"A little over a month ago, we lost contact with a mining post in one of the mines on our land." Valttair's voice held its usual chill. "You know mines well enough by now. Go, and put the problem right."
'Mines,' Trafalgar thought.
The word dragged an old memory up with it. He had gone to one years ago, alongside Lysandra, to hammer out the terms of a mining agreement with the Zar'khael and smooth over the friction between the two houses. He remembered how that trip had ended. A rift tearing open beneath his feet, the ground swallowing him whole, and a long stretch of surviving in the dark on the far side of it. He remembered the veiled woman who had found him down there, the one who had spoken to him in riddles, the one he now knew had been Rhosyn all along.
'A great deal of water has passed under the bridge in the years since,' he mused. The boy who had clawed his way out of that rift and the man standing in this room had almost nothing left in common but the name.
