Alvin nodded at me, once, then folded himself into a calm cross-legged sitting position as Luis and I worked.
I wasn’t sure, really, which of them I feared more. Edie, for her petulance and rages, was certainly the more volatile, but Alvin… Alvin had control, and no kind of real moral compass that I could determine. He was polite, and cold, and empty.
I almost preferred Edie’s fury. It seemed more… honest.
Chapter 8
AN HOUR LATER, we’d moved so much earth and stone that Luis called a rest, and I sank gratefully down against the cool clay wall, gulping down sweat-warm mouthfuls of water until the plastic bottle was dry. “Eat,” Luis told me, and pressed an energy bar into my hand. “Then have more water, but slowly. We’re sweating it all out.”
I nodded. I didn’t feel hungry, but he was right—I needed to keep my energy levels high. The power he was channeling was burning through both of us, and despite the fact that we were literally grounded by—surrounded by—earth, the task was growing rapidly more difficult. As we drove deeper, the pressure on us, and the earth through which we moved, grew more dense. I felt filthy—my clothing clinging and heavy with sweat and caked mud, my skin smeared and as damp as if I’d just emerged from a salty ocean. And yet I was chilled, and grew more so the longer I rested. The damp, cool air made me feel every ache in my much-abused body.
I had time to examine the damage to my left arm, and used a little power to smooth the jagged metal back over the broken cables. It would take time and concentration I didn’t have now to fix everything—if I survived, which was far from a given just now. I did not favor our chances. Most of my arm was dead to sensation now, though the first two fingers and thumb could still curl, grip, and hold, and there were ghostly echoes of touch available from them. The Djinn had done damage to me, but it would have likely torn off a flesh limb. I’d been lucky.
“We’ve only got about another hundred feet,” Luis told me. I nodded; I could also see the glow of the Wardens in Oversight, like fireflies trapped in a bottle. They were all alive, though some were prone on the ground—sleeping or unconscious. “Once we break through, we heal whoever needs it, rest, then start the trip back. We’ve been lucky so far. Maybe it’ll hold out.”
By lucky, he meant that the Earth herself didn’t seem to have objected to our journey under her skin; it was a dangerous place for Earth Wardens, although it was equally powerful… a bit like Weather Wardens traveling by airplane. We were completely at the mercy of our element here, and never more than now, when the Earth herself was at least partially alert to the presence of Wardens pricking her skin. It would be a mere shiver for her to crush us here… or dispatch a wave of Djinn to destroy us.
I hoped she would not do that, because Alvin’s abilities horrified me in ways that Edie’s did not.
“I wish we knew what was going on out there,” Luis said. “Orwell said they still had a few days to make port. Maybe they’re making better time than expected.” He was trying to be hopeful, but we both knew that what the Wardens could do now to control any Djinn-fueled disaster would be like spraying a fire extinguisher on a lava flow. “Seattle seemed to be holding its own.” He didn’t mention Portland.
I handed him another bottle of water, which he sipped in carefully controlled doses. I tried to emulate him, though I wanted to guzzle it as quickly as the first. My body seemed deeply starved for moisture. “We need a day off,” I said, and that startled a low, bitter laugh from him. “Perhaps a vacation.”
“Yeah,” he agreed. “On a nice white sand beach, with the sun shining and a cool breeze blowing. Turquoise blue ocean. Maybe a couple of palm trees. Definitely some cold cerveza.”
It sounded peaceful, I had to admit, though I had no real experience of the sort of thing he was speaking about; I’d seen photographs, and I could imagine it would seem relaxing. “Perhaps it would be a bit dull for us,” I said. That got a less bitter chuckle.
“Girl, I’m definitely hoping for dull. Way too much adrenaline on this ride for me, you know?” He put his arm around me, and for a moment, at least, I felt as if I could breathe easily. Luis had that effect on me, though I don’t think it was any sort of magic. Just… love.
Its own kind of magic, most likely.
We finished our water, made sure the children had finished theirs, and then began the sweaty, brutal work again. A hundred feet became fifty, then twenty, then ten.
And then we broke through into a cavernous space, dark and echoing, and heard a glad outcry from the other side. The first opening was small, but not too small for a dirty arm to be thrust through, to grab Luis’s hand. The babble of words from the other side made it impossible to pick out anything in particular, so Luis pulled free, bent lower, and yelled, “Get back, all of you! Coming through!” He waited for another fifteen long seconds, then said, “Here goes!” and sent a last shockwave of power through the wall of tightly packed clay and till, and it crumbled in a shower and pulled into a pile behind the four of us. As the dust settled into a dull gray cloud, I was snatched into a desperate hug from a woman I didn’t know; she quickly abandoned me to throw her arms around Luis, but I was instantly assaulted by yet another grateful Warden. There were too many of them, and all too grateful.
No one tried to hug Alvin, and those who dared approach Edie received a furious glare that warned them off. After the first rush of overwhelming glee, the Wardens began to sort themselves out into individuals for me.… The one with the most presence seemed to be the smallest, a middle-aged man with a barrel chest, dressed in the grubby remains of a quite nice business suit. The tie was long gone, but he’d kept the jacket, and his pale blue shirt remained relatively clean. “Thank you all,” he said, and held up his hands for quiet. The chatter among the other Wardens died down, as if they had become used to following his lead; that surprised me, because there was a strong-faced older woman in the group who I’d have pegged as a natural leader at first glance. There were two other women, one thin and athletic, one much rounder, but taller. The other two men were as different as possible from each other; one was a sullen-looking young man in a battered T-shirt and mud-caked jeans, and the other was a silver-haired, dignified old gentleman in walking shorts and a brightly colored, squarishly cut shirt. “Thank you so much for coming for us. We were starting to think we’d been left for dead.”
“Not at all,” Luis said. “Believe me, you’re needed up top. It’s our job to get you back in the fight.”
“It’s still a fight?” The older man looked surprised. “I thought it’d be over by now.”
“If it was over, they wouldn’t be here to get us,” the horse-faced woman said, and offered her hand to me. “I’m Salvia Owens.” Under the coating of grime, her skin was a dark brown, and her eyes seemed to have a green tint to them in the glow of Luis’s self-contained, floating light, which had brightened to show the group.
I shook and said, “Cassiel, and this is Luis.”
“I’m Mel,” the man in the business suit said. “That’s Will, Carson, Naomi and Phyllis—Phyl, for short. And the kids…?”
“Edie and Alvin,” I said. “It’s a long story, and we don’t have time for it now.”
“Why not?” Edie asked. “What were you going to say about us? That we’re freaks? We are,” she confided, looking straight at Mel. “I’m stronger than you are. Or you. Or you.” She singled out the Weather Wardens in the group. Mel frowned a little, but he must have sensed that she wasn’t lying, because he gave Luis and me an uneasy glance. “And don’t even ask about Alvin. You don’t want to know what he is. Better hope he doesn’t show you.” She held up her hand, palm out toward Alvin, and he smacked it, though not as if he was in any way exultant. Merely meeting her expectations of behavior.
There was something of me in him, I realized, something of a stranger trapped in a world he didn’t understand, or truly fit inside. Sad. By any logic, that should have brought us closer together—we outcasts should stick together.