“If it eases you any,” Yerin said, “now the scales are even better for you. You're hungry for them, and so is your little baby chick here.”
Lindon refocused back on the task at hand. The Sylvan Riverseed was an interesting problem to consider later, but for now, they needed to hit the Sandviper mining operation soon. His information was less valuable by the day, as the guard habits changed, and the Arelius family could arrive any time to put an end to it all.
“I'd suggest you get ready,” Lindon said. “We need to go as soon as we can.”
Yerin tapped her fingers on her sword, and Lindon felt as though a blade had passed through the air just in front of his nose. His eyes widened, sure that she'd just used a technique.
Then strands of her hair drifted down. It was razor-straight again, hanging down as though it had been measured to end exactly at her eyes in the front and exactly at her shoulders in the back.
“Straight and clean again,” she said in a satisfied tone. “Now I'm ready.” She eyed his head. “I can have a try at yours too, now that it's getting a little overgrown.”
He held up his hands, hoping she wouldn't start blasting invisible sword madra at his head. “I could use some more time.” For one thing, he could get some sleep.
She shrugged and walked back to the corner of her cabin, where she knelt on a cushion for cycling. “Pop in when you're ready. If I'm not here, I'm out hunting.”
He left her to it, walking back through the dark, though he almost fell asleep on his feet before he made it back to Fisher Gesha's barn.
At first, the plan worked flawlessly.
They crept in just before dawn, in Sandviper sect outfits that Lindon had made himself. The furs came cheap from the Fishers, who would never deign to wear the same clothing as their rivals, and their Goldsigns were faked through pieces of green dead matter he'd scavenged from Gesha's supply.
He was proud of himself for that, actually. The little Remnant-creatures attached to every real Sandviper's arm couldn't be duplicated, but he had buckets full of pieces from Sandviper Remnants. Four green legs and a serpentine tube sewn onto a sleeve, and he had something that—from a distance—would pass as a Sandviper's Goldsign.
Yerin's was harder to hide. She couldn't control the bladed arm on her back as well as he thought she should, so it had taken them almost an hour of bending and folding to get it stuck between her furs and her pack. But with the bear-like head of a dreadbeast over her hair, hide concealing the red rope around her waist, and her sword-arm hidden, even Lindon had trouble recognizing her.
He had to admit, it was satisfying when these all-powerful Golds scurried away at a single sight of his Sandviper uniform and an angry scowl.
They'd positioned the Thousand-Mile Cloud behind a tent, close enough to be summoned but not so close that it would give them away. His usual pack was waiting with the Cloud, in case he needed anything from within, and the one he was carrying now contained only the spider-construct.
Everything slid smoothly along, even up to the point where they reached the cages.
He'd worried that he might not be able to find his old cage, but he did so almost instantly. This would be his test case, and ideally a way to survive the prisoner uprising.
Glancing around assured him that everything was in place. Yerin was loitering across the lane, close enough to help if needed. The wagon backed into place almost exactly as he arrived, giving him the fleeting joy of seeing elements of a plan slide neatly into place.
Reaching into his pack, he slowly—and with many a glance around—extracted one of Gesha's spider constructs. The spider was inert, curled up into a ball, and though it stored enough energy for independent action, the crystal chalice would be swiftly depleted and its actions would be limited. It would be best to control this one directly, before guiding it to cages down the line.
The cage was mostly empty space, with only three dirty figures huddled inside. He ducked to get a glimpse at each one, but the one-eyed woman wasn't there.
He'd known that was a possibility. Gesha put the miners' survival rate frighteningly low, and the last he'd seen the nameless woman, she was being beaten with a sword.
Too easily, the image came to mind of himself, tucked in a filthy blanket just like the rest and sent day after day into the waiting horrors of the Ruins. The pyramid overhead seemed ominous now, like a monster looming over the corpse of its prey.
With a flicker of his madra, the spider surged to life, slicing across two points in the script according to his instruction. The scrape of spider's leg against iron was surprisingly soft and quick, leading him to wonder what the construct was made of. If it cut iron so easily, he could think of a number of other uses for it.
Finally, he directed the spider up the bars and to the roof, where the final loop of the script-circle was located. This had taken him three days of observation to realize; though he was only an amateur scriptor, he could tell that cutting two of the loops wouldn't be enough. Leaving the final link on the roof made sense from the Sandvipers' perspective, given the risk that one of the prisoners knew some sacred art that could cut iron even with their spirits suppressed by collars.
A scripted key would have simplified this process, but he'd never found one unguarded, and stealing it could have risked everything.
Seconds later, a soft whisk came from overhead as the spider sliced through the last of the protective script. Lindon pushed the door open, wincing at the squeal of hinges, and directed the spider back into his pack.
Even that paltry few seconds of action had drained one of his cores almost completely, and he would need to cycle according to the Path of Twin Stars to restore his madra. In the meantime, he drew power from his second core.
The three figures in the cage all moaned and backed away from him, but as the spider clambered into the pack behind him, Lindon sank to his knees. “Look at me,” he whispered. “We don't have much time.”
Even less than he'd imagined, as he found out immediately when Jai Long stepped out from beside the scale wagon.
The sight of the tall spearman in the mask of red cloth scrambled Lindon's thoughts for a second. He'd already cast his mind forward, to the next steps of the plan, to the things that could go wrong. Jai Long stayed in his tent in the mornings, Lindon had observed that for five mornings in a row, and idle comments from some of the other Sandvipers suggested he'd done the same thing for as long as he'd known them.
But there was still the possibility that he wouldn't notice anything. If he'd just decided to stretch his legs and get a lungful of morning air, he would just brush past two “Sandvipers” going about their ordinary chores with hardly a glance.
That hope died when Jai Long turned his head to look straight at Lindon.
“To save face for the Fishers, I will keep you as miners instead of killing you as intruders. You have my word.”
Lindon's head was still spinning. They hadn't even done anything yet. Where had he gone wrong? Was there an alarm attached to the script-circle on the cage?
No, he was certain there wasn't. The script connected to nothing, it was all self-contained around the cage. It couldn't have activated an alarm, or he would have found it. What, then?
Yerin, meanwhile, had immediately drawn her white sword against young chief Kral. He wore black furs, finer than those of his subordinates, and he still gave off the air of unimpeachable dignity even while holding an awl in each hand.
Jai Long didn't even look to the side, where his young chief faced Yerin. He remained focused on Lindon, spear propped against his shoulder.