Yarina eyed her with distaste. “Then you may not want to be anywhere near Calimber.” She glanced between me and Maz with hard eyes. “Now tell us what you found in the mine.”
Everyone around the table perked up. Even Helene seemed begrudgingly interested.
I met Maz’s eyes, and he nodded for me to take the lead. Either to finish his second plate of food or because he didn’t want to talk about it yet. Or both.
Swallowing my reluctance, I told them of the mine. The forge. The cavern. The prisoners. The beach. The missing ship.
Maz pitched in with details here and there. Others asked questions. When I started speaking of the prisoners, Helene sent Isabel to play with the dog and her lizard in another room.
Which was fortunate when I reached the supervisor.
“We followed my marks back out of the tunnels,” I continued. Maz tensed. “But a supervisor stopped us to ask for our papers. Said we weren’t due for another three weeks with the next shipment of prisoners.”
Maz shot me a look of relief, his shoulders dropping. There was no need to announce the reason we were stopped. The others didn’t need to know about Bruna.
“What did you do?” Nikella asked, looking as though she already knew the answer.
I stared down at the empty stretch of skin on my finger. I hadn’t worn my father’s ring long enough to leave a mark, yet I still felt its lingering presence. It was good that I’d left it behind with Frieda.
You are not worthy to wear a king’s ring, that voice from the Abyss said.
“We had no papers and couldn’t speak without giving ourselves away, so I killed him,” I said in a dull voice. “We made it look like a tunnel had collapsed on him.”
Kiera drew in a sharp breath. “And no one saw you?”
I hesitated.
Maz sighed loudly, abandoning his last chunk of bread. “A few prisoners were there.” He glanced at Sigrid. “I saw Bruna, and that’s why the supervisor stopped us. She helped us hide the body.”
Sigrid’s eyes lit up. Then she scowled, pointing her knife at her brother. “You weren’t supposed to talk to anyone, Mazkull! Fucking Four, it’s not that hard! You could’ve?—”
“She’s alive, Sig,” Maz said softly. “She’s waiting for us to come get her.”
Sigrid suddenly became very interested in the single piece of bacon left on her plate. Her heavy blond braids slid down to hide her face.
Yarina patted her on the back, then glared around the table at us. “We are getting Bruna out, right? And everyone else?”
“Aiden and Maz barely escaped last night,” Nikella said. “A rescue would take a great deal of planning.”
Yarina slammed her fist on the table, making Helene jump. “I say we just bury his fucking forge, along with the rest of his bloody sunstone, and take the prisoners with us when we’re done!”
Sigrid nodded heavily. Jek grunted in agreement. I looked across the table to Kiera.
She was already staring at me. Her spine was straight, her eyes harder than I’d seen them. “Agreed. Can it be done?”
“Oh, sure, with a few thousand warriors and a couple of warships, we could take Calimber no problem,” Maz said bitterly.
“We have a ship,” I replied. “And that supervisor told us where we can get another.”
Maz stared at me in disbelief. “The Shadow-Wolf prisoner ship?”
I nodded. The idea had been coming to me in bits and pieces since last night. “We useMynastra’s Wingsto intercept the prisoner ship. Once we take it, we sail into the bay—Skelly’s crew disguised as Wolves and us as prisoners—and anchor at the beach without raising suspicion. Then we infiltrate the mine, burn down the forge with the stolen fireseeds, and escape with the prisoners.”
“And what of Dracles’s army?” Jek asked, stroking his silver beard. “The supervisors would notice a fire and escaping prisoners and sound the alarm. Soldiers would overrun us before we made it back to the ship.”
“That’s why I said weburythem,” Yarina growled. She gestured at Nikella. “You made excellent explosives for us in Aquinon. Why not for the mine?”
Nikella pursed her lips, deep in thought. “I could figure something out,” she said. “But it would be dangerous. And the prisoners would have to be out of the mine before the explosions. The timing would need to be precise.”
