AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Did I like what?” Garin dropped from the edge of a boulder and offered his hand to help Sazahk down after him.
“Infiltrating the tunnels.” Sazahk ignored the hand and landed on his feet with a hard thud.
Garin recoiled, his face twisting. “Of course not. It was bloody, violent, chaotic, and awful.”
“Why did you do it?” Sazahk followed Garin down the steep slope to the edge of an old riverbed.
“Because it was my job.” Garin eyed a whistling fumarole belching steam into the air and gave it a wide berth as they descended. They’d left most of the hot springs behind, but this area still had numerous geothermal features.
“But why that job?”
Garin sighed and glanced back at him. “I’m not really sure you could understand, Sazahk. You grew up with money. It’s different for you.”
Sazahk fell silent, pressing his lips together as Garin reached the bottom of the dry riverbed and looked around, rubbing at the stubble along his jaw. Sazahk hated not understanding. There was very little he didn’t understand. People thought he didn’t understand social cues or dynamics or other people in general, but they were wrong. He understood them. He just didn’t relate well to them. And understanding the mechanics of something was quite different from being able to effectively execute something. He understood the science of how guns worked better than most, but as Bar’in could attest, that didn’t mean he had any ability to shoot them.
So he wasn’t convinced he couldn’t understand why Garin had chosen a job he seemed so poorly suited for, but he was convinced he didn’t possess all the necessary information for understanding. There was a lot about the man currently crouched in the dirt, tugging at a dead shrub, that remained a mystery.
“What are you doing?” Sazahk cocked his head as Garin tossed the uprooted shrub away and lifted a heavy rock.
“Looking for a hole.” Garin dug through loose gravel and brushed away some dirt. “It should be—aha!”
A large rock gave way in a shower of dust, and once the air cleared, revealed a small entrance into blackness.
Garin brushed the dirt off his hands and peered in. “You’re sure there’s nothing alive out here, right?”
“No, I’m not sure. That’s the whole reason for this excursion.” Sazahk lowered his pack and dug through it for the lantern he’d used the night before. “And I, in fact, saw some sort of medium-sized fauna roaming under a ledge on my last mission with Bar’in.”
“Sure, but we’re reasonably certain there are no creepy-crawlies waiting to bite or sting me and no wolverines ready to rip my face off?” Garin pulled his flashlight from his impeccably organized bag and flicked it on before Sazahk fished his out.
“The last animal on Qesha comparable to the wolverine was driven to extinction back when this was still a jungle.” Sazahk finally yanked his lantern free from the bottom of his bag. “And if by creepy-crawlies you mean insects or arachnids or their closet indigenous equivalent, they are the form of life I most expect to see here, but as of yet, I haven’t found a single specimen.”
“Good enough for me.” Garin shined the light into the darkness and poked the tip of his tongue out from between his lips as he thought. “Alright, I’ll go in first and see if this leads anywhere.”
He set his pack down out of the way and retrieved a length of rope, looping it around his waist.
“Is there a drop?” Sazahk’s heart stabbed into his throat when Garin tied the other end of his rope around a boulder.
“Not that I saw, but better safe than sorry.”
“Is there likely to be a drop?” Sazahk’s voice shook more than he meant it to and when Garin looked at him, he moved his hands behind his back to hide the red spreading across his palms.
“Yeah, there is likely to be some sort of drop or climb.” Garin frowned and flicked his green eyes up and down Sazahk’s body as he clipped another small flashlight to his belt. “In my experience, at least.”
“You have a lot of experience with spelunking?” Sazahk dropped to his knees to look through his pack for nothing in particular.
“A fair amount, yeah.” Garin’s boots took a step closer. “Is there something you want to tell me, Sazahk?”
“No.” Sazahk looked back up at Garin and forced the red on his cheeks to turn green. He rarely manipulated his colors—he didn’t often see the appeal of deception—but it was simple enough to do. He didn’t know why the infallible Serihk had never gotten the hang of it. “No, not at all. I’m eager to see what we’ll find. If anything’s been able to thrive in this area, it’ll be down there.”
“Alright then.” If Garin recognized his lie, he didn’t call Sazahk out on it. “I’ll go for as long as the rope lets me or until the caves force me to turn back. Keep an eye on your surroundings while I’m gone.”
Sazahk glanced around at the nothingness in every direction: the dead shrubs, the cloudless sky, the yellow dirt and rocks. “I’m not sure that’ll be the most effective use of my time.”
“Just do it for me, would you, Sazahk?” Garin lowered to his belly and shimmied his head and shoulders through the narrow gap between rock and ground. “I won’t be able to concentrate if I’m worried about you being jumped while you have your nose in your tablet, and I’m stuck down a hole.”
“Alright, alright, I’ll keep an eye on my surroundings,” Sazahk called past the disappearing soles of Garin’s boots.
“Good!” Garin’s voice came back muffled and in moments even his boots had vanished. Only the rope sliding through the dirt after him proved he still existed.
