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He got down on his belly on the incline of a black mound and counted the seconds passing as the walls settled.

They wailed for longer than they should without folding inward. Five… six… seven… eight.

Accompanying the groan was the blare of a hand-wrenched siren that only existed in his mind. A miner’s siren. Run, hurry, there’s men below the surface. He had to shake his head to dispel it.

But the walls held. The ceiling settled. A ways ahead, Nina looked back toward him, her face streaked in mud. If he’d had a talent for art, he’d have wished to freeze time to paint her, just the way she was.

Theodore had his hand on her wrist again.

“ Fuck me.” Gunner was panting. “Fuck, fuck, fuck.” His voice trembled. He hammered a fist into the ground where he knelt.

“It’s all right,” Patrick said, his hand slapping Gunner’s back, feeling the sweat and panic that had accumulated there. “She’s held. Walls are up.”

Gunner shook regardless, Briggs beside him and Patrick in front. Three trembling fish in a barrel. The canary screeched.

“Briggs?” Patrick called, his stare still plastered to the woman with hands fit for a malevolent god. “Reckon we’re gonna need some more men.”

“You fuckin’ think so, Pat? Bloody hell. ”

“Go topside. Tell Mrs. Colson to find some men with empty pockets and deaf ears to move all this dirt. We need strutters, too.”

“Three, Pat?”

Patrick thought for a moment. “Better make it four.”

“All right. Give me a minute, me fuckin’ balls got lodged somewhere near my lungs.”

“And while you’re up there,” Patrick added. “Tell my mother… that the timeline has been accelerated.”

A beat passed, and then, “By how much, Pat?”

He thought through it. Twenty yards in twenty seconds. Twenty fucking seconds.

“Tell her we’ll be there in four weeks.” Beneath the pounding adrenaline, there was hope burgeoning. Patrick grinned.

Four weeks.

“Come on, Gun,” he said now. “We need to get some timber on these walls.”

His brother was still breathing too heavily, his hands on his knees. But Gunner nodded, wiped his nose.

On his belly, Patrick slid through the spaces left between ceiling and floor, the lantern he carried now the only one that hadn’t flickered out. Water seeped through the ceiling. “Teddy,” Patrick called. “Might be a good time to use some of your Artisan shit on all this water, eh?”

Theodore looked down at him, seemingly in no hurry, and Patrick got the inkling that the Charmer rather liked seeing him crawl through mud.

In any case, Nina withdrew herself from his hold. Patrick’s jaw loosened.

Theodore raised both hands with his palms down. The water seeped back into the ground, absorbed once more. In the ceiling, the leaks receded, diverted for now.

Patrick finally stood straight in the pocket Nina had left in her wake, leaving the lantern at his feet.

“All right, Donny?” Patrick called.

“Think I’m fuckin’ deaf now, too,” Donny answered. “Are my ears bleedin’?”

“Just the one.”

Nina watched Patrick with an unfathomable expression, and he her. The crater bitten out of the wall loomed threateningly. “Should I keep going?” she asked.

“No,” Patrick said, a smile in his tone. “You most certainly shouldn’t.”

A crease appeared between her brows. She looked at Donny’s bloodied ear, and then at the wreckage beyond Patrick’s shoulder as though only now truly seeing it. “You said ‘as quickly as we can,’?” she reminded him.

Patrick swallowed. “Aye, I did. But we can only go as fast as it takes for us to make the hole safe. And that groaning you heard?” Nina’s eyes went to the ceiling, as though she heard it still.

“Disruptions in the earth. We want to avoid the weak spots. Donny here”—Patrick jutted a thumb toward him—“he has the best ears on the continent. He’ll hear any danger a ways off.

You listen for him to tell you when to stop. ”

Nina wiped her hands on her muddied skirt. “Oh,” she said meekly. “I’m sorry. I—I got carried away.”

Immediately, Theodore wrapped an arm around her shoulders. “You don’t need to apologize,” he told her, and Nina’s lips pressed together. She fell quiet.

Patrick saw it then, the tight coil stuffed inside Theodore’s middle. It sprung at every opportunity to steer Nina. To keep her within reach.

Patrick wondered how long it would take for her to spring back at him. “We’ll clear the dirt from the tunnel,” Patrick said now. “We’ll need a few hours—”

“I can help,” Nina offered, almost eagerly. “I could move it topside?”

But Patrick was already shaking his head. “The shaft can only hold small loads at a time, and it only has a hand pulley. If it snaps, we’re stuck.”

She seemed put out.

“Things move slowly down here,” Patrick said, the smile creeping back into his voice—he couldn’t help it. “There’s a sleeping monster in these walls. Best we don’t wake it.”

It seemed she wanted to argue. Her hands wrung together.

“You can’t do all the work, Nina,” said Theodore, rubbing his hand along her arm.

Her lips pressed once more into a thin line. She nodded, then stepped out of Theodore’s reach and raised a hand. Clods of dirt rose in midair and landed gracelessly in the wagon between them. “I’ll do that much, at least. Save your shovels,” she said.

Patrick only nodded once, though inside, he marveled. Never before had he seen so much power. The ease with which she wielded it. “Donny, keep an ear to the wall.”

“Don’t you worry. I’ll keep an eye on things, Pat,” his brother responded, winking in no particular direction.

“Shut up, Donny.”