Put the Treasure Back

In a drought-stricken kingdom in 1480, a widowed well-digger follows bronze arrowheads embedded in an abandoned shaft toward a royal ransom buried beneath the desert. She hires the defeated army’s last sapper, who recognizes the stone traps because he helped build them, and together they dig through salt beds that crumble at the touch of a shovel. Forty feet below the shaft, they uncover a chest of emeralds beside a sealed spring, but the chest’s iron cradle holds the cracked ceiling in place. With thirsty villagers lowering buckets overhead, she must pull out the ransom that could buy them passage elsewhere or break the cradle to release the water and bury the treasure—and their only exit.