Robin Hobb: Ship of Destiny

She had clung to doubt for as long as she could. Malta and Selden were not in Trehaug. No one had seen them since yesterday. A tearful playmate of Selden had sobbingly admitted that he had shown the boy a way into the ancient city, a way the grown-ups had thought securely locked. Jani Khuprus had not minced words with Keffria. White-faced, lips pinched, she had told Keffria that the particular passage had been abandoned because Reyn himself had judged it dangerously unstable. If Selden had gone into the buried corridors, if he had taken Malta with him, then they had gone into the area most likely to collapse in an earthquake. There had been at least two large tremors since dawn. Keffria had lost track of how many lesser tremblings she had felt. When she had begged that diggers be sent that way, they had found the entire corridor collapsed just a few steps inside the entry. She could only pray to Sa that her children had reached some stronger section of the buried city before the quake, that somewhere they huddled together awaiting rescue.

Reyn Khuprus had not returned. Before noon, he had left the diggers, refusing to wait until the corridors could be cleared and shored up. He had gone ahead of the work crews, wriggling off through a mostly collapsed tunnel and disappearing. Not long ago, the work crews had reached the end of the line he had left to mark his way. They had found several chalk marks, including the notation he had left on the door of the Satrap's chamber. Hopeless, Reyn had marked. Thick muck oozed from under the blocked door; most likely the entire room had filled with it. Not far past that door, the corridor had collapsed completely. If Reyn had passed that way, he either had been crushed in the downfall, or was trapped beyond it.

Keffria started when she felt a touch on her arm. She turned to face a haggard Jani Khuprus. "Have you found anything?" Keffria asked reflexively.

"No." Jani spoke the terrible word softly. Her fear that her son was dead lived in her eyes. "The corridor is mucking in as fast as we try to clear it. We've decided to abandon it. The Elder ones did not build this city as we build ours, with houses standing apart from each other. The ancients built their city like one great hive. It is a labyrinth of intersecting corridors. We will try to come at that section of corridor from a different approach. The crews are already being shifted."

Keffria looked at her laden barrow, then back down the excavated corridor. Work had stopped. The laborers were returning to the surface. As Keffria stared, a flow of dirty and tired men and women parted to go around her. Their faces were gray with dirt and discouragement, their footsteps dragged. The lanterns and torches they carried guttered and smoked. Behind them, the excavation had gone dark. Had all of this work been useless, then? She took a breath. "Where shall we dig now?" she asked quietly.

Jani gave her a haunted look. "It has been decided we should rest for a few hours. Hot food and a few hours of sleep will do us all good."

Keffria looked at her incredulously. "Eat? Sleep? How can we do either when our children are missing still?"

The Rain Wild woman matter-of-factly took Keffria's place between the barrow handles. She lifted it and began to push it forward. Keffria trailed reluctantly after her. She did not answer Keffria's question, except to say, "We sent birds out to some of the closer settlements. The foragers and harvesters of the Rain Wilds will send workers to aid us. They are on their way, but it will take some time for them to arrive. Fresh workers will shore up our spirits." Over her shoulder, she added, "We have had word from some of the other digging crews, also. They have had more luck. Fourteen people were rescued from an area we call the Tapestry Works, and three more were discovered in the Flame Jewel corridors. Their work has progressed more swiftly. We may be able to gain access to this area of the city from one of those locations. Bendir is already consulting with those who know the city best."

"I thought Reyn knew the old city better than anyone," Keffria said cruelly.

"He did. He does. That is why I cling to the hope that he may be alive." The Rain Wild Trader glanced at her Bingtown counterpart. "It is why I believe that if anyone could find Malta and Selden, it is Reyn. If he found them, he would not try to come back this way, but would make for the more stable parts of the city. With every breath I take, I pray that soon someone will come running to give us the tidings that they have emerged on their own."

They had reached a large chamber that looked like an amphitheater. The work crews had been dumping the tailings of their work here. Jani tipped the barrow and let the load of earth and rocks increase the untidy pile in the middle of the formerly grand room. Their wheelbarrow joined a row of others. Muddy shovels and picks had been tumbled in a heap nearby. Keffria suddenly smelled soup, coffee and hot morning bread. The hunger she had been denying woke with a roar. The sudden clamoring of her body made her recall that she had eaten nothing all night. "Is it dawn?" she asked Jani suddenly. How much time had passed?

"Well past dawn, I fear," Jani replied. "Time always seems fleetest when I most long for it to move slowly."

At the far end of the hall, trestle tables and benches had been set out. The very old and the very young worked there, ladling soup into dishes, tending small braziers under bubbling pots, setting out and clearing away plates and cups. The immense chamber swallowed the discouraged mutter of talk. A child of about eight hurried up with a basin of steaming water. A towel was slung over her arm. "Wash?" she offered them.

"Thank you." Jani indicated the basin to Keffria. She laved her hands and arms and splashed her face. The warmth made her realize how cold she was. The binding on her broken fingers was soaked and gritty. "That needs to be changed," Jani observed while Keffria used the towel. Jani washed, and again thanked the child, before guiding Keffria toward several tables where healers were plying their trade. Some were merely salving blistered hands or massaging aching backs, but there was also an area where broken limbs and bleeding injuries were being treated. The business of clearing the collapsed corridor was hazardous work. Jani settled Keffria at a table to await her turn. A healer was already at work rebandaging her hand when Jani returned with morning bread, soup and coffee for both of them. The healer finished swiftly, abruptly told Keffria that she was off the work detail, and moved on to his next patient.

"Eat something," Jani urged her.

Keffria picked up the mug of coffee. The warmth of it between her palms was oddly comforting. She took a long drink from it. As she set it down, her eyes wandered over the amphitheater. "It's all so organized," she observed in confusion. "As if you expected this to happen, planned for it."

"We did," Jani said quietly. "The only thing that puts this collapse out of the ordinary is the scale of it. A good quake usually brings on some falls.

Sometimes a corridor will collapse for no apparent reason. Both my uncles died in cave-ins. Almost every Rain Wild family who works the city loses a member or two of each generation down here. It is one of the reasons my husband Sterb has been so adamant in urging the Rain Wild Council to aid him in developing other sources of wealth for us. Some say he is only interested in establishing his own fortune. As a younger son of a Rain Wild Trader's grandson, he has little claim to his own family's wealth. But I truly believe it is not self-interest but altruism that makes him work so hard at developing the foragers' and harvesters' outposts. He insists the Rain Wild could supply all our needs if we but opened our eyes to the forest's wealth." She folded her lips and shook her head. "Still. It does not make it any easier when he says, 'I warned you all' when something like this happens. Most of us do not want to forsake the buried city for the bounty of the rain forest. The city is all we know, the excavating and exploration. Quakes like this are the danger we face, just as you families who trade upon the sea know that eventually you will lose someone to it."