“Hmm,” J’lantir murmured consideringly. “Fire-lizards can do it, so I can’t imagine that watch-whers could not.”
“It won’t work,” Nuella said sleepily. Kindan started: He had thought she was asleep. “They have to see where they’re going, and they see heat,” she explained.
“So?” Kindan said.
“Ah, I see what she means,” J’lantir said. “A dragonrider has to give the visual reference for his dragon. So only a wherhandler who could see heat could give a watch-wher a proper visual reference.”
“And no one can see heat,” Kindan agreed glumly.
“I can imagine it,” Nuella murmured from her perch on Kisk.
“Why did you want to know?” J’lantir asked Kindan.
“If watch-whers could go between they might be able to rescue people, to bring them out of cave-ins and such,” Kindan explained.
“An excellent idea, Kindan,” J’lantir agreed. “Truly excellent. It’s a shame that it won’t work.”
“Goo’ ’dea,” Nuella agreed sleepily. She yawned and rolled over, facing away from them.
“Well, thanks anyway,” Kindan said, turning to join Kisk and Nuella on the shed’s straw floor.
J’lantir reached out and tousled the youngster’s head. “It was a good try, Kindan.”
Kindan was correct in his assessment that Nuella would be grouchy until the dragonrider returned. He spent several days cheering her up, enduring endless barbed comments from her, before he got her to agree to go back into the mines for more training.
“But only if you agree to explore every bit,” Nuella demanded. When Kindan agreed, she said, “We can go down when the shifts are off.”
The miners worked in the mine only three days in every sevenday. Two other days were spent grading and bagging the mined coal, felling more timber for shoring and supports, and general work around the camp. The last two days were left free for the miners, with the exception that everyone had to help on Camp matters, like quarrying for stone, repairing the road, or making furniture and crockery.
The pumps were the only parts of the mine that were constantly manned. Natalon would never allow a build-up of bad air. Not only would that make it impossible for the miners to return, but it would also allow any gas that leaked out of the exposed coal to accumulate in pockets large enough to cause an explosion, like the one that had killed Kindan’s father and brothers.
“Let’s start with the street Tarik’s working on,” Nuella suggested once they were in the mine and a peeved Dalor was on watch at the hold’s entrance to the secret passageway.
Kindan readily agreed and they turned north from the mine shaft to walk toward Second Street. Kindan had learned how to keep his pace count going while he was thinking or even talking—mostly through painful thumps from Nuella when he forgot.
“You’re even more blind down here than I am, Kindan!” Nuella had cried the last time he’d been forced to admit that he’d lost his count. “That’s it! From now on, you’re going to wear a blindfold,” she had declared. “You’ll have to rely on Kisk and your pace counts to avoid banging into things.”
She’d handed him a dirty scarf that she’d brought along to use as a mask against the worst of the mine’s dust. “You can put this on.”
When Kindan protested, she had told him, “Look, what if there’s a cave-in or something and all the glows are out? What will you do then? If you know your paces, and you’re comfortable in the dark, you won’t panic. And if you don’t panic, you’ll be able to help others.”
Kindan had been convinced. From then on he had donned a blindfold the moment they had safely exited the lift at the bottom of the mine shaft. And, apart from some truly amazing bruises on his shins, Kindan had walked unscathed. The bruises had faded as he learned to keep his count and to trust his memory. But privately he admitted to himself that his mental map of the mine was nowhere near as detailed or accurate as Nuella’s.
Now Kindan felt for joists by delicate touch—having removed several splinters after the first attempt—and walked with something approaching Nuella’s flowing grace.
When they came to Second Street, the tunnel down which Tarik’s shift worked and hauled out coal, Kindan checked for supports on either side of the junction. Nuella waited patiently after her own cursory inspection.
“I’m ready,” Kindan said, turning back around with his right hand trailing along the tunnel wall. He found the turn onto Second Street and started counting the paces to the street’s joists. After fourteen paces—ten meters, the usual interval for the first set of supporting joists—he grew puzzled. After twenty-one he grew alarmed.
“Did you feel any joists?” he asked Nuella, who was walking up the street on the left-hand side, opposite Kindan.
“No,” she said, sounding concerned. “Should we go back and check again?”
Kindan struggled with the desire to remove his blindfold and won, remembering Nuella’s sharp hearing. She’d know if he took off the scarf—the sound of rustling fabric would be a dead giveaway.
“Yes,” he told her, lowering his hands.
Nuella giggled. “You were going to take your blindfold off, weren’t you?”
Kindan let his sigh answer her. He counted his paces back to the entrance, turned, and carefully walked forward, searching for the joists. He stopped at nine paces.
“I feel something here, but it’s not like a proper joist,” he said. The wood was thin, and as he stretched his hands to touch the ceiling above him, he could only make out a thin beam of wood overhead.
“It’s not thick enough,” Nuella agreed. “Or wide enough.”
“It’s like half or even a quarter the usual,” Kindan said.
It was like that the whole way down the tunnel, they discovered. Kindan’s alarm grew as they made their way down. There were numerous side avenues dug off the street, more than he would have guessed.
“It’s almost as though Tarik has started mining this street,” he said. He knew from discussion around the Camp that the mine was supposed to be thoroughly explored before full mining would commence—and that the “room” mining would begin at the far end of the mine, away from the mine shafts so that any cave-in wouldn’t block rescuers. “This is bad,” he said.
“Yes,” Nuella agreed. “Father must not know—he wouldn’t allow it.”
They completed their exploration of Second Street and all its adjoining avenues with their nerves on edge. Nuella did not object when Kindan suggested that they change their exploration to First Street the next time they entered the mine.
Kindan hadn’t forgotten his notion about watch-whers rescuing people. Every chance he got, he tried to arrange an experiment to test Kisk’s capabilities, or to teach her something new.
But when he said he wanted to see how she might excavate a trapped body, Nuella would not allow him to try.
“Look, all I want to do is cover myself with some coal and have Kisk dig me out,” he’d protested when she’d first vetoed the idea.
“What if you get hurt?” she demanded. “What will we do then?” And, despite all Kindan’s arguments to the contrary, she absolutely refused to go along with it. What surprised him was that Kisk backed her up—he had expected that the watch-wher would accept his direction without dissent.
“Okay, okay, you two ladies win,” he grumbled in the end. His comment earned him a swift jab from Nuella.
“It’s not that we’re ladies, you fool, it’s that we’re being sensible,” she snarled at him. She sighed and added, “If you’re determined to practice this, let’s do it up in Kisk’s shed first before we try it underground.”
Reluctantly, Kindan agreed.
Kindan and Kisk returned to the shed, having seen Nuella safely back to her second-floor room in the hold. Kisk was still playful. Tired, but resigned to the need to wear Kisk out, Kindan decided to teach her a modified form of hide-and-seek. He would hide under the straw, which let him lie still, quiet, and almost asleep, while she would search for him.