Chương 11: Leverage

Hours passed. Nobody could have said how many. Time had stopped meaning much of anything down here. No sun to track, no shift bell, nothing but the same three motions on a loop until the loop was all that was left of the day, no way to tell one hour of this from the next. Solstice's world had shrunk down to it entirely: dagger to stone, tongue to salt, swallow, again, again, again. He chipped in small strokes, careful ones, the blade barely scraping loud enough to hear over his own breathing.

Loud enough to bring something down on them was a price none of them could afford twice. His tongue had gone past raw somewhere in the second hour. Scraped, split, bleeding into the salt he kept licking anyway. Every so often his vision would gray out entirely, the cavern tilting sideways, and only the bitter warmth spreading through his chest dragged him back before he hit the ground. He'd stopped counting how many times it happened. Counting cost energy he didn't have to spare.

Lere was doing the same beside him, quieter than usual, his own tongue working the vein like it owed him something. Neither of them talked anymore. There wasn't anything left to say that hadn't already been said, and every word cost breath they needed for chewing salt instead. The masked man stood first. He'd been quiet a long while before that, which should have been a warning. Now he was shaking, both hands pressed to his own skull like he was trying to keep it from splitting open.

"This is never going to work." His voice cracked halfway through.

"This stupid plan. We've been at this for hours and I still can't unfreeze my Saltis!" Murren's head snapped around.

"Shut your damn mouth or I'll tear it off." The masked man went quiet, then folded, sobbing, and started banging his forehead against the salt vein. Once. Twice. A third time, hard enough that blood started running down into his eyebrow, dripping off his lashes with every fresh strike. Solstice kept chipping.' Do us a favor, Go kill yourself or be somewhere useful, and take that noise with you.'

Then suddenly, the masked man stood again, moving toward Murren with slow, careful steps, like a man walking toward something that might bolt.

"I know now. I know it, sir." He pointed at Solstice, then Lere.

"They're close." Murren's eyes narrowed.

"What?"

"The exit. There's an opening nearby. I can feel it." His finger shook, badly enough that Solstice could see it from three feet away.

"That boy's Domain can find it. Expansion. He can make a path where there isn't one, right? He can act as bait too." His breathing quickened, voice sliding toward gravel, something unhinged working its way up through every word.

"We can get out. I know we can."' What is this fool talking about.' Lere stopped licking, looking up.

"He's going to die any minute now anyway," the masked man went on, hysteria climbing with every word, spit flying from his cracked lips.

"Look at him. Frail. Bleeding. Might as well be useful until the end." Solstice set the dagger down, slow, deliberate.

"Maybe you're more suited to bait." He gestured at himself.

"I barely have any meat on me."

"Don't make jokes, boy. You have no say in this."

"Do you have a Domain of Expansion?" Solstice let the silence sit a beat, watching it land.

"Didn't think so. So tell me who's really expendable here." The masked man's face twisted, ugly with panic.

"You're not the only one with Expansion." He jabbed a finger at Lere, hand shaking almost as badly as his voice. Murren said nothing.

'This is bad.' Solstice's stomach folded in on itself.

'If Scarface actually agrees with this, I fight my way out or I don't leave at all.' He glanced at Lere.

'And he's right. Lere's the real Expansion. I've been running on a lie since the ridge, and lies like that only work until somebody bothers to check them.' The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident. The only thing that had kept him alive this long had just stopped being useful. Murren's eyes moved. The masked man. Lere. Solstice. Weighing each of them like a man doing math he didn't want to finish out loud. He's thinking. Don't let him think. Just believe the lie.

But Murren's gaze stayed on him too long. Fuck. Lere stood, tired all the way through, like the effort of standing cost more than he had left to spend.

"You're pathetic. You know that? Sacrificing a kid just because he's already bleeding."

"THEN WHAT DO YOU WANT ME TO DO?" the masked man screamed.

"WE'RE TRAPPED IN THIS HELL WITH NO WAY OUT. THAT RUNT IS OUR BEST CHANCE. THINK, FOR ONCE, INSTEAD OF FUCKING THIN…" The pickaxe caught him across the side of the skull before he finished. A sharp crack cut through the cavern. He went down sideways, limp. Murren stood over him, pickaxe still gripped in his one remaining hand, breathing hard. He hadn't finished the swing, stopping mid arc like he'd surprised even himself. The masked man's Blood spread slow beneath his hair, dark against the pale ice.

He slowly opened his mouth.

"Why— why me?" His voice came out weak Murren looked at the blood on the pickaxe. Then at Solstice.

"You're too loud." His gaze dropped to the man on the ground, still and bleeding, a stranger's name Solstice had never bothered to learn now probably lost for good.

"You're the bait instead." He looked back up.

"Bait needs to be loud." A pause, eyes on the body again.

"And have more meat." Nobody answered him. Nobody wanted to be the one who agreed out loud. Solstice noticed it then, faint under everything else. His Saltis, warming. Not enough to wake, but warmer than an hour ago. The buzzing had crept back into his fingertips, the sting settling behind his eyes, faint threads of color starting to gather at the edge of his sight. They'd been making progress.

Just slower than any of them could afford, licking away at a threshold that kept the same distance no matter how many hours they threw at it. A tiny fleck of salt broke loose under his blade and dropped to the stone. An idea landed with it. Solstice almost smiled.' We're idiots.' His mouth curled further.' But I'm the lesser idiot.'

"We don't need forty grams each," he said. Murren looked over.

"What?"

"It takes forty grams to unfreeze a Saltis right?" Solstice pointed at the vein.

"So why are we all licking our own?" That stopped everyone. He laid it out plain. Pool the salt. Instead of four people crawling toward the threshold at once, each of them scraping by on scraps, put everything toward waking one Saltis first. That person uses their magic to help the rest. One fire lit properly instead of four lit halfway.

"Whose?" Murren asked"Yours." Because Murren was the strongest. Because if anyone could purify the whole pond fast, it was him. And because Solstice wanted him tied to this, needing what only Solstice could keep supplying. An ugly little arrangement. Solstice didn't mind ugly. Ugly had kept him alive longer than anything pretty ever had.

"And why would I waste my salt on you?" Murren said.

"You're not." Solstice met his eyes.

"I'm wasting it on you." He kept going before Murren could argue.

"We pool the salt for you, and you wake your Saltis first. You purify the water. We drink. You get stronger, faster than any of us could make you." A pause.

"And if you decide to kill us afterward, you can do it once we're not dying of thirst anymore. Seems only fair." Murre studied him a long moment, something shifting behind the goggles, some recalculation happening he clearly hadn't expected to have to make tonight. This wasn't desperation talking. This was a negotiation, laid out with patience a starving, bleeding boy shouldn't have had left in him. He looked at the vein. The pond. Back at Solstice. Thinking.

"Forty grams. For you. Only you." Murren's jaw tightened.

"And the rest of you? What happens to the rest of you while I drink?"

"We wait."

"You're asking me to take everything." His voice dropped.

"Cut the bullshit. I know you're scheming something." Solstice wiped blood from his mouth with the back of his hand. The gesture bought him a second to think, and he used every bit of it.

"No." He nodded toward the pond.

"We're asking you to drink first. Unfreeze your Saltis before we're all racing each other for scraps that won't add up to anything on their own. Drink first. That's all this is." Lere glanced between them, confused. Murren kept staring.

"You get the leverage." Solstice shrugged, small and tired.

"While the rest of us keep feeding you." Murren's eyes narrowed.

"And you?"

"I get to live."