LATER — 5(I think?) hours left to find Tanzi
Foxfire climbed the walls at all angles in this new space. It lent my dark skin a greenish sheen.
The Rook had already fluttered off down the wide hallway. The man, meanwhile, wheezed beside me.
“Thank … Noden,” he gasped. I spun toward him, knife slashing high.
It was instinct. My blood still throbbed in my ears from the escape—and from the fall too.
Only pure luck had kept me on the dull side of Lady Fate’s blade. How long until that luck ran out?
The man doubled over, coughing and complaining that his lungs didn’t seem to work. I gripped the knife hilt ever tighter. I didn’t know who he was nor how he had entered the mountain. Fleeing the wyrms together did not suddenly make us allies.
He glanced up at me, eyes watering. “You’re”—cough—“holding” —cough—“it wrong.” He waved weakly toward my knife.
I couldn’t help it. I glared. “It’s still sharp, isn’t it?”
“That angle … is easy to disarm.” Somehow, he looked even more awful than before. Like a cave salamander—one of the slimy ones that Tanzi and I always found in the subterranean streams.
He straightened, wiping at his brow. It spread the black oil farther across his face. “I’m not going to hurt you.” He lifted his hands defensively. “I did just save your life, after all.”
“I never asked you to.”
“Oh.” He huffed a ragged laugh. “We can go back out there, then. Try it all again, except this time I won’t grab you when you fall to your death.”
My glare deepened.
“Hmmm.” His hands fell. “Clearly humor is not your thing.”
I winced. It was too much like what Tanzi always said. Laugh, Ry! It’s funny, don’t you think?
At the thought of Tanzi, I lowered the knife—though I didn’t sheathe it.
Instantly, the man’s shoulders relaxed. He tried for a grin, though it was easily as terrifying as the one from before. Perhaps even more so, since now he looked like some skeleton-salamander hybrid.
“Sorry again. For the, ah …” He wiggled his fingers. “The touching. Earlier.”
I grunted. Then, with the briefest of eye contact, I said, “Thank you. For saving my life. Now walk.” I motioned in the direction the Rook had gone. It was the only way forward.
The man, to his credit, did exactly that. He turned on his heel, that awful grin still stretched across his face, and marched forward, if a bit haggard in his movements.
I counted twenty-three paces before the hallway ended and a workshop met our eyes, an expansive stone space with balconies and stairwells. Shelves lined the walls, while tables of all shapes and sizes filled the floor, each one littered with papers, books, and a hundred strange contraptions I didn’t recognize.
Every available inch of wall was covered in foxfire. Even some of the shelves, leaving the whole room to glow green.
“Noden’s breath,” the man murmured two paces away. His head tipped back to take it all in.
I couldn’t help but do the same. Whatever this place was, it was special.
The Rook squawked from a nearby table. The man and I jumped in unison, which set the Rook to chuckling.
Which in turn set the man to laughing and me to scowling. My annoyance was short-lived, though, for right as the man twisted toward me, lips parted to speak, I spotted blood on his chest.
“You’re hurt,” I said, and in a moment, without any thought at all, I’d sheathed the knife.
“It’s an old wound,” he said, glancing down and patting at his stained coat. “I had it when I woke up on the ice … Oh, wait. This one’s new.” He barked a laugh, as if delighted by this discovery, and poked the wound. A great thump of his finger, like he didn’t quite believe the slash across his chest was real.
His fingers hit the bloodied line.
A cry of shock and pain split his lips.
Then, before I could lunge forward or do anything at all, his eyes rolled back in his head and he toppled forward. So massive. A tree trunk tumbling over.
He hit the floor with a room-shaking thunk.
I darted over and crouched to one knee at his side. I tried to lift him, to turn him, to smack him awake.
But he was out. Completely unconscious, his skin growing colder by the second.
Now, I feel the need to assert here that under normal circumstances I would have helped him. Even as an Accidental Guest of the male variety, I would have stopped to help him had I not seen what I saw next.
What happened was that I knelt beside him, and my hourglass slung down against my knee.
The top half was empty. At some point, the last hour had run out.
Nausea swept over me. I yanked the glass into view—only to face a crooked line of broken glass.
I truly thought I might hurl.
The hourglass was broken. The bottom half had shattered, and the device had drained of quicksilver entirely. Not a single drop was left.
I couldn’t breathe. My thoughts sliced left and right, up and down, an incoherent jumble of questions and panic.
I must have smashed it in the chase, was followed by, That was the crunch I felt against the ice wall. Then right on that thought’s tail, I have no idea how much time has passed. I have no idea how much time is left.
I started cursing then. One swear word after the next, they fell from my tongue as I shoved back to my feet.
I wish I could say I’d forgotten the man, but that wouldn’t be true. The fact is, I didn’t care about how hurt he might be or what healing he might need.
All I could think about was time—that there was not enough of it, that I had to keep going. There had to be an exit from this workshop somewhere. There had to be a way to keep moving forward, no pauses. No looking back.
As I stumbled away from the man, my gaze sweeping over the crowded room around me, Tanzi’s face filled my mind.
Her cheeks were bunched up, her eyes lit with mischief. “Laugh, Ry!” she taunted. “It’s funny, don’t you think?”