by Brian Farrey
She guffawed. “Oh, please. Like you had a chance.”
We ducked into the town-state hall, where a skittish clerk manned the front desk. He looked up, saw us, and on meeting my eyes, his hand shot to defend the money pouch at his waist.
“My uncle forgot his glasses today,” Callie announced to the clerk. “He sent me to grab them.”
Everyone knew Callie’s uncle, Masteron Strom, was Keeper of the Catacombs. He oversaw the safe handling and security of the Twins’ tapestries in the chambers below the town-state hall. Nothing like his niece, he was a meek and forgetful man. This wouldn’t be the first time that Callie had been sent to retrieve something he’d forgotten.
When the clerk made no move, Callie crossed her arms and glowered at the man.
“This is Jaxter Grimjinx,” she said icily. “He is my guest and, in case you hadn’t heard, one of the saviors of Vengekeep. He has as much right to accompany me into the catacombs as anyone, if not more.”
“Right this way,” the clerk squeaked. He escorted us down a hall to a narrow, ornately decorated wooden door on the right. He went to unlock it, but Callie produced the key ring she’d gotten from home.
“I’ve got my uncle’s keys,” she announced. “Thank you.” The clerk scuttled away as Callie opened the door, revealing a long, winding staircase that dropped into the floor.
We made our way down, a series of small oil lamps lighting our descent. Our footfalls echoed back to us with each step.
“It might take some looking,” she said quietly, “but my uncle once told me that there’s a small tunnel hidden in the catacombs, behind one of the tapestry racks. The catacombs were much bigger when Vengekeep was young, but the town-state council sealed off some of the tunnels because of a problem with vessapedes.”
I shivered. Vessapedes were nasty, burrowing, many-legged creatures, as wide as I was tall and long as a city block. I remembered that one of Ma’s prophecies involved a horde of them invading Vengekeep. With any luck, we’d be back to destroy the tapestry before that happened.
“The abandoned catacomb tunnels come out somewhere near Glenoak Falls, just beyond the valley,” she said. “That should be well past where the Provincial Guards are stationed.”
The bottom of the stairs led directly into a mammoth room, the biggest room I’d ever seen. A soft, green-blue light—enchanted fire that would burn until extinguished—flickered from slender candles embedded in copper candelabra that towered over me by two heads at least. The room was longer than it was wide. Wooden racks made with thick, vertical dowels in neat rows lined the walls. Jutting up from between the dowels were slender glass tubes, each end sealed with a thick clot of red wax that shimmered in the light. Inside the glass tubes, rolled up tightly, were all the tapestries ever spun by the Twins. Each tube bore a small, brass plaque identifying the year the tube was to be unsealed.
“All right,” Callie said, pointing to the racks, “if the hidden tunnel is behind one of them, we should be able to feel a breeze from the back. You look in here and I’ll look in there.”
She moved through a doorway that led into an identical room. I knelt at the nearest rack, running my hand along the space where the rack met the blackstone wall. Cool but no air. I continued like this, scurrying back and forth between tapestry racks. The room was seemingly endless and I grew tired quickly. I sat down to rest and, looking up, noticed that the green-blue flames on the nearest candelabrum were flickering. I slipped my hand behind the closest rack and felt a breeze.
Crouching down, I pressed my shoulder to the rack and pushed with my entire body weight until it budged a bit. I continued grunting and shoving until I’d exposed a small crawl space in the wall. Frigid, moist air spilled into the catacombs. I peered down the tunnel. Even crawling, there would be just barely enough room for me and my pack.
I stood to call out for Callie, when I got hit around the waist by a fast-moving blur. I slammed into the floor on my stomach, the air driving from my lungs. Strong hands gripped my shoulders and turned me onto my back. Before my eyes could focus, a fist grazed my temple, once then twice. My vision blurred with tears as I felt myself straddled, powerful legs locking my arms to my sides.
I shook my head and found myself staring up at Maloch, his fist cocked in the air for another strike. I should have known he’d followed us here.
“Maloch?” I rasped. “What are you—”
His fist came down again, a light, glancing blow across my chin.
“You’re under arrest,” he growled, “for breaking into the catacombs, for tampering with tapestries, for …”
As he continued to list charges, I tried to move my hand. If I could just reach the pouch at my hip, I could end this with some ground roxpepper seeds, which doubled as blinding powder. But his knees dug into my forearms, keeping them immobile. I had to buy time to figure a way out.
“Maloch,” I said as calmly as possible, “we used to be friends. I know you’re not like this.” Actually, this was exactly what he was like.
Maloch sneered. “You don’t know anything about me, Jaxter.”
“Well, why not tell me about yourself? I’ve got the time.” My fingers wiggled, just able to skim the edge of my pouches. But he weighed a ton. I wasn’t going to budge him anytime soon.
“I’m taking you right to the Castellan for—”
I never got to hear what he’d planned. From the side, a large backpack flew through the air, knocking Maloch off my chest. I snatched a handful of roxpepper dust and tossed it in his face. He screamed in pain as the gray powder burned his eyes and blisters formed on his cheeks. He writhed blindly on the floor as Callie appeared, retrieving her pack.
“I said you’d need me. I didn’t think it would be this soon.” Callie grinned.
“Bangers, Callie, thanks for the save,” I said, nodding at the hidden tunnel. “I found it.”
“What do we do about him?” she asked, pointing to Maloch.
Down the other end of the room, we heard the report of armored boots on the stairs and the hysterical voice of the clerk screaming, “He’s down there!”
Callie and I looked at each other. The clerk had raised the alarm. We had no choice. Ignoring Maloch’s pained cries, I let Callie enter the hidden tunnel, then followed close behind. Pulling the lantern from my pack, I passed it ahead to her to light our journey.
We crawled along on all fours. Slime from the tunnel floor squished between our fingers. Thin roots dangled from the tunnel ceiling like spider legs, tickling our faces as we moved forward. When the noise in the catacombs had become a low murmur behind us, our tunnel emptied out into a much larger passageway, big enough that we could both finally stand.
Callie held the lantern up. “This must be one of the old catacomb tunnels. If we follow it”—she looked back and forth, to get her bearings—“that way”—she pointed to the right—“we should be at Glenoak Falls by sundown.”
“Let’s go,” I said, and we made our way down the tunnel.
We marched along, casting the occasional eye over our shoulder to make sure we weren’t being followed. “Isn’t your uncle going to notice you’re gone?” I asked.
Callie didn’t seem concerned. “I left him a note saying I was going to find Talian. Don’t worry. He’ll never follow us. That would mean breaking quarantine and Uncle would never go against the High—”
Callie stopped suddenly and looked around. “Is that,” she said, cocking her head to listen better, “rushing water?”
I listened closely and heard what she heard: a low, dangerous rumble behind us.
“Sounds like it. Maybe it’s the waterfall at Glenoak Falls.”
Callie looked unconvinced. “There’s no way we’ve gone that far.”
“So, then what …?”
We listened and the ominous sound grew louder. And it was getting closer. A sudden realization hit and my jaw dropped. I thought about the heavy rains in Vengekeep above us. I thought about Da and his trenches, the ones meant to
keep Vengekeep from flooding. The trenches drained into a shunt that sent the water underground. What if that shunt had tapped into these old catacomb tunnels?
As if to confirm my theory, the rumble became a roar and was now the unmistakable sound of a wall of water bearing down on us from behind. Callie’s face filled with a mix of terror and excitement. I slipped my belt and pouches into the leather backpack, knowing we were sunk if they got wet. In the dim light, my hand found Callie’s and our fingers locked as we both yelled:
“Run!”
PART TWO
THE QUEST
11
The Search Begins
“Fear is just Bravery’s older, wiser brother, leading the charge away from danger.”
—The Lymmaris Creed
Ma and Da raised me on stories of their exploits. Before I was born, they traveled the Provinces as carefree rogues, moving from town to town, bilking marks wherever they went. I always imagined living a similar life, full of intrigue and danger on the open road.
In all their stories, Ma and Da never mentioned that the open road sometimes involved being covered with sparkleeches.
“Ow!” I cried.
“Hold still,” Callie said, “and it won’t hurt. At least, not as much.”
The sun had just started to rise. I knelt near the edge of our campsite on Glenoak Lake, shirtless and cowering. Dark red splotches dotted my body, marking where dozens of sparkleeches had previously attached themselves. Only two of the parasites remained. Callie reached out to my chest and grabbed one by its thorny tail. “Ready?”
I whimpered. The sparkleech, with its hard yellow shell atop a green gelatinous belly, squirmed between Callie’s fingers. I could feel its mouth pinch tighter to my flesh. Callie gave a quick yank. As the sparkleech detached, a blue spark jumped between its mouth and my skin. I yelped. Again. Callie held her arm back, then pitched the sparkleech back into the lake as she’d done with all the others.
Nearly drowning as the wall of water in the underground tunnel swept us away wasn’t bad. Being forcefully ejected through a small hole that came out beneath the powerful waterfalls at Glenoak wasn’t bad. Setting up camp on the banks of a lake and falling asleep, soaked and shivering, wasn’t bad. But waking up to find our tent infiltrated by dozens of sparkleeches—most of which had gleefully attached themselves to our bodies in the middle of the night—was absolutely terrible.
That’s a lie. All of it was bad. But the sparkleeches were the worst.
Callie, not even a little squeamish, had immediately ducked out of sight behind the tent to doff her clothes. She emerged later, fully clothed and sparkleech free. Meanwhile, I stood in my underclothes, too paralyzed with revulsion to do anything. Callie took the liberty of wrenching them from me, spark after painful spark.
I cringed as she reached out for the last one.
“Maybe we should leave it,” I suggested. It was just one sparkleech, right? A little blood seemed a small price to pay to avoid another excruciating shock.
“Do something to take your mind off it,” Callie said. “Quiz me again.”
Callie’s thieving lessons weren’t limited to lock picking and sleight of hand. Ma insisted that if I was going to teach her, she should get a well-rounded education. Lately, we’d been studying thieving history.
I looked away so I couldn’t see her grab the sparkleech. “Erm … Who are the Seven?”
“The seven thieves who created the Lymmaris Creed after the Great Uprisings,” she answered automatically.
“And their names are …?”
“Unimportant, except Quorris and Harjina Grimjinx, who probably wrote most of it themselves.”
I laughed. “You’re a quick study. If you’re not careful, we might have to make you an honorary Grimjinx.”
I felt a tug and an electric jolt that turned my laugh into a howl. Callie held up the last sparkleech. “Now you see it”—she threw it into the lake—“now you don’t. Ta-da!”
I rolled my eyes. “Every time you say ‘ta-da,’ you make my little sister cry. I think we can assume your sleight of hand career is over before it’s started.”
Callie stuck her tongue out as I put my shirt back on. Together, we packed up our camp and marched around the edge of the lake until it turned into the River Honnu, snaking its way north. We followed the riverbank for hours, taking a short detour to climb a hill to get our bearings. At the top, we could look south and see the back of the Provincial Guard barricade surrounding Vengekeep at the rim of the valley. They were small, nearly invisible on the horizon. But they were a reminder that we had a lot farther to go.
With the midday sun beating down on us, we sat for a quick break. As Callie downed water from her flagon, I pulled two parchments from my pack. The first was a still-soggy map of the Five Provinces. The second was the list of solvent ingredients. I’d already crossed off the ingredients I knew we could get in Vengekeep. That left five we needed to acquire:
horvax
wraithweed
sap of an ernum tree
naxis root
mardagan
stems of a corraflower
minzgrass
powdered veezus horn
seeds of a firestalk
emion
rankstamen
musewood
I indicated the missing five ingredients, then pointed to the map of the Provinces. “We’ve got two things making this difficult. First, these items are very, very rare. Second, they’re scattered all over the Provinces, tucked away in forgotten valleys, rocky crags.... You get the picture. Once we get to all these locations, it could take us days to find the actual plants.”
Callie nodded. “But just traveling all over will take weeks. Or months.”
“Which we don’t have. We’ve got three weeks to scour the Provinces, track down the plants, and return to Vengekeep. Three short weeks …”
“Until mooncrux,” Callie finished.
I was starting to see the problem with leaving before we had a solid plan. I sighed. “It’ll take too long to do this on foot. We need to hire some sort of transport.”
Callie groaned. When the wall of water dumped us into Lake Glenoak, the supplies tied to the outside of my backpack scattered. We lost all the food Nanni and Aubrin had packed. We also lost the moneypurse Ma and Da had given me. We currently had six copperbits between us, not nearly enough money to hire so much as a mang to carry us around.
I rolled up the map and tucked it into my pack as Callie studied the list of ingredients.
“You forgot the spiderbat milk,” she said, handing me the list back.
I checked. “Oops. Guess that one’s important. Got a quill?”
She crossed her arms. “Does it look like I have a quill?”
“Well, I’m sure we’ll remember it.” I folded the list up and returned it to my pack.
Staring off into the distance, Callie suddenly pointed north. “Look,” Callie said.
I followed her finger to a meadow, near where the river bent. A thin trail of campfire smoke rose up from a cluster of ragged-looking tents. We could make out people and animals.
“Sarosans?” she asked.
I shook my head. The Sarosans rarely came this far south. Nomads by nature, they wandered the land, living simple lives. They abhorred all forms of magic and wandered from town-state to village preaching against it. They stuck to the Northern Provinces, where magic use was more abundant.
I squinted. “No. That’s Graywillow Market.” I explained the improvised clearinghouse for thieves to her and her eyes lit up as her imagination took hold.
My stomach growled and Callie looked at me sadly. “I’m hungry too,” she said. “Think we can eat at the market?”
I reached into my pocket and pulled out the little money we had. “Six copperbits. It’ll buy us a decent dinner at Graywillow Market. We should be careful, though. Given the market’s reputation, we might look like a couple of easy marks to everyone—”
“That�
��s it!” Callie cried, jumping up. “We’re going to a marketplace, right? A marketplace that we know will be crawling with thieves.”
“Right,” I said, slowly.
“That paste of yours,” she said, eyeing the pouches around my belt. “The stuff you use to help open magical locks. That must be valuable to other thieves, right? Why don’t we sell some of that?”
That had never occurred to me. I’d only ever made the paste for family use. The formula for the paste wasn’t widely known. We could probably make a mint selling the stuff to other thieves and buy transport anywhere we wanted. My pouches had been safe inside the leather backpack when we ended up in the lake. That meant the ingredients were still dry … and usable.
“Help me,” I said, taking off my belt and selecting the necessary pouches. “We’re about to go into business.”
12
Graywillow Market
“The bitter ashwine of a coward’s chalice is soothed by the sweet dawn of a new day.”
—Ancient par-Goblin proverb
Ma had packed eight empty glass vials. We quickly mixed several batches of the paste and filled six of the vials, saving two for the spiderbat milk. With our new wares in hand, we packed up and followed the riverbank toward Graywillow Market.
We decided to charge two silvernibs per vial. A bit pricey but, as Callie pointed out, many thieves would find the ability to break into a magical lock priceless. If we sold out, twelve silvernibs would pay for a coach to Yonick Province and supplies to make more blue paste to sell for our next trip. If this worked, we could easily travel the Provinces and back in three weeks.
If this worked.
Even before we rounded the bend, we could hear the chatter of merchants and the smell of roast panna wafting downstream. Turning the corner, we got our first up close look of the market. The ragtag bazaar consisted mostly of tattered tents, rickety tables holding up sketchy-looking merchandise, and vendors whose wares fit neatly into nearby wagons. Nothing permanent, everything meant to be quickly and easily packed in case a squadron of the Provincial Guard should wander by.
