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up. Night had fallen outside, and it was a long way to the top, but yes, he could pick out the sky up there, a tiny dot of dark blue at the end of the black tunnel.
    “The lift is gone. I think they blew it up, and maybe a little more.”
    “Is there another way up?” Lakeo asked. “There better be. There’s no way we can climb up that shaft.”
    Gold Hawk could have levitated himself up. Shame wrapped around Yanko. He was too afraid of falling to even try. He had called upon the wind and manipulated air before, but to use it to push himself up hundreds of meters? He couldn’t imagine it, nor did he want to imagine the fall that would await him if he made it part way and his powers failed him.
    “In the back,” one of the miners said, waving his pickaxe. He had a thick accent. A Turgonian? His skin was a darker bronze than the typical Nurian yellow-brown, and he had the shoulders of an ox. “The carts go that way. You can get as far as the screw before you have to start climbing some walls.” He raised his bushy eyebrows at Yanko. “I’ll show you if you look the other way when I disappear in the mess.”
    Yanko was on the verge of saying he could find the route himself, but what did the prisoners matter at this point? He needed to find his uncle, make sure he was safe, and then help in whatever way he could to drive these invaders away, whoever they were. Could it be the Turgonians? It was hard to imagine any of Nuria’s other enemies being so brazen as to attack this far inland, but the new republic had been talking of making peace of late, not war. Not that such words couldn’t be a ruse. Or a distraction.
    “Let’s go,” Yanko said, waving for the man to lead.
    * * *
    The explosions continued on the levels above them, each one causing the tunnels to shudder and the wooden support posts to groan and creak. Yanko and Lakeo followed the big miner until he recognized the area. They had climbed up long switchbacks in the bowels of the earth, following those cart tracks, and even at a jog, it had taken nearly a half hour to rise from the eighth level to the second. With every passing moment, Yanko had worried he was too late to help, too late to be any good to his family and the property they were charged to protect. He thought of the miners, too—men who had no swords, no firearms, no true means to defending themselves.
    When they reached the bottom of the screw, they came across the first body. Yanko stared down at the overseer, the man who usually beat the drum from atop the platform overhead. His neck was broken. It looked like he had fallen from the landing above—or been shoved.
    Whatever had happened up there, the platform appeared to be empty now. From fifty feet below it, he could not be certain. He tried reaching up with his mind to check, but a sharp stab of pain behind his eyes warned him that he had been doing much more of that than he was accustomed to—he had been using his senses to search the tunnels ahead for enemies at every turn.
    “We climbing up?” Lakeo grabbed the thick rope attached to the cart lift.
    The men who had been accompanying them—eight miners of various nationalities—grumbled amongst themselves as they eyed the body. They had to be thinking of hiding somewhere and waiting out the attack, rather than barreling into sword-wielding strangers. Yanko could not do that.
    He jumped and caught the rope above Lakeo’s hand. “Yes. I’ll go first.”
    Despite the burgeoning headache, he made himself inspect the platform above them as he climbed. He didn’t sense any more living beings in the area, though he could hear clangs and shouts in the distance. It made him uneasy that the offices, storage rooms, and living quarters were in that direction.
    Even though he trusted his senses, he paused when he reached the bottom of the platform and poked his eyes over the top before committing himself. Three more bodies lay near the screw, two bare-chested miners and a third man in