“Best addition to their hoard ever,” Zina had to agree.
“Does this mean I can have my two-dollar coins back?” Trent asked, as Dusty and Goldie scrabbled at the opal, snapping gently at each other as they clearly squabbled over who had the better claim to the beautiful prize.
“I guess you’ll have to ask them,” Zina said, laughing a little. “But right now… well, how do you suppose we can get out of here?”
“Hmm,” said Trent, looking around. “I suppose we could always –”
He didn’t get the chance to explain what his plan might be. Zina held up a hand, cocking her head to listen, and he fell silent.
“Do you hear that?” Zina asked in a whisper, not sure if she should dare to hope she was right. She could only just hear it herself: the soft, butjustperceptible buzzing sound of a hand-held mechanical excavator, like the one Trent had brought down into the mine with them.
After a moment, Trent nodded. “I do.”
“Do you think it’s Euan and Hector, or some of Sumner’s goons?” Zina asked, hearing the tension in her own voice.
“I guess we can only wait and see,” Trent said grimly.
In the end, they didn’t have to wait long – after just a few minutes, rocks and small stones began to fall away from the wall of rubble that cut them off from the rest of the mine shaft, until the few falling rocks became a small landslide. Zina picked up Dusty and Goldie – ignoring their outraged protests at being moved away from the opal they’d found – and moved away to a safe distance, just as Trent did the same with Quicksilver. Zina stared at the newly created hole in the rubble, watching as it got bigger and bigger, waiting to see who’d emerge from the other side…
“You two in there? Hello?”
Zina let out a long, slow breath, relief flooding through her.
Hector.
“Yeah – we’re in here, Hec,” Trent called back, and Zina could hear how relieved he too was in his voice. “And it’s not just the two of us. We had some stowaways, as it turns out.”
“Huh?” Hector sounded confused, but then his head and shoulders appeared through the hole he’d dug, his eyes sweeping over them before landing on Goldie, Dusty and Quicksilver. “Oh – shit!”
“It probably turned out for the best, to be honest,” Trent laughed, as he rubbed Quicksilver under its chin, eliciting a loud purr. “This little one might have saved my bacon. Well, and left a geological mystery behind for some future archaeologist to discover.”
Zina turned to him, raising an eyebrow. “What do you mean?”
“Well… let’s just say it learned how to use its basilisk powers at the best possible moment it could,” Trent said with a smile, as Quicksilver rolled over to get its belly rubbed, its six tiny legs all wiggling in joy as Trent complied.
Zina stared at him a moment, her mind whizzing. Then, she realized what he meant. “The Bloodhound?”
“Yeah – though he turned out to be more of a Bloodcrocodile. Anyway, whatever the case, he’s very much a statue of a Bloodcrocodile now, thanks to Quicksilver.”
“O-Oh,” Zina murmured. She gazed down at where Quicksilver was wriggling and purring as Trent scritched its belly – it seemed impossible that such an adorable little creature could have such a terrifying power.
I guess we’ll just have to raise it to make sure it understands just how powerful it is!
“Huh, lucky for you guys we got here when we did,” Hector said, interrupting her thoughts as he climbed through the hole he’d made, now big enough for him to clamber through, and followed a moment later by Euan. “What was your plan for getting out of here, just out of interest’s sake?”
“We didn’t have one,” Trent said evenly. “Things kind of… well, they got complicated. You can read the report – right now, I think we just need to get out of here. And have a shower. I have shards of rock in my underpants, pretty sure.”
“Okay, well, thanks for informing us of that, mate,” Hector muttered.
“How did you know where to find us?” Zina asked, and Hector grimaced.
“I spotted some goons – who I assumed were Hargreaves’s goons – coming out of a hidden exitwayover on the other side of the mine,” he said. “That was when I realized this place covered a much bigger area than any of us realized –andthat you guys might be in need of some help. So I flew down and gave them a bit of biffo, just to attract enough attention to draw their friends out. It was a bit like shooting fish in a barrel after that – I almost felt bad about it.”
“You did not,” Euan retorted. “You were having a great time, swooping down on them from above and scaring the living daylights out of them before knocking them unconscious.”
“All right, yeah, thatwasfun,” Hector said with a grin. “After that, it was a case of ‘follow the sound of the explosions.’ That usually leads us to where Trent is.”
“Well, I suppose I shouldn’t argue with that, in case I seem ungrateful for the rescue,” Trent shot back. Pausing, he glanced over his shoulder – and after a moment, Zina realized he was looking at the opal seam Dusty and Goldie had found. “Just before we do actually get out of here, can I ask you to use the excavator to do me a favor? Or rather, do Dusty and Goldie a favor?”
