Chapter 63: THE SECOND COLLAPSE

DIANA’S POV

The urgent Rellan packet carried four lines.

SECONDARY COLLAPSE AT MIDDLE LEVEL.

MULTIPLE RESCUE PERSONNEL INJURED.

GRAND DUKE INJURED, CONSCIOUS WHEN PACKET DISPATCHED.

INJURY EXTENT UNKNOWN.

Diana read the third line twice.

Her chalk touched the slate.

HOW BADLY?

Daric read it.

"We do not have the medical assessment yet."

Conscious when dispatched gave Diana one fact and left every useful question open.

She wanted to know whether he could breathe without pain, whether he was bleeding badly, whether he could stand, and whether he had already begun arguing with whichever physician had found him.

None of those answers existed in the packet Daric held.

Work usually gave Diana somewhere to put her attention. This time, every task left enough room for the same unanswered questions about Raigoro to return.

Another household clerk approached before she could write something less reasonable.

"Your Grace, the Rellan families are asking whether the rescue stopped."

The question pulled Diana back to the corridor.

Raigoro was injured.

Thirty-seven people were still part of the mine count.

She could do nothing for him from Blackharrow.

She could answer this.

"Latest confirmed rescue status?" Alma asked.

Daric checked the packet and the previous scheduled report.

"Secondary collapse struck the middle station. Multiple rescuers were injured. We do not yet have confirmation that the main rescue stopped. Lower service-team status is unknown."

Diana wrote:

POST ONLY WHAT WE KNOW.

The clerk nodded.

"Do we include His Grace?"

If they learned Raigoro had been injured during the same collapse, fear would spread.

Hiding it would be worse when the information arrived from someone else.

She wrote: YES.

Then: NO DETAILS WE DO NOT HAVE.

Daric read it.

"Agreed."

The public board changed.

37 RECORDED UNDERGROUND AT TIME OF COLLAPSE.

11 EXTRACTED AS OF LAST VERIFIED REPORT.

26 NOT YET EXTRACTED.

SECONDARY COLLAPSE AT MIDDLE LEVEL.

MULTIPLE RESCUE PERSONNEL INJURED.

LOWER SERVICE TEAM STATUS NOT YET CONFIRMED.

GRAND DUKE INJURED, CONSCIOUS WHEN PACKET DISPATCHED.

The ward lamps above the waiting corridor had already lowered into their night setting, though nobody beneath them appeared likely to sleep.

The families read it.

One woman clasped both hands against her chest.

Another whispered, "He was underground?"

Diana had no answer for that.

Joren Vale’s mother appeared at the edge of the crowd.

"The six?"

Daric had no new report. Diana shook her head.

The woman nodded.

Then sat down again.

Waiting.

Diana returned to the workroom where Alma followed.

There were still room assignments and meal counts to check. Two family registrations did not match the mine records, and a child with a fever had turned the household waiting room into an actual infirmary problem.

Diana tried to work.

She read the same paragraph three times.

A clerk asked whether one family could move into the western guest hall.

Diana answered correctly.

She signed a meal transfer.

She turned another page without understanding any of it.

Alma allowed this longer.

Then she said, "You are holding that upside down."

The page was upside down.

I KNOW.

"No, you didn’t."

Diana gave her a look.

Alma sat across from her.

"You are frightened."

Diana took another sheet.

Alma did not stop her.

Good.

There was nothing useful to say.

Diana measured the next hours in work completed badly and footsteps outside the door that turned out not to belong to the relay clerk.

Every time someone entered carrying a case, Diana checked the seal before the person carrying it. Most belonged to another office or another report. Each opening door brought a brief expectation before delivering someone else’s problem.

The Rellan families were living inside the same cruelty, and Diana hated understanding them better this way.

The medical packet finally arrived after dark.

Daric opened it at the report desk.

Diana was beside him before he finished breaking the seal.

He read silently first.

Then turned the page toward her.

GRAND DUKE STABLE.

TWO SUSPECTED CRACKED RIBS. LEFT SHOULDER INJURY. SCALP LACERATION.

NO IMMEDIATE SIGN OF SEVERE HEAD INJURY.

Diana closed her eyes.

Stable.

Her knees felt unreliable enough that she sat.

Alma exhaled beside her.

Diana read the medical lines again, slower this time.

Nothing in the report said Raigoro had crossed Master Var’s marked safety line.

The collapse had reached the place the engineer had cleared for command.

Diana held on to that distinction.

He had gone where the work required him to go. He had listened to the people who understood the mine. The mountain had moved anyway.

Diana still hated the injury.

She would simply have to choose another argument when he returned, because accusing him of ignoring the engineers was no longer available.

Unfortunately, she had several others.

Daric continued reading.

"He remained conscious throughout the medical assessment. The mine physician wants him removed from the middle station."

Good.

Diana held out her hand for the rest.

Daric gave her the page.

Near the bottom:

GRAND DUKE REFUSES EVACUATION UNTIL COMMAND TRANSFER COMPLETE.

Diana stared.

Alma read over her shoulder.

"Oh."

Diana reached for her slate.

Daric said, "I recommend saving whatever you are about to write until he returns."

Diana wrote anyway.

IDIOT.

Daric read it.

Alma said, "I have no corrections."

Diana added another word beneath it.

STUBBORN.

Daric considered. ℯℯ𝘭.

"I am less willing to place that in an official dispatch."

Diana gave him a look.

Nobody sent the message.

Unfortunately.

The mine already had enough problems.

The waiting resumed.

Diana returned to the family rooms.

Joren’s mother was still there. The lower service rescue team still had no confirmed status.

Diana sat beside the woman for several minutes.

She did not offer reassurance.

There was none.

The woman held a cup of tea with both hands.

"He should have been fixing lamps somewhere else this week."

Diana looked at her.

"They changed the assignment."

The woman stared into the cup.

"One little order."

Diana understood that too. Odran’s order had put her in Selena’s wedding and sent her north. A changed maintenance assignment had put Joren in Rellan instead of another repair.

The orders themselves had probably looked ordinary on paper.

Diana remained until the woman drank half the tea.

Then she returned to work.

Much later, quick footsteps came down the corridor with a priority slip rather than a full relay case.

Daric read it, and Diana was already standing before he spoke.

"What?" Alma asked.

"The lower service rescue team survived the secondary collapse."

Joren’s mother had heard.

She stood in the outer room.

Daric continued.

"They reached the far side of the shifted wall."

Diana waited.

"And they heard knocking."