I don’t invade my friends’ privacy by trying to read their thoughts.
No? She arched her eyebrows. You continue to be different from the other mages I’ve met. Sun Dragon read the thoughts of all those around him. So he wouldn’t be taken by surprise, he said, but I saw that he liked that it made people afraid of him.
Well, I’m glad not to be like him. Yanko didn’t think he was truly that unique among mages, other than his interest in earth magic over fire magic, but he admitted liking that Jhali thought so. That fond smile was so much more appealing than the stony glares she had given him for so long.
He had to remind himself that they were investigating deaths and that this wasn’t the time to think of how a kiss might go if he were more prepared for it, if he were to lean in and be the one to instigate pressing his lips to—
He tripped over the uneven ground and flailed, barely managing to remain upright.
The soldier looked back, pointed at the ground, and offered what sounded like a warning to watch his step.
“Yes, thank you,” Yanko said, avoiding Jhali’s gaze, though he could see her eyes twinkling in his peripheral vision.
He told himself there was no way she could have known what he was thinking. The tunnel grew narrower ahead, such that they would have to continue in single-file, but she stepped close first and patted him on the butt. He managed not to gawk and trip again. Barely.
Wordlessly, she stepped back, letting him follow after the soldier while she guarded them from behind. Guarded him.
Was he truly the reason she was sticking around? That she was down here, an ocean away from Nuria, risking exposure to some horrible disease? She’d said there was nowhere left for her after her sect had been destroyed, but surely, there were places more appealing than this.
The idea that a woman might have feelings for him flummoxed him. Falcon got the girls. That was how it had always been. True, his mother had said he was handsome and he would attract women one day, but mothers had to say that, didn’t they? Admittedly, Pey Lu wasn’t a typical mother.
After Yanko almost tripped again, he forced his attention to the matter at hand, not speculation on his attributes and whether Jhali might be looking at his butt as they walked.
Realizing that part of the problem was the poor lighting, he conjured a yellow illumination globe to float along with them. He thought about sending it past the soldier’s shoulder and farther into the tunnel ahead, but the man jumped and eyed it with alarm when he noticed it.
They came to a more open area with a couple of shafts branching off from the main one. Something on the wall gleamed with the reflection of Yanko’s light. Ore?
Piles of debris had been scraped off the walls and lay on the ground under it. The work of the Turgonians, removing centuries of accumulation to find their gold or silver or iron, whatever they sought.
The farther they moved from the entrance, the less dead vegetation coated the tunnel floor. The kelp and seaweed that had settled into the canyon when the water disappeared hadn’t made it into the cave. But there was all manner of silt on the ground, where Turgonian footprints hadn’t yet cleared a path, and gunk on the walls that Yanko couldn’t name. They should have brought some of those Kyattese scientists along.
“There.” The soldier pointed into one of the offshoot tunnels.
Yanko’s light showed a dark lump on the ground—the dead soldier.
Swallowing, he headed in that direction. The translator had stayed outside with Lakeo, so Yanko couldn’t ask for details on what the man had been doing here and if he’d disappeared the day before or early that morning.
He swept over the body with his senses, verifying that the lieutenant was indeed dead, then looked for cuts or contusions, as he had with the first two bodies. Nothing. Ore bulged from the man’s pockets—gold, it looked like—but Yanko couldn’t imagine it was the source of any deadly contamination. He’d heard of poisonous gases in caves that could accumulate and kill miners, but whatever had gotten to the lieutenant ought to have been the same thing that had affected the two men in the base camp. Later, Yanko would ask the general if those two men had spent time in the mines. He should have asked that earlier.
Yanko examined the dead man’s organs, the best he knew how. Someone had mentioned respiratory distress among the symptoms. Had the lieutenant’s lungs been damaged or severely inflamed? He couldn’t tell.
Feeling like a bumbling idiot, Yanko used his senses to examine his own lungs and tried to compare. He shook his head, not detecting a noticeable difference. The man’s liver seemed a little different. Not larger exactly, but… off. It was hard to tell if it was simply because he was dead or if it had to do with what killed him.
Behind Yanko, the guide muttered to himself, shaking his head and wrinkling his nose and looking with longing toward the exit. Jhali stood silently behind Yanko, her hand on the hilt of her dagger as she gazed past him and into the darkness, as if she suspected some animal or monster had been responsible for the man’s death, and that they might face it at any moment.
Yanko appreciated her alertness since he was wrapped up in the mystery and not paying attention.
“I’m going to go a little farther that way.” Yanko pointed past the lieutenant, in the direction he looked to have come from before he fell.
The Turgonian clasped a fist over his head and drew it down to his groin, then shook his head again. Yanko thought it was a superstitious gesture from their culture, one for invoking the protection of one’s dead ancestors. He’d never seen Dak make it, but Dak was as superstitious as a rock.
“You can stay here if you like,” Yanko told Jhali.
Though he appreciated her watching his back, he hated the idea of exposing her to a danger she couldn’t fight with her dagger. And one he also couldn’t fight with his magic.
“I will come with you,” she said.
He nodded, selfishly admitting to being glad for company, even if he knew he should have tried harder to send her away. It was possible there were threats far back in the caves, but he doubted they were animal or monster.
With his light guiding them, they traveled deeper, the passage narrow but wide enough to walk side by side without ducking. Now and then, gold glinted from the walls, where a patch of gunk had been chiseled or rubbed away.
Yanko wondered if the lieutenant had intended to share his stash with his superiors or keep some squirreled away for himself. What he’d had in his pockets would have been enough to pay for Lakeo’s tuition at the Kyattese Polytechnic, enough for all five years, he wagered. If she’d known that, she might have risked deadly air to come in and snatch some. He supposed the gold was anyone’s to claim at this point. Unfortunately, he knew that as soon as the word got out that it was here, people would flock to the continent from all over the world. His odds of keeping this for Nuria diminished with each passing—
“The smell grows headier again,” Jhali observed.
Yanko paused and sniffed. It had been gradual, so he hadn’t noticed it, but she was right.
“Why would that be?” he mused. “We’ve seen less and less dead vegetation as we’ve moved away from the entrance. And if the deposits on the rock smelled that strong, we would have noticed it all along.”
“It is the same smell that hung around the lake.”
Yanko looked sharply at her. “Are you sure? The entire continent has smelled of dead matter. Kind of a big blend smooshed together, so you can’t identify anything except general decay.”
“This is different. It is the same as the lake.”
He frowned at her, not because he didn’t believe her but because it didn’t make sense.
She lifted her chin—or maybe her nose. “I have excellent olfactory senses. All of my senses are highly trained. There were numerous exercises in my youth. A mage hunter must be able to more than compensate for not having magical acuity.”
“I believe you. I’m just puzzled.”
“About how my superior nose sp
ends so much time around you when you bathe so infrequently?”
He stared at her. “Was that a joke?”
She did seem to be smiling slightly. The shadows made it hard to tell.
“An attempt. I’m not very good at jokes. They were not encouraged in my youth.”
He gazed sadly at her, imagining a childhood full of long days of training, during which joking and playing were not allowed. He’d occasionally lamented that his father hadn’t paid much attention to him when he’d been a boy, other than to insist that he study for the occasional mage tutors who could be lured to the mountains to teach him, but he’d had the freedom to play with his brother and cousins and the neighbor children. They had roamed the trails around his valley, enjoying exploring under the sun and rain and snow.
“You did not like it,” Jhali said. “It is difficult for me sometimes to grasp the difference between playful teasing that someone will enjoy and mean-spirited teasing that will hurt feelings. Admittedly, it is simpler not to attempt jokes.”
“No.” He rested a hand on her arm, not wanting to be the reason she locked up her urges for humor. “It was good. It surprised me because you’ve made so few jokes.”
“Ah.”
“And as for the rest, my Great Uncle Lao Zun…” Yanko paused, feeling a pang of upset as he remembered Falcon’s words that their great uncle had died in that prison camp, that Yanko hadn’t gotten to say goodbye… Aware of Jhali watching him curiously, Yanko swallowed and did his best to put away the sorrow for now. “My great uncle once told me that a joke that ridicules a man’s insecurities will strike to the heart and not be appreciated. A joke that ridicules something he’s not sensitive about or that’s temporary is less likely to cause offense. But the best jokes don’t ridicule another person at all.”
“So teasing your stench would fall into the middle category.”
“Let’s hope it’s temporary. I used to have more opportunities for bathing when I lived beside a lake.” He smiled, but it didn’t last. He turned to face back down the dark tunnel. “Speaking of lakes…”
“Yes.”
As they headed deeper into the mountain, their tunnel sloped downward. Cracks and fissures appeared in the walls and ceiling, making him wonder how stable the area was after the huge upheaval from a few weeks prior. He hoped the Turgonians didn’t decide to toss blasting sticks into neighboring tunnels while he and Jhali were down here.
“I hear water dripping,” Jhali said.
Yanko nodded. “I do too. Even though my senses are only average.”
Jhali grunted. Agreement?
The trickling grew more pronounced as they progressed. So did the smell.
“I’m going to create an airtight barrier around us,” he said. “Just in case it helps.”
“You believe we’re endangering ourselves by going farther?”
Yes, he thought, certain now that there was a link between the lake by the camp and whatever water they were heading to up here.
He was about to say they should stop, that he would use his senses to examine the area ahead further, but his floating light slipped out into a cavern, and water glinted. The yellow globe sailed past a pile of recently chiseled rock and out over a large pool. Here and there, bubbles rose to the surface. Gas? A poisonous gas?
Yanko tightened all the tiny junctions of his barrier.
“That is a large gold nugget.” Jhali pointed to the rock pile. No, the ore pile. “I wonder how the Turgonians knew just where to look.”
Yanko thought of Dak’s words that before mining had grown so common, and all the desirable and easy-to-get ore taken, it had been much easier to find large amounts. He picked up a piece larger than his fist and almost fell over from the unexpected effort of lifting it. Right, gold was heavy. He knew that. But he hadn’t had the opportunity to pick up such large pieces before.
He set it back down, hoping Jhali hadn’t noticed his clumsy lifting attempt. She was at the back end of the bubble he’d created, prodding it with her finger.
“I was going to check the temperature of the water,” she said.
Yanko nodded and moved to the edge with her, the bubble staying with them. He didn’t see any steam rising from the lake so doubted they had found a hot spring. As chilly as the air was in the cave, it wouldn’t have taken much heat to create steam.
Careful to maintain the bubble, he reached out with his mind to sense along the bottom of the lake. He searched for vents or fissures, whatever was causing some gas to rise to the surface. He found them, but he also found life—plant life. The same tubular pink growth that was at the bottom of the lake outside. It was thicker and haler than the vegetation out there, growing all around the vents sending up those bubbles. He couldn’t tell if air or some other gas rose, but he could tell it was warmer around the openings than near the surface.
“It’s not warm,” Jhali said, crouching at the edge. “Not noticeably, anyway. It’s not freezing but—” She shrugged.
“It’s only warm around the vents at the bottom. Come on, let’s get out of here.” Yanko backed away from the edge—away from those plants—and took his bubble with him.
Jhali must have read his concern because she asked, “What’s wrong?”
Fortunately, she kept backing up with him.
“The same plants are growing in here that are in the lake outside. I think they are what’s making people sick.” Yanko barely kept from stumbling over the rock pile as he kept backing up. Realizing the plant wasn’t likely to jump out of the lake and stab him in the back, he turned to face the exit.
“How could plants grow inside a mountain?”
“These don’t use sunlight. We’ll take a long look at Tynlee’s marine biology textbook when we meet up with her.”
Yanko didn’t know how much use it would be since, as Dak had said, this plant life might be undocumented. He might be the first human in history to ever examine it. That would have excited him more if he hadn’t thought it was the reason people were dying. And would he, too, die after two close encounters with it? He imagined a tickle in his chest, strange plant toxins curling down his airways and into his lungs.
Jhali paused at the ore pile, and Yanko stopped so his bubble wouldn’t bump her.
“I know acquiring riches isn’t the goal right now,” she said, looking from the gold to him, “but as you pointed out, I don’t have a means to pay for schooling or anything else I might like to do with my life if my sect and my career are essentially gone. Would it be too selfish and opportunistic to take some of this? I’ve never dreamed of great wealth, but there have been times when a little extra coin of my own would have been nice.”
Her eyes grew wistful for a moment, and Yanko wondered if she would have chosen a different career if she’d had a choice. She’d once bragged of all the mages she’d killed, but hating mages and wanting to be a mage-hunting assassin weren’t necessarily the same thing.
The expression vanished, and her face grew more guarded as she looked at him. Did she fear judgment?
“No,” Yanko rushed to say, not wanting her to accuse him of not understanding poverty since he’d grown up moksu and had never truly lacked. “My only objection would be taking something the Turgonians mined. They don’t have any more of a claim on this continent than our people—less, I would argue—but if they did the work…” Yanko shrugged. Given the death of the soldier, the Turgonians might not rush back down here to claim their pile of gold. “We passed some ore still embedded in the stone on the way in. When we get back to it, I’ll lower my bubble and pull some out for you and Lakeo.”
Jhali’s mouth grew wry. “You don’t think she should lose out for not coming along?”
“No.” Yanko started to say that Lakeo was his friend, however abrasive she tended to be, but he doubted Jhali would want to hear about that. He tried another tactic. “As I mentioned, she wants to study in Kyatt. If she has the money to pay for it, she will move to the islands, and you and she wouldn’t cross paths
for years.”
Jhali smirked. “In that case, let’s get her enough to buy a palace there.”
As they left the underground lake, Yanko thought of the bamboo and wood structure the Komitopis family lived in. It was large and sprawling but definitely not a palace. The climate was pleasant, though, and he could see Lakeo settling there permanently if she went for five years of study and found that she could fit in. She never had in Nuria, despite growing up there. It saddened him to think that he might not cross paths with Lakeo again for years, either, but if it meant she would find a place to be happy, he couldn’t object.
They stopped before they reached the body, Yanko placing a hand on one of the visible veins in the stone. It was gold.
A grumble came from up ahead—he sensed the soldier waiting for them around a bend. Yanko was surprised he hadn’t left and gone back outside with Lakeo.
“Watch for him,” Yanko whispered, trusting Jhali had also heard him grumbling to himself.
She nodded and stepped into the tunnel ahead of him, a hand on her dagger again. Yanko decided he wouldn’t mind having her for a bodyguard if she would be willing. He remembered the quirk of her lips the few times she’d smiled, and admitted he wouldn’t mind her for more than a bodyguard.
He didn’t know why he could let the past go more easily than Lakeo, but the fact that Jhali was sticking with him and willing to put herself in danger on his behalf made him inclined to like her. He felt particularly tickled that she’d essentially said Sun Dragon had been an ass and that he was not.
She glanced back at him, perhaps wondering at the silence, and he blushed and stared at the ore vein. It would be easy to use his earth magic to create cracks around the ore and extract it, but not without making noise. He had to work slowly, and he opted to melt the ore instead of breaking rocks. Even though he believed he was correct, that the Turgonians had no greater claim on these mountains than he did, he doubted the soldier would agree.
The gold, its melting point lower than that of the surrounding rock, soon dripped out of the wall like lava dribbling out of the volcanic tubes on the Kyatt Islands. He made a shelf of air to catch it, cupping it to form a mold.
Great Chief (Chains of Honor, Book 4) Page 12
