Davren cleared the salt-stained desert sheet aside and unrolled the third map from his portfolio. This sheet was drawn on heavy drafting linen salvaged from the old mine company office. Coarse, starch-stiffened cloth that had been scraped clean with a razor and reused. Across its width, drawn in sharp black charcoal and red hematite crayon, lay the underground network of the southern galleries.
“This was eleven months ago,” Davren began. His tone dropped into the grim, analytical rhythm of a mining land-mapper. “Three months after the medicine run. Krail’s quotas had become impossible. The Host was demanding twelve tons of dressed silver-lead galena every fortnight. But our richest stopes in Shaft Number Two had flooded with winter slow leak. The miners were working fourteen-hour shifts in cold water up to their knees, hacking at low-grade veins with worn picks. Men were collapsing from tiredness, and Krail cut our grain ration by a third to punish the shortfall.”
He pointed to the southernmost edge of the workings. There, the old exploration drifts ended against a solid, cross-hatched wall of dark red crayon.
“Voss and I knew that if we couldn’t find an alternate route out of this bowl before the summer quotas arrived, the basin would starve,” Davren said. “We took two timbermen, three iron pry-bars, and six animal fat lanterns. We began exploring the ancient drainage galleries at the southern end of the valley. Drifts that hadn’t been entered since the survey corps abandoned the region fifty years ago. We…
