping Vision and running comms with the remaining Abastion guards. We decided it would be too dangerous for him to go with Tia, so he’ll wait for Mint to get back.”

“I’m fine, Lady!” the rat called.

“So don’t worry. He’s in good company. Sanna and I are going. We need to get Fraze before he screws the khentauree.”

“Anything else?” Patch asked.

“Not that I can think of. Contact Scand if something happens, though the khentauree are proving better information carriers than our devices. That was smart, Lanth, to tell them to contact Vision. We have a lot more info now than we would have otherwise. Stay safe.”

Lapis rocked back, not realizing she had leaned so far in to listen. Caitria glanced at them, then finished Rin’s arm.

“You, my lad, have the luck of the Stars,” she told him. “Still, you should stay here and rest. You’ve already strained that wound, and—”

“It’s fine,” he stressed. “Been hurt worse lots o’ times.”

“That doesn’t mean you should take a chance in a mine crawling with enemies. My dad is going to have someone retrieve the scientists here, and you can help get them out.”

“I’s the Lady’s apprentice,” he said, in the same stubborn tone he used to say ‘I’s the Lady’s man’. He folded his arms, pursed his lips to the side, and raised an eyebrow, the perfect expression of obstinance. “It’s up t’ me t’ takes care o’ her, ‘cause she’s not thinkin’ much on herself, but others.”

“Rin—”

“This here rat’s taken beatin’s and falls, ‘n I’s sneaky enough, I’ll slip away and jest catch you anyways, so’s you might as well take me along first.”

“Do you really think this is the time and place for stubbornness?” Lapis asked, annoyed.

“Yep.”

It was dangerous. It was deadly. Any number of things could happen—had already happened. “Rin, the khentauree here need a human they can trust as a go-between until we can get them safely out of the mine. It’s not as flashy, but it is important, especially for the children.”

She knew, as he did, that would make him stay—and she knew, as he did, as soon as the rescuers lifted that weight, he would find them, danger be damned to the Pit. Could they take care of Fraze before the stubborn rat chanced the mines alone?

“I think you knows me too well,” he grumbled, deflating.

Patch laughed. “And she knows, we’ll see you when we see you.”

“Definitely too well,” he said.