me young.” He grins, showing me his yellowed teeth, his long, stringy beard bobbing beneath his chin. “I’ll emerge when the ground thaws, and we’ll have plenty to talk about. Until then, gather your strength, and for stars’ sake, keep silent. If one person in these caverns knows your secrets, they all will.”
I gape at him, but before I can ask if he’s serious about hibernating—because it’s impossible to tell with this mischievous old man—Oskar’s voice echoes into the rocky chamber. “What in the stars above is taking so long?” he roars.
Raimo’s bony shoulders shake as he starts to laugh, and I scoot out of his presence, rushing headlong into my new life—as an outlaw in the thieves’ caverns.
CHAPTER 10
I scramble toward Oskar, apologies on the tip of my tongue. But his tight jaw relaxes and his lips twitch as he sees me bustling out of Raimo’s cave. When his gaze lingers on my hair, I pull the kerchief a little lower on my forehead. His brow furrows. “Your hand is giving you difficulty?” he asks, his voice a bit unsteady.
I shrug my right shoulder so the sleeve covers my crooked fingers. “Not much.”
He begins to walk. “You’ll stay with my family. My mother and my younger sister. I have to go hunting, so they’ll look after you.”
“I can help them . . . do whatever needs to be done.” Though truly, I have no idea what would need doing. Does one sweep the floor of a cave? Is there cutlery to polish? “How long have you lived in the caverns?”
“These? Only since the spring.” He arches one dark slash of an eyebrow. “We thieves tend to move around a lot, and there are a lot of old mines and caves on the peninsula.”
“This one hasn’t been mined yet,” I say, remembering how desperate the miners supposedly were to gain access—though now I wonder if they were half as desperate as the elders.
“It’s one of the few that hasn’t been,” Oskar informs me. “Which means it’s less prone to cave-ins. Our numbers have grown and safety is important.”
“How many people live here?”
He gives me a sidelong glance and doesn’t answer. I bite the inside of my cheek, but I can’t stop myself from blundering forward. “Did you live in the city . . . before?”
“Did you?” he asks, acid in his tone.
For the first time in my life, I understand how threatening simple questions can be. It looks like we both fear the slippery slope of revealed secrets. If I don’t want to give away any of mine, it looks like I’ll have to curb my own curiosity. “I apologize for prying.”
Oskar grunts and steps ahead of me as the tunnel grows narrow. “Watch out for puddles and loose rocks.” Our only light is the torch in his hand, and it strikes me that he didn’t have one when he made this journey with me on his back. He stumbled through the suffocating dark with a heavy burden pulling him down, just to get help for me. And now he’s probably regretting it.
We make our way slowly. Something tells me Oskar is doing it for my benefit. I watch every step and yet still manage to stumble every few seconds. The tunnel seems to stretch forever, winding upward. My legs ache with fatigue. My breaths come harsh and fast; I’m not accustomed to walking so far, and especially not uphill. The three remaining fingers on my right hand are sensitive to any jarring motion, so I keep them tucked against my belly and use only my left hand to keep my balance.
Oskar looks over his shoulder when I stumble for the thousandth time. “Do you need me to carry you?”
“No,” I snap, then soften my tone. “But if you could tell me how much farther, I’d be grateful.”
His inscrutable gaze lingers on me. “The main cavern is just around that bend.” He points the torch toward a distant crimp in the path. I wait to grimace until his back is turned again.
We eventually reach the turn and are greeted by the flicker of distant campfires. The tunnel widens, with a few openings on either side—smaller caverns where I can hear people talking and water splashing. The front cave comes into view a moment later. It’s massive, at least as large as the domed chamber in the Temple on the Rock. Around its edges are . . . well, calling them cottages would be generous. At least forty small shelters line