26 NASH

We’re looking for a woman.

What in the hells did that mean? The Guildmaster had sounded so certain, but of course, he was dead wrong. Maybe the bastard wasn’t as all-knowing as everyone thought. Her spine crawled as she remembered the familiar way he had studied the axe, Ryia’s axe. Or maybe he knew even more than she had suspected.

But that was irrelevant for now. Nash pressed herself into a broom closet in the servants’ passageway as footsteps clicked down the hall. She held her breath, waiting to be discovered… but they thundered right past. Like Ryia had said, Sensers could only detect someone who posed a physical threat, and Nash didn’t plan on hurting anyone. Either that or those footsteps had belonged to Kinetics. Either way, it was the first stretch of good luck she’d had this whole damned job. If that luck held until the sun went down, they might actually make it off this rock alive.

Nash eased the door open, peering left and right down the hall and adjusting her fake mustache. Empty again. She extracted herself carefully from the closet, sidestepping the broom and buckets inside before slipping down the hall to the right.

The servants’ entrance led to a maze of corridors and rooms. There were kitchens and larders and dressing rooms. Nash peered at her blueprint again in the low light of the lanterns on the walls. She edged past a deserted icebox full of expensive liquors and fruit wines, finally stopping before an elegant oak door.

Blood thundering noisily through her veins, Nash pressed an ear against the door, listening for footsteps or voices, but it was useless. The racket from the arena was deafening, bouncing around the enclosed corridors like a hive of bees trapped in a bottle. She winced, closing her eyes and flinging the door open.

Sunlight flooded the corridor, and Nash opened her eyes slowly, letting out a relieved breath as she saw nothing but a deserted path stretching out in front of her.

“All right, Tristan, you surprisingly resilient son of a bitch,” she said under her breath, shutting herself inside the servants’ corridor and shuffling to the right. “I’m coming for you.”

She had plotted out her path a hundred times last night, but she would only get one shot at this. Tristan had clearly resisted whatever torture he had been subjected to so far. He had kept the Saints’ plans to himself and kept them all safe. Once she got him out of that dungeon, she was going to apologize for all the shit she had given him over the past few weeks.

Well, maybe not all of it.

Nash ripped the false mustache from her upper lip, tracing a soot-stained finger along her path on the map. The manor was just on the far side of the next hill, positioned along the northern cliffs of the tiny island. There were two proper entrances to the building, according to the drawings.

The front door—no good, there was bound to still be at least one Disciple left there, no matter how big a commotion they made in the arena.

The other door was at the top of an outdoor staircase, leading directly into the Guildmaster’s private chambers on the third floor. Nash wasn’t sure if Disciples would be posted there when the Guildmaster wasn’t inside, but it was pretty far out of her way. She wanted to get into the basement, after all. Seemed just plain dumb to risk running into whatever Disciples might be inside on three unnecessary floors on her way there.

Thankfully, the building plan had offered a solution.

Massive, deadly storms were pretty common on the southern seas, especially in autumn. On an exposed island like this, even Kinetic powers couldn’t save someone from the destructive force of those winds. A storm-cellar entrance stood twenty paces from the edge of the manor. The cellar itself was just a rough-looking rectangle, some ten feet below the ground, but it was connected to a snaking tunnel that led to the manor’s storerooms. Even Adept had to eat, apparently.

The storerooms were just a few corridors away from the steep staircase that led down to the infamous dungeon.

Sure, there were bound to be a few locked doors in the way. Nash stowed the sketches in her coat pocket and slipped up the hill, clinging to the shadows at the edge of the outer arena wall. But she knew the doors would not be her only obstacle. The dungeon was plenty secure from the inside, but there was still no way the Guildmaster would leave a prisoner completely unguarded. She would come face-to-face with a Disciple before the day was through.

Shit.

She patted her pockets, feeling to see if any of Ivan’s magical black marbles were still tucked there. She found two lonely Trän vun Yavol. If worse came to worst, she hoped they would be enough to cover her tracks—to cloud the Disciples’ vision long enough for her and Tristan to escape. It was a long shot, but it was the only one they had. They had started this job as five random members of Clem’s crew, but in the past few weeks Nash thought they had become something of a family. At this point, she had the distinct feeling they would be leaving the island together or not at all.

The ground fell away in front of her as she crested the hill, the cliff side manor now clearly visible in the distance. Although “distance” was a strong word for it: it was only a few hundred feet away. Nash dropped to her stomach, peering over the top of the hill toward the building, looking for the telltale sign of blue robes swirling in the wind.

Nothing. No sign of a single Disciple—or a single breathing body—in sight.

Suspicion tugged at the back of her mind, but she shrugged it away. Maybe the Disciples were doing rounds and happened to be on the far side of the building? She couldn’t afford to turn down a stroke of good luck.

But she also couldn’t expect that luck to hold out forever. She sprinted across the open stretch of grass surrounding the manor. It was only a matter of time before someone turned up, and she didn’t want to be caught out in the open when that happened. She tore around the side of the building, bent over in an attempt to diminish her six-foot frame.

The storm cellar doors lay flat against the ground: two slabs of heavy wood that looked like they might just have been tossed onto the grass. To the north, the ground dropped eighty feet into the ocean. Just as she had hoped, the storm doors had no locks—it wouldn’t be a very useful emergency shelter if no one could get inside quickly. Nash wrenched one door open and found an old wooden ladder leading to a scraped-earth floor.

Shooting one last look at the deserted manor lawn, Nash lowered herself into the darkness, closing the door behind her.

First hurdle: cleared.

The door leading from the cellar to the storeroom was sealed with a rusting padlock and a heavy chain. Nash picked it easily enough, tiptoeing her way through the empty storeroom and peering into the hallway beyond. The manor was eerily silent. She could hear the sound of her own breathing, echoing in her ears. Where were all the Disciples? They wouldn’t really have left the entire manor and dungeon unguarded to run off to the arena, would they?

Nash shivered uncomfortably, thinking of the Adept she had seen before. They could move quieter than jungle cats. She could be completely surrounded and not even know it. She whirled suddenly in a circle at the thought, fists raised… but there was no one there.

“Keep moving,” she intoned to herself. The lack of guards was suspicious, sure, but she wasn’t about to throw away her chance to rescue Tristan because of a little suspicion, right?

But the suspicious voice in her head got louder and louder the deeper she moved into the manor. As she snuck through larders and wine cellars and corridors, all silent and empty. She pulled the Trän vun Yavol from her pocket, rolling the capsules between her fingers as she reached the door at the top of the dungeon stairs.

This was it. The place where her luck was bound to run out. She was ready. Or as ready as she possibly could be to face an impossibly strong magical being in single combat.

She pulled her lockpick out again, inserting the sticks into the knob, then frowned. Her stomach swirled uncomfortably as she turned the knob and the door swung open. It was unlocked. Why in Felice’s bitterest hell would the door to a dungeon be unlocked? It made no sense.

Unless…

Was Tristan already dead?

Her heart thudded in her chest, sending pulsing beats down her arms and into the tips of her fingers, still clenched tight around her two precious Trän vun Yavol, ready to chuck them at the ground at the first sign of trouble. The stone stairs were coated thickly with dust. Her steps left clear prints behind her as she walked. The only set of prints on the stairs. As though she was the first person to tread this staircase in a very, very long time.

By the time she reached the bottom of the stairs, she already knew what she would find when she turned toward the cells. And she was right.

Nothing. No one. The prison was unguarded because it was empty. Because Tristan wasn’t here.

Because he had never been here.

Nash turned in a slow circle, struggling to process the thought. But if Tristan wasn’t here, then where the fuck was he?