“Work,” she told herself. “Focus.”
While thumps, groans, and gunfire continuedat the mine entrance, her fingers flew. The drill itself was easy,but the motor took a steady hand and a lot of squinting, given thepoor light. More than once, she fumbled a small screw, and itbounced onto the uneven floor to hide in a crevasse. At least shehad all the parts she needed.
A clash of steel announced the end of Cedar’sbullet supply.
Kali lunged to her feet, remembering he hadtaken her cartridges but not her rifle. She grabbed it and dartedto the front of the mine. She almost stumbled over an inert body onthe way. A bullet had taken one of Sebastian’s men in the eye. Shegulped and stepped over him.
Cedar stood a few feet from the hole, hisback toward her, his sword poised and ready. Blood spattered hisshirt. Not his, she hoped.
“Cedar,” Kali said, not wanting to startlehim, not when he held that sharp blade. “Here’s my rifle.”
Before he even turned around, she was leaningit next to him. She had to get back to the drill so they could finda way out of there.
Thunk!
A tin can bounced off the wall and landed onthe ground. Fire spat and hissed at the end of a fuse.
Cedar lunged, snatching it and hurling it outof the mine in one motion. Inches above the entrance, it explodedwith a flash and a bang that thundered in Kali’s ears. The walls ofthe mine shuddered, and dirt and rock rained down. Black powdersmoke hazed the air, and its pungent smell flooded the tunnel.
Before Kali could scramble back from theentrance area, Cedar grabbed her rifle. With smoke blanketing theentrance, he used the opportunity to stand straight, his head andshoulders above the hole in the ground. The rifle cracked severaltimes.
Outside, screams of pain erupted.
Kali closed her eyes and reminded herselfthese men had intended to hand her over to gangsters-or worse. Shehad no idea how Cedar could see his targets through the smoke-theymust not have moved after the explosion-but she was glad for hisaccuracy.
“Pace yourself,” she said. “I need five moreminutes.” She ran back to her workspace.
Gunfire answered her, and she glanced back intime to see Cedar duck low. Dirt knocked loose by the bulletsspattered his head and face, but he gave her a somber nod and wavedfor her to go.
Kali dropped to the floor before her drill.The construction was complete. It just needed a power source.
She slipped a flake of flash gold out of hervial. Despite the need to hurry, she took the time to cap thecontainer and tuck it back into her sock. If the goons outsidefound that vial, it would end up in the hands of some criminal.It’d be hard to deny the existence of flash gold after that, andshe would have even more people hunting her.
The flake pulsed as she tucked it into a slotshe had etched for it next to the motor.
Streaks of lightning coursed up themetal-reinforced wooden shaft, merging and sparking above the drillhead. The air crackled around the tool, and energy hummed up Kali’sarms.
“You could be less obvious about yourpresence,” she told the gold chip.
It throbbed in response, and one could almostbelieve it sentient. Not for the first time, she lamented that shehad not inherited either of her parents’ gifts for sensing andmanipulating otherworldly elements. She could instill commands intothe gold, something her father’s research said most people couldlearn to do, but she could never make more of the substance.
Kali pressed her thumb against the flake andclosed her eyes to concentrate. With such a small piece of gold, itdid not take long. It could not accept a complicated imprint, butit would do what she needed.
“Spin and hammer,” she whispered to it,imaging the actions she wanted the drill to perform.
The pickaxe point twitched, then rotated.Though slow at first, the revolutions soon picked up speed. Ithitched with each revolution, thanks to the haste she had used onthe chuck, and the perfectionist in her growled at the hiccup, butshe reminded herself the tool need not last for long. It wasworking. That was all that mattered.
Kali touched the drill bit to the closestwall. The hitch grew more noticeable, but stone sheered off asreverberations coursed through her body. Tiny shards pelted her,reminding her of the shrapnel from her smoke nuts.
She dug out her snow goggles, grabbed thelantern, shouldered her pack, and ducked into the three-wayintersection. Cedar knelt beneath the entrance, like some knightfrom centuries past, his sword point pressed to the ground beforehim, his hands atop the hilt, ready. It had grown quiet outside.The men must have paused to concoct some plot-or build anothergrenade.
“I’m going to make a backdoor.” She heftedthe drill.
He gaped at the tendrils of lightningstreaking along the tool’s shaft. She wished she had time to buildmore of a casing to hide the telltale signs of the magic, but, withluck, nobody except Cedar would see the drill.
“If you could arrange some extra noise,” Kalisaid, “I’d appreciate it.”
He dabbed at a cut dribbling blood into hiseye. “You don’t want much, do you?”
Kali winked. “I just want to make sure youearn your fifty percent.”
Cedar tilted his head, listening to someconversation outside, and she left him to his work. Later, shecould ask him if his spying had given him a bead on CudgelConrad.
With the whirring drill in one hand and thelantern in the other, Kali delved deeper into the tunnels. Alabyrinth of passages spread out around her, and she soon wonderedif the owners of the claim had mined beneath the adjoining parcelsas well. If so, she hoped they had scraped all the gold out ofSebastian’s land. Had that bastard even intended to mine, or hadthis all been a setup to capture her and turn her over to somegangster? He must think her a delightful idiot for showing up andsleeping ten feet away from him. If not for Cedar’s scheme, shenever would have come up here, but even with that excuse she wishedshe had been too vigilant to get caught.
A likely dead-end opened to Kali’s right andshe stopped, figuring she had better choose her spot before thetunnels wound her around so much she ended up drilling out rightbeneath Sebastian’s toes. She thought she was under the trees now,several dozen meters from the river, but the permafrost kept rootsfrom piercing the ceilings anywhere. She hoped the tunnel had notslanted down, putting a dozen feet of earth above her head. Cuttingthrough more than a couple of feet would be a tall order, even fora flash-gold-powered tool.
She lifted the tip to the low ceiling. Thoughit lacked the grooves of a typical drill, the pickaxe “bit” spunand pulsed so rapidly it ate into the dirt and stone anyway. Beingon the other end of the tool jarred her to the core; her teethrattled, her body quaked, and her joints ached as if she were theone being drilled, not the rock. Dust filled the passage and sooncoated her tongue and nostrils. Clumps of dirt and rock fell,pelting her on the head. Too bad she did not carry a helmet as wellas goggles in her pack.
Too slowly for her tastes, a concave holeformed over her head. She went slower than she wished, conscious ofthe noise the activity made. If Sebastian heard the drill and hadmen standing at the top when she broke through, she would have madetheir situation worse, creating two entrances to guard instead ofone.
She should have created something capable ofissuing loud booms and given it to Cedar to use as a diversion.
“Kali?” his voice came from the tunnelsbehind her. “Which way did you go?”
Unease roiled in her stomach. If he hadabandoned the entrance, that must mean it had been breached.
“Back here.” She lowered the drill.
“Don’t stop,” he whispered, appearing out ofthe darkness. “If I did it right, your distraction is coming.”