Giddon spotted a guard near the hole, overturning pieces of wall and roof. Noticing Nev near the building’s broken walls, Giddon called, “Nev! How many guards are there?”
“At least six,” Nev called back.
“Two are dead,” came a voice, small and frightened, from somewhere inside.
“Lovisa?” said Nev, turning sharply at the sound. “Lovisa? Where are you?”
“I’m going to fall,” said the voice, “so listen to me. If anyone sees a metal thing shaped like an egg, do not touch it.”
“Lovisa!” cried Nev, trying to find a way over the broken walls.
“Nev, don’t!” said Lovisa. “You stay there! The floor is caving in!”
“Nev, see if there’s a back entrance!” shouted Bitterblue, and in that moment, the guard who was digging through the detritus cried out. His digging had unearthed the body of one of the dead guards. Looking around wildly, he spotted Giddon heading toward him with a sword. Unsheathing his own sword, the guard ran and attacked. Giddon had been carrying his sword in his right hand, a habit he’d picked up to hide his secret advantage of left-handedness. He waited until the guard was near. Then, switching sides, he surprised the man with a left-handed parry that gave him an opening for a punch.
Then Davvi was beside Giddon, helping him grapple the guard to the ground.
“We need something to bind them,” said Giddon, who was getting tired of handing out concussions. “And there’s at least one more guard.”
Davvi grunted, distracted. He was staring across the hole in the ground, trying to make out what was happening at the other edge of the hole, where the broken walls of the storehouse began.
“Nev!” he shouted, then jumped up and ran around the hole, then around the storehouse, disappearing behind it. Giddon squinted, trying to see what Davvi had seen. Nev was on her knees on the storehouse’s broken floor, crawling toward the edges of the hole. That’s when Giddon saw Lovisa, clinging to the crater’s edge.
“Bitterblue!” shouted Giddon, because the queen was there too, leaning over Nev, using her sword as a cane, trying to look into the hole. “Get back from that edge!” He thumped the poor guard on the head. Then he ran after Davvi, as fast as he could.
Inside the storehouse’s back entrance, piles of rubble blocked his way. Giddon pushed through it, stepping into broken barrels, scratching himself on nails. By the time he reached the operation at the edge of the hole, Davvi was on his knees, anchoring Nev’s legs.
“Bitterblue!” Giddon grabbed her, dragged her back from the crater. “You are not well enough for a rescue operation!”
“You’re right,” she said, tears running down her face. “But what about—”
“You stay there,” he said, dropping beside Davvi onto a painful hill of splintered wood and taking one of Nev’s legs. Nev had hold of Lovisa’s arm, but Lovisa was gripping some sort of broken post, some pillar that had used to be part of the storehouse floor, with both hands. She wouldn’t let go.
“You have to,” said Nev. “Lovisa. You have to let go, or we can’t pull you up.”
“I’ll fall in!”
“I will not let that happen,” said Nev fiercely.
All at once, the lip of the crater began to break. Lovisa screamed, released her hold on the post. For one horrible moment, Lovisa dangled over empty space by one arm and Nev plunged in after her. Giddon and Davvi dragged on Nev’s legs as hard as they could, harder, back, away from the edge, across a floor that snagged and cut them. Giddon got hold of Nev’s shoulder, yanked. His hand closed around Lovisa’s arm. He pulled. They all fell together, scrambling back as the crater continued to widen. Someone else had Lovisa. Giddon grabbed Bitterblue, who still hovered too close, trying to see into the hole. He spun her up and pushed himself over the rubble to the back door, burst out into the air with Bitterblue in his arms, running, putting distance between them and the storehouse.
In the yard, Lovisa dropped onto the ground, gasping, crying. Nev dropped beside her and wrapped the smaller girl in her arms.
“But what about Hava?” said Bitterblue. “Does anyone know where she is?”
“She fell in,” said Lovisa. “She fell in.”
* * *
—
Their shouts yielded no response.
“Hava!” they repeated. “Hava!” Bitterblue’s cries were the most piteous of all. She kept drifting toward the hole, crying “Hava” with tears running down her face, to the point that monitoring her safety became an exigency of the group. Someone was assigned to the intoxicated queen at all times.
It was impossible to approach the crater, impossible to get a good view inside or even contemplate trying to climb down. The ground was still crumbling at its edges. Even Giddon, who should have been able to muscle himself down into that hole and find her, find her!, was reduced to shouting.
He searched for rope in the barn, instead finding the sixth guard, trying to sneak out on a horse. Giddon, exhausted, worried, and hacking up dust, dragged the man down from his saddle, then did his best to knock him out without killing him. These things weren’t exactly a science, after all, and it was getting harder to care, what with Hava inside the earth somewhere, not responding to their cries.
Finding no rope, he returned to the others. Bitterblue lay flat on the ground, too close to the rubble, ear to the dirt. At first the sight frightened him—she looked like she’d collapsed there—but then she turned her head, pressing her other ear flat to the ground.
She raised a hand. “Everyone,” she said. “Silence.”
Everyone went quiet, standing still, staring at the prostrate queen.
“I hear her,” Bitterblue said. “She’s calling my name.”
* * *
—
Hava’s ankle was trapped under a ladder. It was, by her estimation, sprained or worse, and her head hurt, but she insisted she was otherwise fine. She’d been knocked unconscious. As she came awake, her voice grew stronger. The group, gathering as near the crater as seemed safe, could hear her, and shout down questions.
“It’s a cave,” she told them. “With high, curving walls. There are even stalactites and stalagmites”—she spoke those words in Lingian—“though I can never remember which is which. I can’t move this ladder. Both of its ends are trapped.”
“Can you see any path down that looks steady?” called Giddon.
“No. And stuff keeps falling in and there are explosive eggs near me. Kindly don’t drop more rubble down here and set them off.”