4 - Unbroken by Rachel Caine

Author:Rachel Caine
Language: eng
Format: mobi
ISBN: 9781101575611
Publisher: Penguin Group
Published: 2012-02-07T06:00:00+00:00

Chapter 8

AN HOUR LATER, we’d moved so much earth and stone that Luis called a rest, and I sank gratefully down against the cool clay wall, gulping down sweat-warm mouthfuls of water until the plastic bottle was dry. “Eat,” Luis told me, and pressed an energy bar into my hand. “Then have more water, but slowly. We’re sweating it all out.”

I nodded. I didn’t feel hungry, but he was right—I needed to keep my energy levels high. The power he was channeling was burning through both of us, and despite the fact that we were literally grounded by—surrounded by—earth, the task was growing rapidly more difficult. As we drove deeper, the pressure on us, and the earth through which we moved, grew more dense. I felt filthy—my clothing clinging and heavy with sweat and caked mud, my skin smeared and as damp as if I’d just emerged from a salty ocean. And yet I was chilled, and grew more so the longer I rested. The damp, cool air made me feel every ache in my much-abused body.

I had time to examine the damage to my left arm, and used a little power to smooth the jagged metal back over the broken cables. It would take time and concentration I didn’t have now to fix everything—if I survived, which was far from a given just now. I did not favor our chances. Most of my arm was dead to sensation now, though the first two fingers and thumb could still curl, grip, and hold, and there were ghostly echoes of touch available from them. The Djinn had done damage to me, but it would have likely torn off a flesh limb. I’d been lucky.

“We’ve only got about another hundred feet,” Luis told me. I nodded; I could also see the glow of the Wardens in Oversight, like fireflies trapped in a bottle. They were all alive, though some were prone on the ground—sleeping or unconscious. “Once we break through, we heal whoever needs it, rest, then start the trip back. We’ve been lucky so far. Maybe it’ll hold out.”

By lucky, he meant that the Earth herself didn’t seem to have objected to our journey under her skin; it was a dangerous place for Earth Wardens, although it was equally powerful… a bit like Weather Wardens traveling by airplane. We were completely at the mercy of our element here, and never more than now, when the Earth herself was at least partially alert to the presence of Wardens pricking her skin. It would be a mere shiver for her to crush us here… or dispatch a wave of Djinn to destroy us.

I hoped she would not do that, because Alvin’s abilities horrified me in ways that Edie’s did not.

“I wish we knew what was going on out there,” Luis said. “Orwell said they still had a few days to make port. Maybe they’re making better time than expected.” He was trying to be hopeful, but we both knew that what the Wardens

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