I marched out of the cave with Maz fast on my heels. I could almost feel him vibrating with things to say, but we couldn’t speak here.
We passed another prisoner lugging a bucket of rock. I veered down the tunnel that would take us deeper into the mine. Purpose burned beneath my skin, leaching out any lingering fear.
The passage snaked downward, then opened up into the giant cavern from my memory. Soaring support beams pierced the cave ceiling. Wooden scaffolds wove over the rocky walls, prisoners lining them like ants. Sunstone shimmered in the rock like veins of black blood. Hammers pounded. Chains clanked. And the only human sound was that of helmeted supervisors barking orders from a raised platform in the middle.
It was like I’d stepped directly into one of my worst memories. Nothing had changed.
Except me standing here in an enemy uniform instead of the torn, dirty clothes of a prisoner.
But the burning in my heart was the same.
I needed to be here. I needed to end this.
“We should move quickly,” Maz muttered.
“Ships, then prisoners.”
He gave the barest nod.
We darted into one passage, then another, and then another. My breath came shorter, more stifled, with each turn. Gods, I didn’t remember this many tunnels. Weylin, and then Renwell, must’ve dug deeper into the cliffs, and not just for access to the sea.
I started marking the ones we turned into with a slash of my sunstone knife. It cut through the rock like it was sand.
Occasionally, the walls shuddered around us. And every time, my whole body tensed. There had been several cave-ins when we were prisoners here. All of them deadly.
Perhaps Renwell would bring down the mine before I could. But he probably wouldn’t get the prisoners out first.
I walked faster.
We ran into several dead ends, each filled with prisoners carving out tiny bits of sunstone.
Every time we backed out of a passage, I gave it another slash.
Finally, we chose a tunnel that smelled of the sea. My boots sank deeper into the damp earth, which gradually turned to sand.
The tunnel spit us out onto the beach.
A huge ship floated in the bay. The incomplete hull of another rested on a bed of logs.
We’d seen three when we rowed through the canyon. And the one at anchor didn’t look like it’d been through a battle. Which meant the third—the one that had attacked the Urzost village—was elsewhere.
My scowl deepened.
Prisoners swarmed over the beached ship, hammering boards into the hull. Renwell must have enough prisoners to work them in shifts, day and night.
Soldiers watched over them or sat around fires, drinking and eating.
No one had noticed our arrival yet.
I darted behind a large pile of rubble, Maz following, and we crouched, peering from behind the rocks.
“I count eighteen soldiers,” I muttered. “In addition to those on the cliffs.”
“At least thirty or forty prisoners,” Maz breathed. “It’s hard to tell them apart.”
I nodded, staring at the floating ship, plans building in my head.
Maz pulled back and nudged me. “There’s some fancy soldier down there by the unfinished ship. The general?”
