Stolen Songbird(71)

“It’s a dormitory owned by the Miners’ Guild,” Zoé explained quietly. “It houses two mining gangs. There are fifteen half-bloods in each gang.”

“Thirty people live here?” The house seemed barely large enough to contain the fifteen miners in front of me.

“Day and night shifts,” Tips explained around a mouthful of porridge. “We only cross paths to and from work.”

“What about your days off?” I asked.

The whole room erupted into laughter.

Wiping porridge off his chin, Tips said, “If you get a day off from mining, you’re likely to spend it trying to outrun the sluag in the labyrinth.”

“I see,” I said.

“Sure you do,” Tips said. “Now tell me, what’s His Royal Highness thinking putting you up to this?”

“He doesn’t know I’m here,” I said. “He’s sleeping.” Which wasn’t precisely true… I didn’t know where he was or what he was doing.

Tips’s eyebrows rose. “And you think when he wakes up to find you missing from his bed, he won’t wonder where you got to?”

I refused to meet his gaze. “That’s not your concern.”

“Oh ho!” Tips cackled. “That’s how it is. Separate sleeping for the royal lovebirds.”

“He has business to take care of,” I snapped. “And you should keep your nose out of other people’s bedrooms.”

“Perhaps the King should have found Tristan a boy songbird to fulfill the Duchesse’s prophesy!” one of the other miners said, and the room echoed with their laughter.

I glowered at them.

“Just jokes.” Tips gave me a companionable swat against the shoulder. “Ain’t nobody more loyal to Tristan than Tips’s gang.” He motioned for the girls and me to follow him into another room. “You sure you wanting to be doing this?” he asked.

“I wouldn’t be here if I wasn’t sure.”

Tips’s remaining eye narrowed. “I need you to be sure, cause once we’re lowered into the mines, we’re down there for twelve hours, no matter what happens. If one of us gets hurt, we tend to it down there. If you get hurt, we’ll help you the best we can, but understand, there is no way out before our shift is over.” He waited to see if I would react before he continued. “We’ll be going further down into the deeps than you probably ever thought possible. The air will taste foul, and there will be times you’ll feel short of breath. And you’ll feel it, the weight of all that rock and earth piled above you. There’s some who can’t handle it – some who’d rather be dead than spend five minutes at the bottom of those shafts.”

élise squirmed uncomfortably next to me. She’d already told me that it would be Zoé who would come with me into the mines. She hated tight spaces.

I swallowed hard. “I can do it.” I met the miner’s gaze. “I need to know what I’m fighting for… who I’m fighting for.” I squared my shoulders. “I need you to give me a reason why I should risk everything for you.” This was part of the speech I’d used to convince Zoé and élise to help me: I needed something worse than coddled lady’s maids or even forlorn street sweepers to motivate me. I needed to see the worst in order to understand why Tristan had chosen to lead a revolution against his father. The mines were the worst.

“I reckon we can do that,” Tips said softly, then watched silently as the girls tucked a miner’s cap over the braids binding my hair to my head. They smeared black grease over the parts that showed and rubbed a bit of grime over my cheeks. I was already dressed in the grey trousers and tunic the miners wore.

“Will do,” he said when they finished. “Mind you keep your face down – those pretty blue eyes of yours will give you away.”





I walked in the center of Tips’s gang, doing my best to imitate their unconcerned amble while keeping my head down. Zoé walked next to me, providing a second ball of light as part of my disguise.



“Has he noticed yet?” she asked under her breath.

“No,” I whispered back. “It’s too early – he probably just thinks I’m at one of my lessons.” It was the one flaw, albeit a major one, in our plan. Tips’s gang’s shift ran from seven in the evening until seven in the morning. There was only another hour until curfew fell, and although I wasn’t subject to punishment for breaking it, he would wonder what business kept me out of the palace. And that was only if he didn’t notice that I was suddenly a league below Trollus. I had no doubt he would figure out what I was doing – the only question was whether he would interfere or not.