Chapter 97: NO MORE RUNNING
Nyx checked the lower tunnels for three nights, while Aiden, Miasma, the cat, and Cinder waited at the forge. Each time it came back and made the dark around his shoulder darker. He understood what it meant now.
Not yet. Not yet. Not yet.
On the fourth night, the darkness loosened aroud him.
Nyx had found the opening.
"The slate-man," Aiden said.
Nyx did not answer. Beasts don’t.
But Nyx moved ahead of him, and the shadow it threw took the shape of three men. Two carrying hooks. One with a slate.
"He walks the slate up at night. Both hook-men are escorting him. That leaves the two on the wrappings."
Two men working at night.
That’s the whole window.
He took all of them down.
A furnace in a hole. Of every plan I’ve hated, this one wins.
He said the rest of it out loud on the stairs.
"Nyx. If those two shout, the hook-men come back down." Nyx went still on his shoulder. "Kill the lamp first. Then silence whoever opens his mouth. Nothing gets up that stair."
Nyx slid off his shoulder into the tunnel’s darkness. Aiden lost sight of it at once.
"Miasma. You watch the cold. You’ll see it winning before I do."
She was on the kit bag with her spines low.
"You tell me when the cold is winning. I’ll understand faster than I ever have."
Miasma looked at him for a moment. Then she climbed off the bag onto his shoulder. She stayed there.
"And you..." He looked at the cat. It was riding Cinder’s shoulder like a beast out on a journey with its best buddy. Why was it even following them?
"You keep her there. When it hurts, and she wants to run, you’re the warm thing that stays."
The cat looked back at him, as if Aiden had finally caught up to a job it had already understood.
The bottom went on with its trade as they passed.
The water-seller had gone home. The dice boys slept in their drain in a heap that looked, for one second, like three pups.
Aiden made himself not look at it twice.
The ember in Cinder’s flanks dropped. Her steps shortened.
She knew before I did. She’s known since the basin.
Cinder looked at him.
He had seen that look once. At the basin, staring down at the ice wolf moving through the fires.
It was not the wolf who had burned her own den down.
Aiden put his hand on her neck. The heat under his palm was fighting to stay up.
"I know what it is," he said. "I know you know."
He stepped in front of her, so she had to look at him and not the passage.
"You don’t have to stop being afraid. That was never the plan. The plan is we’re both afraid, and we go anyway."
Her orange eyes stayed on his.
The ember climbed a little, back up under his hand.
"There you are."
They came into the sink. Ember drifted around them.
Across the side passage, frost covered the floor around the cradle. The two workers bent over it, gloved, with a lamp on the stone between them.
They were men.
Until now, Aiden had only thought of them as obstacles.
One was old and grey at the stubble. He worked the wrappings slowly and carefully. He had done careful work his whole life and been paid badly for it.
The other was young and bored. He held his hands over a brazier, rubbing them together whenever the heat failed to reach his fingers. He complained the whole time, low and constant.
"Told him I’ll work for a week. He said a week. It’s been past a week." The young one blew on his fingers. "My feet haven’t been warm since the river."
"They won’t be again till it’s seated," the old one said. "Save your breath. Wrap."
Two men on a night shift. Cold, underpaid, a hundred feet down, bedding something they probably know nothing about.
Aiden put it where he kept everything he could not use.
The Ice Heart hung over them, pale and bloomed with frost, breathing cold into the chamber.
The cold came down the passage and met the sink’s heat. It made a line on the floor he could almost have drawn with chalk.
Ember glowing gold on one side. Grey frost covering the other. The line moved, the frost taking it a finger’s width at a time.
Even sitting still, the room is winning. That’s all it does. It wins by being there.
The fruit was in his coat, hissing, nearly spent. He had cut it a week ago, and it would not last another day.
Now or never.
Never means a wolf who spends the rest of her life chasing a bloodline she’ll never get. A life I paid for with most of my own. I won’t let fear make the choice for her.
He knelt at the edge of the line. He took the fruit out.
On his shoulder, Miasma’s green went out. She turned to face the frost.
You’re already watching. Good.
Last fruit.
No second one until next year’s lightning. If I get this wrong, she’ll be dead before it grows.
"Okay," he breathed.
To her. To himself. To whatever waited further up her bloodline, white-gold, like the Hound under the tree.
"Here’s the part where I’m sorry. You go to the line. You push the cold back, and you make this end of the room yours."
Cinder’s ember came up.
"While you’re holding the cold, you eat the fruit and evolve."
He made himself say the rest.
"It’s going to hurt. The thing that hurt you will be right there. You can’t let go. Not until the evolution is finished."
Cinder looked at the fruit.
Then at the grey line, and the men beyond it.
Go, he thought, and did not say it, because she did not need it.
She walked to the line.