Sandry joined him. Together they wove the roots loosely around the suraku, Sandry working with the thin, stringlike tendrils, Briar with the heavier tree-roots. That done, the boy wrapped the shakkan’s magic around root and rootlet, protecting them from the molten streams of iron, copper, and lead that Daja made.
The heat she brought to her metals baked into Daja’s skin, drying and cracking it; her sweat burned in the cracks. A tremor struck the hollow, rocking. Heat, sting, movement: once more she was on a raft in the middle of the ocean, foodless, waterless, the last of her family alive. A whirlpool dragged at her, trying to pull her in.
All around her magical suraku, she found mats of woven plant roots. Now what? She dared not burn them with her liquid metals. There had to be a way to work her iron, lead, and copper into their shell, without killing Briar’s friends.
Through the roots, she saw light: the spindle, whirling as it pulled magic from the four shapes. It reminded her of the wire threads Frostpine spun—
Wire threads. Wire. Her magical fingers reached into the pool where her liquid metals combined, taking just a pinch of fluid between thumb and forefinger. For a drawplate, she used her other magical hand, thumb and forefinger overlapping to form a tiny opening. She fed liquid metal through the opening, then gripped it and drew.
This way I don’t trip over my own feet, she thought, once she was done. Nearby was a crack in the ground that contained seawater. She didn’t even know if this three-metal wire could be made outside magic, any more than she knew if a saltwater bath was good for it. Instead she logged a prayer to Trader Koma and Bookkeeper Oti and plunged her creation into the water. It boiled off in a flash, and the wire took on shifting colors and shadows. Tongue sticking out of the corner of her mouth, Daja too began to weave.
Heat flared: the roaring earth warmed up. Sandry could smell her friends’ sweat. Watching Tris shove a wave of settling earth so it yanked the fresh heat away from them, Sandry grabbed a drift of warmth for herself and let her spindle drive it deep into the earth. Tris herded still more heat ahead of her until it burst through pinholes at the bottom of the sea, fueling plumes of steam.
The land shrieked as it twisted and bucked in a fresh earthquake. None of them heard their own cries as their hollow shelter wrenched. The pain of crushed rock and soil ground into Tris. She thought that her skull was being crushed between millstones; her eyes and nose ran. She began to cough.
“You don’t sound good, merchant girl,” whispered Daja when things quieted.
“Dust,” Tris replied faintly.
“Briar, it’s the coal,” Daja said. “Help me press it some more.”
Both of them forced their minds, and their magic, against the slab over Daja’s head, using the power that Sandry continued to spin for them. Their own strength was beginning to give out. As the thread that she drew from her friends went pale, Sandry poured more of herself into the spin. Grabbing more heat from the soil, she forced it to become power and slammed it into her spindle. “You’re going to work,” she said grimly. “You’re going to work, or I’ll know why.”
“Spoken like a noble,” gasped Briar.
The new magic that she gave them was raw stuff that boiled in their veins. With it Daja and the boy hammered the coal until it had no more dust to shed.
“Brace yourselves!” cried Tris. A new earthquake was almost on top of them. “Gods help us, I don’t think we can ride this one out!”
Sandry twirled her spindle as the ground bellowed in fury. The plants, metal, and box that sheltered them all groaned; even the shakkan was strained past its limit. Airways closed. Stone heated up.
The coal over Daja’s head begin to burn. “Tris!” she cried, losing the power to speak mind-to-mind. “We need water here!”
The spindle faltered. The threads that connected them began to fade in Sandry’s magical vision. The shakkan started to draw away from Briar—he clung to it with all his strength. Tris broke the others’ grip on her hands, scrabbling for the water she sensed just outside her reach.
Strength roared into the spindle and out along the roots, wires, and suraku. Power that everyone could see flowed into the thread that Sandry had made, turning it from thin cord into heavy rope. The new magic cupped the hollow, drawing in around it as a fisherman’s net closed around his catch. White fire, waterlike, streamed over the burning coal and doused it.
The earth still grumbled, but now it was the sound of rocks being crushed into each other. The hollow was moving through the ground. Little Bear whimpered and crawled into Daja’s lap.
“Sandry?” asked Briar.
“We’re all right,” she whispered. “I just don’t know—”
They stopped moving.
Daja’s suraku evaporated. Dim voices reached their ears. Through a chink in the rock, Tris saw a patch of light gray. The new magic vanished; the spindle fell on its side with a clatter. Slowly, nervously, Briar and Daja let go of Sandry.
“No, idiot! You’ll kill the roots!” A sharp, familiar voice penetrated the hollow. “Let me!”
“Then get it done, woman!”
“Rosethorn?” whispered Briar, voice cracking. Root by root, he felt his plants draw away from the hollow under his teacher’s gentle touch.
Frostpine, thought Daja, and sighed.
“Safe?” whispered Sandry, lips trembling. “We’re safe?”
They couldn’t see it, but they felt it. Power entered their hollow, weaving to form a net under the coal. With a spattering of loose dirt, the roof of their hollow began to rise.