The only blessing was that it was almost spring. The icy slopes were impassable in the winter. In the spring, runoff from thawing snow moved mountains. People had crossed the mountains successfully in the spring. More people had died in the attempt.
So, the blessing came wrapped in razor blades. At least she probably wouldn’t freeze to death.
Her decision made, she started over steep hills towards the northern coast, wishing fervently that she had better gear than the two thin blankets she'd packed. It would be a cold night.
The best chance she had, she mused as the daylight began to fade, would be to find some kind of cave.
She didn’t find one. Not exactly.
A hole had been bored into the side of the mountain, braced with wooden struts. It gaped open, scarring the wildness of the mountainside. She stepped over the threshold gingerly, listening carefully for the sounds of people.
She didn’t know how strong the structure was. In a few days, they would probably send a search party. Maybe they would just let her go, but she couldn’t risk being discovered. Finding cover was worth taking a risk.
A few steps into the shaft, she found two long parallel ruts worn into the stone and a couple of pieces of broken plank. Piecing them together, she knew what had been here. Someone had carefully salvaged the valuable iron used to make the rails, but not before they’d carried heavy loads.
Bending down next to the rails, she found traces of very old ox dung. She went in deeper, and the passage continued until she ran out of usable daylight.
It had been a mine, and just as clearly, it had been abandoned. It would do. She left her pack and used the twilight to find what food she could on the hillside. There weren’t many spring greens out yet, but she managed to find enough to fill her belly. It was profoundly unsatisfying, but there would be no chance to forage on a boat.
She didn't dare start a fire with the city so close. Shivering, she gave thanks that the wind could not reach her.
Morning dawned, almost a relief after a night of fitful sleep. She’d woken half a dozen times, stiff and uncomfortable, to pitch black emptiness. The cold reached her bones. Her joints creaked as she levered herself off the hard-packed ground and the blanket she’d wrapped herself.
The last time she’d slept outside, the ground hadn’t been frozen, and she’d woken up to a fire and Harold’s grouchy morning attitude. She missed the company. The warmth. If she turned back time a little bit further, there was Alex, too. Even in the winter chill, they could have wrapped themselves together in blankets, warmed each other.
Her breath puffed out in a cloud as she stretched, as best she could. She didn’t want to pack up her blankets, but she couldn’t afford to damage them, and she couldn’t afford the reduced mobility. She folded them carefully, dreaming of late summer warmth. She’d packed blankets and caught a boat then, too.
Memory stirred, and the beginnings of a plan took form. The last time she’d been traveling under the radar, Alex had disguised her. She’d paid attention then, and she could disguise herself now. With her limited skill, stopping in the Arrosan capital would plainly be foolhardy. Once she made it across the border, though, she would have options.
She could send word. Alex had told her stories about how, with the right disguise, she’d walked right by the people searching for her. Mud already streaked Grace’s cheeks and by the time she reached anything approaching civilization, her best travel-ready clothing would be caked in grime. It wouldn’t be glamorous, but it was enough to move her through the cold and barren forest. She had a goal.
Cheered with the thought, she set off on the hike.
By the time evening began to set in, some of her enthusiasm had chilled. She scrounged a meal of frostbitten greens and told herself that it was healthy and that the cold made the bitter leaves more tender. The argument wasn’t convincing.
She had passed half a dozen abandoned mine shafts. The procession of holes ripped into the earth stopped surprising her, and when the sun began to sink, she began to look for another. The sun went completely, shrouding the entire mountain range in misty grey twilight, before she found another shaft. Familiarity was a mistake, she reminded herself as she walked into it to escape the chilling wind for the night.
Startling awake in pitch blackness, Grace sat up. A fresh scent had hit her nose, disturbing the stillness of the air in the mine. It was enough to send her into motion. As quietly as she could manage, she snatched her blankets and her pack up. They hung awkwardly over her arms as she crept down the tunnels away from the entrance to the mine.
Her caution paid off when she heard another set of footsteps echo loudly off the walls. A glimmer of light appeared behind her. She turned down the first cross path she saw, turned again to reduce the odds she’d be found. Wooden struts pressed up against her back, and she dug her fingernails into them as she fought to quiet her breathing. Her heart thudded too loudly.
Pressed against the wall, she could hear voices growing louder. A glimmer of reflected yellow lamplight moved along the tunnel wall.
“I don’t see why we don’t get a bigger cut,” someone was saying. “They’ve got to be making a mint on this.”
“At least we’re doing better than the scrags,” said the other voice. It oozed smugness like a slime off of a mud pie.
“Low bar,” said the first voice. “We could break our backs doing this, and they should pay us better. We’re proper Arrosan citizens, not like that rubbish.”
The second voice laughed. It echoed across the hard stone walls, sounding nastier every time on every reverberation. “Yeah, and you remember what happened the last time someone tried to negotiate a pay raise. Better a broken back than that.”
There was a moment of pregnant silence. Grace held her breath and tried not to imagine any details.
“That was blackmail,” said the first voice, much subdued. “Anyway, I figure if we’re here, we might mine a little extra. Bring it to market. Those crazy inventors in the square pay top dollar for any scrap of metal they can get their hands on.”
“You really think we can find any metal here? They abandoned this mine because it’s all tapped out.”
The footsteps stopped, just before the cross tunnel Grace was hiding in. “Yeah, you’re right. But that won’t stop us from getting more out of another mine. We just make sure we make our quotas, and everything else will be gravy.”
“Just don’t let them hear you talk like that. They’d have you on trial for treason before you could say please.”
There was some rustling of clothing, and then the footsteps began to go in the other direction.
“Where do they get off anyway? Making like they’ve forced us into all this labor for the good of the country. It’s not like there had never been mines before.”
“Not like this.”
The footsteps and the light receded completely into the darkness, and Grace let herself breathe again. She waited another span of time-- there was no way to know how long-- before she let herself move.
The mine didn’t feel like a refuge anymore. Panic began growing, gnawing at her composure. That could be fatal, to get lost in the mine. She knew, at least, the last two turns she’d taken, and could get back to the main passage. Her heart rate was up, and when Grace stepped back into the main passageway, she realized she couldn’t recall which way to go.
At least there were the grooves where the rail had been, traced into the floor. They had to lead somewhere. She began walking.
There wasn’t any light. Darkness crushed her perception of distance and of time. Her eyes drooped and her legs began to burn. Eventually, she gave in and slept.
She woke up disoriented and hungry. Her eyes adjusted to the dark, and the blocky shapes of the tunnel walls were still only barely-there dark grey shadows against unrelieved black. They boxed her in. She wished fervently that she’d brought a torch, and then she wished even more that she knew how much ventilation these tunnels got.
Stuffing je
rky in her mouth, she set off immediately. There was no reason to delay. She had nearly decided that she’d gone the wrong way when there was a faint glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel. The shadows took on more form. With the pressure of unrelieved darkness lifting off her shoulders, Grace increased her pace.
She still couldn’t tell what time it was or how long the walk took, but she could mark a kind of distance as the light shone brighter and brighter.
Breathing deeply, she hurried toward the light.
Even with the time she’d had to adjust, the sunlight nearly blinded her when she emerged out onto the hillside. She staggered back, closing one eye and then the other to shield them from the brilliant rays. She couldn’t stop walking: she didn’t know if anyone was still around the mine.
Her vision began to clear as she made her way down the hill. By the time she could look around without seeing sunspots, she knew she’d emerged somewhere different from where she’d started out.
Taking a course diagonally up the slope, she climbed just far enough to get above the tree line. The sun told her which way was north, but not where she was. Squinting out over the scenery, she tried to get her bearings.
A valley spread out before her, dense with trees on her side and rocky and barren on the other. On the far side, she could see movement. That didn’t make sense: people avoided the mountains in the spring. A brown path snaked along the trough of the valley to the east before it disappeared behind a mountain. It seemed strange that she’d emerged with the mountains to the west, but she was desperately glad to breathe the fresh mountain air instead of the stale dust-logged air in the mine.
In the valley, sunlight glinted off a row of metal contraptions. She couldn’t identify them at distance, but nothing else gleamed like that. As she watched, a plume of rock dust emanated from an explosion. She’d found the missing metal, but who was blowing up the mountain? And-- more importantly-- why?
Plunging back into the cover of trees, she started back down the slope. Whatever this was would explain the secrecy, the attacks she’d had once she’d uncovered more about the mining. She had to get closer.
Tingles raced along her skin, and she realized had begun to hyperventilate. Forcing herself to hold air in her lungs and slow her breathing, she brushed aside branches.
The undergrowth was thick in the forest, and there were strange, so the going was slow. She picked her way down the mountain, burrs getting caught in her hair.
No one would recognize her now. If she told someone she was a princess, they would laugh.
The farther down the slope she went, the sounds of nature grew quieter and quieter, and twice she had to stop when she thought she heard foot traffic in the woods.
Figures dressed in black swarmed over footpaths, and she had to bury herself in the undergrowth. As she nearly tripped over some dense ivy, she reminded herself that it was lucky the woods were so dense with plants, because otherwise she would have been spotted already. She had come too far to fail now.
Branches crunched nearby. Her muscles jumped at the closeness of the sound, she forced herself into stillness. Aligning her back with the mossy trunk of a nearby tree, she pressed hard into it. The pressure relieved the worst of the tension.
“It’s not reliable yet,” she heard someone say. It was the kind of voice that wore glasses because its owner had damaged its eyes with too many late nights spent in unnatural lighting poring over books. “Half the time it backfires where our people would be standing.”
“But you’re refining it, yes?” The second voice was cold, female, demanding. Chills ran down Grace’s spine. She dug her fingernails into her thigh.
“Yes, of course!” said the first voice. “You’ll remember that when we started, 90% of the cannons had undirected explosions, and I have some ideas. We just need to iterate the design.”
“I look forward to your success.” Footsteps moved away.
Grace was about to edge forward when there was a sound of a stream of liquid hitting dead leaves.
That explained why they’d come so far back into the forest, then. Fabric rustled, and fallen branches crunched.
She wanted to get closer, to find out more, but she was already so close that people had come within yards of her to relieve themselves.
It was too risky. She didn’t know what more she could find out by getting closer. Getting caught might mean she wouldn’t get to convey what she’d learned.
She’d learned enough. She’d learned that they had new, frightening weapons. She’d learned that they still had time to stop this before it started.
She needed to get to a town. Picking her way east, she hiked down the mountain and towards-- she hoped-- civilization.
Spring
Chapter 13
It took three days of miserably slow hiking through dense undergrowth before Grace felt safe enough to emerge onto a clearer path. Branches and brambles had knotted themselves into her hair along the way. She had to keep shaking leaves out of her tunic.
She was glad when the path opened up onto a broad field. Making good time across the flat, clear plain, she scanned the horizon for any trace of civilization.
She found the stream around lunchtime. It was swollen from the runoff as the weather eventually warmed. Little chunks of ice floated on the surface. Boots planted firmly in the muddy ground, she dipped her canteen in anyway. The cold, clear water was the perfect accompaniment to the last of the jerky she had in her pack.
Scrambling back up onto firmer ground, she followed the course of the river downstream. It didn’t matter that she’d run out of food because rivers meant people. She would find a village soon.
Her reward came when the sun had dipped low in the sky and her shadow spread long in front of her. A wooden fence forced her to veer away from the river to avoid slogging through ankle-deep mud on the river bank. She walked along the wall of the enclosure in the dwindling light.
Cows in the enclosure watched her balefully as she moved by them. Perhaps she was the most interesting thing they’d seen in some time, or maybe they were judging her bedraggled appearance. Grace didn’t care.
She crested a rise too gentle to be called a hill and spotted a barn not so far off in the distance. Someone had planted fruit trees around it, and she thought she could see a glimpse of brown dirt that would be a garden as the weather warmed.
A figure emerged from the barn on horseback to herd the cows back into the barn. As she drew closer, she stopped her horse near the fence where Grace was walking.
Grace stopped, too, and called out a greeting. The woman wore a leather vest with many pockets over a blue tunic whose dye had faded. Her trousers were splattered with mud. Wrinkles had begun to form on a face that looked like it regularly saw the sun. A long braid threaded liberally with grey hung straight down her back.
“You look like you’ve come a long way,” she called back over the fence to Grace.
“Yes,” said Grace. “I was wondering if I could trouble you to stay the night.”
“We’d be glad to have you,” said the woman. “It’s not often we get strangers this far into the land. Just go around the front, and I’ll be with you as soon as I get the cows in. I’m Sophie.”
“Grace,” said Grace, watching from the corner of her eye as the woman dug her knee into the horse’s side and finished up the cows.
So the tunnel had gone all the way through the mountains, mused Grace as she turned a corner and walked straight towards the farmhouse. The leather vest and the cow pasture agreed with her haphazard geographical conclusions. She wasn’t sure what that meant for Coura.
The house was of simple construction, clean lines and stout beams of wood. Well-worn paths adorned with squelchy boot prints made a loop between the door, the barn, the garden, and the chicken coop. Daffodils poked up in clumps around the foundation. Crouching down, Grace stroked the bright yellow petals.
“I imagine you want to get cleaned up,” Sophie said from behind her. “Take off your bo
ots so you don’t track mud in the house.”
Grace sat on the broad, smooth stone in front of the door to pick the caked mud off her laces. A minute later, she pulled on them and they came done in a puff of dust. Her socks were wet under the boots, and she pulled those off too.
Barefoot, she padded into the house. Quilts hung on wooden walls in riots of color. The table was covered in a quilted runner, and the wood chairs had brightly-colored cushions.
Sophie emerged from the kitchen carrying a bowl of soup, which she put on the table. “Eat,” she said, casting an appraising look over Grace.
As directed, Grace sat and picked up her spoon. It steamed in front of her, a thick medley of winter vegetables and spices and just enough beef to give it depth. She found it warmed something even more than her skin, which had grown accustomed to the chill.
She had thought it would be more awkward to eat alone while Sophie bustled about the house with her soup in a thick mug, but she found that the soup didn’t last long against her hunger. Before she knew it, the bowl was empty and she was up from the table.
“Is there anything I can do to help?” she asked, looking around at the organized shelves and clean floors.
“You probably want to get out of those clothes. You look like you haven’t changed in a week.” Sophie handed her a bundle of clothing with a pair of thick wool socks on top of it. “You’re a little bit shorter than my daughter, but these should fit. You can wash your things out at the cow pond. Moon’s bright, and they’ll be dry by morning.”
Grace thanked Sophie and pulled on the dry socks. The moon shone bright overhead as she stepped outside.
The water was bracingly cold, but it felt amazingly good to get the dirt off her face and her hands. Steeling herself against the cold, she dunked her entire head into the icy water. Her fingers snagged on tangles. She could feel leaves falling out of it and into the water.
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