10

The mine bell rang while Isolde slept.

Three long strokes. A pause. Three more.

Kaoran was already standing when she opened her eyes. Rain fell outside. Winter snow remained on the peaks; the late thaw still ran down the walls of the northern post. The third summer since Cendral had just begun.

In the months since her first visit as Sela, Nydel’s map had filled a notebook.

Isolde entered through the gardens, worked with the families, and changed routes when the posts moved.

She could walk to the village and back without spending the next day in bed.

The bell made her reach for the stick before she remembered keeping it beside the ropes.

“A collapse,” she said.

Isolde put on her boots.

The signal repeated from Nydel. Then came a short, irregular sequence, made by someone striking the metal too hard.

Teren appeared among the pines. He climbed on all fours on the steepest stretches. Blood marked his forehead, and one sleeve was torn off.

“The red gallery,” he said when he arrived. “The ceiling fell behind the dawn shift. Twenty-seven are inside.”

“Sava?” Isolde asked.

“Inside. Emon too. The machine went through the old wall, and the river came in below.”

Kaoran took out ropes, lamps, and Enna’s box.

“What has the Guard done?”

“Closed the yard. They say there’s gas and no one enters until an engineer arrives from Caleryon.”

“How long?”

“Two days if the pass stays open.”

Isolde put Nydel’s map inside a waxed cover. The red gallery appeared in three records, though none showed the old chamber they had drilled into. Ydrael held up a section beneath Cendral. That root could belong to the same network.

“Let’s go,” she said.

“The Guard is waiting for you,” Teren warned. “Soren has kept men on the road since the fight.”

“Today they’ll watch the main entrance.”

Isolde pointed to the laundry route. Meltwater passed beneath the kilns and entered a drainage pipe. Oren had used part of it years ago. The mine extended the pipe when it opened the new gallery.

“The channel may be flooded,” Kaoran said.

“That’s why we’re bringing ropes.”

They descended through the woods. The bell stopped ringing. The silence that followed made them all quicken their pace.

Enna waited beside the irrigation ditch with Doven, Mella, and a dozen neighbors. The Guard had turned the families away. Two women cried near the bridge. A boy repeated his father’s name.

“Last collapse, they were still getting people out in the sixth hour,” Doven said. “Today water is coming in. I don’t know how much of the chamber they have left.”

“Who knows the drain?” Isolde asked.

Three hands rose. A laundry worker named Bren cleaned filters. Joren Fell had worked there before Cendral. Nia, a girl of fourteen, slipped in to take food to her mother.

“I need the width, the grates, and where it rises,” Isolde said.

Nia drew in the mud. The pipe reached a cistern behind the second level. From there, a maintenance stair descended to the red level. The Guard watched the cistern during the day, though rain might have driven them away.

“I’m going in,” the girl said.

“Bren will go with you as far as the cistern,” Isolde replied. “From there you can show the way out to those who come behind. We know the gallery from Sava’s shifts.”

“My mother is down there.”

“I want to bring her out by a route that stays open. I need you to warn us if the drain fills.”

Nia looked at Bren. He pointed to the chalk in his pocket and offered her a rope with a loop for her waist. The girl took it.

“I’ll say her name through the pipes,” she said. “Pella will know we’re here.”

Isolde assigned tasks. Bren would lead through the drain.

Joren knew the supports and would go in with them.

Teren would carry rope. Kaoran would watch the air and tend anyone injured they found.

Enna would prepare a treatment area in the laundry.

Doven would gather tools, timber, and pulleys.

Mella would keep families away from the Guard and record who came out.

Nia prepared the chalk: three lines at each correct turn and a cross on closed passages. She also packed bread in a bag she could drop to escape.

The drain entrance lay beneath a bridge. Water reached halfway up the pipe and flowed hard toward the river. Bren removed two bars with a key he had copied. He went through first, tied to the rope.

Isolde entered behind him.

The ceiling forced her to walk bent over. Cold water pressed her left leg and scar. Slime covered the stone underfoot. Every ten steps, Nia drew three lines on the wall.

Kaoran brought up the rear with Doven’s safety lamp, protected by glass and a double mesh. The blacksmith had shown them how to watch the flame. If it grew shorter or changed shape, they had to withdraw toward the cistern.

They reached the first grate. The thaw had wedged branches against the metal. Bren cut the smaller ones. The large piece was jammed underwater.

Isolde put both hands in. The iron held a cold that pulled at her core. She could heat it and expand the frame, though the water would steal some energy.

“Need,” Kaoran said.

“Free the hinge without heating the pipe.”

“Time.”

“Three breaths.”

Isolde closed her fingers around the pin. She put heat into a point the thickness of a coin. The metal expanded. Bren struck with a bar, and the corrosion gave. Isolde withdrew the fire before the water began to boil.

The grate opened.

“Three,” Nia said.

She marked the wall.

There were no guards in the cistern. Above, they heard orders, carts, and the local engineers’ short bell. Soren Tyre argued with Doven in the yard. The blacksmith had managed to draw attention toward the main entrance.

They descended the maintenance stair.

Nia stayed in the cistern with the rope and chalk. Bren showed her the mouth of the signal pipe before going down with the others.

The air on the first level smelled of broken stone and oil. Kaoran raised the safety lamp. Its flame had grown shorter.

“From here, we use the cold stones,” he said. “Speak as soon as breathing grows difficult. Flame lamps stay closed.”

They used cloth-covered cold stones for light. The red vein gave off a faint glow behind the walls. Every blow from the machine had left cracks around it.

On the second level, they found an unconscious watchman. A beam trapped his foot. Joren and Teren lifted the wood with a lever. Isolde pulled the man free. He wore Varek’s circle at his neck.

“He’s Guard,” Teren said.

“He’s also breathing,” Isolde replied.

Kaoran splinted the ankle and left the man beside the stairs with water. Bren marked his position with a chalk circle.

“We take him out on the way back,” Isolde said.

The red level began behind an iron door. The collapse had bent its frame. Dark water seeped beneath it.

Knocks came from the other side.

Three. Pause. Two.

Sava used the shift code: alive in the chamber, two badly injured.

Joren pressed his ear against it.

“The main corridor is full. The door is holding back the pressure.”

“If we open it, the water could come in here,” Kaoran said.

“The chamber’s air will come out too,” Bren added.

Isolde examined the hinges. The upper was twisted. The lower was intact. Cutting the metal with fire could consume oxygen and heat the water. Forcing the frame could cause another collapse.

“Is there another entrance?” she asked.

Bren pointed to a narrow pipe in the ceiling. It appeared in Nia’s sketch and rose to the cistern before continuing toward the office.

Bren removed the pipe’s grille. Isolde spoke into it.

“Sava.”

The answer came faintly.

“Iria?”

“How much room do you have?”

“A chamber and a half. The water is rising. Sel is under a stone. Emon is losing blood. Ydrael is holding the back wall.”

The dragon’s name traveled through the pipe.

“Can you reach the door?”

“Eight can. The rest are beyond a fissure.”

“I need you to clear everything from the left side and take the wounded to the high wall.”

“The door is holding back the water.”

“We’ll open an exit above before touching it.”

Isolde followed the wall. The red vein joined the ceiling and answered her hand. A narrow cavity lay behind it. Ydrael supported the other end. The dragon felt her presence.

“Do you want me to open it here?” she asked.

The warmth shifted toward a point two paces above the door.

The decision came from him.

Isolde marked a circle.

“The upper wall opens into the space they still have above the water. We can start with small holes and check the level before removing a slab.”

Joren struck the rock. He listened to the sound that came back.

“It’s less than an arm’s length thick. The vein could split.”

“Which way would it fall?”

“If we cut from below, toward us.”

Kaoran prepared a rope and passed it through a maintenance pulley.

“We open three points and pull from the stairs.”

They worked with chisels. The red rock carried each blow back to Isolde’s hand and Ydrael’s body. The dragon showed where he could withstand movement. At other points, he answered with pressure that meant danger.

The first hole released warm air.

The protected flame grew a little taller as the draft arrived from the stairs.

“Another breath for them,” Kaoran said.

The second hole found water. A thin jet emerged and filled the corridor trench. Bren set a gutter toward the side sump, which connected to the drain beneath the cistern.

A bar from the machine crossed the third point.

Isolde touched the metal. Its vibration ran to the gallery and vanished into a blue network. Cutting it abruptly could release tension against the ceiling.

“Sava,” she called through the pipe. “Does the bar move inside?”

“It holds a plate. Sel is underneath.”

“Alive?”

The pause was long.

“I don’t know.”

Isolde thought of Sel, one of the neighbors who helped Mella. She had written his shift on the map. She knew he cared for another man’s horse to pay a debt and could work two afternoons a week.

“We don’t cut the bar,” she said.

“Without the third point, the slab could turn,” Joren warned.

“We support it from this side.”