Ask him where he was that day.
I looked at Merrick.
“Where were you when the mine exploded?”
His expression went blank.
“What?”
“October fourteenth, eighteen sixty.”
“I was a baby.”
“Where?”
He swallowed.
“I don’t know.”
Vane laughed sharply.
“Enough of this.”
But Merrick was staring at Gideon.
“Why are you asking?”
Gideon’s hands trembled as he wrote again.
Red mitten.
Small child.
Locked room near the lower gate.
Merrick read the words over my shoulder.
His face drained of color.
“I don’t remember.”
I reached inside my coat.
The little mitten was still tucked beside my mother’s statement.
I held it out.
Merrick stared.
A terrible silence settled over the chamber.
Then he whispered:
“My mother used to keep one like that.”
I felt a sudden, sickening certainty.
Before I could speak, Vane lunged forward and snatched the mitten from my hand.
He examined it.
Something changed in his expression.
Recognition.
Fear.
He looked toward Merrick.
Then he said:
“Your mother should have burned this years ago.”
Merrick stumbled backward.
“What does it mean?”
Vane crushed the mitten in his fist.
“It means nothing.”
But Gideon was watching Merrick with an expression of dawning understanding.
He remembered the child.
Not the child’s name.
Not what became of him.
Only the weight of a tiny body in his arms.
And the terrible need to keep moving.
Vane raised the pistol again.
“Enough.”
His finger tightened around the trigger.
Merrick stepped in front of Gideon.
The shot struck the timber above their heads.
Wood splintered.
Gideon seized the opportunity.
He pushed Merrick aside and drove his shoulder into Vane.
The men crashed against the stone wall.
The pistol fell.
I grabbed it before Vane could recover.
“Stop!”
Vane froze.
My hands shook violently, but I kept the weapon pointed toward the floor between us.
Gideon backed away.
Merrick stood breathing hard, blood trickling from a scrape along his forehead.
Then a deep cracking sound rolled through the chamber.
The damaged support had begun to shift.
Water burst through a seam beside the iron gate.
A thin stream became a powerful jet.
The floor trembled.
Gideon immediately turned toward the wheel.
He motioned urgently for us to move.
Vane tried to run.
But the second armed man appeared in the passage, blocking the exit.
“What happened?”
“Get out!”
