For the majority of residents, though, an open-air dwelling was far out of reach. They lived in the tunnels, dividing up the vast, winding galleries with wood-and-cloth partitions, reclaiming human space from something Elder and intimidating. But no one forgot where they were living, not when every too-smooth curve and vast cavern was a reminder.
Before the Plague War, this had been a ghoul city—possibly the ghoul city, their capital, though legends were contradictory—and the endless kilometers of tunnels that honeycombed the mountain had once been their homes and workshops. Not long after the war began, the Chosen had unleashed a terrible weapon, which had smashed the place open like a child taking a shovel to an anthill. No one was quite certain what kind of weapon it had been, but everyone agreed it was still down there, sputtering away at the bottom of the Pit. It was the source of both the warmth that kept the city free of the surrounding glaciers and the occasional miasmic gases that strangled children in their sleep.
The surviving tunnels, in the meantime, had been ruthlessly cleansed by the Chosen and their armies. These battles had left a rich legacy of Elder arcana behind, broken weapons and shattered armor, bits of junk and the occasional marvel. Not long after the end of the war and the final downfall of Chosen and ghouls alike, bold men and women had returned to scavenge for treasure and had raised the beginnings of the modern city in the still-glowing crater.
And then the centarchs decided no one else was allowed to play with their toys.
The small tunnel joined a larger one, which bore a few signs of habitation, bits of trash in the corners and crude messages painted on the walls. This eventually joined another, still larger passage, which became an alley feeding into one of the main thoroughfares. Apart from the smooth stone roof, twenty meters overhead, this could have passed for a street in the poor quarter of any city—a narrow, muddy road down the center, lined by narrow, rickety buildings. Day and night had little meaning down here, and torches and braziers burned nonstop, filling the air with a haze of smoke. There were no carriages in the tunnels, and a sea of bustling humanity pushed and grumbled past one another, mud spattering from their feet.
Poor bastards. It was hard not to pity the tunnelborn, who spent their lives down here, emerging aboveground only long enough to trudge to a job at some manufactory. They were gaunt from bad food and pale from lack of sun, like they were half corpses already.
Yora threaded her way into the crowd, instinctively using hips and elbows to work her way through the press. Gyre stayed in her wake. Even after three years, he couldn’t maneuver through crowds of tunnelborn with the ease of a native like Yora. After a cramped, sweaty interval battling the press, they broke through into a less crowded section.
There was nothing marking out the door to the Crystal Cavern as belonging to a pub. Gyre wasn’t sure if that was even the official name of the place. An alley led to a side tunnel, which dead-ended in an iron-banded door. It opened to Yora’s knock, revealing a tough-looking woman who gave them a once-over, then grunted.
Inside, a long, low-ceilinged cavern was mostly full of a haphazard array of mismatched tables. There was a bar along one wall, made of pieces of old packing crates. The place was mostly empty, apart from a few determined lone drinkers, and Gyre spotted the rest of their crew in their usual spot in the back corner.
“Good to see you in one piece,” Ibb said, tipping his hat graciously. He sat in a rickety chair tilted dangerously far back, his boots propped up on an unused table. “Have any trouble losing our helmeted friends?”
“A little more than usual,” Yora said, pulling another chair over. “They had a Legionary with them.”
Ibb raised his eyebrows. “That’s unusual. Maybe we’re finally getting to Raskos.”
“Are you all right?” Harrow got up from where he was sitting and hurried over. When he noticed Yora’s wound, his eyes widened. “That looks—”
“It’s a scratch,” Yora said, waving a hand. She prodded the wound with her finger and winced. “Sarah will sew it up for me. Right, Sarah?”
“Not really my area of expertise,” Sarah said from the corner. “Nevin’s the one who’s good with needles.”
“Nevin’s a little busy at the moment,” Nevin said.
Harrow pulled up a chair for Yora beside Ibb. A heavy wood-and-iron chest had been hauled onto a table, and Nevin sat in front of it, a pair of lockpicks in his hands, bent in front of a keyhole at one end. Sarah stood behind him, one hand on his shoulder in silent encouragement.
Sarah was their arcanist, a woman in her midtwenties, short and plump with a mass of red-brown curls. She’d been with Yora for years, since before Gyre had arrived in Deepfire, and her cheery optimism sometimes seemed like a deliberate counterpoint to Yora’s dourness. Nevin was a newer addition, a tunnelborn thief whom Sarah had taken up with and convinced Yora would be a useful member of the inner circle. He was a tall, lanky young man with dark green hair and long, spidery fingers, well suited to the kind of work he was doing now.
There were more members of their nebulous organization, spread throughout the tunnels and reaching into Deepfire proper. Probably only Yora knew for sure how many. Certainly among the tunnelborn—the Deepfire natives, born underground and rarely seeing the sun—there was no love lost for the Republic, Dux Raskos Rottentooth, and the Twilight Order that backed them. That resentment kept them alive every time Raskos sent his Auxies into the tunnels, searching for the daughter of Kaidan Hiddenedge and the thief called Halfmask who’d caused so much trouble.
It’s kept us alive so far, anyway. If Raskos was calling in the Legionaries, that might not last. Yora and I need to talk. He glanced at Yora, who was deep in conversation with Ibb. Harrow, catching Gyre’s look, gave him a resentful glare, and Gyre sighed inwardly. The boy’s puppy-dog protectiveness of Yora was starting to get genuinely irritating. He needs to learn that she can take care of herself.
A loud clunk drew his attention back to the chest. Nevin leaned back, brushing his sweaty hair back from his forehead and grinning broadly.
“Told you,” he said. “No problem.”
“You’re brilliant.” Sarah bent down and kissed him, then flipped up the lid of the chest. “Let’s see what we’ve got.”
The box was full to the brim with small bundles, wrapped in rough cloth and tied up with twine. Yora and Ibb got up, too, and came over as Sarah rooted around, pulling out a few pieces that clunked when she set them on the tabletop. She peeked inside a few of the other bundles and gave a soft whistle.
“These I’ll have to take a closer look at,” she said, gesturing to her chosen items. “The rest looks like raw alchemicals. Lynnia’s going to have a field day.”
“A field day for which she’ll pay handsomely,” Ibb said, grinning broadly. “You know what that means.” He glanced at Yora, then raised his voice. “A round for the house, courtesy of our favorite alchemist!”
*
One round turned into several, as drinks were wont to do. Gyre nursed a clay mug of dark, sour wine and watched Harrow try to keep up with Ibb. The boy was already weaving unsteadily as he went back to the bar, while Ibb seemed utterly unaffected no matter how much he downed. The benefits of experience, I suppose.
Yora was holding court. Word had gotten around about the score and the free drinks, and a steady stream of tunnelborn made their way to the Crystal Cavern to pay their respects and collect their booze. They bowed to Yora, or bent close to whisper words of support they didn’t dare say aloud, or raised foaming mugs to toast the memory of Hiddenedge and his companions, who’d first roused the tunnelborn against the Republic and ended up dying in a cell for his pains.