The others—Davvi, Nev, Lovisa, the cook, the maid, and housekeeper—would arrange themselves in a line above the cliff, grasping the sheet rope’s other end. They agreed on a system of shouts and tugs for communication, though Giddon wasn’t sure how anyone would be able to hear anything over the crash of the water, or how he was supposed to tug on a sheet rope while clinging to a rock face.
Bitterblue was forbidden from helping, with anything. She was still too high. Nor was she allowed to remain near the hole by herself, where at least she could’ve comforted herself—and Hava—by talking to Hava. She sat against a tree near the rope operation, rubbing her braids with shaking fingers and pretending to be fine.
A sheet rope tied tightly around his waist and groin, Giddon went to her.
“Bitterblue,” he said, crouching before her, meeting her enormous, frightened eyes. “I’m just going down once. I’ll find her and free her. Then we’ll both come back up again. It’ll be over in a few minutes. Okay?”
She whispered, “Okay.”
“The rope is safe,” he said. “We’ve checked and double-checked every knot, and I’ll climb wherever I can to minimize the strain on it. Do you understand that?”
“No, but it comforts me that you do. Will you give me a math problem?”
He would’ve smiled if she hadn’t looked so sick. “Square integers for me,” he said. “When I come back, I want you to tell me how far you got. Okay?”
“You promise you’ll come back?”
“I promise.”
“Okay,” she said.
He kissed her forehead. Then, returning to the others, he approached the cliff’s edge, got down on the ground, and peeked over. The ocean was very, very far below. The water pounded against rock. Giddon saw no cave opening.
He checked with the rope team, swung himself over, and began to climb down.
* * *
—
The cliff face was slippery. Cracks and knobby places abounded, but his cold fingers couldn’t grasp slick rock. He slipped once, his full weight yanking down on the sheet halter, and the team above held on. Below him was the tiniest ledge.
I’ll climb down to the ledge, he told himself. I can make it to the ledge.
After a few more minutes of wedging his fingers hard into cracks, he achieved it, his feet touching down. It wasn’t much of a ledge, narrow, running sideways around an outward-curving bend to a part of the cliff wall Giddon couldn’t see. But it held his weight while he breathed, refocused, and tried to examine his surroundings. He spotted no doorway to a cave.
Giddon took another, calmer breath, quieted his shaking, and looked harder. He saw one bird, then another, come from the sea and shoot straight toward the part of the cliff face he couldn’t see, at a speed that was either suicidal or indicated that there was no wall to stop them.
Then he understood. That was the opening, on the other side of that bend. He began to move sideways along the ledge, trying not to think about how the rope would swing him like a pendulum if he slipped again. The route became smelly, and slimy with bird droppings, then with blood that seemed to be seeping from one of his hands. The ledge grew narrower, and still he saw no cave opening.
Suddenly birds exploded out of rock right beside him, launching themselves across the sea. He nearly lost his grip, it startled him so much, but he steeled himself and kept pushing sideways, knowing it must be near. He stretched, reached, wedged his bleeding fingers into cracks. Yes! He could see it now, a small, dark gap in the cliff! As he neared it, the ledge petered out. For a few terrifying steps, he had to balance his toes on any knobs he could find, straining not to slip.
Finally, excruciatingly, his boots reached the safety of the opening, where he could stand.
A hand grabbed his ankle.
Chapter Thirty-nine
Giddon would have fallen if it weren’t for the solid rock on which he stood.
As it was, he screamed. The others above heard the scream and, with natural misunderstanding, started pulling, so that Giddon was briefly stretched between the rope and the viselike grip on his ankle. But then he got his breath back and yelled up to them to stop. “I’m fine,” he shouted. “I’m fine. Give me some slack, and shift to your right.
“Hava?” he said next to the hand on his ankle, even though he knew this couldn’t possibly be Hava, who was far back in the cave, trapped under a ladder. Giddon had a wild, incredulous idea of who this must be. As the sheet rope loosened, he crouched down.
Another hand came out of the opening and grasped his wrist. Giddon saw a hunched form gray with dust and dirt, a scraggly, dark beard. “You’re safe now,” he said in Keepish, peering closer at a man who stared out of the hole with crazed eyes in a bone-thin face. He looked, and smelled, like the most misused, neglected human Giddon had ever seen, and Giddon realized his guess had been wrong. He’d never seen this man before.
“Giddon?” said the man. “Is that you?”
Giddon, stunned, searched the man’s face. It couldn’t be; he was too small, too old. But then a flicker of something flashed in those eyes, amusement, if that was possible, resolving the man’s face into one Giddon recognized. Tears choked Giddon’s throat. He was going to kill Benni Cavenda.
“Katu,” he said.
“Am I hallucinating?” said Katu Cavenda, one of his hands letting go, his finger touching Giddon’s shoulder with a tentative poke, as if he expected a ghost. He looked like a ghost.
“I’m real,” Giddon said. “Let’s get this rope on you and get you out of here.”
“What’s happening?” he said. “Why are you here?” His voice turned into a cry. “There was an explosion! The roof caved in! I’ve been hearing voices!”
“We know,” said Giddon. “Everyone’s all right. We can talk about it after we’ve gotten you out of here.” Then he shuffled into the cave opening beside Katu and began to unwrap himself from the sheet rope, and Katu began to panic.
“What are you doing?” he cried, knocking Giddon’s hands away from the halter.
“Tying you to this rope so my friends can pull you up,” said Giddon.
“But you can’t stay here!”
“They’ll lower the rope for me after you’re safe.”
“You have to come with me! I’m not leaving you here!”
“Katu,” Giddon said, grasping the man’s shoulder. “There’s not enough rope for us both and the weight would be too much. My friends aren’t going to leave me down here! One of them is your niece, did you know that? Your niece is on the other end of this rope.”
“My niece?” said Katu, in utter disbelief. “Lovisa?” Then his shoulders dropped and he began to sob.
“Let’s get you attached,” said Giddon, returning to his halter. “We don’t want to waste time.”
But Katu was too overwrought. Leaning into Giddon, he shook and cried. So Giddon wrapped his arms around his smelly companion, waiting until he was ready.
* * *
—
Katu had no strength to contribute to his own ascent. Imagining him tipping upside down and sliding out of his halter, Giddon triple-knotted the sheet rope around Katu’s waist and groin and even passed it over Katu’s shoulder once. He tried not to worry about what happened to sheets when dragged over rock with the full weight of a person at one end.
Next, Giddon tugged with the signal that meant “Pull!” Then he lay on his side in the cave opening with his feet braced and his arms and torso hanging over the ledge, so that should Katu fall, Giddon could grab for him. He knew it was unlikely to work, though. More likely, Katu, falling, would bring Giddon down with him. I’m risking my life to save the life of my future wife’s past lover, he thought with a sigh.
Slowly but steadily, Katu rose; he even attempted alertness, grasping for handholds in the rock to keep himself from spinning. When Katu got to the top, the arms of Da
vvi reached down for him. Then, with a flailing of limbs, Katu was on solid ground. Giddon supposed everyone up there must be pretty surprised to see Katu Cavenda instead of Hava. And then he forgot about it, because he needed to get Hava out of there.
Carefully, he felt his way deeper into the cave. “Hava?” he called, his voice echoing.
“Here,” she said, her voice echoing back to him from some distance. “Don’t shout any more than you have to,” she added calmly. “It makes the ceiling crumble. Walk slowly and watch for metal eggs.”
The cave was huge, and curved and strange, like being inside the shell of a gigantic mollusk. There was the hole in the ceiling ahead where light filtered down from the place where the storehouse had used to be, illuminating streaks of floating dust. There were piles of rubble below, broken chests and barrels, glass jars and sacks. Then, part of a metal ladder. Hava’s ladder. Giddon moved as quickly as he could with a light tread.
When he rounded a pile of debris and spotted her, tears began to make paths through the grime on his face, because of how nonchalant she looked. She’d propped herself up against a broken barrel with one leg tucked against her torso and the other extended, her ankle trapped under the ladder as she’d said. Blood was sliding down from a gash on her forehead and she blinked up at him, red and copper eyes, in a face white with dust. And she was reading. Calm as calm, with those dangerous metal orbs scattered around her, with the ceiling caving in and no certain rescue, with that heavy metal ladder pressing down so hard on her leg that Giddon, examining it more closely, became frightened that she might lose a foot, Hava had a notebook open before her and was reading.
But he could hear the quickness of her breath. She was in pain, and she was scared.
“Anything good in that book?” Giddon said quietly, grabbing the ladder to either side of her foot and heaving. Nothing happened. It was the longest ladder he’d ever seen—probably the means of entering the cave from the storehouse—and it was trapped under rubble at both ends. It was also slippery with dust.
“You sap,” she responded, watching the tears run down his face. “Was that Katu Cavenda I heard you rescuing?”
“It was.”
“And here I thought I was alone.”
“He was pretty out of it.” Giddon took his coat off, then, deciding it was too thick for his purposes, pulled his shirt over his head.
“I was hoping for a rescue too, not a striptease,” she said, watching as he wrapped his bloody hands with the sleeves of his shirt, then used them as improvised gloves to grip the ladder. Giddon heaved again, muscles of his arms and shoulders straining. The gloves helped. But still, nothing.
“To the best of my ability to decipher these notes,” said Hava conversationally, “the explosive eggs are made using zilfium and a byproduct of silver refining, among other things.”
“Fascinating,” said Giddon. There was nothing in the nearby debris strong enough to use as a lever to free her leg. There was no way to dig a cavity under it, because her leg rested on rock. He studied the rubble mountain at either end of the ladder, then chose the mountain that looked less formidable.
“It is fascinating,” said Hava, “seeing as the world’s richest known zilfium deposits belong to Bitterblue. Do you understand what she’s sitting on, Giddon? The value of her mountains, economically and politically—militarily—if this is what she could do with them?”
The rubble at this end seemed to be mostly rocks and wood. No metal eggs. Giddon adjusted his improvised gloves, bent his knees, and grabbed the ladder. When he tried to lift it, it shifted, ever so slightly.
“Giddon,” said Hava. “If you can’t get me out of here, promise me you’ll take these notebooks. I think they contain the plans to make the eggs.”
“Hava, love,” he said. “Get ready to move your foot. It’s going to hurt, and I might not be able to lift this thing completely clear.”
Hava looked across at him for one long moment. When a tear ran down her face, she let him see it. “Okay,” she said. “I’m ready.”
With all the strength in his body—with his legs, his back, his shoulders screaming, with his hands tearing and a roar bursting out of his throat, Giddon lifted the end of the ladder.
Shrieking from the pain, Hava pulled her foot through the tiny aperture he created.
When he saw that she was free, Giddon dropped the ladder, then bent over, coughing. Stones and dirt were falling from above, pinging onto the floor of the cave like a hailstorm.
“You okay?” he managed to say.
“Yeah. You?” Her voice was rough.
“Yeah.”
“Let’s get out of here.”
“Yeah.”
“Giddon?” she said as he made his way back to her.
“Yeah?”
She was crying, really crying, which Hava hardly ever did. But the eyes she turned up to him were glowing, with a kind of joy that seemed out of place. “You did good,” she said, and Giddon understood that she hadn’t been expecting to survive this.
Stiff, aching, he pulled his shirt and coat back on, then dropped to one knee beside her. “Did you think I was going to leave you down here, brat?” he said, lifting her into his arms.
* * *
—
It was harder to send Hava up on the sheet rope than it had been with Katu, because she was in so much pain. He strapped her into the halter, then braced himself in the opening as he had during Katu’s ascent. Every time her injured ankle jarred against the rocks, he felt it in his own body. Giddon was feeling everything in his own body. He couldn’t remember ever having been so tired, sore, bruised, and cold.
Then Hava was safe on solid ground, and suddenly Giddon’s heart started pounding. It was time for his own climb back up the cliff. What if now, after all he’d done, he made a mistake? What if, with the team’s arms at their tiredest, the sheet rope at its most tattered and strained, and his own fingers bleeding and stiff with cold, he slipped, and fell? Giddon didn’t want to die. He had work to do. He had happiness to feel. He was a baby; his life had begun anew only a few days ago.
Giddon turned and pushed himself up, walked back into the cave, to distract himself from these thoughts. There was no way to get back onto solid ground without passing through his fear. He would think about the others, who believed he was strong enough to climb back. One, in particular, who wanted him back badly. What a gift, that she wanted him back that way.
Giddon took in the cave one last time. A stalactite near him reached down toward a stalagmite, the two almost meeting in the middle to form a pillar. It was cold in this cavern, stark and strange. What had Lovisa said—that Ferla’s father had used to send Ferla here for punishments? How long had Katu wasted away in here? It seemed impossible that such a place should exist, or that any person should ever discover it. Inhumane that anyone should use it to discipline children. From where he stood, he could see the broken barrels, jars, and chests that must have been stacked in the storehouse a few hours ago. How peculiar to see the results of an explosion from below. “Wow,” he said. The word echoed back to him, soft and deep.
And then he saw a few of those metal eggs, scattered near the edges of the fallen supplies. He studied them; he committed them, and the damage they’d done, to memory. He knew that he was looking at a terrible evil. And though he hadn’t responded to Hava earlier, he understood some things about what it meant. The exploding eggs were an invention that, once invented, couldn’t be un-invented. They were made from a fuel that lived in Bitterblue’s mountains. Hava possessed the plans to make them. And Bitterblue was a queen, with a kingdom to defend, surrounded by militaristic nations like Estill. What would happen to the world, once everyone knew what Benni Cavenda had made with zilfium?
Now Giddon knew he would get to the top of the cliff, because he wasn’t going to leave Bitterblue to find the answer to that question alone.
* * *
—
The climb was exhausting. His fingers were senseless nubs and his arms heavy as iron mallets, and just as useful for climbing. He loved the sheet rope. It was the world’s best friend to humanity. He wanted to bring it home, ragged and dirty as it was, and keep it in a chest at the foot of his bed. Was that strange?
Arms reached down out of nowhere and pulled him over the edge. He heard cheering. He heard himself gasping. Someone untied him and someone else wrapped a cloth around one of his bloody hands. He lay on his stomach above the cliff and hugged the ground.
Then he looked up and saw Bitterblue, still sitting against her tree, staring at him with enormous eyes.
Picking himself up, Giddon went to her.
Chapter Forty
When Nev and Davvi dragged that scraggly gray man up over the edge onto the ground beside her, Lovisa didn’t recognize him. He was a shriveled, terrible-smelling rat and she recoiled, until he looked up into her face. When he saw her, he smiled.
“Katu,” she cried.
“Lovisa,” he said, his smile growing beatific.
Abandoning her rope, Lovisa threw off her coat and gave it to him. When he seemed confused by how a coat worked, she helped him with it, stuck his hands into the sleeves and pulled it over his shoulders, and then she was hugging him, crying, unable to hide how much his gauntness upset her. She couldn’t find the white streak in his hair, then realized it was because his hair was so grimy.
“What did they do to you?” she cried.
“Well, my dear,” he said lightly, resting a tentative hand on her shoulder, as if steadying himself. “I was attacked while I was diving. Next thing I knew, I woke up here.”
“While you were diving! You mean, you were attacked underwater?”
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