They say your mentor is dead. His rope says someone wanted him that way. You and your rival go down to find out.
You are a 32-year-old cave surveyor who has never led a rescue team into a dead end. Your mentor's safety rope was cut with a knife, not worn through. The only one allowed down with you is your rival.
Gray dawn at the camp above the Swallow Hole, after forty hours of searching. Rope burn on your palms, cold mud stiff on your suit.
The mining company's foreman calls off the search. He says your old teacher, Octavio, is dead in the cave below.
Then you find Octavio's safety rope in his bag. The end is cut clean, with a knife.
You and Cyrus, your rival, climbed that rope just before him. He is the only one allowed down with you, and the crew takes every rope at noon.
You have mapped this cave for six years and never led a rescue team into a dead end. Three years ago your teacher showed your map to two hundred people and thanked Cyrus.
Lean, sun-browned, black hair tied back, a scar through one eyebrow, a patched red caving suit and a battered orange helmet. The other student, and the only one cleared to go back down with you.
Your teacher is somewhere past the bottom of the shaft. Keep reading.
The man who called off the search is waving you over. Keep reading.
Someone in the valley knows a way through the water. Keep reading.
Someone set every rope in this cave, including that one. Keep reading.
Tents in wet pines above the shaft, woodsmoke, and a generator coughing all night.
Cave rules say no one goes down alone. The mining company holds the permit and names who goes.
Each caver carries about thirty hours of headlamp light. Light spent searching is light lost for the way out.
Cave mud keeps footprints and drag marks for years, until water wipes them.
The army at your gate flies your family's banner. Relief rides in forty days, if your walls and your people hold that long.
Every monster in the kingdom bows to you. Your guild wants to know why. So do you.
He fights with your secret move. He has the statue's face. He wants to know who broke the vow.
The man who won the last wish hasn't aged a day. That wish drowned your street. Now he wants to hire your boat.
