“Goddess help me to know what’s right,” she whispered, cupping the rainbow close to her heart and realizing that for the first time in a long time—maybe forever—she didn’t know what defined success.
Normally, Izzy would’ve told her what was right, because that was a winikin’s job. But how could a winikin know the will of the gods better than a Godkeeper? She couldn’t, that was the answer, which meant the Godkeeper needed to look inside herself for the answer. Unfortunately, when Alexis did that, she saw nothing but a blank spot where certainty used to be, which left her feeling adrift, and so alone. Then the water moved in the center of the chamber, swirling around the few stalagmites still visible above the rising tide. The light brightened at that spot, and bubbles rose in a furious exhale as Nate kicked upward and broke the surface, holding not one, but both of the pony bottles aloft. “Found them!”
Finally some good news. “Way to go!” Alexis called, her words echoing in the filling chamber. “Do they both work?”
“Yep. The flashlight survived its dunking too, which is a bonus.” He swam toward her, creating ripples in the water that trailed after him, turning to colors in the light from her fireball. He’d ditched the broken headlamp and held the flashlight in one hand, the air canisters in the other.
When he reached the altar, though, he didn’t climb up to sit with her. He stayed in the water, his expression going grim when he said, “The main tunnel is completely blocked, as is the left-hand side of the loop.”
Which, of course, was the side that didn’t have the death glyph on it. Granted, that didn’t mean there weren’t booby traps, but still. She shivered involuntarily. “That leaves us with a lovely choice between braving the possible booby traps or sitting here until we run out of air and croak. Oh, joy.”
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.