Stolen Songbird

CHAPTER 18

CéCILE

There was only one way to lure Tristan into my company, and that was to sing. As often as I could, I would go out into the glass gardens and do battle with the thunder of the waterfall, my voice echoing through the cavernous hall of Trollus, knowing that no matter where Tristan was in the city or what he was doing, he would come to listen.

He never said anything to me in those moments, always keeping his distance. Sometimes he stood on the edge of the gardens or sat on one of the many benches, staring at his feet. If I walked while I sang, he’d trail after me, careful to keep a glass hedgerow between us. I always pretended not to see him, even though I was keenly aware of his presence. And even more keenly aware of the gap between us that he would not breach.

Today was no different. I sang. He listened. And when my voice grew too tired to carry on, he hesitated in the silence for only a heartbeat before departing. But today, I decided I could not leave it at that. Holding up skirts stained with Lessa’s blood, I strode through the winding pathways, taking the steps into the palace two at a time. Servants bowed and curtseyed as I passed, but I hardly noticed, my attention all for tracking Tristan’s progress through the palace. He was heading towards our rooms, but I knew he wouldn’t linger. He never did. It took every ounce of control I had not to run – running garnered attention, and I needed some time alone to speak with him.

Our rooms were dark and empty when I finally reached them. But I sensed he was here. Holding up my light, I walked from room to room, searching. Then I noticed one of the doors to the courtyard was slightly ajar. Pushing it open, I stepped outside and shone my light down the stairs. In the center of the space stood a black piano, my light gleaming off its shiny surface.

Closing the door behind me, I made my way down the stairs and over to the instrument. The wood felt strangely warm to my touch, but perhaps that was only because I spent my days surrounded by glass and stone. I pressed a finger against one key, and then another, listening to notes ring out. Then my eyes caught sight of a single glass rose resting against the music rack. Tentatively, I reached out to pick it up. At my touch, it blossomed with a warm pink glow.

“Can you play?”

I didn’t answer, but instead sat on the bench and began a quiet little piece I knew by heart. When the last note trailed off into the darkness, I rose and walked over to where Tristan sat in the dark. The only light was the one dangling from my wrist, but it was enough for me to see fatigue written in the shadows of his face.

“She set you up,” he said. “But you knew that already, didn’t you?”

“Once I found who she was, I figured it out.”

Tristan tilted his head. “And if you had known from the beginning, what would you have done differently?”

I chewed my lip as I thought. Even if I had known it was a ploy, would I have been able to walk away from a woman being whipped? The blood was real, and so was the pain. “I would have done the same thing,” I admitted. “Which is probably pretty stupid.”

Tristan’s mouth quirked. “I’ve found that bravery and wise judgment rarely go hand-in-hand.”

“What would you have done?” I asked.

His smile faded. “I’d have walked away.”

“Oh.” I shifted my weight from foot to foot.

He rose, coming within an arm’s length. His coat was unbuttoned, and he seemed far more disheveled than usual. “But I’d have wanted to do what you did,” he said. “I suppose that makes you the brave one.”

“And you the smart one,” I replied, raising an eyebrow.

“I’m not so sure about that.” He shoved his hands in his pockets. “I’ve never seen Damia squirm. Ever. You made her confess everything without saying hardly a word. It was a clever bit of work. Reckless, mind you, but clever. I think my father was impressed.”

Pulling his hands out of his pockets, he took hold of my hand and pushed back my sleeve. A ball of light blossomed, and he examined the growing bruises surrounding the welt. “How fearless must you be to step in front of a blow, knowing you would have to live with the injury for days, weeks, even. That you could die?”

I remained quiet, sensing the question was not for me, but rather for Tristan himself.

Carefully, he pulled down my sleeve and then adjusted my cloak so that it covered my shoulders more fully. Then he stepped back. “I need to go.”

“Where?” I asked. It was past the dinner hour, and curfew would fall in another hour. Not that such things restricted him.

“Here and there,” he replied, stopping at the base of the stairs. “I like to walk.”

He would not tell me where, so I did not ask. What I did know was that Tristan paced the city throughout the days and into the nights, only resting when exhaustion pushed him to the brink of collapse. He walked, plagued by melancholy, anxiety, fear, and guilt. Except when I sang and he came to listen. I thought those were the only times he felt any peace.

“Tristan,” I said quickly, before he had the chance to move. “Who is Lessa?”

He exhaled softly and looked up at the blackness overhead. “Lessa is my half-sister. My father had an affair with a servant when he was a little older than I am now.” He hesitated. “Do not trust her – she is loyal to Angoulême.”

I pressed a hand against my throat, shocked. “But your father despises half-bloods.”

Tristan nodded slowly. “Perhaps he did not then. Perhaps Lessa’s mother was the exception. Perhaps he was drunk. Perhaps…” He shrugged one shoulder. “It is an event cloaked in a great deal of mystery.” He met my gaze. “Resist the temptation to simplify my father’s motivations. He is ruthless, but he is also complex and clever – one needs to be in order to rule this city for long.” He inclined his head to me. “Good night, Cécile.”

I sat and played at my piano for a long time after he left. For weeks, I had spent my days learning about a myriad of topics, but perhaps my attention had been misplaced. I was starting to realize just how complex Trollus’s politics were, and how little I understood them. There were not two sides, there were countless. Not all the half-bloods were sympathizers looking to overthrow their oppressors. Nor were the full-bloods united against them – many were far more interested in their squabbles with each other. I had thought I knew whom I was fighting against, and whom I was fighting for, but now I wasn’t so sure.

What I did know was that I needed to rectify this lack of knowledge, and soon. For there was no peace in Trollus. Beneath the cultured and austere surface, there was a battle brewing, and it was my greatest fear that I had aligned myself with the losing side.

“This is a terrible idea,” Zoé moaned.

“The worst,” Élise agreed. “If we get caught, we are sluag-fodder for certain.”

“Nonsense,” I said softly, pulling my hood further forward to ensure my face was concealed. “We won’t get caught, and even if we do, I’d hardly let them feed you to the sluag.”

“Because you’d be able to do anything to stop them?” Zoé asked, looking at me sideways.

I didn’t answer – there wasn’t any point in arguing about it now. They’d already sneaked me out of the palace and we were halfway to the Dregs. It had taken days for the girls to set up this excursion, and another chance would not be forthcoming.

We hurried through the side streets of the poorest area of Trollus, stopping in front of a home that blended in with all the other unadorned stone buildings. Zoé knocked firmly on the door, and after several long, nerve-racking moments, it opened.

“Ah, there you are. I was starting to wonder if Her Highness had turned craven on us at the last moment.” The half-blood man who had opened the door winked at me, but my attention focused on the jagged scar running across the empty socket where his left eye had been.

“Don’t call her that!” hissed Élise, pushing me through the threshold. “Do you want us to get caught?”

“Ain’t no one in these parts that would turn on old Tips,” the man said, gesturing for me to start down the hallway.

I glanced back at him, taking his measure. Behind the scar – and what seemed to be permanently embedded grime – was a young man. I’d eat my left shoe if he was more than twenty-five. “Old?” I remarked.

He grinned. “For a miner, I’m practically a relic, m’lady. But you’ll learn about that soon enough.”

The room we entered seemed to be a common eating area. It was filled with grey-clad half-bloods, mostly boys and girls around my own age. They all looked up when I entered, their expressions curious. “You all know who she is,” Tips said. “So I won’t bother with introductions.”

“What is this place?” I asked, looking around.

“It’s a dormitory owned by the Miners’ Guild,” Zoé explained quietly. “It houses two mining gangs. There are fifteen half-bloods in each gang.”

“Thirty people live here?” The house seemed barely large enough to contain the fifteen miners in front of me.

“Day and night shifts,” Tips explained around a mouthful of porridge. “We only cross paths to and from work.”

“What about your days off?” I asked.

The whole room erupted into laughter.

Wiping porridge off his chin, Tips said, “If you get a day off from mining, you’re likely to spend it trying to outrun the sluag in the labyrinth.”

“I see,” I said.

“Sure you do,” Tips said. “Now tell me, what’s His Royal Highness thinking putting you up to this?”

“He doesn’t know I’m here,” I said. “He’s sleeping.” Which wasn’t precisely true… I didn’t know where he was or what he was doing.

Tips’s eyebrows rose. “And you think when he wakes up to find you missing from his bed, he won’t wonder where you got to?”

I refused to meet his gaze. “That’s not your concern.”

“Oh ho!” Tips cackled. “That’s how it is. Separate sleeping for the royal lovebirds.”

“He has business to take care of,” I snapped. “And you should keep your nose out of other people’s bedrooms.”

“Perhaps the King should have found Tristan a boy songbird to fulfill the Duchesse’s prophesy!” one of the other miners said, and the room echoed with their laughter.

I glowered at them.

“Just jokes.” Tips gave me a companionable swat against the shoulder. “Ain’t nobody more loyal to Tristan than Tips’s gang.” He motioned for the girls and me to follow him into another room. “You sure you wanting to be doing this?” he asked.

“I wouldn’t be here if I wasn’t sure.”

Tips’s remaining eye narrowed. “I need you to be sure, cause once we’re lowered into the mines, we’re down there for twelve hours, no matter what happens. If one of us gets hurt, we tend to it down there. If you get hurt, we’ll help you the best we can, but understand, there is no way out before our shift is over.” He waited to see if I would react before he continued. “We’ll be going further down into the deeps than you probably ever thought possible. The air will taste foul, and there will be times you’ll feel short of breath. And you’ll feel it, the weight of all that rock and earth piled above you. There’s some who can’t handle it – some who’d rather be dead than spend five minutes at the bottom of those shafts.”

Élise squirmed uncomfortably next to me. She’d already told me that it would be Zoé who would come with me into the mines. She hated tight spaces.

I swallowed hard. “I can do it.” I met the miner’s gaze. “I need to know what I’m fighting for… who I’m fighting for.” I squared my shoulders. “I need you to give me a reason why I should risk everything for you.” This was part of the speech I’d used to convince Zoé and Élise to help me: I needed something worse than coddled lady’s maids or even forlorn street sweepers to motivate me. I needed to see the worst in order to understand why Tristan had chosen to lead a revolution against his father. The mines were the worst.

“I reckon we can do that,” Tips said softly, then watched silently as the girls tucked a miner’s cap over the braids binding my hair to my head. They smeared black grease over the parts that showed and rubbed a bit of grime over my cheeks. I was already dressed in the grey trousers and tunic the miners wore.

“Will do,” he said when they finished. “Mind you keep your face down – those pretty blue eyes of yours will give you away.”

I walked in the center of Tips’s gang, doing my best to imitate their unconcerned amble while keeping my head down. Zoé walked next to me, providing a second ball of light as part of my disguise.

“Has he noticed yet?” she asked under her breath.

“No,” I whispered back. “It’s too early – he probably just thinks I’m at one of my lessons.” It was the one flaw, albeit a major one, in our plan. Tips’s gang’s shift ran from seven in the evening until seven in the morning. There was only another hour until curfew fell, and although I wasn’t subject to punishment for breaking it, he would wonder what business kept me out of the palace. And that was only if he didn’t notice that I was suddenly a league below Trollus. I had no doubt he would figure out what I was doing – the only question was whether he would interfere or not.

The entrance to the mines was at the opposite end of the valley from the River Road. It looked innocuous enough – a wide set of white stone steps leading underground. The groups of exhausted and filthy miners coming up the stairs and making their way into the city were all that marked it for what it was.

All that changed the moment I took my first step down the stairs. A cacophony of sound assaulted my ears: the clanging of metal against metal, the dull roar of explosions, and the din of countless half-bloods crammed into a too-small space. Dust filled my nostrils and it was a struggle to keep from coughing and choking.

“There’s a barrier to keep the dust and sound from getting out,” Zoé said into my ear.

“I noticed.” Wiping my nose on my sleeve, I tried to look around while still keeping my head lowered. I could see several half-bloods arguing with a guild member, gesturing wildly, their expressions angry. “What are they fighting about?”

“Quotas,” one of the gang members answered. “Now keep quiet until we get out of sight of the guild.”

We took a corridor leading to the left and joined a long line of miners standing on the right hand side. Every few minutes a gang of tired-looking day-shifters would pass us on the left, burdened with large crates of rock laced with yellow metal.

“Next!” I heard someone shout. The line surged ahead. It wasn’t long until I could see what we were lined up for. A large shaft girded with gleaming troll-light lay in the center of a chamber. Two uniformed guild members stood on either side of the shaft, looking bored. Another stood at the head of the line with sheaves of parchment in his hand – it was he who kept calling, “Next.”

I watched the shaft with nervous anticipation. A dull roar of wind rose out of it, and moments later, a platform loaded with miners and crates rose into view. The miners climbed off the platform, carrying their crates with a combination of magic and physical strength. The group at the front of the line grabbed empty crates from a pile against the wall and hopped on the platform. They dropped out of sight into the shaft.

“Next!”

There was only one group ahead of us. Tips abruptly appeared beside me. “Last chance to back out,” he said into my ear.

I shook my head.

When Tips’s gang rushed forward to grab their crates, I went with them and grabbed my own. They kept me in the middle of their pack as we ran over to the platform. The guild members paid only enough attention to note we were aboard before letting the platform drop.

I gasped aloud, my stomach rising into my throat. Zoé grabbed my hand and smiled reassuringly as we hurtled downwards, rock and glowing girders flashing by on all sides. “Amazing,” I shouted over the rushing air. It was like nothing I’d ever experienced before. My excitement only faded a bit when I looked up and realized the top of the shaft had faded from view.

“Is this the only way in and out?” I shouted.

“The only way, Princess!” Tips shouted back.

We fell and fell, then the platform slowed and we ground to a halt. Picking up my crate, I followed the others, keeping my head down so the half-bloods waiting to go up wouldn’t notice me. The air felt tight and close, so dusty it seemed like my lungs were choking on grit. I coughed softly as we walked through one of the narrow tunnels that branched away from the shaft, noticing with great relief that the tunnels were well lit by all the magic beams and girders that supported them.

“You can relax now,” Tips said. “Ain’t no one but us down here. Guild only comes down when there’s a problem.”

His words, I noticed, were not meant just for me. Everyone relaxed out of their postures of forced submissiveness. Where there had previously been slumped shoulders and lowered heads, I now saw straight backs and raised faces. I wondered if tension always ran high when they were around the guild or if it was only a function of my presence, hidden in their midst.

We left the crates in a pile and walked over to a long row of metal carts sitting idle on rails that led off down the tunnels. “Get in,” Tips said.

“I can walk.” I hadn’t grown that soft.

He grinned. “No one walks. Not when we can ride. Now get in.”

Zoé and I got into the dusty cart. “Hold on,” Tips laughed. Grabbing the handles of the cart, he gave it a hard shove. We started slowly, then picked up speed until Tips was sprinting. Then he leapt on the back of the cart and it surged forward. “Woo hoo!” he shouted, and shouts from the rest of the gang echoed after us as we all flew through the tunnels.

At first I was terrified. The cart seemed out of control, and with every turn I was convinced we’d all meet our dooms, but my fear soon turned to euphoria. I was having fun. The miners shouted rude jokes over the squeal of the metal wheels, and Zoé and I screamed and clutched each other every time we surged down a decline.

The ride ended all too soon. Tips pulled a lever on the side of the cart, and with the piercing wail of metal against metal, we ground to a halt. “Fun part’s over. Now it’s time to get to work. You ready to pick up the slack, Zoé?”

“I need to stay with Cécile,” the girl said, shooting me an apprehensive look. Clearly this had not been part of the agreement.

“And we need to make quota,” Tips said. His voice was conversational, cheerful, even; but the expression on his face was not. “Two of my gang are having the first and only days off of their lives so that her Highness can undertake this little excursion. She can’t help, but you can. Prissy as you are, Zoé, and I mean that in the most affectionate way, you’re still stronger than three of my boys combined. Might be we even get ahead of the game with you down here today. Cogs!” he shouted. “Get Zoé started on detonations.”

“What sort of quotas?” I asked, watching Zoé and the rest of the miners turn down another tunnel.

“Production quotas are what we live and die for down here,” Tips said, settling down on the floor of the tunnel. “It’s the amount of product each gang is expected to deliver each month. Lean against the magic girding the tunnel, girl, it will keep you warmer.”

I did as he said, and when we were both comfortable, he continued. “Product is mostly gold down this way, but there’s all manner of glittery things hidden in the mountain. The guild keeps track of where each gang is at and gives us the numbers at the beginning of each shift. If we make monthly quota, all’s good. If we don’t…” He shrugged. “Not so good.”

“What happens if you don’t?”

“If we don’t, then someone from the gang gets sent into the labyrinth as sluag-fodder.”

I hugged my arms around my middle. “They kill one of you just because you didn’t mine enough gold? How do they decide who goes?”

Tips chuckled. “They don’t. Those maggot-gobbling guild members are too clever for that. They make us choose who has to go.”

Clever indeed. And cruel. “How do you choose?”

Tips picked up a rock, tossing it from one hand to another. Which struck me as an oddly human gesture, although I couldn’t pinpoint why. “If we’re lucky, someone will volunteer. There’s those who have had enough of the never-ending toil, the fear of cave-ins… Those who’d rather meet their end now than go on another day in the mines. And if we’re not fortunate enough to have one of those optimists in our mix, then we choose whoever is holding the gang back.”

“How often do gangs miss quota?”

Tips set the rock down. “Rare for more than a few months to pass where at least one gang doesn’t have to send someone.”

So frequent. I stirred a finger in the bits of rock by my feet, trying to imagine having to choose which one of my friends to send to their death. Not just once, but having to choose on a regular basis. The guilt would be overwhelming.

“Cover your ears,” Tips said abruptly.

I barely managed to clap my hands over my ears as the tunnels echoed with a loud boom. Dust coughed over us, but Tips didn’t look the slightest bit concerned. “We’re going to get all sorts of work done with Zoé here,” he said with a smile.

“If she’s so powerful, why isn’t she a miner?” I mused.

“You really don’t know anything, do you?”

Tristan’s words echoed through my mind. In Trollus, power is king. “It’s because she’s powerful that she isn’t down here.”

Tips nodded. “They know when we’re children how powerful we are likely to be, and when we get auctioned off, those like Élise and Zoé get picked up to be servants. Having more magic makes your presence…” he searched for the word, “desirable to the full-bloods. Then there’s those with little or no magic. All they tend to be good for is street cleaning and sewers. Dirty jobs that can be done by hand rather than magic. Everyone else goes to the mines.”

Down in the mines where death lurked at every corner.

“So, if you are half-blood, and you aren’t powerful, it’s better to have almost no magic,” I said, picking up Tips’s discarded rock.

“You’d think so,” Tips replied, raising one eyebrow. “Polishing sewer grates is lots easier than mining gold and a whole lot less dangerous. ’Cept if you were one to be noticing such things, it would have dawned on you that while plenty of half-bloods are born with little or no magic, there aren’t too many of them that live long enough to make it to the auctions.” He blinked. “Accidents happen.”

“I see,” I breathed. If you were at the bottom of the pack of miners, in regards to magic, then you would be first on the chopping block if your gang didn’t meet quota. It was better to be top of the pack of sewer workers, except that in order for there to be positions available, it meant eliminating the very weakest of them all. “The full-bloods don’t even need to dirty their hands,” I whispered. “You kill off your own weak.”

“When it’s your life, or someone else’s…” Tips shrugged. “Maybe you understand better now why we’re fighting for change. Cover your ears.”

The ground shuddered and another cloud of dust rolled over us. “How do you know when the explosions are going to happen?” I asked when the noise subsided.

“Been doing this a long time. I know the rhythms.”

I leaned forward. “And how have you survived down here this long?”

His face darkened, confirming my suspicions. He acted too human: trolls did everything they possibly could with magic. Even idly tossing around a rock. And I’d noticed that he was the only one that let his troll-light fade when we entered the mines. The man sitting across from me looked almost human, with his badly healed scar and eye more grey than silver. Tips was one of those with weak magic.

“I can smell the gold,” he said, voice chilly. “I always know where to dig. And since I joined this gang, not once have we missed quota.” He pointed a finger at me. “Despite what they think, a man’s value ain’t just determined by his magic.”

“Or a woman’s.” I met his glare calmly until he blinked.

“Or a woman’s,” he agreed. “Right you are about that, Princess. Now how about we go see what sort of progress our friends are making. If I leave them alone too long, they’ll dig in the wrong direction.”

We walked through the tunnels until we found Zoé and the rest of the gang sorting through rubble. I hadn’t missed Tips’s choice of words: “our friends”. Before tonight, helping Tristan had been primarily about securing my own freedom, but now I realized that my own freedom wasn’t enough. I wanted to help bring down the laws that forced the half-bloods to kill each other to save themselves. The half-bloods weren’t just my friends – they were my comrades. “You’re risking a lot telling me these things,” I said. “And bringing me down here – if we get caught…”

“The sluag would feast for days,” Tips said. “But it’s worth it.”

“Why?” The ground shuddered from a distant detonation.

Tips slowed his pace. “We are slaves caught in a cage within a cage, Princess. And for the first time in history, a future king is willing to put the lowest but largest caste of his people ahead of his own interests. Tristan’s willing to risk his own life to save ours, and there is nothing most of us wouldn’t do for him. But unless the curse can be broken…” He shook his head. “Power breeds power, and it ain’t going to cede to morality or what’s right for long. We need to be able to put physical distance between us and the full-bloods, it’s our only chance at being truly free. And that’s not something Tristan can accomplish on his own. It’s human magic that binds us, and it will be a human that sets us free. And we don’t need a stinking prophesy to tell us that.” He stopped and inclined his head to me. “We need your help.”

Put that way, the request was daunting. “I’ll do what I can,” I said.

“I know,” Tips replied. “Now cover your ears.”

Hours later, Zoé came over to where I was sorting through bits of rock. “Has he noticed?” she asked, wiping sweat off her brow and leaving a streak of grime. She’d been working tirelessly the entire time.

I sat back on my haunches, closed my eyes, and focused on Tristan. He was awake, but he wasn’t coming any closer. “I think he knows what I’m doing,” I said. “But I think he’s decided not to interfere.” I tried to smother a yawn. “He knows I’m all right.”

“We’ll start loading up soon,” Tips called over. “It’s a long walk back to the lift, and we’ve got a big haul today.” The gang all cheered, clapping each other on the back, but they were cut short by the roar of falling rock. I’d heard the sound on and off all night – both from Zoé’s efforts and from those of other gangs working nearby, but this sounded much larger. And it was coming from behind us.

“What was that?” Zoé asked, her eyes wide.

“I suppose we’ll find out soon enough,” Tips replied, but I caught the warning glance he gave to the other miners. “Load the trolleys, it’s time we got moving.”

Walking back took hours and, within the first hour, all I wanted to do was lie down and sleep. And I wasn’t even carrying anything. Through a combination of physical strength and magic, Zoé and the other miners pushed the rock-filled trolleys back through the tunnels. With the exception of a few muttered oaths, the only sounds they made were grunts of effort and panting breaths. It was no small amount of relief when we could finally hear the ruckus of miners loading rock into crates at the lift.

I helped the best I could with the unloading – more because I didn’t want the other gangs to notice us than because I was any help. We were next to ride up when Tips hissed, “Guild members!” Everyone dropped their heads, shoulders slumping. I mimicked their posture and tried to conceal myself behind the other miners.

Two of the guild members got on the lift with the group ahead of us, but one remained behind. He leaned against the far wall, eyes closed and face slack with weariness as we waited for the lift to come back down. I could feel the tension in each member of Tips’s gang as we set to loading the lift, and it only escalated when the troll got on board with us.

“Cave-in?” Tips asked as the lift began to rise, moving much more slowly than when it had brought us down.

“Yes,” the troll replied. “Finn’s gang was working the south tunnel and brought the whole thing down. The one we’d closed over concerns about stability,” he added pointedly.

“Survivors?”

“None.” The troll scrubbed a hand through his hair, making it stand on end. “No idea what the blasted fools were doing down that way.”

“Heard they were looking short on quota,” Tips replied, tone neutral. “That tunnel was known to be rich pickings.”

The guild member straightened and glared at Tips. “And now Finn and all his gang are dead because they couldn’t accept the loss of one.”

“Easy for you to say,” Tips muttered.

All murmurs of conversation ceased. It was fair to say none of us even breathed as we watched to see what would happen. The troll’s uniform rustled as he straightened his shoulders, then in a flash, he shoved Tips hard against a stack of crates and the whole platform rocked. “Easy for me to say? I just spent the past four hours digging up fifty yards’ worth of tunnel to find only blood and unrecognizable raw meat!”

The two of them were practically on top of me. I tried to squeeze away, but there was no room. The troll had Tips by the shoulders, but he didn’t seem to be hurting him. I felt the tremble of his arm where it rested against me and realized that the guild member was genuinely upset about the death of the miners. “Half you miserable lot don’t have the power to keep the dust off your heads and you insist on going into tunnels a bloody Montigny would avoid. And when the rocks come down, I have to dig you out.”

“So don’t,” Tips said. “It’s not as though you care whether we live or die.”

Several of the gang members groaned in dismay, but Tips showed no sign of backing down. “Just be careful you don’t kill us all, or you lot might find yourselves having to do an honest day’s work.”

“Stupid half-breed!” The troll punched him in the face and I winced at the sound of cracking bone. “Every time those tunnels cave, I will dig out your miserable hide, even if there isn’t enough left to fill a bucket. That’s a promise.”

My skin prickled with the charge of magic, and several of the miners gasped aloud in surprise at a troll uttering those binding words. As I tried to struggle away from the two, the troll looked up and our eyes met. His widened in shock. My chest rose and fell in short little jerks as I waited for him to react to my presence. I was caught. He was sure to turn me in and I couldn’t even begin to think of an explanation for what I was doing down here. He opened his mouth to speak, and I held my breath.

“They aren’t my laws,” he said, his voice rough with emotion. “But I have to live by them too.”

My head jerked up and down in understanding. The half-bloods were not the only malcontents in Trollus. I wondered how many more full-bloods were secret sympathizers and whether Tristan knew about them. Or whether they knew about him?

The lift lurched to a halt, and the guild member clambered off Tips and hurried through the crowd. Stunned, the gang and I set to unloading our crates and taking the gold down to where it would be sorted. All I could do was pray that the guild member wouldn’t tell anyone he’d seen me in the mines, because if he did, I would have some serious explaining to do.