“A sand-runner could crawl up your leg, and you would not notice,” he projects, dry as old bone. Annoyance clouds his thoughts. “Your eyes are open, but do you see anything besides the female?”
I bristle, lips peeling back just enough to show fang. “I am guarding.”
“You are thirst-mad,” Zan answers, his disapproval clear. “But do not worry. I will watch the tunnel, since you are only watching her.”
“Let us move,” I growl back.
He snorts, but turns toward the dark.
We step into the tunnel together, the cool breath of the deep path washing over us.
Time to go stab the water.
Chapter 7
EVERYTHING IS TRYING TO KILL US, INCLUDING MY SELF-CONTROL
SARVEN
The water at the high tunnel smells wrong.
In the way of new stone. Stone that has been broken recently. It is sharp. Uneasy.
I do not like it.
Mih-kay-lah walks close at my side, the handle of her basket gripped in one hand. Every time the tunnel narrows, her arm brushes my hip.
My dra-kir stutters every time.
Ahead of us, Haroth and Kelvan lead the way, their glows bright enough to paint the walls in soft gold. Haroth uses his spear like a probing claw, tapping at the floor, as if he can irritate danger into showing itself. Kelvan’s gaze keeps going up, not down, tracking fine cracks across the ceiling.
Behind, Zan takes the rear position. That is fitting. He trusts nothing. Not stone, not air, not his own shadow. It is good to have his suspicious ears back there.
“The tunnel is old,” Zan projects, dragging his claws along a veined section of wall. Stone flakes away under his touch in a way I do not like, and I suddenly realize there are a lot of things I do not like.
The mountain’s deep groan echoing ahead? Threat.
Dry pebbles crumbling from a ledge? Threat.
The white puff of cold from Mih-kay-lah’s mouth, condensing in the chill as we ascend? Threat.
Before, these were just… sounds. Textures. The normal language of stone.
Now that she is here, everything is a potential enemy.
I am becoming more suspicious than Zan.
Zan, who once spent an entire sol watching a single boulder because he did not “trust the way it sat.”
“The tunnel is old,” Haroth answers, his mind-tone calmer, “but not so old it should be falling on our heads. Maybe it is only testing us. To see if we are worthy of clean water.”
“Stone does not test,” I snap. I nudge a loose pebble with the side of my foot, sending it skittering into the dark ahead. “It only waits for fools to step wrong.”
The thought comes with a growl slipping out of my throat before I can catch it.
Mih-kay-lah glances up at me at the sound.
Dust.
