Chapter 56: BEFORE THE BELL STOPS

DIANA’S POV

Rellan.

Diana knew the name.

The civilians trapped at White Pass had come from there. She remembered the little girl wrapped in her blue coat.

Raigoro arrived from the Inner Keep corridor moments after the alarm and crossed into Diana’s writing room.

"What do we have?"

The messenger held out the first relay packet.

"Deep-working collapse. The failure happened before dawn. Rellan sent the first report once they confirmed the main lift remained usable."

Raigoro opened it.

"How many trapped?"

"Unknown when this left."

"How much of the mine?"

"Three lower sections suspected. Local rescue crews were already entering the middle level."

Raigoro looked at the relay mark.

"This is already several hours old."

"Yes, Your Grace."

Rellan was days away for a traveling party. Dispatches moved faster because the territorial relay changed riders and horses at each station, but even the quickest message reached Blackharrow after the situation that created it had already changed.

Daric was already moving.

"Command Terrace."

Raigoro handed him the first packet.

"Send mine engineers there. Not military engineers alone. I want people who know deep structural work."

Daric left.

Raigoro did not follow.

Apparently he did not need the complete report before beginning whatever could already be done.

He turned back to the messenger.

"Any fire?"

"None reported."

"Flooding?"

"No report."

"Ventilation failure?"

"Possible."

"Secondary collapse?"

"The foreman reported continuing movement below."

"Who holds rescue authority at Rellan?"

"Foreman Tomas Rusk was directing the local crews when this dispatch left."

"Mining engineers?"

"Two were already below with the rescue teams. The senior engineer was inspecting the middle approach."

Raigoro nodded.

"Good. Rellan keeps local rescue command until someone on site has evidence it needs to change. Tell Command Terrace I want their requests relayed exactly. Nobody here decides what a mine needs because they have seen a tunnel before."

The messenger bowed and left.

Raigoro looked toward one of the guards.

"Tell the infirmary to prepare for crush injuries, smoke, bad air, fractures, and hypothermia. Have medical reinforcement ready."

He turned to another.

"Rope stores. Timber bracing. Excavation equipment. Portable lamps. Water. Send word to the lower mining guilds. I want experienced rescue miners available for reinforcement, not volunteers who have never worked a collapse."

The guard hesitated. "How many crews?"

"As many as their mine masters say they can release without making another working mine unsafe."

The answer sent him moving.

Within minutes, no one cared about the monthly accounts still spread across Diana’s household table. Clerks were setting emergency papers over them faster than she could move the earlier pages aside.

A clerk arrived asking whether medical wagons should be prepared before the trapped count was confirmed.

"Yes," Raigoro said.

Another wanted to know whether military bracing stores could be released to the mining engineers.

"If the engineers request them."

A third had questions about the road.

Raigoro asked about weather, which Rellan approaches remained open, and which specialist teams could reach the first relay stations fastest.

The corridor changed around Diana.

She had seen Blackharrow answer military alarms before. Armor appeared. Officers moved toward Command Terrace. Dragon Host riders headed for the upper courts.

Rellan sent people in different directions.

An infirmary clerk hurried past carrying a list of treatment beds. Two household servants were sent to clear a lower passage for incoming medical equipment. A quartermaster began arguing with someone over bracing timber. Another runner asked whether portable lamps should come from military stores or the territorial mining reserve.

The court below remained clear of assembling infantry, and no Dragon Host officers were running toward the landing platforms.

A mountain had fallen on civilians. Blackharrow answered with engineers, healers, miners, rope, timber, lamps, and people who knew how to use them.

Diana looked down at the slate in her hand.

Everyone entering the corridor seemed to know which question belonged to them.

She did not.

At White Pass, usefulness had been simple enough to understand.

A child had been cold.

Diana had possessed a coat.

Rellan was different.

Willingness to enter danger would do very little for the people beneath the mountain. They needed people who understood where stone might fall next, how poisoned air moved through a tunnel, and which support could be disturbed without bringing half a gallery down.

Diana disliked that distinction before anyone had even made it for her.

Rellan employed more than a hundred workers across the mine during a full operating shift. Most had likely been on upper levels, surface works, or unaffected galleries when the collapse began.

The unknown number concerned the people who had not come back through the surviving exits.

Diana raised her slate.

HOW MANY PEOPLE BELOW?

Raigoro looked toward the empty place where the first report had been.

"We still don’t know."

The answer irritated her.

He saw it.

"The packet is several hours old. That is worse than an incomplete report because conditions may already have changed."

Diana wrote:

HOW LONG UNTIL WE KNOW?

"If Rellan sent the full foreman’s report when this packet says they would, it may already be somewhere on the relay road."

The answer existed.

Just not here.

Diana hated delayed information.

Raigoro apparently did too, but unlike Diana, he had spent enough of his life commanding through it to know irritation did not make a rider move faster.

Another runner came through the outer doorway.

"Command Terrace has the infirmary, mining guild, supply office, and territorial relay on the emergency circuit."

"Good."

"Master Engineer Pellan Var has been located. He wants every structural report we have before he selects the first reinforcement team."

"Give him everything."

The runner nodded.

"Does he wait for the full Rellan packet?"

"No. He prepares from what we have and changes the preparation when better information arrives."

The man left.

Diana looked toward the corridor leading to Command Terrace.

She wanted to go to Rellan.

That part was already settled in her mind. What she would actually do there was considerably less clear.

She could carry supplies above ground, help wherever the medical teams allowed her, work with the families, or do whatever useful task someone put in front of her.

Anything that did not leave her inside Blackharrow while other people rode toward trapped civilians.

Staying here felt too much like watching danger through a window and calling attention concern.

But everything happening around her kept returning her to the same unpleasant fact.

Wanting to help gave Diana no knowledge of unstable stone, poisoned air, damaged supports, or any of the hundred other things the rescue teams might need to understand before stepping below ground.

Raigoro had not told her that yet.

Diana was already annoyed with him for eventually being correct about it.

Alma looked toward her slate.

"You are planning something."

Diana gave her a look.

"I recognize the expression."

Diana wrote: I HAVE NOT DONE ANYTHING.

"Yet."

Unhelpful.

A messenger appeared at the far end of the passage before Diana could answer.

He was running.

"Your Grace."

Raigoro turned.

"A second Rellan packet just reached the outer gate. Foreman Tomas Rusk’s full report is with it."

Conversations stopped nearest the messenger first. A clerk carrying two folders lowered them without seeming to notice.

Raigoro held out one hand.

"Bring it to Command Terrace."

The messenger turned immediately.

Raigoro followed.

Diana did too.

Alma came beside her, and the two Household Guards fell in behind them.

They crossed from the household passage toward Government Terrace, where clerks and military runners were already moving in both directions.

At the restricted Command Terrace doors, Diana’s guards stopped with her.

Correctly.

Raigoro had given her real authority elsewhere in Blackharrow, but none of it extended through these doors. Rescue routes, personnel deployment, and emergency command belonged to the people inside.

Diana understood the rule. But understanding it did not make the closed door less irritating.

Raigoro stopped before entering.

Diana looked at the closed packet in the messenger’s hands.

The full report might contain the trapped count.

The damaged routes.

Whether anyone remained alive below the deepest collapse.

Whether the surface itself was safe enough for people to work near the mine.

And, somewhere inside all of that, the answer to whether there was anything Diana could actually do if she went.

Raigoro looked at her.

"This report decides the rescue."

Diana held his gaze.

She did not write that she wanted to go yet.

The question could wait until they knew what Rellan actually needed.

Raigoro entered Command Terrace.

The door closed behind him.

Diana remained outside with Alma.

Inside, voices began almost immediately.

Numbers.

Tunnel names.

Air.

Timber.

She could hear pieces without understanding enough to make them useful.

Alma glanced toward her.

"You want to go."

Diana looked at the closed door.

Then wrote: YES.

Alma read it.

She did not tell Diana whether that was wise.

Neither of them knew enough yet.

The civilian alarm finally stopped.

The Citadel did not.