Chapter Seven

A BURGLARY

‘Keep your hands up.’

Midge showed me the error of my ways by landing another thump across the top of my head.

I dragged my hair back around my ears and humphed. Nodding for another bout, I bent my knees and kept my hands around my ears, elbows and arms taking the blows instead. Midge’s playful thwacks – or so he called them – darkened the bruises already earned from half a week of sparring with the big lout. Riveno had given me magic, but Midge had shown me how to hit, and more importantly, how to take a hit. Or the kind I like most of all, how to avoid being hit altogether. Let me give you one piece of advice: learn to fight against a man twice your size. That way, once you can take a lump like that to pieces, men your size will seem half as intimidating.

I weaved and ducked as Midge had taught me, waiting for him to overextend himself. The moment came, and I knocked him in the jaw.

Midge grinned as he massaged his face. ‘That was good stuff. That one almost hurt.’

A tutting came from behind me.

’I’m a fan of the old kick to the back of the legs and put them in a headlock,’ Ganner opined. He was lounging up against the wall, picking his trimmed nails. I had never seen a gutter rat try so hard to play the gaudy parrot.

‘You’re going to put Midge in a headlock?’ I said, stifling my laughter.

Ganner shrugged and grinned. Several of the girls of the shop said he was a handsome sort. All I thought when I looked at him was how many eggs I could have fried with all the oil in his hair.

‘Didn’t say it would work on everybody.’ Ganner shrugged. ‘Works well on those it works on.’

‘Come on then,’ I said. ‘Let’s see if it works on me.’

Ganner obliged me without question. I wanted to teach him a lesson, but after a few feints and jabs, and even though I was expecting it, he hooked my leg, swept past me, and wrapped an arm around my neck so I dangled from his grip.

I tapped his arm with a grunt, but Ganner didn’t let go and only smiled down at me instead. I threw an elbow, just like Midge had taught me, and Ganner soon dropped me. When I found my way to my feet, the boy was dabbing a finger at a speck of blood on his nostrils.

‘Huh,’ he laughed, rather unconvincingly. ‘Not so defenceless after all,’ he said.

I looked to Midge for approval, but he was too busy winking at a passing gentleman in a fine hat and ash-smeared tails.

‘Is there anyone you won’t flirt with?’ I asked him with a chuckle.

‘If they’re rich and wanting a young treat to take under their wing and shower with shells, who am I to complain?’ The big lad grinned.

‘By this time tomorrow, you won’t need to marry rich. You’ll be rich.’

‘Tonight, then?’ asked Ganner.

I nodded. ‘Wrekham will be at the amphitheatre, filling his ears with the Venerance choirs. And we’ll be in his mansion, lining our pockets.’

Ganner whistled through his suspiciously white teeth. ‘Wrekham must have beaten you hard for you to want this so badly.’

‘Not me,’ I growled. ‘I’m doing this for Aberan.’ It was all for Aberan.

Midge cleared his throat. ‘Here they come, Dwellin. Ready up.’

It wasn’t uncommon for servants to run errands for their mansion of employ. The butlers and masters of the mansions didn’t handle a task with their own hands if they could help it. Only the most trusted servants got the chance to escape the mansions to fetch food and clothes from the markets. They were the ones who could be given a master’s shells and bring back the right change as well as the right items. They even made a few crumbs for themselves if they were quick enough. They were lucky bastards, and today it gave me great pleasure to be hunting four of them.

I peered around the edge of the wall and stared into the bustling market. Between the pointed, garish tents and the stout wooden halls made for drinking and gobbling roast salamander, I spotted our prey.

Four skinny wretches came bustling down the stalls with half-empty sacks in hand. Each wore a familiar, vile mustard-yellow tabard; a colour I had not missed in the slightest.

‘Sure you want to mess with Mop Mattox’s children?’ Ganner asked.

‘Without a doubt.’ It was almost a treat to thump the heads of those who had once thumped me. I already recognised two of them, and both were long overdue a whack.

Ganner and I made ourselves scarce while Midge sauntered into the middle of the narrow street. I watched him stand like a rock between the four.

‘Those colours make you look like some shit threw up,’ he told them, making it tough to stay silent for anybody involved.

Seeing how big their harasser was, three of the servants were content to pass Midge by and keep hustling. The fourth was the opposite. He was Golg, the Esfer lummox that gave Aberan and I far too many scratches from his talons. I watched the feathers around his face flex outwards as he turned to face Midge.

‘What did you say, gutter-lump?’

Midge struck Golg straight in the face without a single word of preamble. Golg was a big lad in his own right, and he didn’t fall straight away. Midge was there to make sure he did, whacking him in the stomach so hard the lad folded over his fist. The other three were torn between street loyalty and seeing their biggest go down like a half-full sack of shit. One fled straight away, and I raced to catch her. Unfortunately for her, the lizard tail she had bound her hair into made a fine leash. I snatched and pulled, and her legs flew out from under her with a comical squeal.

Turning, I found Ganner and Midge had subdued the others. Ganner even had one in a headlock, just as he had promised. A wheezing Golg was dragged into an alleyway, while Ganner and I herded the rest of them. Only a few bored onlookers from the market, too drunk or ambivalent to raise any alarm, went back to their browsing.

‘Give us your sacks,’ Midge ordered.

‘You’ll have Ma Mattox thirsting for your blood after this. Never mind Baron Wrekham,’ one of my fellow gutter rats snivelled around a bloody lip.

‘You should know better than to think they care about any of you,’ I hissed, keeping them quiet.

‘You,’ Golg spoke between his breaths. ‘I recognise… your face. Aberan’s… sister. The one… Wrekham is looking for…’

I grinned back at him. ‘Not so much of a lummox after all, are you? This is what you get for your bullying ways. Gutter rats should stick together, not tear each other apart. Take this as a lesson.’

My words surprised me, never mind Ganner and Midge. They looked at me with eyebrows raised as the echoes of my shout died.

‘Give us your sacks and your shells,’ said Midge. We had to make it look like common street thuggery to avoid suspicion from Mattox or Pitius. Or worse, Wrekham himself.

My fellow gutter rats did as they were told. Midge’s fists hovering close to their face helped quicken the process immensely. Clunking sacks and little pouches of shells were handed over.

‘Now strip,’ ordered Ganner.

‘You what?’ Golg blustered.

‘You heard him,’ I said. ‘Give us those awful tabards. They’ll make nice trophies as well as doing you a favour.’

‘Ma’ll make us pay for them ourselves. Pitius will beat us.’

‘Say you were robbed,’ Ganner told him with a tut, as he whisked the tabards from the last waif and threw them into the sack. ‘Won’t be lying now, will you?’

Golg stared down his beak-like nose at me. ‘If the Mop doesn’t find you, then I will.’

I patted the Esfer lad on his feathered cheek. ‘Sure you will.’ I knew all of this would be over by tomorrow.

With a nod to Midge and Ganner, we left our prey to snivel and curse, and made ourselves scarce in the market.

Ganner was jangling the pouches in his palm. ‘That was worth our while. Got a bunch of shells for the trouble,’ he announced with a cackle.

‘Keep them. Pittance compared to what we’re after,’ I replied.

‘Suit yourself,’ said Ganner, tossing a pouch to Midge, who caught it with a crunch. Once his shells were safely in his pocket, he had a brief nose through the sacks. He rescued three apples and the tabards before he threw the rest into an alley.

‘Better keep these out of sight,’ Midge said, before shoving the mustard cloth down his shirt. It looked as if our escapades had made him abruptly pregnant. It gave me the laugh I needed to quiet the worry I heard muttering inside me.

We were almost in the safety of the Buried & Lost when we were stopped in our tracks by a sound I had never heard the like of. At first I thought it was one of the closer volcanos spewing its guts into the air, but it had an undeniable musical note to it. It sounded like a horn, but loud enough to rattle the windows of the buildings, and send flocks of crows and lizards fleeing.

Midge, Ganner, and I skidded to a halt, staring between each other. Everybody in the street performed the same fearful pause as we did. Only the prosecutors and clerics on street corners looked unperturbed. They raised their hands to the air as if in praise.

Between the roofs of two warehouses, I saw what they worshipped. A pointed, white-silver nose of a humongous aircraft came into view. It blotted out half the sky with its swollen envelopes. Its armoured fuselage kept going, and going, and going. My neck was beginning to hurt by the time its blue gondola passed, shaped like a pointed beard, and the thrumming blightcore engines. There were no flocks of drakes and birds pulling this craft, but blades of steel that paddled the air like the fins of a fish. The rhythmic pounding of its machinery could be felt in the very cobblestones. A balloon that had been grazing the rooftops scurried from the enormous cruiser’s path, its flock of birds squawking as if they were being plucked alive.

‘That has to be the revenant! The one from Bashkar,’ Ganner yelled over the noise of the engines.

Two sharp bangs rippled across the city. As I stared up at the cruiser, racing along streets to keep it in view, I saw a shower of confetti burst from its flanks. Blue and white scraps of parchment rained down on Canarva like a holy ash.

Screams rang out across Canarva. Not of terror or pain, but of joy. I knew that to be paid a visit by one of the six Reverents was a privilege the Ashlands hadn’t enjoyed in decades. I’d heard plenty of talk in the Buried & Lost. The reverents were the embodiment of the Great Watcher’s blessing, and Canarva, often forgotten to the northeast, sorely craved their attention.

To the scattering of drakes and crows, thick crowds of onlookers began to fill the streets. People flooded from doors and even windows in a few instances. The fervour almost beat the prophecy for the attention it received.

Distracted, Midge and Ganner followed the flightpath of the huge Venerance cruiser. Almost replacing the body of the Great Watcher, it cast shade across half the city. I felt a shiver in its shadow despite how fast I ran to keep up with the others.

‘This way!’ I yelled to them, bounding up a barrel to a balcony and a shallow roof beyond. They swivelled on their heels and followed me, scrabbling more than I did on the roof tiles. much to my brief amusement. Rooftops took practice, but once you had conquered them, a whole new world awaited you. I climbed for that unobstructed view, passing chimneys and pipes and drakes until I was staring over Canarva’s spiny hide.

The cruiser was a storm cloud filling the horizon. The sheer size of the aircraft made me turn my head south to north to take it all in from stern to bow. It must have been more than a mile long to cover so much of the city. A name was painted on the cruiser’s nose: the Fist of Tempest.

Avoiding the rivers of people below, the three of us hopped from rooftop to rooftop to follow the beast of a cruiser to its landing. Where else, of course, but the Venerance temple that was so set on scraping the clouds?

Before the cruiser began its descent, a voice began to emanate from the horns that crested its gondola. It was a shrill and haughty voice, full of Venerance charm and oleaginous tone. If I peered, I could see a stick of a figure standing in the circular doorway of the gondola. Dressed in pure white robes, some kind of contraption to her mouth, she spoke across the entire city with ease.

‘Bend your knees before the Venerance and the will of the Great Watcher! Blessed be the followers of the one true god!’ came her words, shouted by multiple voices at once. Half the city – the god-fearing half – obeyed her without question. I already knew her name from Riveno’s conversation with the swordsaint. This must have been Reverent Lectra, all the way from Bashkar, and she hadn’t solely come for the chosen one, but a little business with Baron Wrekham, too. I wondered which one had dragged her from her throne quicker. I hoped it was the former. The pressure was already becoming too much.

‘I am Reverent Lectra, and I come with kindness and blessings for you all!’ cried the woman. ‘And indeed you have been blessed, for his city is the pride of the north. You alone power the furnaces and smiths of the south. You alone build our walls and temples through your toil. And your work has been rewarded, for the first time in decades, a prophecy is spoken within Canarva. A chosen one waits to be found amongst you at last. Rejoice!’’

‘Haven’t they already found somebody? That hunter, no?’ Ganner spoke over the resulting cheer. This reverent knew how to work a crowd. Even one that numbered in the tens of thousands.

Apparently not.

‘I regret and yet delight to inform you proud citizens that no candidate has yet proved themselves as the answer to your prophecy. The hunter Arso Lon was unfit to serve, and the search continues for the chosen one of Canarva. Those who believe the prophecy to be false or calamitous, clear your minds of heresy and restore your faith. Those who believe, those who are worthy, and those who fit the seer’s words should present themselves without hesitation, and be enveloped into the bosom of the Venerance and the Great Watcher!’

I should have been impressed, like the rest of the city, but the words sounded foul to me. Call me suspicious if you will, call me coloured sour by my distrust of the Venerance. For all the riches and the charity they preached, nobody had ever lent a helping hand to Aberan or I in the gutters. Clerics were more likely to flick holy spice on you than provide a crust or cup of untainted water, or medicines for the sick and lame. Thoughts and prayers, that’s all they ever offered the masses. And I can’t tell you how utterly fucking useless that was.

The Venerance was a vast machine of empire, and the littlest screws and bolts didn’t matter as long as the whole engine kept on churning. Nobody complained as long as the Venerance kept the door to the afterworld open, and offered it to the common soul. Funny, what people will do for you when you can offer eternal bliss – or threaten everlasting damnation in the netherworld. That was the Venerance’s charm, and luckily for them, faith wasn’t a problem when your god could be pointed at in the sky.

I stared at the Great Watcher and the flocks of birds dappling its hazed form. The second moon had not yet set, and hovered behind the crowned head of the Watcher as a blue halo. I saw no god there, but a devil.

‘Aberan,’ I said aloud, before throwing myself from the roof. The slates clattered beneath my backside before I seized the gutter, dangled for a moment, and swung onto a balcony. My feet punished the cobbles as I sprinted back towards the Buried & Lost.

Riveno was standing at the doorway, replacing the door with his square and serious frame. ‘You heard the reverent?’ he asked.

‘Clear as the voices in my head.’

‘Same.’ Riveno seemed to sense my hurry, but he didn’t move. ‘What is it you’re up to, Dwellin? You, Midge and the others have been thick as… well, thieves, if I have to say it. You missed our practice this morning.’

‘It’s nothing. Just making friends, is all, and I’ll study all the harder this afternoon.’

Riveno measured me with a stare. He could see me fidgeting. ‘Your brother is inside, packing some clothes by the looks of it. What did you do now?’

‘I haven’t done anything. Not this time at least,’ I said, my voice small. ‘He thinks the Canarva prophecy is about him.’

Riveno didn’t look surprised. ‘I thought the same when I saw his blinded eye.’

‘Ugh. How has everybody noticed but me?’

‘Because I’m guessing you don’t want him to be right. I feel the same. The life of a chosen one is not all gold and screaming crowds. It’s tough, dangerous. Mud and blood. And if the Venerance is this worried about a prophecy that a reverent personally comes to find its chosen one, that life will be no easier. They’d be watched, feared, challenged. Perhaps seen as a challenge or downfall of the First Chosen himself. But I wouldn’t worry, Dwellin. Those words fit, but there are others that don’t.’

‘That’s what I told him,’ I said.

Riveno nodded as he moved aside. ‘Go. Talk to him.’

It was because my bladder was also fit to pop, but I didn’t tell him that.

After finishing my business, I ran the ladders up to Aberan, and positioned myself right between him and his sack of clothes.

There was no smile for me today. ‘Come to tread on my dreams some more, little sister? I saw the cruiser. I heard the voice. The hunter wasn’t chosen even with a golden token.’

‘Don’t do it. Don’t go,’ I blurted.

‘I need to. Even if I’m wrong and the clerics laugh in my faces, I need to try. That’s what I wish you’d understand.’

‘What you don’t understand is that I’ll be left here alone if you’re right.’ I knew it was selfish. I knew it as sure as I knew I was standing. It was a cruel trick to get him to stay, but I knew what I wanted and I was desperate to have it. ‘We’re supposed to stick together, Aberan.’

‘If… if I’m right, it’ll only be for a short while. I can talk to the clerics, see if you can be my steward or something. Plenty of chosen ones have stewards and squires.’

I didn’t let him know the true reason why that had cut my soul, and lied instead as I felt my eyes begin to itch. Wrekham hadn’t just blinded his eye, but half his heart. ‘Surrounded by the Venerance, day after day?’

Aberan brushed past me and reached for the sack. I seized it first.

‘You might not believe in it, Dwellin, but I do. I believe in the Watcher, just as Mother did. She saw like a seer. She knew we were made for greater, and this is it. Trust me.’

‘I believe in the chosen ones. I believe in the prophecies. I believe in that warehouse door of a woman who barged into our shop with a Godgear weapon on her arm. I just don’t believe in the Venerance. Mother didn’t see this. Not this.’

I saw my words ricochet from his resolute mind like stones off Korishian armour.

‘Not what? Not becoming a chosen one? The highest honour in the Holy Realms? I don’t get you, Dwellin. You and I used to play alchemage and swordsaint as children, with sticks. Don’t you remember?’

‘I know different now.’

Aberan’s head turned to where Riveno once again stood below us, arms crossed and staring. Aberan lowered his voice to a whisper. ‘Because he told you?’

‘He is a damned chosen one, Watcher curse it!’ I hissed.

Aberan shook his head, jaw bunching.

‘You heard the swordsaint. She knew him,’ I added. ‘They had history.’

‘So does a criminal and a prosecutor. He’s a Blighted old thief, Dwellin. But why do I bother? You stopped listening to me a while back.’ Aberan grabbed the sack and tore it from my grasp, always the stronger one.

‘Then don’t go yet. Please,’ I said, becoming desperate. ‘The Watcher and the Venerance can wait a day.’

‘What difference could that possibly make?’ he said, his own violet eye levelled at me. I felt his stare like a fraying rope, in danger of breaking for good.

All the difference in the Holy Realms, was the truth, but I kept my lips pursed. My brother would have turned his back on me in an instant. I knew I needed to do this without him in order to keep ahold of him. It was the same with Riveno.

‘Promise me.’

‘What—’

‘Promise me. If tomorrow at dawn you still want the same, then I’ll carry you down to the temple myself.’ I meant it. I mean, I would have got Midge to do the carrying, but it was still a promise. I might be many things, almost all of them terrible, but I was not about to break a promise to my only living kin, whether it meant misery or not.

‘Dawn,’ Aberan muttered, shoulders hunched and rocking back and forth on the ladder-top.

‘Dawn.’

His good eye turned on me. ‘What are you up to, little sister?’

‘Nothing,’ I told him.

Aberan pointed down to Riveno. The shop was empty besides the three of us. ‘Is this his doing?’ he whispered.

Riveno answered for me. At least his words weren’t a lie. ‘Nothing to do with me, Aberan. Your sister has done nothing but bother me about the mines and turn up late for her training,’ he said. ‘And if I can offer some advice, you don’t want the swordsaint life, lad. It’s not what you think it is.’

I had never seen Aberan so rigid and cold. ‘What do you know?’ he hissed, before throwing the half-empty sack at me. He stormed down the ladder. Riveno let him barge past into the daylight. Canarva still reverberated with the sound of cruiser engines.

‘Dawn, Dwellin,’ he called over his shoulder.

I breathed out so far I made my vision spin, and I sagged against a bunk.

‘Focus, focus,’ I chided myself in between breaths.

‘Time for your practice, Dwellin,’ Riveno called to me. ‘The world keeps grinding on, with or without you.’

*

In the dark of Riveno’s sanctum, I ran through the three drills Riveno had so far taught me. A light mixture, heat mixture, and a fire recipe was all he trusted me with so far. The basics, he called them. A pinch of green. A morsel of yellow. A dash of blue. The powders came together in Riveno’s mortars, and with sparks or water or heat, they transformed. At first, I had been close to useless. Most combinations I got wrong, and created nothing but brown sludge or a simple and innocuous mix of powders. I could tell I was being held back, but that day I couldn’t have cared less. It was as if I could hear an hourglass whispering in the back of my head, perpetually running out.

‘I can see something’s on your mind, Dwellin,’ Riveno rumbled as he watched me complete my fifth drill almost perfectly.

‘I did it fine.’

‘But I can tell your mind isn’t here.’

‘Where is it then?’ I snapped, my mood frail.

‘Aberan, I’d have guessed. But something tells me it’s the reverent still above yelling her prayers and blessings?’

Riveno was as astute as ever. The muffled depths of Reverent Lectra’s voice could be heard through the canvas and wood walls of the Buried & Lost.

‘She’s the one, isn’t she? The master that Wrekham was waiting for?’

‘Why do you think I told Orzona to say hello to our good baron?’

‘It was a good trick. I’ll remember that,’ I said, as I watched Riveno scowled. ‘Who is Orzona to you?’

Riveno shook his head. ‘An old story not worth telling.’

My silence wore away at him, but only so slightly.

‘She and I both called Lectra a patron a long time ago. So long ago it was Devoter Lectra back then. There was a disagreement, and Orzona ended up blaming me for the consequences.’

‘Must have been some disagreement. She was disappointed you were still alive.’

Riveno broke then. I saw the slump of his shoulders. ‘Orzona had a wife. Her wife was my best friend. A sister of sorts. She believed in change just as I did. She even came to Canarva with me. She died here, too.’

I nodded, unsure what to say. What does one say in such moments? No words bring the dead back, and if they do, then that’s necromancy, and a whole different story altogether. ‘I’m sorry. Sorry I asked you to talk about it.’

Riveno cleared his throat. ‘It’s been far too long since I did. The real question is what is so important it’s brought Lectra and her pet Orzona all the way to Canarva. I’ll put a hundred shells on it not being the prophecy.’

I grumbled, my fears confirmed. ‘Wrekham’s trinket.’

‘My thoughts exactly,’ said Riveno.

I decided to test him one last time. I sat up straight at the workbench, hopes high. ‘We could still find out.’

‘No,’ he growled, and despite his grim face, I saw a flicker of fear in him for the first time. The arrival of the revenant had prickled him. ‘As much as I know Lectra, and as much as I understand that she is an ambitious swine with fewer morals than a beast, I want even less to do with Wrekham if he is part of her games. Not now,’ he said. ‘I can’t.’

I shook my head. My hopes dashed on Riveno’s obstinance, I clamped my mouth shut.

‘And you’ll have nothing to do with them either, will you, Dwellin?’ said Riveno. It wasn’t a question.

I shook my head effusively. Or at least I hoped it looked effusive.

‘Then why dawn?’

Riveno caught me there.

‘I don’t know. I panicked. I needed time,’ I said. I hoped those excuses would suffice. I could see through the windows high in the sanctum’s reach that the day’s light was already dying into darkness. It was almost time to perform the most daring feat of my life. One that could quite easily get me hanged.

Riveno regarded me with his usual scrutinising stare, as if trying to read my mind through some magic I knew nothing of. I stubbornly kept my thoughts on Aberan, just in case.

‘Sure there’s nothing you want to tell me, Dwellin?’ he asked me.

‘Not in the slightest,’ I said, knowing that was no lie. I felt a subtle knot in my stomach for keeping the truth from Riveno, but I knew my plan gave me no choice.

Whether he knew my intentions or trusted me, or some mixture of the two, Riveno nodded, and lined up the vials of blightpowder in front of me one more time.

‘Again, Dwellin,’ he said, ‘and this time, you’ll learn how to perform alchemagic under pressure,’ he said, beginning to tap the table before me like a machine of clockwork. ‘You have until I count fifty. Go.’

I could not agree more, and I seized the vials with gritted teeth and a fierce intention.

*

‘Ready to change your lives?’ I announced to the silence.

I’d hoped my words would stir some inspiration in my makeshift crew, but all I received in reply was grunts of acceptance. Very encouraging, let me tell you.

From our crouched position on a small ridge of dirt, we stared at the mine-tower. Ash fell in light showers, seeking to slowly bury us. The night was thick, the smell of sulphur strong. The torchlight of Canarva’s walls barely reached us. A single lantern burned outside the tower, waving back and forth in the unseasonably cold breeze.

‘You sure about this, Dwellin? Never seen the prosecutors so bloody fidgety with the reverent in the city,’ Yver remarked. ‘And I swear the reverent’s brought her own army.’

‘Never been surer of anything,’ I said. The truth sounded strange after a day of lies. I had to be certain. Who else would be if I wasn’t? I ran them through the steps of my plan for my own reassurance rather than theirs.

‘We go into the mines, find the tunnel to Wrekham’s, put on the tabards, make our way into the top of his mansion, distract the guards, and get into his study. Our prize will be there.’

‘All well and good, Dwellin, but you know there’s normally an escape plan, too?’ asked Ganner.

‘Same way we got in.’

The others nodded. Yes, fine. I know what you’re thinking, reader. It wasn’t the most airtight plan, but this was my first burglary, and for somebody of fourteen years, it felt seamless to me.

‘Ready?’

‘As we’ll ever be,’ hissed Midge.

And with those simple worlds, the fate of our night was sealed.

Midge went first, ambling down then ridge like a guard on patrol. We filed behind him, watching every angle for onlookers, but the ash-fall was our ally.

Myers was on duty once again, looking as tired as ever despite the earlier hour. We bustled past her before hooking around behind the tower. Ganner solved this puzzle for us, throwing a rock past the tower’s edge. Myers rubbed the sleep out of her eyes and immediately went to investigate.

‘Oi!’ she yelled. ‘Clear off, you bastards! There’s no sneaking around me.’

Oh, but there was, and much of it. As the guard turned her back, the four of us slid to the door

‘There’s a lock, Dwellin,’ Yver hissed, burying all my hope in an early grave. That was new.

‘Bastards must have added one,’ I gasped, scuttling back around the tower with the others in tow.

‘We’re bloody ruined. Let’s run for it. Come another night,’ muttered Yver.

‘No. There won’t be another chance,’ I snarled. ‘Midge, you still got those shells we stole from those servants?’

‘I do,’ he said reluctantly.

‘How much?’

‘Forty shells.’

‘Give it to me.’

Midge did so with much huffing.

‘Oh, you’ll get it back, you lummox,’ I whispered to him, stepping out from behind the wall.

‘Myers!’ I called.

The guard whirled on me, spear-point shivering as it advanced. ‘Who’s there,’ she barked.

‘Friend of Riveno’s. The helper you met the other day,’ I said.

‘And what by the Watcher do you want?’

‘Need some more stuff from the mine,’ I said.

‘I only deal with Riveno.’

‘He sent us. We’ve got the shells. More than he paid you last time.’

Myers relaxed her spear and raised an eyebrow. ‘Who’s we?’

‘My friends and I,’ I said, shortly before the others showed themselves and Myers brought her spear back to bear. I waggled the pouch of shells and watched their jingling work their magic on the guard. ‘Do we have a deal?’

Myers chewed her lips for a moment before deciding. I could already see the promise of shells wearing her down. ‘You scavengers are going to be the death of me,’ she sighed, before producing a key for the lock. She had it undone in moments, and stared around suspiciously as we entered.

‘Tell Riveno I want double next time,’ Myers grunted.

‘I’ll have him bring triple,’ I smirked before ducking into the dark.

With the door slammed behind us, one by one, they followed me down the ladder into the dark. Though the memory filled every inch of my mind, I of course didn’t mention what I had seen the last time in these tunnels. All I knew was light was our weapon, and I told the others to keep their candles bright. They had the trust – or greed, which is sometimes as good as the other – to follow without question.

With Riveno’s map in my hand, I led us through the dark, keeping my eyes keen for any sign of the Blighted woman and her kin. There wasn’t a sound in the darkness besides the scuttling of lizards and the dripping of moss.

‘Watcher, what’s that reek?’ Yver muttered at my back. ‘Midge did you shit yourself again?’

‘One time, that happened!’

I smirked. ‘It isn’t Midge, and it gets worse, don’t worry.’

‘When you said the mines, I didn’t imagine sewers,’ sighed Ganner.

Without a word, I led them over rubble and effluence and wormed our way deeper into the stinking gloom. They complained no end at what they found beneath their feet and hands. At last, we hovered under the same grates as I had found before, and this time, I chose the wine and rum cellars instead of the kitchen larders. Much quieter.

‘Midge,’ I whispered to the dark. The big lump muscled through the candlelight to stand before me. He put his hands against the grate and heaved. It took more of his strength than I imagined, but to the cracking of mortar, the big lad pushed his way upwards. Standing in his clutch hands, I squeezed into the cellar. It was a tight fit for the rest of us, and it took Midge several tries to climb from the sewer.

The stink of old wine lingered in my nostrils as we shed our soiled clothing and dug Wrekham’s tabards from the sacks we’d brought. With a little splash of some wine, we looked like any normal baron’s servant.

‘Grab those casks,’ I directed the others as I manhandled one of the little barrels myself.

With the squeak of an un-oiled door, we found ourselves between the wings of the mansion, staring down the alley of a small herb garden. The odours of mint and rosemary trailed us as we bustled through the overgrown fronds towards the inner mansion.

Taking a quick breath, I pushed the door inwards with my foot, and was enveloped in the warmth of the mansion’s air. It smelled of the kitchen’s spices and perfumed oil-lamps. It should have been a pleasant smell, but I found myself hating it though association. With the others silent and careful behind me, we put foot to fine wood boards and worked our way through the tunnels my mind had memorised a long time ago.

I heard the kitchens nearby and the familiar bellowing of Bunt making some cook feel inferior. I led us a wide berth around anyone that could possibly recognise me, and with our casks in hand, we proceeded into the mansion proper. The lamps burned brightly here, shrinking shadows and giving us no places to hide. Our tools were confidence and our disguises, and though I could hear the short breaths of those behind me, we pressed on up the stairs to the upper levels.

We received a few stares from passing servants, but not a single question as to who we were or what in hell we were doing. I’ll let you know a little trick of the trade, reader: rarely do people question the person with purpose. Looking busy can often look more innocent than innocence itself.

With trembling legs, sweat beading our foreheads, and arms afire from carrying the casks, we kept climbing. The guards stood everywhere: at every intersection of hallways, at every landing in the stairs, and at every doorway. It was comforting to see some of them asleep at their posts, but not so to see their numbers increase the closer we got to Wrekham’s upper chambers.

‘Just like we practiced,’ I mouthed, hoping none of them could hear my heartbeat.

I admit, I played fast and loose with the word “practice”. We’d discussed different excuses that would get us past the guards, but little more than that. It was the only gap in my plan besides the end of it. I hadn’t been one for praying up until now, but it seemed a good time to start.

I thanked my stars Haltweather hadn’t left Wrekham’s side that night. I was trusting in the pattern of him accompanying his baron to every amphitheatre visit, and I trusted well. It was some spotty idiot that barred our path outside Wrekham’s study instead, barely twenty years out of his mother.

‘Delivery for the baron’s chambers,’ I said, as nonchalant as I could be.

The guard rolled his lips. I confess, it was hard to feel sorry for guards. They came cheap, and coming cheap doesn’t mean much smarts between the ears. You get the occasional stand-out, sure, but most of the time in worlds like mine, they were a single gem in a field of ash. Besides, every good story needs its cannon fodder, doesn’t it?

‘What delivery?’ the guard spat.

‘Rum? What does it look like?’ I spat back, readjusting my sweaty hands around the cask.

‘What do you think you’re doing?’ The guard took exception to Yver moving past him to the ornate door.

Yver tutted at him. ‘Avoiding a clap around the ears from the master or the baron, is what I’m bloody doing, you twit. We were told to put some barrels in Wrekham’s chambers, that’s what we’re doing. If you have any sense you’ll let us in and spend some time filling his decanters.’

‘Master Pitius and Cook Bunt said so,’ I added, quietly impressed with Yver. I learned a thing or two in that moment.

‘Fine,’ the guard capitulated, making a big show of getting out his keys and unlocking the door. The four of us kept our faces plain as the baron’s chambers were opened.

‘Be quick about it, too.’

The door was locked behind us, both a blessing and a curse in one. Throwing my cask down, and with my heart apparently trying to beat its way out of my chest, I led the way, charging to the narrow end of the room and the second door. It too was locked.

‘Ganner, get on it. We’ve only got an hour before Wrekham’s done with the choirs,’ I warned. I stared up the staircase in the corner of the room, knowing it led to the baron’s bedchambers where Aberan had lost his eye.

The boy pulled a thin file and a jagged pin from his trews pocket and went to work. It took far too much time for my liking, but he was true enough to his word. With a resounding click, the door came open.

Baron Wrekham’s study opened to us. The fireplace within was dead and the light lacking. I proceeded immediately to the large armchair, checking beneath its pillows, but found nothing.

‘What about that, Dwellin?’ Yver asked, pointing past me to a thick rusted trunk bound with black iron.

‘That looks about right,’ I replied. ‘Ganner!’

‘Watcher, I’ll try, but these are some high quality locks. I don’t know if—’

I waved him to it. ‘Then stop yapping and get working. Midge, Yver, watch the door.’

I prowled around the room in the meantime, poking into every drawer and cranny I could get my hands into. There was nothing but documents and trinkets. I pocketed a handful of jewels out of spite, but there was nothing like the wooden box I’d seen.

I swore I heard a shout behind the door. I froze, listening to the clinking of Ganner’s tools, when it came again. A shout from the guards, but I had no idea who or what they shouted at.

‘What if he took his treasure with him to the choirs?’ Yver hissed.

‘Don’t even think that!’ I answered sharply.

At last came a shout loud enough to tell us what was going on. I heard the door to the outer chambers burst open.

‘Wrekham’s back!’

All of us paled. My heart somersaulted.

Yver was immediately distraught. She jabbed me in the shoulder with a vicious finger. ‘Great Watcher’s balls, Dwellin. Thought you said we had an hour!’

‘We did!’ I protested while hot blood rushed to my face. ‘He must have left the amphitheatre early! It’s not my fault, I swear! That damn reverent in town must have changed his plans.’

‘Fuck this!’ Midge yelped as he ran to the latrine closet. The pipes at this height of the mansion were barely big enough for a rat, and sadly not accommodating enough for escape, no matter how much he tried.

Ganner seized me by the collar. ‘We’re ruined, curse it!’

‘This has gone right to shit, Dwellin!’ Yver hissed. ‘I knew this was a bad idea.’

I knew she was right, but I didn’t dare show it. Instead I pointed to a cupboard nestled into the wall. ‘There!’ I cried. ‘We hide until he leaves.’

‘Bloody tight fit.’

‘Got any better ideas, Yver?’ I snapped.

Her silence told me no, she didn’t. As we heard the closing thump of footsteps and voices clearly complaining even through a locked door, we threw ourselves into hiding amidst a mess of spare cushions and crates of logs. One by one, legs tucked and bodies squeezed at odd angles, we crammed into the cupboard. It was then I regretted bringing the boyish hillock that was Midge. I was last, and once I had wedged myself so tightly I could barely breathe, with prying fingers we swung the door shut on ourselves, breaths held, and bathed in darkness.

‘Fuck,’ I whispered.