Brine smashed through the vaulting overhead like iron sledgehammers.
Korinthal did not think. He hooked his ruined, raw-boiled arms under Savia’s armpits and hoisted her against his chest. Flesh sloughed against rough cloth, agonizing fire racing up his forearms, but his grip remained clamped shut. A boulder the size of a carriage crashed into the leviathan ribs ten paces behind them, atomizing the marrow into gray dust.
"On your feet!" he roared toward the shelf of basalt.
Warden Beran spat salt-spray and pushed up from the floor, his thigh leaking crimson into the swirling puddles. "The shelf! The dogs brought an iron bell with ballast tubes—near the ridge!"
Water rose around Korinthal's knees in seconds, an icy, suffocating surge that smelled of ancient decay. Savia was limp, her head lolling over his collarbone. Every ragged exhalation she drew tore against his neck like grit.
Then she arched backward, stiff as an iron beam.
A screech ripped from her lungs, wild and unhinged. Dark, viscous fluid erupted from her mouth, splashing over Korinthal’s tunic. Her spine bowed with such force he heard the cartilage pop.
"Savia! Look at me! Look at me!" he shouted against the roar of the deluge.
Under her skin, the oily violet luminescence was not simply fading; it was being torn apart. The liquid from the Tear crawled through her capillaries like molten mercury, ripping the Void-sickness out by the roots. It looked like living needles carving her flesh from the inside out. Her fingers curled into rigid claws, raking down Korinthal’s neck, digging bloody furrows into his collar.
Her pupils rolled into her skull.
Her back snapped flat. The screaming ceased.
Nothing. No shudder of ribs. No puff of mist against the freezing dark.
"No, no, damn you, don't you dare!" Korinthal fell backward into the knee-deep surge, splashing wildly as he cradled her. He smashed his palms against the center of her sternum. The agony in his burned hands vanished beneath absolute terror. "You don't get to die because of my stupidity! Live, Savia! Live!"
He hammered her chest again. Once. Twice.
Nothing moved. Her lips were gray, the water already lapping over her chin.
"Please," he croaked, pressing his forehead against hers, tears mixing with the bitter sea brine on her cheeks. "Please, take everything. Take my skin. Take my breath. Just don't leave me with this."
A harsh, convulsive cough rattled through her chest.
Savia jerked upright, vomiting black bile and pale, luminescent foam onto his tunic. Her hands clamped onto his lapels, her knuckles white. Her pupils snapped forward, locking onto his with terrifying, feral clarity.
"You... loud... bastard," she gasped, her voice sounding like stones scraping on glass.
Korinthal let out a ragged, unhinged laugh, hoisting her up before the water could swallow them both. "Move! Beran, move!"
The ceiling fully gave way. An entire quadrant of the upper reef collapsed in a thunderous roar. The flood changed from a surge into an avalanche of liquid dark.
They scrambled up the slick slope of the stone ledge. Half-buried under rock fragments sat the assassins' transport: a reinforced ballast pod, forged from deep-forged brass and tempered quartz panels, designed to shoot through pressure gradients using saltpeter charges.
Beran threw the circular hatch open. "Get her inside! The shelf is buckling!"
Korinthal bundled Savia through the narrow hatch, dropping her onto the padded harness bench. He shoved Beran through next. The old officer scrambled for the lever rack, bleeding heavily over the brass floor plates.
Korinthal seized the exterior dogging bolts to seal them in, but the mechanism refused to budge. The outer lock-arm was pinned under a three-hundred-pound chunk of fractured ceiling slate.
"It’s jammed!" Korinthal shouted into the hatch.
"The primary release lever is on the exterior hull!" Beran shouted over the deafening cascade. "If that slate isn't cleared, the ballast won't blow! We'll be buried alive!"
Korinthal looked down at Savia. She was slumped against the interior bulkhead, shivering hard, her skin pale, the pale streaks slowly conquering the venom in her veins. She was alive. She had a tomorrow.
He had spent his whole life calculating ledger balances—debt, blood, interest. This was the only balance that mattered.
He didn't hesitate. Korinthal dropped to the outside ledge.
"Korinthal!" Savia's voice cut through the thundering brine, cracked with horror.
"Seal the inner dogging rings, Beran!" Korinthal bellowed through the opening. He wedged his bleeding, acid-scarred shoulders beneath the fallen slate. "Don't look at me, Savia. Just go."
"No! You son of a bitch, get in here!" She fought to unbuckle her harness, her motor control sloppy, desperate.
"I started this fire," Korinthal snarled, straining his legs against the stone slab. Muscles tore in his back. Agony from his burned hands flared white-hot as he shoved upward. The slab ground against the brass casing, scraping sparks in the gloom. "I'm putting it out!"
With a final, desperate heave, he rolled the slab off the mechanism. The external release lever clicked free.
The cavern floor dropped two fathoms beneath a collapsing sinkhole. The sea swallowed his waist, then his chest. He grabbed the hydraulic primer handle mounted to the hull and wrenched it downward with all his remaining strength.
The pod hissed. The pneumatic chambers screamed as the propellant primed.
He let go, ready to let the black water pull him into the dark. He had given her life. It was enough.
A band of raw, crystalline energy locked around his wrist.
Savia hung halfway out of the narrow hatchway, her face drenched, veins on her temple pulsing with brilliant silver power. She had reached through the opening, the ancient magic of the Rask line crackling along her fingertips like shattered mirrors.
"You don't get... the easy way out," she snarled through gritted teeth.
She yanked.
The deep-glass lattice flared, pulling Korinthal out of the churning water as if he weighed nothing. She hauled him through the hatchway with frantic, spiteful strength, tumbling backward into the cramped cabin with him on top of her.
Beran threw the heavy brass hatch shut and spun the locking wheel until the gaskets groaned.
"Hold on!" the veteran yelled.
The charges ignited beneath them.
A concussive boom rattled Korinthal's teeth in his skull. The pod shot upward like a bolt from a siege engine. Acceleration pinned Korinthal flat against Savia’s chest. The interior groaned under hundreds of atmospheres of pressure as they tore through the darkness, leaving the collapsing ruins behind.
Korinthal didn't dare lift his head. He buried his face in the crook of her neck, his body shaking uncontrollably, his scorched hands curled uselessly against the deck plates. Savia’s fingers twined into his hair, holding him there with a force that felt like a brand.
Neither of them said a word as the pod hurtled toward the surface, climbing five thousand fathoms in minutes.
Then, the punishing drag hit.
The pod breached the surface with a deafening crash of displaced brine, pitching wildly before leveling out in calm, subterranean harbor water.
Air hissing through the automatic equalization vents smelled of furnace smoke, lamp oil, and sulfur.
"We made it to the central harbor," Beran muttered, wiping blood from his brow. "The lower docks."
Before Korinthal could pull himself up, the external manual overrides clanged loudly from outside.
The hatch was wrenched open from the exterior.
Blinding carbide lamps flooded the pod’s interior. Half a dozen heavy repeating crossbows were pointed straight down into the compartment, their steel tips glistening with venom.
Standing behind the firing line on the polished marble pier, clad in pristine velvet robes and holding a gold-chased signet cane, was Prefect Othelius Croy.
"Welcome home, Master Voss," Croy said, his smile cold and impeccably rehearsed. "And my deepest gratitude. You brought me both the cure and the traitor in a single, convenient container. Kill the Warden first."