She drummed her fingers against the counter, thinking. The soldiers would be here soon, which meant their window of time was short. Really short. She eyed Yassen, picking her words carefully.
“You’ve seen the metal transports before. What are they like? How long does it usually take?”
“Depends,” Yassen said. “If this load is as big as the merchants told us, it’ll likely take them a few days. They’ll need to be extra careful. The raw ore is highly combustible.”
“So no pulse guns, then,” she said.
Yassen shook his head. “They’ll have them, but they won’t use them. I bet if anything, they’ll use bullets. But we aren’t going anywhere near them, right?” When she did not respond, Yassen touched her elbow. “Right?”
Elena gazed at the holo. What was it that the merchant said?
There’s been talk of brushfire. There was one on the other side of the mountain last week that got the soldiers jumping.
She looked down at her hands. She had no army, no slingswords or pulse guns, but she did have her inferno. It thrummed in her veins.
“If the forest is already dry,” she began, considering, “then we can start a wildfire. Make it seem like an accident.”
Yassen said nothing, merely watched her as she zoomed in to the silver dots indicating the mines on the map.
“This one is the closest. About ten miles east. They’ve probably cleared the trees around the rig, but if I start the fire half a mile or so away in the forest, it’ll catch. I can make it catch and push it toward the mines. Toward the ore.” She searched Yassen’s face, but still he said nothing.
“Yassen,” she began.
“It’s too risky,” he said. “Sure, you can blow this rig. But there are two more, and we don’t have time to get all three. The Arohassin know you’re not confirmed dead, which means the Jantari know you’re not dead. Cian saw us. Farin’s men are probably already on their way to the Sona Range. They could be here any day.”
Elena bit her lip. He was right, damn it, he was right. Every day they spent on this mountain was a risk. But she could not forget the screams of the Ravani guards. The echo of pulse fire in the mountains. The thundering feet of the Jantari army as they marched through her desert.
“It can be done, Yassen,” she said. “You’ve seen how fast fire moves. It will spread, and when the smoke finally clears, we’ll be long gone.”
“And what about the town?” Yassen said. “If the rigs explode, there could be a landslide. It could crush a part of the town.”
“Don’t you think I considered that?”
She remembered the old man who had sold them their furs, the woman who had rented them their brenni. These people had no role in the war, yet they would suffer.
She ran her hands through her hair, staring at the holo as if it could suddenly produce the right answers. The drone outside grew louder. The windows rattled in their frames, but Elena felt a rattle in her chest, felt the crush of the mountain as if it were already crumbling, already falling onto sleeping homes.
“Hey, hey,” Yassen said and stroked her back as she hunched over on the counter. “I didn’t mean it to upset you.”
She closed her eyes, took a deep breath. But she tasted ash on her tongue, and suddenly she was back in the temple, watching her father fall into the Eternal Fire. She saw the fear on his face. The flail of his hands as he tried to grab her. Heard his scream.
If we carry the burdens of our fathers, we’ll never know what it means to be free.
No one understood her burden, not Yassen, not Samson, not even Ferma. The only one who had truly known it had been burned alive, crying out for her.
Elena gripped the counter, her breath hot and ragged in her throat.
No one will understand what it takes to rule the throne. Not like you. So even if you take our advice, you must think for the kingdom.
Her kingdom was burning. And the people who had done it were now coming to this mountain, taking the very ore that would become weapons used against her Ravani.
How could she sit here silent and afraid?
“I—I need air,” Elena said.
Yassen began to follow her, but she waved him away.
“I’m all right, I just—” She paused at the door. “I just need to be alone.”
