Yara stirred, and rubble sloughed off her as she sat up. She looked at Maldynado’s hand, but was apparently too battered to bother berating him for touching.
Sicarius had his eyes closed, head tilted to the side. Listening for more attacks? Amaranthe didn’t hear anything except for periodic shifts of dirt and pebbles trickling to the earth.
“Are we going to be able to get out of here?” Sespian asked.
He sounded calm, despite their position and the blood trickling into his eye from a gash on his brow. Good, nobody was panicking yet.
“Of course.” Amaranthe bumped Sicarius’s arm with the back of her hand. “Right?”
Sicarius eyed the walls of rock. “We’re not far from the tunnel exit, though bringing down the cliff might have compromised the entrance area and caused a landslide.”
“I’m going to call that a yes,” Amaranthe said.
“Optimistic,” Sespian said.
“Yes. Yes, I am.” She flung open the toolbox, or tried to. Flying rocks had dented the lid and warped one of the hinges. The box creaked open slowly. “Grab tools, everyone. Let’s see if we can dig our way out of here.”
“Uhm.” Maldynado looked back and forth from the toolbox to the walls of boulders surrounding them. “Unless you’ve got a steam tractor tucked inside there, I don’t see how-”
Amaranthe cut him off by pressing the coal shovel against his chest. “We’re getting out of here.”
“What if the enemy is waiting outside?” Maldynado asked.
“I doubt they’ll stick around all night.” Amaranthe selected an axe for herself. It wasn’t an ideal tool for digging, but it ought to be sturdy enough to lever rocks aside. “They’ll probably think they’ve buried us alive.”
“Then… they’ll probably be right,” Maldynado said.
She scowled at him. “You aren’t digging yet?”
Maldynado lifted his hands. “All right, boss, I’m digging.” He headed for the side of the cab that was only halfway hemmed in.
The rubble appeared less dense on that side, and Amaranthe spotted an open area at the top of the tunnel. Though no drafts of cool air whispered down from above, she thought that might be a route of less resistance. Basilard and the others were rooting through the toolbox for something suitable. Sicarius had slipped out past Maldynado and was squeezing through a gap between two boulders. If there was an escape route there, that’d be fantastic, except that it was pointing in the opposite direction, to the rear of the train instead of toward the exit.
Amaranthe pointed at the gap near the tunnel ceiling. “I’m going to climb up there and have a look.”
“Be careful,” Sespian said.
Sicarius, who hadn’t quite slipped away into the darkness, paused to look at Sespian and then Amaranthe. She could never guess at the thoughts going through his head, but feared they might have to do with their conversations regarding non-sentimental words to convey sentimental feelings. It wasn’t the time to worry about it, she told herself.
“Thanks, Sire,” Amaranthe said. “I will.”
She thought to send a similar warning to Sicarius, but he had disappeared into the dark crevice.
“Where’s he going without a light?” Maldynado asked.
Amaranthe didn’t answer. She climbed past Maldynado, hands gripping rock cold with the mountain chill. Pebbles shifted under her feet, but she managed to squirm up the stone wall to the gap. There was room for her to lie flat on her belly with her head brushing the stone ceiling, but not much more. She doubted the bigger men could follow her, but it hardly mattered. A few feet ahead of her, the rocks filled the gap, creating a solid wall from floor to ceiling. She crawled toward it anyway. Maybe it was only a couple of feet thick and she could dig her way through the barrier. She refused to believe that it was impassable. She hadn’t put this much effort into rescuing Sespian just to have her team die in a cave-in.
Chapter 18
After an hour of digging and prying at the rocks with the axe, Amaranthe returned to the cab. New gashes adorned her knuckles, and the shoulder wound she’d taken earlier burned like a furnace. Even her back and neck ached as a result of trying to dig from such an awkward position.
Unfortunately, the others had made little progress, unless she could count the dented lanterns someone had found and lit. Sicarius wasn’t back yet, so maybe he’d discovered something, though she didn’t find it encouraging that he’d been heading toward the end of the coal car instead of the tunnel exit.
With shoulders slumped and weary expressions on their faces, Maldynado, Basilard, Sespian, and Yara looked as tired as she felt.
“This could take days,” Maldynado said, leaning on his shovel.
“Unless we run out of air before then,” Yara said.
Amaranthe groped for something optimistic to say. “Books and Akstyr will have missed us by now. Maybe they’ve flown back down the mountain, found the landslide, assumed we were in it, and are seeking a way to help us escape.”
Unless they tangled with that nightmare craft and are now dead, Basilard signed.
So much for optimism.
“Is there any food?” Sespian asked. “Or should I attempt to look particularly unappealing in case your team resorts to cannibalism?”
That earned him a round of surprised stares.
Sespian cleared his throat. “It was a joke. I hope.”
“We have plenty of food, Sire,” Amaranthe said.
Maldynado lifted a hand to his mouth and leaned close to her. “You’re not going to feed the emperor those awful Sicarius bars, are you?”
He wasn’t quiet enough with his whisper, for Sespian asked, “Sicarius bars?”
At that moment, Sicarius appeared out of the darkness and climbed into the cab. So much dust covered him that none of his clothing remained black.
“One bar,” he said, “provides all the fuel you need to perform adequately for the day.”
“But they taste awful,” Maldynado said.
“That is irrelevant.”
“They’re made with brains,” Maldynado said.
“Yes, and liver and hearts,” Sicarius said. “Organ meat is nutrient-dense and rich in fats that can sustain you for long periods of time. The Zeyzar, a tribal people in Moratt, regularly feast on raw tripe, brain, and heart, and they-”
Amaranthe placed a hand on his arm. “If we’re going convince the emperor to try them, you might want to stop talking now.” She pointed a finger at Maldynado. “And you, shush.”
Maldynado lifted his hands and blinked innocently.
“Not… human brains, right?” Sespian asked.
“Of course not,” Sicarius said. “The average human has an abysmal diet. I wouldn’t wish to fuel my body with meat from such an impure source.”
Yara gaped at Sicarius. Maldynado lifted a finger and opened his mouth, but seemed to think better of commenting, for he shut it again. Sespian looked… horrified. Amaranthe realized it hadn’t been exactly clear that Sicarius objected to cannibalism for more than dietary reasons.
She gripped his arm before he could say anything else, grabbed one of the lanterns, and pointed him toward the gap he’d been investigating. “Why don’t you show me what you found out there?”
Sicarius gave her a curious backward glance but let her push him out of the cab. On their way out, Amaranthe heard Sespian mutter, “That man is a ghoul.”
She winced because she knew Sicarius would hear the comment too. When he paused, Amaranthe waved him toward the crevice. A vaguely puzzled expression put a dent in his usual mask, but he led the way into the narrow passage.
“I didn’t find anything useful,” Sicarius said. “There’s an area that survived the cave-in, but it’s blocked beyond that.”
“Just keep walking.”
That earned Amaranthe another backward glance, but he continued deeper, alternately turning sideways and ducking to maneuver past boulders and jagged slabs of cement.
“I take it back,” Amaranthe said when they came out into an open area-and when she deemed they were out of earshot. “Don’t try to bond with him. You’re too…” She groped for a tactful way to say he was too inhuman for most people to relate to, but failed to find one. “You’re too you,” she finally said with a sigh.