“I cannot believe you would have the guts to come back here, to me, empty handed.”

The room that Ephin had felt was so claustrophobic last he had been there, was definitely worse now that the number of people had doubled. Darroreck sat behind his desk, looking down at various notebooks and loose papers. Ephin wasn’t sure how he could be so calm, sitting down in front of a collection of people who could likely kill him. Not that Ephin would, he was simply impressed at the composure of the man, or wondering what Darroreck had in his back pocket as a safety mechanism for the one time a desperate person he was threatening did attack him. This group was filled with those desperate people now.

“We are following a lead to potentially bring out the thief out of hiding,” Jadon said, unused to being head height with his boss whilst the man was seated. “We have encountered the individual multiple times and believe him to be a chyringa. A chyringa is-”

“I know what a chyringa is, smart ass.” Jadon fell silent. “You think I can simply take you at your word. Let you run around town for everyone to see? You need proof before you start throwing around wild accusations of monsters nobody has seen in decades, possibly centuries,” Darroreck said, still not looking up. “Any other excuses before I let the boys fill you full of holes?”

“We can get that proof for you,” Jadon said. Ephin could tell from how he was gripping his wheelchair that Jadon was terrified of this man. He had the beginnings of beads of sweat gathering on his face and shook ever so slightly. Ephin likely wouldn’t have noticed, if he hadn’t been around the guy for so long. Jadon was usually indistinguishable from a statue when it came to moving around.

“Why should I believe you?” Darroreck asked, lifting his eyes to stare into Jadon’s. “You said you would do something for me last time you were here. Where is the evidence you haven’t simply been off having fun outside the city walls?”

“I-”

“Trust.” Darroreck stood slowly, putting down his quill and looking down at Jadon, not breaking eye contact or blinking once. “Trust is a powerful thing. Over the years, I have placed my trust in you. In turn, I would like to think you placed yours in me.”

“Of course, I-”

“Shut it.” Darroreck turned his unblinking gaze to each of the others in the room, pausing momentarily on Ephin- the only sign of recognition he was afforded- before turning their focus back to Jadon. “How much do you trust these companions you have? In our line of work, you know that I can only trust them as much as you do. If they break your trust, they break mine. This is why we either keep a close-knit group of people that we can trust, or we expand and sleep with one eye open and a knife under the pillow.”

“I trust them, Darroreck, I do.”

“You’re in High Morr, idiotically, to collect something that can lead you to your ‘chyringa’?” Darroreck emphasised his disbelief in air quotes.

“Yes, that’s right,” Jadon said.

“Choose who goes to pick it up.”

“I’m sorry?”

“We’ll get to that. Right now, you trust these individuals. Choose who stays here and who goes to collect your lure. If they do not return with it, by oh let’s say midnight tomorrow, then you and whoever you choose to stay with you, will be killed.” Darroreck cracked the slightest smirk that Ephin caught.

But he doesn’t trust any of us, Ephin thought, watching Jadon scratch at the arm of his chair nervously.

“It’s that or we kill the lot of you now for wasting my time and my money. Hurry it up.”

“Beth and Ephin can go. They’re more likely to be able to figure out where our next step is,” Jadon said, his voice strained and scratchy, dehydrated. Ephin and Beth raised their hands to identify themselves.

“You’re the one with the automaton,” Darroreck asked Beth, who nodded. “Well, you can take it with you, less trouble for us that way. You’ll be shown out. Don’t try to tell anyone about us or where we are. Until you need to return, we might as well not exist. Remembering at the wrong time or to the wrong person will hurt a lot of people.”

Beth and Ephin nodded and were led out of the winding underground tunnels by one of the people who brought them down in the first place.

“I should’ve had Hunter deal with them from the start,” Beth muttered.

“I doubt there were only two people watching us,” Ephin said, “we wouldn’t have gotten out of the alleyway. Jadon was right to get us to come peacefully.”

“Damn right,” the member of the Brixith Order guiding them said, “but I won’t say how many extra people.” He looked at them and smiled, his wet teeth reflecting some of the everflame light at the other two.

The four of them walked out to the entrance that they had been brought to, near one of the larger livestock buildings and Beth, Ephin and Hunter were allowed to leave.

“Don’t be too long, now,” the Order member laughed from the shadows, slinking back down into the den.

Jadon and Iarkspur were taken to a pitch-black room with a double set of single doors. One was heavy metal with a metal grate to talk through, at head height. The other one was a normal wooden one to hide the metal door from the outside corridor. The room they were pushed into was metal on all sides and devoid of light. It soaked in the cold from the ground and made it uncomfortable for either Iarkspur or Jadon to rest in the room. Jadon, incidentally, was also left without his chair, to make it even more difficult to mount an escape.

Iarkspur barely waited a few moments until she tried to grow her plants from her seeds. Instead, all that happened was the seeds hit the metal floor and lay there unmoving.

“It won’t work,” Jadon mumbled.

“I should at least be able to get one through the seams of the metal slabs.”

“This room,” Jadon explained, “it’s built specifically to stop someone using magic. Darroreck is really proud of it.”

“Great.” Iarkspur slumped back against the wall, sliding to the ground and scooped up the seeds to put back in her pouch. It took a little longer than she would have liked, thanks to the darkness. “Are you happy now?”

“Why would I be happy?”

Iarkspur sighed and knocked the back of her head against the metal wall a couple times in frustration.

“I don’t know,” she said, “I just feel like I wouldn’t be in this situation if it weren’t for you.”

“In this cell?”

“The whole thing. It’s such a mess and everyone else is okay with killing and I ran out on my family again and there is some powerful bad guy trying to bring back even more powerful bad guys and now I’m stuck in a box in the ground with you of all people.”

“First off, thanks for that.”

“Shut up.”

“No,” Jadon said, “secondly, I’m not really that okay with killing. I got carried away in Vernox. I think I just wanted to hurt him a little. He’s a city guard and the son of some rich person in the upper city. I see the uniform and I see how he was born into everything he wanted. Then he wanted to get all that back, possibly with the title of hero, by throwing us under the bus? After everything we have been through. I just… I just wanted to take him down a peg. Not kill him. Not what that thing did.”

“He was a guard and he was the son of some rich-”

“I know, Iarkspur!” Jadon slammed a fist into the metal wall by him, the impact reverberating around the room until silence caught up to them once more. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay.”

“No,” Jadon’s voice was quiet, even in the isolated darkness, Iarkspur could barely make it out. “I’m sorry for getting you dragged into this. For getting Arledge killed. For getting Guy killed. For getting us captured. For putting a target on our backs for these monsters to play with. It’s my fault. I just don’t know how to realize enough is enough. All I do is double down.”

“I accept your apology,” Iarkspur said softly.

“You know Guy gained powers while he was with us?” Jadon said, trying to lighten the mood.

“Yes, he was controlling water in a similar way to how I control plants. He showed it off a little with some puddles on the trip down south.”

“I wonder where he got the powers from,” Jadon said.

“No idea,” Iarkspur said, “I get mine from the matrons. They taught me how to ask nature to help me out.”

“So, Ephin has is holy stuff, Beth is good at making deadly or useful things and now has a murderous automaton, you have your plants. Since when am I going to get some cool powers?” Jadon gave a single quiet huff of a laugh to signal to Iarkspur that he wasn’t entirely serious. He wasn’t entirely joking either.

“If you could get anything,” Iarkspur asked, “what would it be?”

“New legs, for one. Or flight, so they wouldn’t matter. Being really strong would be cool, or really fast.” Jadon smiled to himself in the dark.

“They sound ridiculous,” Iarkspur laughed.

“Says the tree hugger,” Jadon retorted.

“How long do you think we’ll be down here?” Iarkspur asked, her voice getting quiet once again.

“As long as it takes the others to get back with what we need,” Jadon said.

“What if the riddle wasn’t to the library?”

“Then we’re screwed,” Jadon answered, “hey, look on the bright side. Since when has anything ever gone wrong for our group?”

“I had almost forgotten you’re a jerk.”

“Almost.”

Beth was thanking whatever gods Ephin might pray to for having him with her. The streets were impossible to navigate and even harder to navigate in a way to avoid the piercing gaze of the city watch. Having a being made entirely of metal following her around and showing no care for being stealthy did not help. Beth and Ephin had dressed Hunter up so that unless someone took extra care looking at his hands or under his hood, he should vaguely pass as a living being and not a metal machine.

With the distraction of the pending siege or invasion by the army across the lagoon, the streets were more of a frenzy than the last time either of them had raced down them. This meant it was easier to slip by the reduced patrols and into the upper district.

Jadon had been right, whilst the walls were impressive, there were well-hidden alcoves for people to ferry supplies to the upper district’s wealthy occupants and that meant it was simply a matter of timing their darts across streets with the patrols who watched the crowds.

Pushed open a small wooden door and stepping up, out of the narrow passage under the final inner wall, both Beth and Ephin were struck at the grand architecture of the buildings in this area in comparison to the crammed together shops and houses in the other districts. Everywhere else, everyone seemed to be fighting for room on the island of limited space. In the upper district, no buildings were conjoined. Each house was multiple times larger than any of the buildings in the lower districts and a large wall cut off the central building from prying eyes. The Frostharbour Palace.

“There,” Ephin pointed. Beth looked just to the side of the huge palace and saw a turret rising in the air, dwarfing the height of even the palace. “That’s the central library.”

The three of them ducked and dodged the eyesight of anyone pottering around the much less crowded upper district. The entire library came into view as they made their way slowly around the wall of the upper district, skirting the circumference of the area.

Beth saw a series of smaller buildings, though not small in comparison to anything on the island outside this district. They were laid out in a circle, encircling a huge main column that rose into the sky.

“There we go,” Ephin said, looking up at the turret too, “the Atipumal Archives.”