There was no real need for discussion. Of course they were forging onward—first because there wasn’t a better option, and second because they’d come to do a job. The earthquake hadn’t changed that. So she extinguished her fireball and secured her bedraggled knapsack, knowing that the satellite phone and autopistol could wind up being vital . . . or useless. There was no way of knowing what waited for them up ahead.
Forcing herself to scoot to the edge of the throne, she dropped her legs into the rising water, wincing at the clammy chill. To her surprise, Nate stood on the ledge and moved between her knees, setting the flashlight and pony bottles aside so he could bracket her with his arms braced on the edge of the throne, one on either side of her. He was cold and wet, but his eyes were steady and kind, which sent a ripple of nerves through her, straight to her core, because Nate could be many things, but he was rarely kind.
If he was being sweet, he thought they were in deep shit.
“No mushy stuff,” she said, ducking under his arm and dropping down into the water, dragging the knapsack behind her. “Let’s get going.”
It wasn’t until he’d nodded and passed her one of the pony bottles, and they were both sinking down in the water and heading for the right-hand tunnel with Nate holding the flashlight and leading the way, that she realized she’d done it again, done exactly what she’d just been telling herself she needed to avoid. She’d hidden a moment of emotion behind necessity, behind practicality. No wonder Nate didn’t want to be around her anymore. She treated him like a convenience. Or was that yet another way for her to convince herself there was a chance for the two of them? she wondered as she kicked after him. How many rejections would it take her to figure out that it just wasn’t happening for them?
Maybe at least one more
, came the answer from deep inside her. Then Nate was passing into the mouth of the tunnel and she wasn’t thinking about anything except the chill that gripped her as she followed and the rock walls closed in on her. They were ridged, natural and uncarved, like the tunnel that had led into the rectangular gallery, only narrower, closing in to within a foot of her on either side, meaning she had to cut down on her kicking strokes or risk banging rock. Up ahead she could see Nate reaching out and touching the walls, feeling his way along, partly to propel himself, partly to check for whatever had earned the death glyph on the map.
Nerves growing by the moment, she took too many puffs off the pony bottle and the world started to spin. She made herself slow down, calm down. There had been no sign of danger. Maybe the glyph had been a metaphor.
Nate swam on, breathing regularly from his pony bottle, though the bubble stream was growing thinner with each breath. Alexis had a feeling her bottle was running low, as well.
Then Nate stopped dead, tensing. After a moment he looked back at her and shook his head, then waved her onward and started swimming, moving fast now, tossing his empty pony bottle as he went. When she passed the spot where he’d stopped, her stomach knotted on a hard surge of disappointment at the sight of a narrow groove that cut all the way around the tunnel. It wasn’t the channel that was bad news, though; it was the sight of the stone blade that had moved along the track to bury itself in the tunnel floor, and the silt-shadow of old bones beneath.
The good news was that Nate hadn’t triggered the trap. The bad news was that they weren’t the first to swim the tunnel.
Worse, when she took her next hit of air, she got almost nothing from the canister. Sucking hard, she took what she could, and kicked along after Nate, following the dimming flashlight beam.
They passed two more blade traps; both were triggered, though neither held bones. She cared less for them, though, than the building desperation as her lungs tightened with the need to breathe. Heart pounding, she started kicking harder as panic gathered. Then something grabbed her from the side and she nearly screamed out the last of her air. She didn’t, though, and she struggled only momentarily before she forced herself to be still, knowing it was Nate.
A look showed that he was in a wider tunnel leading off the one they’d been in. The walls of the new tunnel were curved, lined with stone tiles that might have been carved and painted at one point in the past, but had been worn smooth and featureless by centuries—maybe millennia—of moving water. Magic crinkled across her skin, indicating that he’d unsealed the passageway. That was all she had time to notice, though, because he grabbed her hand and started kicking. She swam beside him, so they were linked and moving together, neither one leaving the other behind. Then, blessedly, she saw a shimmer up ahead, as the weakening flashlight beam bounced off an interface where water gave way to air.
Shouting a stream of bubbles, she and Nate kicked for the pocket, breaking the surface together and inhaling, gasping, choking on air gone foul with time and lack of good circulation. They clung to each other for a moment, just held on as relief crested and ebbed, and she began to believe they weren’t dead. Not yet, anyway.
Unfortunately, that was the sum total of the good news, she saw as soon as Nate lifted the flashlight and panned the space they’d come to.
A set of stairs rose up from the water, four or five treads leading to a raised platform. The sides of the dais were carved with Mayan figures, not acting out scenes of battle or sport this time, but rather scenes of study, with men and women bent over codices and stretching up to work on carved stelae. At the top and bottom of each panel ran a repeating motif, a glyph of a hand holding a parrot-feather quill. It was the same mark Jade wore on her forearm: the scribe’s mark, the mark of a librarian and spell caster. Which was the good news.
The bad news was that the platform looked empty from their vantage point.
“Gods damn it,” Nate said. “Someone beat us here.”
Alexis felt his frustration echo, felt her own rise to match. “Iago, maybe?”
“That’d explain why he’s so much more advanced than we are.” His voice was hollow and disgusted. Discouraged. Paddling to the start of the stairs, he climbed out of the water, then reached a hand back to help her up. “Come on. Let’s see if the bastard left us anything.”
Left unspoken was the other question, equally important if not more so:
Let’s see if there’s a way out.
When they reached the top of the staircase, though, Nate muttered a low curse. The space had been stripped clean; hell, it even looked like Iago—assuming it’d been him—had swept on his way out. There was no evidence of a doorway, either. The walls were seamless painted murals on three sides, with the fourth open to the water, but no matter how hard they pressed or whispered the
“pasaj och”
spell, no secret passages revealed themselves.
“It’s a dead end,” Alexis said finally, trying hard not to let her voice shake.
“In more ways than one,” Nate said, his eyes hard with anger. “Gods
damn
it. I’m sick of being two steps behind these bastards.” He spun away and paced the edge of the platform, wheezing a little as the air in the closed-off space started to thin.
Legs giving out under the weight of the fear she’d held off for as long as she was able, Alexis leaned back against the painted wall and slid down until she was sitting on the cool stone floor with her knees to her chest, her body curled up in a protective ball. She wanted to ask what they were going to do next, but didn’t because she figured his answer would be the same as hers:
I don’t know.
“We could probably make it back to the other chamber on a single breath if we swim fast,” she said.
But Nate shook his head. “For all we know, the chamber could be full up by now. At least here it doesn’t look like the water’s rising. We should—” He broke off, freezing midpace. “The chamber could be full up,” he repeated.
“Yes. And?”
“Where’s the pressure going?”
“The—Oh, right,” she said, remembering what little she knew of fluid dynamics, most’ve which had come from hanging out at the marina. “The incoming water is displacing air, which has to be going somewhere, or the water would stop flowing into the chamber because of back pressure.” She thought for a moment, then shook her head. “You’re right that there’s got to be an outflow. But we’re way bigger than air molecules. Nothing says we’d be able to get through.”
“Maybe. Maybe not.” He held out a hand, kindling a small fireball. “The airhole would be a structural weak spot, right?”
“You want us to blast our way out?”
“Would you rather stay here?”
“Hell, no.” Wary hope kindling in her chest, Alexis pushed herself to her feet and crossed to him. As she approached, he let the fireball wink out. She stopped very close to him and looked up into his eyes, which were dark in the fading flashlight beam. “We’re betting on there being some air left.”
“You see a better option?” he asked, his words a soft touch of breath on her upturned face.
She shook her head. “No. I definitely think we should try it, but I was wondering . . . what about a barrier spell?”
“To protect us after we let rip with the fireballs? Definitely.”
“Well, that. But I was thinking more along the lines of casting one all the way around our bodies and seeing if it acts like a dry suit, keeping the water away from us and trapping a layer of air. It’d have to be a thin layer so we still fit through the tunnel, but it might hold enough oxygen to buy us time.” Grim logic said they’d be out of air when they reached the cavern. If the space was completely submerged, they wouldn’t even have a chance to try the underwater-fireballing theory.
“A shield like that would be a power drain,” Nate said, but it was more of a comment than a real argument. He tipped his head in acknowledgment. “I think it’s worth a shot.”
They descended the short staircase side by side, and Nate kept a protective hand on the small of her back. Alexis wanted to lean into the touch, into the man, but she didn’t because it wasn’t the right time. She did, however, make an inner vow:
If we get out of here, I’m going to show him that I cared—and I still care—about him as a man, not just a mage or a mate.
As if she’d spoken the thought aloud, he stopped and turned at the bottom of the stairs, and took her hand in his so their sacrificial scars lined up like a promise. Then he leaned in and touched his lips to hers. “For luck.”
“For luck,” she whispered when he drew back.
He palmed his ceremonial knife from his weapons belt, which had been damaged in the quake maelstrom, and cut his palm, then offered her the knife because she’d lost her belt altogether. She cut a groove along the raised ridge of flesh, welcoming the bite of pain because it meant that she was still alive, still fighting. Then she handed the knife back, and they both jacked in and called on their warriors’ shield magic.
Alexis’s shield appeared in a flash of color and a brilliant burst of power from the base of her skull. Nate stumbled back in surprise, and would’ve fallen into the water if she hadn’t reached out and grabbed him. When they touched, the rainbow spread from her to him and back, and the shield spell strengthened far beyond where she’d been able to get it previously.
Thank you, goddess,
she thought, relieved by the help, and by the evidence that Ixchel hadn’t deserted her entirely.
Sending her consciousness into the magic, Alexis shaped it around her body, then around Nate’s, leaving a three-inch space between the shield and his skin, weaving the protective magic into a different form than it normally held, one with texture and flexibility. Soon their bodies were surrounded with a pulsating glow that was all colors and none of them at once, buoying Alexis with magic and light. But alongside the thrill of power was the knowledge that this was a one-shot deal, and they didn’t have a plan B.
Please, gods, help us,
she thought, aiming the prayer toward the back of her skull.
Then she nodded. “Okay. Let’s do this.”
They dropped into the water together, submerged together, and stared into each other’s eyes as they each took a breath inside their force-field dry suits. Alexis had to make herself inhale, as her eyes were telling her brain that she was completely underwater. But when she breathed, she got a lungful of the old, stale air trapped within the skin-shield. It would have to be enough.
Knowing they were already running out of time before they even began, they turned and kicked for the tunnel, moving fast. Nate pulled ahead, and Alexis cursed inwardly when that meant she had to fight the turbulence from his powerful kicks. Then she moved up and found a slipstream of sorts, and the going got easier. They flashed along the wider, smoother tunnel, then turned into the narrow half loop, which was dark and claustrophobic in comparison. The flashlight must’ve died for good, because Nate let it fall as he swam, and Alexis felt a jump in the barrier flow as he jacked in another level deeper and called up a fireball. The light kindled to life up ahead, boiling the water around it and sending a cloud of steam bubbles back along the tunnel. They popped when they hit the edges of Alexis’s shield spell. For a moment she wondered whether they might help freshen the increasingly stale air inside her protective layer. They didn’t, though, killing her quick thought of somehow using fireballs to boil water and generate an air pocket. It might be possible in theory, but they didn’t have time to figure out the trick.
Then Nate’s trajectory suddenly changed and he was shooting up and away. Alexis had half a second to think that the trip out had been so much faster than the one in; then she was following him and trying not to put too much stock into the hope that there would be air left up above.