Chapter One

Lorelle

Lorelle crouched on the lip of the roof, her belly so low it almost touched the wooden shingles. Her knees rose on either side of her head as she leaned forward.

Her ragged soul burned inside her, filling her body with flames, but she forced herself to ignore the pain.

She waited half a breath, then dropped to the second story window without a sound. Her toes perched on the windowsill while her fingers pressed against the top of the recessed frame to hold herself in place over the three-story drop. She tested the latch. Unlocked.

The secret society known as the Readers tried so hard to keep itself hidden. An unlocked window seemed strangely out of place. Perhaps they felt the whispered stories of their vengeful reputation were enough to dissuade thieves.

Well, not this thief.

She opened the window and slipped inside. Just below the windows, a decorative, six-inch ledge ran around the interior of the tall room. She crouched low and slid quickly to the side so her silhouette didn’t show against the open window. The ceiling curved over her, requiring perfect balance to remain on the narrow ledge without falling. The most acrobatic of Humans couldn’t have accomplished it.

But Lorelle wasn’t Human. Her muscles, her bones, even her blood, were less dense than her heavy counterparts. A Human woman Lorelle’s size would weigh at least a hundred and fifty pounds. Lorelle weighed eighty while her physical strength remained comparable, which meant she could leap higher, move faster, and balance her body in ways Humans could never match.

She looked at the huge library below. It was exactly as the thief master had described it, but even at that it barely seemed real. How could this place be here, practically in the center of the city, and no one knew about it?

Books and scrolls and bound sheaves of paper lined every wall. Large bookcases stretched across the length of the room, creating seven aisles filled with untold knowledge. She surmised there were more secrets in this room than in the royal library.

Neither Rhenn nor Slayter had known about this place.

But the thief master of the Thin Alley Thieves’ Clutch, a man named Zenghi, had known. One of Zenghi’s thieves—the last person who’d dared to enter this secret library uninvited—had also known. He’d died for breaking into this place and stealing the mythic Plunnos Lorelle also sought. The Plunnos was the only way to open the Thuros in the basement of the palace that had swallowed Rhenn.

And Lorelle was going to find it and take it.

Since Rhenn’s abduction through the Thuros two weeks ago, she had hunted for the key to follow. Her single-minded drive had pushed her to interrogate Vohn and Slayter, to tear through the palace library, and to visit every noble house that possessed rare books that might contain some hints about the mystical Thuros. It had driven her to every dirty gambling house, shkazat den, and brothel where even a whisper of secret knowledge might be spoken. She’d barely slept, barely ate, and the ragged edge of her soul had tried its best to burn her alive in that time.

But she’d followed the alley gossip. She’d uncovered a promising whisper about Zenghi’s now-dead thief. According to rumors, he’d held the Plunnos in his hand, had sold it, and had reveled in his riches. Those stories had led her to Zenghi, the master of the dead thief’s clutch. Of course, thieves were secretive. Zenghi hadn’t wanted to talk.

She’d made him.

With her fist squeezing his throat and her knee pressing on his groin, Zenghi had finally panted out his secrets. He’d told her the story about the Reader Library.

Three years ago, a thief of the Thin Alley Thieves’ Clutch had snuck in, even as Lorelle was doing now. He’d stolen a small casket of jewels, a book with a gold-and-jewel-encrusted cover, and a thick, oversized coin with the royal Usaran symbol engraved on both sides. The thief had brought the jewels to his thief master—Zenghi’s predecessor at the time—who had taken a substantial cut as leader of the clutch. After the clutch’s fence turned the items into gold, the thief had run to the lure of gambling and wenching to spend his earnings.

Five days later, he’d died in an accident. Drunk after a night of gambling, the thief slipped in the alley outside the gambling den, struck his head on the corner of a building, and passed out.

That was unremarkable in itself. Drunks passed out in alleys every night in Usara. But in a twist of fate, the thief fell face first into a puddle created by a huge divot of missing cobblestone. He drowned there, his head in half a foot of water, and that was the end of him.

Bad luck, Zenghi had thought at the time.

Five days later Zenghi’s predecessor, the master of the Thin Alley Thieves’ Clutch at the time, also died.

One might have thought his death a murder if there hadn’t been five witnesses in the room of the brothel. There had been a silk scarf on the floor, tied around the base of a bedpost. Zenghi’s predecessor slipped on the free end while his other foot shot back to catch his balance—and caught on the now-taut scarf. He stumbled and slammed into the window. It might have ended there with a broken window and some cuts, except the window was open. Without a sound, the thief master tumbled through, plummeted three stories to the cobblestones, broke his neck, and died.

Bad luck, Zenghi had thought without much remorse. After all, it opened the way for him to take leadership of the clutch.

Exactly five days after the thief master’s fall, like the workings of an insidious clock, the fence who’d handled the sale died.

On a trip to the butcher’s market, the fence stepped awkwardly off a poorly built curb and turned his ankle. The resulting stumble made him lurch in front of four draft horses hauling bars of iron. The horses’ hooves mangled the fence and the steel wheels nearly cut him in half. Grisly. A hundred-to-one fluke all the bystanders said.

Zenghi got the message that time. There was too much coincidence between the deaths to assume it was just “bad luck.” All three dead men had handled the items lifted from the Readers Library.

The next day, Zenghi’s first edict as thief master was: Leave that building alone. Any thief coming back to the clutch with goods from the Reader Library would be expelled from the clutch and thrown into the street with his eyes put out.

“It was Readers what killed ’em,” he had gasped painfully to Lorelle as she leaned on his groin. “With magic!”

Lorelle had heard of Readers. In her ceaseless search for knowledge about the Plunnos, the term “Readers” had come up several times. She’d also heard it back when she and Rhenn had lived in the Laochodon Forest. Rhenn and Vohn had been obsessed about anything concerning the noktum, which had included stories about the history of Giants, magic, and the Human-Giant War at the beginning of known civilization.

The Readers were a notable part of that history. As keepers of knowledge, they had been instrumental in defeating the Giants during the Human-Giant War. After the Giants vanished, the Readers had promised to stay vigilant for their return. Except the Giants had never returned, and the last recorded instance of a Readers’ Conclave was centuries ago. Like the Giants themselves, the Readers seemed to have vanished.

Except, apparently, they hadn’t…

After extracting the information from Zenghi, Lorelle had returned to the palace to question Slayter. As usual, the mage had eagerly regaled her with everything he knew.

Slayter was easier for Lorelle to be around these days than either Vohn or Khyven. The mage didn’t comment on the dark circles under her eyes, her gaunt frame, or the fact that she was always away from the palace. He didn’t look at her with soulful, hurt eyes. Slayter acted like every day was a fresh adventure and he didn’t seem to notice, or care, about Lorelle’s state of mind. When prodded, he would talk until he was blue in the face about anything regarding history or magic. It was as though his ten years as a spy in Vamreth’s court had driven him near to mad with the need to reveal secrets. Now he did so with abandon whenever he could.

According to him, the Readers might never have actually vanished. They might simply have… removed themselves from the public eye.

“Could they make people become unlucky?” she had asked him.

“Unlucky?” Slayter’s eyes had lit with interest at the question. “Lorelle… Did you meet a Lore Mage?”

“Just tell me about Lore Magic.”

“Oh, well, it’s fascinating. Lore Mages pay close attention to moments and objects that seem inconsequential. They move trinkets from one place to another for no apparent reason. They give warnings that seem like gibberish. All because they have ‘read’ bits of the future. Lore Magic is the art of knowing what is going to happen so far in advance that a person can move these seemingly inconsequential things to a more favorable position by the time the mage interacts with the events they’ve predicted. Then, by the time the future catches up with them, they are in the most favorable position to get what they want.”

“So, Lore Magic makes a person lucky.”

“No.” Slayter had shaken his head. “Not at all. But it would look like that to the uninitiated. Lore Magic is the opposite of luck. It’s knowledge. It is strategically using what no one else knows. It is thinking two, twelve, a hundred steps ahead.” His eyes had glittered. “So, tell me. Did you meet a Lore Mage?”

She had left him with that eager look on his face and dove out a window, back into the night.

Obviously, it was dangerous to offend a mage, but Lorelle had almost beaten her hands bloody on the Thuros in an effort to get it to work. She wasn’t about to pass up a chance to get to Rhenn, no matter how dangerous.

If the Readers punished those who stole from them—reaching them wherever and whenever they wanted—it was a sure bet they’d also taken back what was theirs.

But even if the Readers no longer possessed the Plunnos, they certainly knew about it. That, small though it was, could be another lead, and Lorelle was running out of time. Her insides felt bloody and tattered, like a red-hot saw blade was being dragged back and forth across her vitals. Every day, the saw dragged deeper.

The pain, exquisite beyond anything a Human could understand, was meant to drive her toward Khyven. It demanded she do anything to finish the bond, to convince Khyven to attempt to give half his soul to her.

She’d begun the bond by giving half her soul to him to save him from the Mavric iron’s destructive effects. During the months of his unconscious convalescence, the pain had been manageable. But since he’d woken it had been torture, and the pain wouldn’t stop until she capitulated.

She’d been willing to try the soul-bond, frightening though it was, before Rhenn was taken. Now it was simply impossible. Until Lorelle brought Rhenn safely back through the Thuros, Lorelle’s life wasn’t her own. She couldn’t afford to risk it.

She estimated the chances of a Human successfully bonding with a Luminent at less than one in ten. If Khyven tried to give half his soul to her and failed, as he almost certainly would, her life was over. The search for Rhenn was over. The pain would subside, and a hollowness would grow in the center of her chest. Soon, she’d lose all care for the usual mortal passions. Her desire for Khyven. Her dedication to her found family. Her care to eat or drink. Nothing would matter, including Rhenn.

She couldn’t allow that.

So here she was, perched on the windowsill of the Readers’ secret library, flirting with the wrath of Lore mages who had already proved they wouldn’t hesitate to kill those who stole from them.

If she could just get her hands on the Plunnos, though, let the Readers chase her. Let them follow her through the archway of the Thuros. Let them kill her five days from now. None of that mattered.

She silently closed the window so no one would accidentally notice it and raise the alarm. From her vantage point, she could see down the aisles and across the small foyer at the entrance of the room. The place was empty. It wasn’t late, but only one person in black robes moved through the stacks, cowl up.

That struck her as odd. Why would he wear his cowl inside the building?

She unsheathed her blowgun and carefully inserted a special dart. This one was coated with a rare herb called verit. When mixed with honey and the smallest dose of somnul, verit had a startling effect upon its target, especially for her current purposes. Once pricked with this dart, the victim would feel as if they’d quaffed six beers. Within seconds, they’d experience a glorious euphoria, relax all reservations, and tell her anything she asked. Shortly after that, they’d slip into sleep.

Lorelle raised the blowgun to her lips. It was a long distance, maybe a hundred feet, and she couldn’t see the neck of the person through the cowl. It was a tough shot, but at least there was no wind.

She fired.

The dart hit the back of the Reader’s neck and stuck. They jerked and hastily batted the dart from their neck. They always did that, as if they could save themselves if they just pulled out the dart quickly.

The robed figure spun around, floppy cowl twitching as they searched desperately behind themselves. The batted the cowl back, blinking and rubbing at his neck. It was a man with wavy brown hair and shocked eyes. He opened his mouth to shout…

And the verit went to work.

His horrified expression froze and he blinked like he’d forgotten why his mouth was open. An easy grin spread across his face.

Lorelle dropped from the ledge, caught it with her free hand, and swung. Her momentum carried her above the first line of bookshelves, and she dropped, pivoted, dropped again, and landed a hundred feet in front of the man.

She strode toward him, her golden hair streaming behind her, glimmering in the dim room. She was having more and more difficulty controlling the glow of her hair since Rhenn had been snatched, but she didn’t care now.

“You’re a Luminent.” The man grinned.

Lorelle had never enjoyed violence before. But grabbing someone and shaking them, pinning them, seemed to quench the ragged burning in her chest. It had felt wonderful when she was leaning on Zenghi.

Unfortunately, she couldn’t use that tactic here. The verit required a different approach. Befriending a verit victim would get them talking about anything. Whereas pain could jolt a victim out of the drug’s embrace.

“I need your help,” she said in a soft voice.

“I would like to help you,” the man said dreamily. “It’s a library. That’s what it’s for. Everyone who comes here is always looking for something.”

“Do you know what a Plunnos is?” she said.

“Yes,” he said.

“Have you seen one?”

“Yes,” he said. “In many books.”

“Have you seen one in real life?”

“Only once. Today. They have one here.”

She felt electrified with hope. “Where is it?”

“Well, it was here, but the pretty Reader took it. She was very pretty…” He sighed, then blinked as though remembering something unpleasant. “But kind of mean.”

“Who took it?”

“She did. She said someone was going to try to steal it. A woman with golden hair. I think they meant you.”

“What?”

“The Readers were talking about you.”

“You’re not a Reader?”

“Oh,” he giggled. “No. I’d like to become a Reader, but they don’t tell you how to do that. It’s a secret, like everything else. So, I just do what they tell me and hope…” he trailed off, looking at her with half-lidded eyes. “You’re so pretty.”

Lorelle clenched her teeth. The drug was working faster than usual. In the first stages of verit—the first five minutes or so—the victim was talkative. But the second stage could make them amorous; verit was sometimes called “the love potion.”

“Tell me about the Plunnos,” she insisted.

“They moved it.”

“Where?”

“They don’t tell me things like that. The pretty Reader took it. She was so…” He sighed. “Did I mention her?”

“What does she look like?”

“Her neck was smooth and long…”

“How tall was she?”

“Oh. She was little. Barely up to here.” He lifted his hand to his shoulder, which Lorelle gauged to be less than five and a half feet tall. “But she had the nicest, roundest—”

“What color was her hair?”

“Black, with a few streaks of brown, you know? And her eyes were so blue. She saw me when I caught them talking. She only looked at me once, but I could see the blue of her eyes. It was like she was looking at me the whole time, even though she was actually talking with Lekoff and Menzel.”

“She took the Plunnos?”

“That’s what they do. If something is in the wrong place, they move it to the right place. I want to be a Reader some day.”

“Where did she go?”

“They let me see her. Does that seem funny to you?”

“Let you see her? What do you mean?”

“She was in the Reader’s office and I was told to go up and deliver a scroll to them. They’d never asked me to deliver a scroll to them before. I think that was intentional. I think everything the Readers do is intentional. I think they wanted me to see her. Then they sent me down here; told me to bring them the Canwell Compendium. You know the Canwell Compendium?”

“No. Why do you think they wanted you to see her? Why do you think it was intentional?”

“Oh! You’ve never read the Canwell Compendium? It’s fascinating. It’s the Triadan book that records the list of allies during the Human-Giant War.”

Lorelle wanted to shake him. Some people were more susceptible to drugs than others, and the verit had moved through him fast. In less than a minute, he’d gone from talkative to amorous to babbling about everything and anything that entered his head. The trick now would be getting him to focus.

“Who was the Reader?”

“She was exquisite and small and the front of her robes were kind of open and you could see—”

“Who is she?”

“She was the one who told me to put my cowl up. She said, ‘Walk down the center aisle and search for the Canwell Compendium.’”

“Her name. Did you catch her name—” Lorelle stopped. “Wait, she told you to wear your cowl up and walk down this aisle?”

“That’s what she said.”

An alarm gonged in Lorelle’s mind. She pieced several things together that had been niggling at her since she’d entered. The empty library. The raised cowl. The unlatched window. Almost as though they were encouraging her to come in.

Almost as though they had planned it.

Her keen ears caught the shuffling sound of a foot behind her and she heard a soft puff.

She dropped to the ground.

The dart that would have hit her in the back of the neck stuck into the acolyte’s throat instead.

The acolyte gurgled and snatched the dart from his throat. She didn’t know what it was coated with, but she wasn’t going to stay here long enough to find out.

She sprang straight up to the top of the bookshelf.

“Senji’s Braid,” a voice cursed softly behind her, no doubt fumbling to insert another dart. “She’s a Luminent!”

Another puff alerted Lorelle and she threw herself sideways, leaping over the aisle to the next stack. The second dart—from the other direction this time—buzzed by her ear.

Luminent hearing was superior to Human hearing in every way. Not only could she hear at a much greater distance, and not only could she distinguish nuances in sound a Human ear could not, Luminents could triangulate distance on a specific noise just by hearing it once.

So, after the two puffs sounded she knew exactly where her assailants were hiding.

She sprinted noiselessly to the end of the stack, leapt off the edge, flipped in midair, and landed softly right next to the second blowgun owner.

He was a red-headed man about her age, and his eyes flew wide when he saw her suddenly standing right next to him.

He opened his mouth to shout, but she struck him in the throat, paralyzing his vocal chords. She dragged her pinkie sheath across his cheek as she withdrew. The needle was covered with pure somnul. He had about five seconds.

He grappled with his throat, sucking a breath, and she slapped his blowgun aside. The weapon clattered to the floor even as the red head stumbled backward. She followed him and grabbed his tunic.

“Who told you to attack me?” she demanded. “What is her name?”

“She came… from the Great… from the Great…” But the somnul took him. He slid down and slumped at her feet.

The Great what?

Her keen ears heard the approach of others. Not only was her first attacker closing on her, but now there were more, coming from all around.

Slayter’s words about Lore Magic rose in her mind.

“Lore Magic is the art of knowing what is going to happen so far in advance that a person can move these seemingly inconsequential things to a more favorable position by the time the mage interacts with the events they’ve predicted.”

If she’d been a fraction of a second slower, they’d have tagged her with the first dart and she’d be asleep. The only reason they’d missed was because she’d moved faster than they’d expected, because they hadn’t known she was a Luminent.

The ragged saw on her soul suddenly ground back and forth and the fire arced through her. She stifled a gasp. The red haze of agony burning in her chest spread through her entire body, covering her vision in red. She clenched her teeth.

It was a trap, and if she didn’t turn this around they were going to capture her or chase her out of here. Without the Plunnos.

“No,” she growled.

The woman who took the Plunnos could still be here. She’d just sent the acolyte to look for the book. She could still be in this building.

The Readers were on alert now. She’d never get another chance to get this close to the Plunnos. If that woman escaped the Plunnos was gone forever, and Rhenn with it.

Lorelle ducked around the side of the stack and into the shadows. She had no cloak, but her tight leather tunic had a cowl. She flipped it up to hide her glowing hair and slid silently along the side of the bookcase. Ahead, she saw the shadow of a man with a blowgun in his hand waiting at the end of the stack.

She broke into a silent sprint. The man turned the corner when she was almost upon him. He saw her and his eyes went wide. He whipped up the blowgun, but he was only Human.

She leapt into the air and, turning upside down as she arced over him, caressed his cheek with her pinkie sheath. He cried out, but she didn’t care now, the time for stealth was gone.

He fumbled at his waist for his dagger, but she paid no attention. The dagger cleared the sheath in shaking hands, and then the man collapsed. She spun past him, pausing with her back against the stack to steady herself. She deftly drew out a vial of somnul, carefully dipped each pinkie sheath into it, capped it, and slipped it back into its case. She silently sprinted toward the sound of shuffling feet behind the next stack. Like the whisper of a breeze she launched herself up and landed atop the bookcase even as the man turned the corner, aiming his own blowgun where the shout had come from. She dropped on him.

He never saw her coming.

Shouts went up from the remaining attackers.

“It’s a Luminent!”

“She’s attacking!”

“Where’s Guzan? Where’s Guzan?”

“He’s down!”

“Where is she?”

Each shout let her know exactly where each man was. There were three more…

… And a quieter sound, a fourth person trying to be stealthy. Not rushing to attack, but to get away. Soft boots, expensive boots, making for the door.

Could Lorelle be so lucky? Those boots could belong to a small woman. Was it this visiting Reader, this woman of importance?

Lorelle sprinted down the aisle. The entrance was before her, and the other three men were lost in the stacks behind her.

The woman appeared, running quietly for the door. She was small, nearly a foot shorter than Lorelle, and her black hair—with brown streaks—flowed behind her.

She made it to the door, and Lorelle paused in a shadow as the woman, wide-eyed, turned to give one final worried glance at the room. Obviously, this hadn’t turned out the way she’d wanted.

The woman closed the door softly, quietly, and only when she was gone did Lorelle resume her pursuit.

“Senji’s Spear, she got Madri, too!” one of the men said behind her.

She opened the door and silently slipped through. The edge of the woman’s black robe disappeared to the left around a corner.

With the men flailing around in the giant library, Lorelle might be able to get a moment alone with the fleeing woman.

The woman who had Lorelle’s Plunnos.

She sprinted up the hallway. Closing the distance between herself and the woman would take only moments. No Human on Noksonon could outrun a Luminent.

She rounded the corner, saw the Reader’s cloak fluttering as she hastened to the door at the end of the hall.

She never reached it.

Lorelle took five powerful steps and launched herself into the air. She arced across the distance and landed at the feet of the running woman. Lorelle snatched the Reader’s ankle, exerting just enough force.

The woman cried out as she tripped, hit the floor, and slid unceremoniously against the wall. Lorelle rolled to her feet and padded toward her opponent like a stalking Kyolar.

The woman fumbled to pick up her glasses, which had fallen next to her, and pushed them onto her face.

“Give me the Plunnos,” Lorelle said.

“It was not meant for you,” the woman said.

“Give it or I’ll put you to sleep and take it.”

The woman’s lips pressed together in a defiant line and said, “It won’t serve you, Lorelle. I know what you’re doing and why. In your place, I would do the same, but it won’t work for you.”

Lorelle’s eyes narrowed. “How do you know my name?”

“Knowing things is what I do.”

The woman was playing games, stalling for time, hoping her fumbling protectors would come in time.

“Last chance,” Lorelle said.

“I will never relinquish the Order’s property.”

Lorelle moved like a tree bending in the wind, forward and backward so quickly the woman barely had time to jerk away, and certainly not fast enough. Lorelle left a light scrape just below the woman’s chin.

“I’m sorry,” Lorelle said as the pure somnul went to work. She hadn’t had time to dilute it. The woman’s eyes dropped to half-mast, and she sank back against the wall. Her arms and legs went limp.

Lorelle knelt next to her. The woman wore a black cloak and, beneath it, a low-cut dress belted at the waist. Three pouches hung from it and Lorelle searched them quickly.

She drew a breath. The second pouch contained the Plunnos, a silver coin four inches in diameter with the symbol of Noksonon—a sun being devoured by tentacles of darkness—on one side and the head of a demon with five horns on the other.

Lorelle’s heart beat faster. She turned the coin in the light of a window that let in a shaft of moonlight. It glimmered.

“I will return it,” Lorelle promised, tucking it away into her own pouch as she glanced up at the window. “If I am able.”

The woman’s hand closed around Lorelle’s ankle, startling her. She shouldn’t have had the ability to move at this point, considering her size and the purity of the somnul. The one advantage Humans had over Lorelle was their greater weight and the brute force that came with it. The worst thing a Luminent could do was let a Human get a grip on them.

Lorelle tried to wrench her leg free, but she couldn’t. The woman held fast with a burning intensity in her quickly dulling eyes. She looked up at Lorelle.

“Beware the Nox, Lorelle,” she whispered through numb lips as her eyes tried to slide shut. “The game… is… larger… than you think…” Her head bobbed forward, but she yanked it up through sheer force of will. “Don’t… trust…”

But the somnul took her. Her grip slackened and her eyelids slid shut before she could finish.

Lorelle stood there, stunned. That sounded like a warning.

She was actively stealing an artifact from this Reader—an artifact for which men had been killed—and the woman was warning her?

Her keen Luminent ears heard footsteps approaching. Obviously, the fumbling men in the library had exhausted their search and were heading this way.

Nox?

She shook her head. It didn’t matter. Only Rhenn mattered. And for the first time, Lorelle had a way to reach her friend.

She sprang to the nearby window and escaped into the night.