The soldiers were quieter than they'd been on the way north.
Not exactly subdued. They were talking and eating when they stopped, arguing mildly about inconsequential things, the way soldiers did to remind themselves they were still ordinary people in an ordinary situation. But the quality of their noise had changed.
There was a carefulness to it now. A restraint.
They'd been in the tunnel. Most of them hadn't gone far enough to see the chamber — Marson had kept them in the upper sections for cataloging — but they'd felt it. I could see it in the way they moved. The slightly wider spacing between the men. The way their eyes moved to the skyline more often than they had on the way up.
Edran sat down beside me during a rest break, his right hand flexing and curling with the automatic regularity of someone who had made it a habit.
“Amarya?”
“Mm-hmm?”
“Those stones in the tunnel,” he said quietly. “The ones in the ceiling.”
“The diamonds,” I said.
He looked at me sideways. “Is that what they are?”
“That's what I'm told.” I shrugged. “We call them ice rocks.”
“Ice rocks.” He was quiet for a moment as he mused that over, looking at the white expanse ahead. “They were moving.”
I turned to look at him properly. “What do you mean, moving?”
“The light in them.” He frowned, as if trying to describe something that didn't quite fit the words he had. “It was moving. Like… like something breathing. I thought I was imagining it.” He glanced at me. “Was I imagining it?”
“Anyone else see it?” I asked him softly.
“More than me, not all.”
I held his gaze steadily. “You weren't imagining it.”
He nodded slowly. The nod of a man who had suspected as much and had hoped to be told otherwise. He got up and moved away without another word, and I watched him go, thinking about the pulse in the column and how it had synced with something in my chest, and wondering how many of the others had felt something similar but hadn't said it.
Like before, rest stops were brief. I was watching a storm approaching from the west and mapping potential spots to stop and shelter. It was so vast and open, I wasn’t sure if I should stop us now and dig us out a small shelter, something to burrow against when the storm came.
Nicco waited until the group had settled into the rhythm of the march before he spoke.
“The tracks,” he said. Not loudly, a conversation just between us.
“What?”
“You have a theory.”
I gestured to the sky. “I have a snowstorm coming our way.”
He looked at where I pointed, sniffed, and dismissed it. “It’ll be fine.”
I didn’t hide my shock. “Um… I think I’ll be telling everyone to stop.”
“Why?” He looked around. “It’s a snowstorm. We know what to do. Let’s keep moving while we can.”
“Who died and put you in charge?”
He grinned at that. “If you were alone, would you stop?”
I didn’t look at him. I very purposely refused to look at him.
