Lapis pushed a low-hanging needled branch from her face and peered through a device Caitria called a seefar, an oval, metal cylinder with rubber grips and innards that allowed her to see two hills over without difficulty. No need to peer that far; her targets stood outside Jeri’s den, waving hands and shaking long-barreled tech weapons at each other. An echo of their argument reached up the hillside to her concealed scout group, breaking the blue-skied, crystalline day.
They did not strike her as Meergeven mercenaries, nor the scientists that Bov Caardinva kidnapped, and not just because they lacked a badge to denote their affiliation. Their dress and mannerisms reminded her of Jiy guttershanks. Caitria mentioned Calderton housed a Revechere syndicate base, but she did not know if the two distant places shared a similar style of dress and demeanor.
“Those aren’t locals,” Vory said, soft enough to blend with the crackle of frozen snow.
“They remind me of Jiy undershanks,” Caitria muttered.
“You’re right,” Patch said, his fingers running over the light points on his patch. The new eye could zoom in on far-away objects, and with a press of the bottom of his patch, stopped blinking when it did so. His old set-up always had the lights racing about; improvements galore, thanks to Sils. “I’m pretty certain a couple of them work as Hoyt’s bully boys, and one’s a Beryl agent.”
“Agent?” Lapis asked.
“Like those you fought at the Lells,” he said. “Only he’s all brawn, no brain.”
“He looks like he has one of those gauntlets,” Caitria said in an absent voice, as if she were not quite aware she spoke. “He better hope it doesn’t go up in flames out here. There isn’t a doctor to drag him to.”
Lapis drummed on the rubber. “He might be in charge. He keeps pointing his finger in the others’ faces, and they yell but don’t point back.”
“Well, I’m not certain they’re the ones who injured Jeri.” Vory dropped her seefar and rubbed at her eyes with her snow-crusted, gloved knuckles. “Those rifles don’t make the kind of wound she has. The vet said she thought a tech knife, something with a burning edge, slashed her.”
“The gauntlet wire could have done that,” Caitria said.
“Beryl agents aren’t brave,” Patch said. “They hide behind tech weapons because they can bully those who fear it. I can’t picture anyone working for the syndicate facing a forest creature they thought could hurt them back.”
The men parted with red-faced screams, half storming north of the cave, half storming south. Not one peeked inside the cave, which settled the debate for Lapis. If they thought a gigantic injured animal lay within, they would have kept quiet, maybe even checked.
“Well, now we get to decide whether to monitor them, and if they get in trouble, help, or find their bodies when the snow melts,” Caitria said with a sigh.
“Lorcan will want to know where they are.” Vory planted the seefar against her eyes and viewed the area. “I know the vet wanted us to check the cave, but I’m hesitant to go down.”
“I doubt they’re going to return,” Patch said. “Mainly because I’d be surprised if they’re smart enough to follow their footsteps back around. The finest minds don’t go tromping up unfamiliar mountains when the snows start to fall.”
Lapis lowered her tech and eyed him. “Which is why we’re here.”
He nudged her, his eye twinkling with boyish charm.
The cave sat in a dell, a shadowy blot behind a scattering of trees and boulders. They acted like a windbreak, preventing deeper drifts from blowing across and blocking the entrance. A pond and stream rested across from it, both with an icy crust dusted in frozen sparkles. Scattered, snow-heavy evergreens trailed along the bank, and birds flitted from one to another, singing to each other.
Other than the men’s sunken boot prints, the blanket of glittering snow remained pristine. Stars’ luck, the blizzard obliterated Jeri’s tracks, so no one hunting her could follow her to Ragehill. Unfortunately, while her group scouted in snowshoes, they left a trail any competent individual could trace.
Lapis proceeded down the slope sideways, still uncertain about her step, and grumbled about Caitria and Vory leaving her behind. While she sidled, they hopped, reaching the cave long before she hit the bottom and bustled inside. At least Patch remained with her, though he, too, did more slipping and sliding than shuffling quickly ahead.
They clomped inside, then popped the clips that held the wide straps in place over their boots. The shoes had a metal frame with crisscrossed leather strips that prevented sinking in the soft snow, and which worked far better than Lapis anticipated. She stepped from them and shook the clumps off. Patch retrieved a tech light from her pack, handed it to her, and she gripped her snowshoes under her arm as he slipped his crossbow out of his outer coat pocket. He triggered the unfolding, then nodded to the interior.
She would have worried about tripping over bones and frozen carcasses of prey, or encountering a mate, but Caitria gave her and Rin a fine book on yamir. While written for younger teens, she and the rats devoured it anyway. The rest of the Jilvaynan contingent gathered around, and she conducted a short storytime for the listeners, with the Abastion rebel answering questions afterwards.
Yamir were large herbivores. They ate grass and leaves and water greens, and loved scarfing the bark off the local willows and trandils, both thin-branched, softwood shrubs. They had white fur during the cold season, which changed to a dull brown when touched by midyear warmth. Palm-sized blue eyes with rings and oval pupils defined them, though their blue tongue came in second. They had three toes on the front and back feet, with a vestigial one in back. These toes had curved, sharp claws that dug into harsh terrain.
They lived solitary existences for seventy to eighty years, except when they mated and raised their young. Jeri’s last calf wandered away two years ago, and she seemed perfectly happy to be child-free.
“The shanks didn’t do this,” Caitria said, her voice echoing off the frosty walls.
“No,” Vory replied. “Those mine shafts must extend further than we thought, because who else would be up here with tech?”
Lapis frowned. They sounded . . . odd.
Caitria pointed a head-sized, elongated tech lamp at a black hole that took up the entire back wall. Debris littered the floor, as if someone had blown up the wall. Lapis carefully stepped around the chunks, crunching on the smaller pieces.
To the left, the scattered edges of a nest made from dry grass, leaves, and dirt coated the rocks. Had the fragments pelted Jeri, and she attacked the source of her pain? The book said a yamo’s volatile temper when surprised made them dangerous.
Vory readied her weapon as Caitria’s light slowly illuminated the hole's interior. “There’s blood,” the Ragehill rebel said. “A whole lot of it, too. Jeri didn’t bleed this much.”
“So she probably took out whoever blew up the wall,” Caitria said.
“It’s a good bet. Caiti, can you look down the tunnel?”
The light bathed a black-crusted tech door in a yellow haze, one nearly identical to those found in Ambercaast. A blank screen sat to the side of a sliding metal door settled tight in the stone. This one had deep gouges in the side, so someone had pried it open rather than use other methods, like explosives.
How odd, it sat right behind a thick rock wall. Had it been a storage room, with no need to open the back to the outside?
“Blood leads right to the door,” Patch commented, waving his crossbow at the stains. “So they escaped, if not whole.”
“I’m betting whoever bled died,” Vory said. “Unless the group carted a ton of medical equipment and transfusion stuff with them.”
“If it’s all from one person, then yeah,” Patch agreed.
“I see burn marks on the walls and blood on the ground, but nothing near the entrance,” Lapis said, running her light across the rock. “Jeri probably scared them, they fought and realized they couldn’t win, and ran back to the door, closing it to keep her out.”
“The burn patterns are pretty haphazard,” Patch said. “The shanks weren’t expecting an inhabitant and I don’t think they bothered to get a good look at what they shot at, they just fired everywhere.”
Caitria looked at the interior sides. “I wonder where this leads,” she murmured. “We’re nowhere near Shivers. I don’t recall the histories talking about other mines in the area, but this might be one.”
“The khentauree will know,” Lapis said.
“Jhor thought he’d be able to get Luthier on her feet today.” The light wobbled as the Abastion rebel looked up at the ceiling. “We just need to convince them we’re here to help, unlike the humans who drove them from their home.”
Patch stepped through the hole, his patch awhirl with blue light. “Powder on the ground, inside and out,” he said. “Probably from the explosives. I wonder if they just dumped a bunch of materials here and lit it.”
That sounded like something guttershanks unfamiliar with tech would do; dump everything together and hope it worked. Lapis dealt with the creative shank often enough on rebel missions to know brilliant ideas concerning strange devices exploded into rubbish. Literally.
Vory followed, pulling her own light to illuminate the interior. Caitria slipped her communication device from the front of her coat, glanced at the screen, and then at the backlit entrance. “I’ll report, in case the shanks get ideas and stumble on the hangar,” she said.
“I’ll go with you,” Lapis volunteered. She did not have her gauntlets with her because they did not fit under her coat, but Lorcan loaned her a dagger nearly as long as her blades. If the guttershanks returned, she would make them regret doing so.
The other rebel, with several adjustments, had enough of a signal to cheerfully declare the danger and their intentions. The person who answered told them to use extreme caution, and he did not sound happy about the exploration. Lapis was not, either, but if the shaft led anywhere near the Shivers and could provide a secret way to the villains, all the better.
Patch and Vory had shed their gloves and stuffed their fingers into the holes at the edges of the door, trying to pull the bulky contraption open with their tips. They needed a crowbar. Would a tree branch do?
Her partner jerked up, his patch spinning at an alarming rate. A loud crack resounded from beyond the door. The four of them started, then, without a word, hustled to the cave’s entrance. If the ones Jeri attacked returned for revenge, they probably had weapons large enough to take out a yamo—which would easily fry a human.
Repetition, Lapis thought, as she stared through her seefar at the cave. Her stomach quavered at the thought of someone nasty spying them just inside the tree line and pointing a huge tech weapon at them. The other three did not seem to care, and she failed to understand why; they left a trail a babe could follow as they booked it up the hill and into cover, slipping and sliding be damned.
Had the other scouting groups Lorcan dispatched incurred a similar difficulty? Too bad she was not with one of them; shivering in the chilly wind, squinting through the bright sun glinting off the new snow, bored and happy about it.
She blew out a breath that traveled up her buff and fogged the seefar glass. She rubbed it away and viewed the cave just as a group of fifteen men crept from the entrance, holding two-handed tech weapons, looking suspiciously around. They immediately noticed the shanks’ trails and pointed and waved their arms. They appeared better-equipped weapon-wise than the Jilvaynans, but their black uniforms did not seem warm enough for the post-blizzard, high-mountain cold.
In fact, she regretted only wearing a buff and not what the Abastions jokingly called a cold helmet, a knit that covered the entire head with one oval slit for the eyes. Vory wore one and seemed toasty.
“Interesting.” Patch pressed his fingers against his patch. “They’re Black Hats.”
Lapis frowned. “Black Hats?”
“They have a V on their berets and I recognize a couple of them from the Nightmarket confrontation with Requet. I’m betting they’re part of the group he took along for the ride when he left Jilvayna. Vory, no one’s said anything about a skyshroud, have they?”
“No. We’re very careful to watch for them, too. They tend to fly over these mountains, and they’re capable of taking out Ragehill if they realized we existed.” She sucked in a deep breath. “This is concerning. We knew someone showed up at the Shivers—they made a racket. We know the underground from Jiy is in Calderton. But we haven’t heard of or seen another force in the area.”
Their reaction, their uniforms, Vory’s words, pricked at Lapis. “What if we’re thinking about this wrong? What if the Blackhats just arrived, the blizzard hit, they took shelter in the first cave they found, and didn’t realize Jeri was inside. They freaked out about an animal taller than they are, shot at her, she took a few out and ran away. Maybe their weapons produced enough damage to the back of the cave, they realized a tunnel lay beyond, so they blew it up and found the door.”
“Which would explain the gouges on our side of it,” Patch said. “I wonder why they didn’t just blow it, too.”
“Maybe they ran out of explosives. They don’t seem to have extra equipment with them.”
The Black Hats noted their snowshoe trail and split into three groups of five men, each taking one of the trails. Without proper equipment, they sank as deep into the snow as the shanks.
“Wondrous,” Vory grumbled.
“Do you think they’re on Requet’s or Kayleb’s side?” Lapis asked.
“Depends whether they think Kayleb deserted them when Requet took off.” Patch shook his head. “Since we don’t know, it’s best if they don’t see us.”
Caitria adjusted her scarf, staring absently at the struggling men. “I bet they left the door open,” she said.
“Caiti!” Vory protested.
“It’s the best chance we have of getting inside,” she reminded her.
“Come on,” Patch said. “We can hide in the depression behind that fallen log. We’ll wait til they follow our prints past us, then sneak back into the cave.”
“I’ll warn the hangar, once it’s obvious that’s where they’re headed,” Caitria said.
Lapis dug as fast as the Abastion rebel, packing snow from the hollow into the surrounding bushes to create a barrier, while Patch and Vory did a quick and dirty hide of their tracks. They swiped a broken branch with needles still attached around, disturbing enough snow that the snowshoe prints just seemed another bit of it. They tossed tree litter across the sparkly surface as a last touch, then they all hunkered down in the cleared space below the fallen trunk.
Sitting sideways so the shoes did not point up proved uncomfortable, and the icy snow penetrated Lapis’s coat and clothes. They all shivered, so she did not feel so out-of-place, but she hoped her muscles remained loose enough she could race back to the cave without wincing in pain the entire trip.
Patch used a twig to knock away the powder piled against the bottom of the log so they could see the trail. It took longer than she anticipated for the men to tromp into view, one plowing ahead through the soft snow and appearing winded, while the others followed in his wake.
The Black Hats spoke Ramiran, and none appeared too happy—or maybe their predicament upset them. They motioned to the snowshoe trail, flipping hands on wrists, grumbling. They noted the disturbed snow, and as one, they pointed their weapons into the forest and studied the laden earth surrounding them. A quick conference ended with them continuing to follow the tracks towards the hangar, though they hunched over and glanced back several times before the wood swallowed them.
Caitria retrieved her communication device from the front of her coat and tugged her glove off. She pulled her scarf from her mouth and blew on her fingertips before sliding them across the screen. “Caitria reporting,” she whispered. “Black Hat mercs following our trail to the hangar. We don’t know their loyalty, so they may or not be of informational use. We think they left the door in the cave open, so we’re scouting ahead. Caitria out.”
The one who took the call got one screeching syllable out before she ended the transmission. His eyes crinkling in humor, Patch pressed his patch, peered around, then hustled them back to the cave.
No wonder the two of them got along so well. Lapis should have realized the woman’s adventurous streak when she braved merc-infested forest to search for Tovi and Vali. She should have realized that Faelan would not hold someone who lacked courage as a close confidant.
She glanced at an unhappy Vory, feeling more a kinship with her than with their excited companions. They should tromp back to the hangar and get backup. While the Black Hats did not have the hard edge Gredy’s boys or the Red Tridents possessed, they still did not have much care for those they used. She predicted a violent reaction if they came across a group of unknowns in the supposedly vacant wilderness.
Her partner raced inside and stepped from his snowshoes without care. He must not have detected guards. Caitria and Vory helped them secure their shoes to their packs, and all four trotted to the door.
At least the nice mercs left it wide open for them to traipse through.
Would they return? Probably not, or they would have left guards who could drive off scary creatures.
The other side was as unremarkable as the cave; cracked, hanging tech screen near the door, rocky floor, rocky walls, a string of broken lights running down the center of the ceiling. No doorways exited the tunnel, no other gaping holes led to it. They swished their lights about but saw nothing interesting.
“No interference except for the rock, unlike Ambercaast,” Patch said. “There’s more than one signal my patch is picking up.”
“Let me check,” Caitria said, shrugging out of her pack and pulling her bulkier square tech device out. Patch took the lead, Vory the rear, as the rebel turned dials and tapped at the screen. “Hmm. It looks like a repeated signal, likely an emergency one. It’s pretty weak, so whoever they’re trying to reach probably isn’t going to get it.”
She adjusted more parameters and noise crackled from the speaker, low enough their footsteps drowned out most of it. Lapis could not distinguish words, but her companion shook her head.
“That’s Ramiran,” she said, putting her ear closer to the speaker. “I bet the mercs are calling for help, and they’re not going to get it.”
“Requet isn’t someone who gives a shit about paid scum,” Patch muttered.
“That’s what Neassa said. I don’t think a flattering word concerning him has escaped her mouth. She’s really taken Midir’s disdain to heart.”
“Redeemable and quality aren’t bedfellows where he’s concerned.” Lapis inwardly sighed at the sarcasm lacing her partner’s words.
The words switched from Ramiran to Lyddisian. “Lieutenant Yordan here. We’re snowed in. Coordinates 8259 crossed 11.”
“What system is that?” Patch asked, his brows knitting. Caitria shrugged.
“Four men deceased, three down. Immediate evacuation requested.”
“They want to leave?” Vory asked drily as the message repeated.
“Lucky them, we’re answering,” Lapis said. “So, how many do you think they left with the injured?” Her companions eyed her, then Patch raised one shoulder in a lopsided shrug.
“If they follow a typical merc or syndicate set-up, they probably have two-and-a-half dozen. Depends on whether Requet knows that or not. He’s good at throwing a lot of people at his problems, hoping to intimidate through numbers.” His eye glinted in dark expectancy. “View this as an opportunity to stick that ass where it hurts—taking his backup away.”
The tunnel continued its unremarkable way. Blood stains darkened the stone of the ground every so often. Musty odors rose from the disturbed layer of dust coating the rock, which Lapis took to mean the place had lain dormant for six-hundred years. Nothing else met her senses.
They reached a cracked cement staircase with a collapsed railing that went down two stories. An uneasy crawling dread wormed up her spine; no hiding places presented themselves, so if the mercs returned or nosy shanks investigated the cave, they had no concealment options. They really should have gone back to the hangar and gotten more help; four against fifteen plus unknown others with tech had terrible odds.
“There’s a cavern ahead,” Patch said. On alert, they entered the humongous space and looked for a place to hide. Several nooks and crannies had bat guano, though no current inhabitants. Lapis breathed in relief when light reflected off dirt-crusted, stacked metal crates with a worn flying bird stamp on the curved edges and no animal waste in sight. They hustled over and squatted down behind them, then turned off their lights.
The only illumination came from the soft green glow of Caitria’s screen. Both she and Patch conducted scans while Lapis huddled into a ball, memories of darkness and Ambercaast slamming into her. The wait in the science outpost storage room while khentauree banged on the trapdoor, the wait for backup with Brander in total darkness, the wait in the locker . . .
She fell back into her twelve-year-old self, struggling through the forest at night, headed towards Coriy, knowing bad people might find her, kill her as they had her family. She jumped at branches breaking, at owls screeching, at insects buzzing a merry tune. The days faded into a blur, but she remembered the nights, how they bore down on her, surrounded her, how her arms prickled and she cried, aware she would attract the attention of those hunting her, aware she could not stop.
Her partner slipped his arm around her shoulders and pressed his cheek against her hair. She slid her palm over his fingers, wishing to touch warm skin rather than have gloves between them, but cold appendages would not do when she might need to use her digits quickly.
“The distress signal’s close,” Caitria said, her voice a soft patter against the ears. “They’ve probably camped in an adjacent room.”
“I detect heat further that way.” Patch pointed to the area left of the entrance with the tip of his crossbow. “There’s something odd in a series of larger caverns that way,” and he nodded backwards to the darkness behind them, “but unless we visit, I can’t tell exactly what that might be.”
“Odd, like how?” Caitria asked.
“Mixed signals concerning tech.”
“I’m not picking up much tech using this,” and she hefted the device, worming her lips to the side. “Maybe I need to invest in an upgrade.”
“Your hand-built stuff is fantastic, Caiti,” Vory said.
“Yeah, but it’s failing compared to Patch’s patch.”
“It’s giving us different information,” he denied. “It’s not failing, it’s adding to what we know. So, we want to go introduce ourselves to a few mercs?”
Lapis bottled up the scenarios that raced through her mind at the thought of her too-eager partner marching into a nervous merc camp and declaring his intentions. She was an adult, she was brave, she could follow his lead. The dark would not frighten her, Black Hats would not frighten her . . .
Caitria held up a finger. “I’ve an idea.” She pulled out the smaller device she used to contact the hangar and slid her fingers around on the screen. “Hello!” she said brightly.
Confusion raced through her. What?
“We are locals from Ragehill Farm, and we heard your emergency signal. Please respond if you hear us.”
They waited a breath before a voice blared through the speaker. “Hello? Locals from Ragehill Farm?” Such panic and hope, in that tone.
“Yes.”
“I’m Sef. We’ve been snowed in, and we have injured. Can you help?”
“Our local yamo, Jeri. You must have startled her, because she leaves humans well enough alone for the most part. But because we live around her, we have medical equipment to deal with yamo injuries. The emergency signal gave strange coordinates. We don’t know how to find you.”
“Oh.” They heard rummaging and a quick conversation in heated Ramiran. “I don’t know.” Frustrated anxiety rang through his tone. “We’re in a cave. That thing. Yamo. Jeri. Whatever. It was inside. It attacked us, it left, we took a tunnel from there to a cavern.”
“You poor dears. We’ll be there as soon as we can.” Patch rolled his eye at the sugary sympathy, and Lapis smacked his side. Caitria played a role, and she did it with zeal. She doubted any merc listening thought her anyone but a local answering the emergency call. “What does the area around the cave look like?”
“It’s in a little valley, stream running through it. Lots of trees.”
“OK. We know the dens Jeri uses, and I think I know where you’re at. We’re going to need someone to stand at the entrance to meet us. How many of you are there? What equipment do you have? We have vehicles that can glide on the snow, but we need to know how many to bring.”
“Oh, um, yeah. There are twenty-one of us. And . . . and four who didn’t make it.” He rushed on, though his voice trembled. “We can put someone at the front of the cave. A group of us went on a scouting expedition. I’ll tell them, so they don’t attack you when you show up.”
“Please don’t. We are trying to help.”
“I appreciate that, thank you. Thank you.”
Definitely a grunt. No one in charge would sound so grateful and thank a rescuer like that. A leader would find the offer suspicious, even if it came with the best intentions.
“All right. We’ll be in contact in a bit. Just listen for us on this channel.”
Vory’s half-lidded lack of amusement struck Lapis as funny, in a cringy way. Caitria beamed at her before tapping on the screen. “Hey, guess what? Have I got a job for you!”
The aghast disbelief in the person who answered elicited snickers. They retrieved Lorcan, who agreed that the farm could house a transient merc group, and agreed that grateful men would more readily answer questions about why they stomped into inhospitable mountains during a blizzard. Would that not be grand, to weasel info out of them when they did not realize who they imparted it to?
Caitria gave them the emergency channel before the signal deteriorated into static and bouncing, pointed into the darkness. “Let’s go check out that strangeness,” she said.
The tunnel was as unremarkable as the previous one. How different, from the places Lapis and her companions walked in Ambercaast. She knew the terrons performed upkeep on the tech attached to doors because it kept out the carrion lizards, and the khentauree maintained their living quarters, but the tunnels as a whole appeared in better condition there. How much reconstruction had the Meergevens done?
She brushed her boot tip over the ground, but the dust only covered rock; no dilapidated tracks or empty grooves to hint someone pried them up. The Taangins must have used another form of transport to get mine goods to the entrance—if this section were part of a mine. If Ragehill began as a military base, perhaps these tunnels had a similar origin.
“This is weird,” Vory said, craning her head about. “This place doesn’t look like it’s been touched since Taangis retreated. They left supplies behind, and we know from the histories people snagged what they could when the conquerors vacated. Why ignore a trove of goods?”
“I don’t know.” Caitria wobbled her head about as she studied the square device’s screen. “I wonder if they knew about the khentauree and fear of strange mechanical beings kept them away.”
A soft blue light bloomed ahead. Patch stopped, ran his fingers over his patch, and concentrated.
“I’m not picking up any heat,” he said. “From any kind of source. But there’s a frequency lower than what we can hear.”
“Let me see if I can detect that,” the Abastion rebel whispered, fiddling with the knobs.
Lapis stared at the glow, her throat constricting as the fine hair on her arms prickled. “That’s aquatheerdaal blue, like the glow in the baubles the Meergevens put in the khentauree,” she said.
Patch held up his crossbow. “Be ready,” he murmured.
