CHAPTER 19

Vax followed the miners, who made their way through the tunnels at an uncomfortable pace. There were half a dozen of them, far more than was likely necessary for the unlucky Shadewatch patrol. They didn’t pay attention to him, and that was fine. He needed this. To sate his restlessness and his curiosity, and to get a better sense of the tunnel system around them. To learn more about what was going on here. To find his way out if the opportunity arose.

Thorn and the other dwarf had drawn the guards into the level of the mine where they usually lived and toward the now abandoned kitchen. They ducked across and wove around the tables, doing what they could to keep three of Jorenn’s guards occupied. The fourth guard was nowhere to be seen.

The dwarf—Davok—held his arm at an impossible angle and was locked in battle, warhammer against sword, with a guard who towered head and shoulders over him. Thorn had blood spatters across his face, while he kept two others—a human woman wielding a glaive and a halfling man—occupied, darting in and out to lunge at them and taunt them, before dancing out of reach again. Despite being outnumbered, he was grinning dangerously. He relished the fight.

He only faltered when the half dozen miners and Vax ran into the room, tensing at the sudden movement, and he was a second too late to parry the attack from the guard with the glaive. The butt of the weapon slammed against the inside of his knee, and when he went down, the guard followed through with a downswing from the blade.

Thorn shouted, and the miners spread out around the tables, two per guard. Vax did the only thing that made sense. He dropped to the floor so he had a line of sight toward where Thorn lay. The half-elf was bleeding profusely from a cut along his arm.

When Thorn rolled out of the way of another downswing of the glaive’s blade, Vax drew his hand back and sent a dagger flying straight toward the guard. It jammed into her calf, and she stumbled.

In that moment of pain and hesitation, Thorn pushed himself up to his knees and ran her through, his sword digging deep into the guard’s side. For a brief instant he stood face-to-face with Vax and everything around them ground to a halt.

Then Thorn snarled and twisted his blade. The glaive clattered uselessly to the floor, while Thorn slumped back against the table.

His eyes found Vax, and some of the gentleness of the first night leaked through the cracks in his pain. It made him softer, while the fight around them was quick and brutal.

Then one of the miners stepped between them and reached out a hand to drag Thorn to his feet. Vax crawled out from under the table and retrieved his dagger, wincing at the open, unseeing eyes of the guard and the blood that pooled around her. An unlucky fool in the wrong place at the wrong time. He’d attacked her without thinking twice about it, once Thorn fell.

This wasn’t his fight, Sencha had said. But wasn’t it? Or had he inadvertently made it his own?

The remaining two members of the Shadewatch were no match for the remaining miners. One encountered the sharp end of a longsword, and the other met the dwarf’s warhammer with his face.

Between the guard he and Thorn had attacked, and the two who fell, there were only three guards here. Vax glanced around, and something cold crawled up his spine. “Where is the fourth guard?”

Thorn’s eyes scanned the room and he swore loudly. “Did anyone see her? A dwarf with a longsword?”

Denial from the other miners.

Vax shook his head. He cleaned his daggers with his shirt. “She was gone before we got here.”

“She’ll be long gone. Fuck. We can’t let her escape.” Thorn called out two of the miners’ names. “Find that errant guard, and close off the entrance she came through. If there are any horses outside, make sure the tracks lead away from here. Once you’re a good distance away, let them go safely.”

“We know what to do,” one of the miners said, with what she probably meant as a reassuring smile. It looked more like a horrified grimace.

Thorn stared, and she colored and nodded. “Yes, boss.”

On the other side of the room, a broad-shouldered young woman cut off a piece of the guard’s tunic with her dagger and helped fashion it into a sling for Davok.

“The rest of you: clean up,” Thorn ordered, pressing another ripped shirt against his arm. “When you’re done, go find Tinyn. She needs to know about the guard who got away. She’ll know what to do. Vax, with me.”

Vax tried not to stare when miners efficiently and effectively dug through the pockets of the guards, removed any valuables, and bound the bodies together.

“What will happen to them?” he asked Davok as he passed the dwarf.

“Deepest unused mine shaft,” Davok replied gruffly. He cradled his arm against his chest despite the sling. “It’s the closest thing to a burial we can give them. We can’t let anyone out of these tunnels alive.”

Vax stilled. “So what do you do with stray travelers you pick up?”

“We try to lure them in and if that doesn’t work, we toss ’em in the shaft too. Why, are you worried for your safety?” Thorn answered in Davok’s stead. “Come.”

He ran out of the kitchen without waiting to see if Vax would follow, and two of the miners fell into step with him.

Without further hesitation, Vax followed.

Thorn’s pace was unforgiving, and Vax fought to keep up. With the rush of the fight leaving him, everything reminded him of the fact that he was still healing, and likely Sencha would find a way to scold him as soon as she was done patching up the others. At least without Vex here, that was almost comforting.

Thorn led them through the maze once more, through a tunnel at a steep incline, and with every step they took the air became fresher and felt heavier. Vax pulled his cloak tight around him. He kept his eyes peeled for any markers he saw, and identifying details that would help him retrace his steps. He wondered why Thorn brought him here now. One of his hands snaked toward a dagger, just in case.

Before they reached the surface, the tunnel dipped again, and for the last quarter of a mile they zigzagged. The tunnel branched off into passages that led nowhere, and Thorn followed a twisting passage so narrow that he seemed to disappear into solid stone. Vax followed after him, and he felt sharp edges of protruding rocks dig into his shoulder and back. He pushed through, until the tunnel opened up wider again—and came to a dead end.

In front of him, Thorn placed his hand against the stone and walked straight through. Vax narrowed his eyes and followed, one hand in front of him to reach for the wall that his eyes told him was there, but when he walked closer, he felt nothing. No rock. No barrier of any sort. The faintest breeze. The air felt heavier here than it did down below.

He pushed through. And all of a sudden, he was outside. Underneath an overcast sky at dusk, with hills stretching out as far as the eye could see. It was the type of endlessness that Vax had longed for even as it left him dizzy.

Jorenn Village was nowhere to be seen, though whether that was because they were a long way away or because it’d dipped beneath the glowing of the hills, Vax couldn’t tell. With the sun having dipped beneath the horizon and no stars to guide him, he didn’t have a clue where they were.

He closed his eyes and breathed deeply. The air tasted of flowers and ash.

Thorn stared out too, the stained shirt still pressed to his arm. Tension arched across his shoulder and back, and he stared up at the clouds like he could fight the sky itself. He screamed his rage and helplessness.

“Are you all right?” Vax asked, though the answer was blatantly obvious.

“No.” Thorn didn’t meet his gaze, and he laughed without humor. “You know, Tinyn almost had me convinced you were a spy for Derowen, with your curious eyes and your endless questions. It’s not the first time we’ve taken travelers in, and it would be easy enough to hide someone loyal to her in a group small enough to be a target for the ash walkers. But it doesn’t matter anymore. None of it does.”

Vax flinched at the accusation and the pain. “You saw me fight for your side in there. I didn’t let myself get cut up just to sneak in here. You know I wouldn’t let myself get separated from my sister.”

“Wouldn’t that make the story better? Who better to know than she that I’d be sympathetic to it.” Thorn’s hands wavered, and something in his gaze broke. “She tried so hard to get rid of us, and I don’t know how I can stop her anymore.”

He looked more dangerous in his grief, and Vax treaded carefully. “Why does she want to get rid of you? She’s already got your mines.”

“We knew what the mines held,” Thorn said immediately, and the words had the cadence of practice. “Every ore and every deposit. Every piece of silver she stole, all the riches she kept to herself. She started stealing from the town the moment the Shadewatch took over the mines, and she must be terrified we could expose her as the monster she is.”

Vax took a step forward. “Who would you tell? The people of Jorenn who see her as a hero and who didn’t protest when the Shadewatch cleared you out? They think you’re the monsters.”

“If you’re trying to convince me you’re on my side, you’re doing a piss-poor job,” Thorn snapped. Intense fear flicked across his face, until he visibly pushed it away. “Perhaps we are the monsters.”

And before Vax could say or do anything, Thorn turned to face him, the weight of the people down below on his shoulders.

“They know where we are now. It’ll be hours or days, but they’ll find us here and they’ll kill us. Leave. Just fucking go. The night isn’t safe by any means, but it’s better than staying.”

It was so tempting. Even though the hills around them were obscured, with only fragments of dusk breaking through the cloud deck above. Even though he didn’t have a clue where he was in relation to Jorenn and how to get there. Vex was out there and that ache was a hollowness inside of him.

He took a step forward. This was what he wanted.

All Vax needed to do was find his sister, steal the ring, fulfill his debt, and leave all of this behind.

But.

“No. Not yet.” He pushed his fingernails deep into the palms of his hands and steeled himself before he met Thorn’s gaze. He felt the weight of his own daggers, flying toward the guards. Of Sencha and Felric’s stories. Of Emryn. Of knowing it was only a matter of time before the miners would be attacked by the Shadewatch. “I wouldn’t be able to hold my own if any ash walker crossed my path,” he told Thorn instead. A half-truth. Or a full lie. He tried to put the rest of it into words. “This isn’t right. I couldn’t go knowing I’d leave you all in danger.”

Thorn’s look was completely unreadable, his eyes as cloudy as the sky above. In the end, he simply shrugged and turned away. “Fine, your choice.”

“I will need a guide into town when it’s safer, though,” Vax added.

Thorn simply kept walking.

BY NIGHTFALL, VAX WAS CERTAIN he’d made a mistake in not walking out. Or in getting involved in the first place.

The atmosphere in the cavern had changed when they returned. It had gone from comfortably defiant to intense and deadly. Tinyn had taken charge in Thorn’s absence, and everyone who could, carried a weapon. Many people milled about like they had before, but they did so purposefully. To prepare themselves for the inevitable. The miners’ belongings, which usually lay spread out across the cavern, had been gathered into easy packs that were placed near the entrance and close to the stream and the narrow pathways. No one spoke loudly; everyone whispered. Like they were afraid their voices alone could bring the Shadewatch down upon them.

It was as though everyone held their breaths waiting for the Shadewatch to come bursting in.

Following their return, Thorn didn’t say a word to him. He let Sencha patch him up and he spent a bit of time with the dwarves, but he avoided Vax easily.

It wasn’t until dinner that Vax realized that Thorn was keeping his distance from most of the group. He skirted around the edges, exchanged a word or two with anyone who asked for his time, but he didn’t settle down to eat with them or try to relax around the fire. He kept going back and forth among the cavern, the people who stood watch in double patrols, and the tunnels.

“It’s what he does,” Tinyn muttered when Vax mentioned it. She had a pair of scimitars by her side and she didn’t stay in one place for long either. She’d come out of a quiet but heated discussion with both Sencha and Junel when Vax approached her, and she was scanning the chamber to make sure everyone was where they were meant to be. “He feels responsible.”

“He won’t rest until he’s confident we’re safe,” Sencha said, with a sigh. “He never considers his own safety.”

Twice more that night, Thorn wandered into the cavern, once to grab a drink, once to discuss something with someone and throw a withering look in Vax’s direction. When the other miners nervously went to their cots for the night, Thorn was still flitting around. It made Vax wonder if he’d seen the half-elf sleep much at all these last few nights. Even before the Shadewatch had found their way in, he’d seemed to be constantly busy, constantly worrying.

With the others falling asleep around him, Vax skirted around the edges of the cavern and waited for Thorn to reappear. When he did—to discuss something in hushed tones with Tinyn before he pressed a pouch in her hands—Vax followed him. He kept his distance, far enough not to be seen. He was as quiet as he knew how to be, moving silently from shadow to shadow. In doing so, he found a whisper of patience that eased his own restlessness.

Thorn led him deeper into the mines, way past the tunnels they’d traversed and toward another system that was in the process of being expanded. Vax ran his hands along the walls and felt the grooves of pick marks, the harder edges of a different stone underneath. The air around him smelled of dirt.

Vax rounded the next corner and paused, pressing his back against the wall. A few dozen feet away from him, Thorn sat on his coat on the floor, a dull magical light illuminating the pieces of paper in front of him, while he drank from a tankard of ale. He had a pencil next to him and occasionally he took notes, but most of all, he was talking.

“… lose any more of them,” Thorn said, his voice raising the lightest echo around him. He held up his hand to the light, and a green snake wrapped itself around his arm and wrist, slithering and following Thorn attentively, like he was listening. Vax stared at it for a long time before he realized the snake had the exact same color and markings as Thorn’s serpentine belt. It was an odd thing, but he couldn’t let himself be distracted by it.

“Sencha argues, but they have to leave while they still can. We have no evidence to clear anyone’s names, but we have funds …” Thorn’s voice trailed off and he wrote something down. He looked despondent, sitting there, with only a snake and ale to keep him company. “If we stay and fight, we’ll have more raw silver to divide among the groups, and—”

“You’re trying to relocate them,” Vax said, realizing what the other man was saying. “Was that what those letters were about too? You’re trying to gather evidence and funds to give your people a new home, away from the Shadewatch and out of danger.”

“Fuck.” Thorn snarled and leaped to his feet, swords in his hands, while the snake fell forgotten onto his coat. His eyes blazed, and both of his swords were pointing at Vax’s throat. “What the hell do you want?”

Vax raised his hands, showing he was unarmed. He was confident in his skills, but he wasn’t sure he could hold his own against Thorn in this state. Even with his arm in bandages, he looked fierce and dangerous. “I’ve noticed you disappearing into the tunnels a few times before. I was curious.”

“Perceptive and determined.” Thorn didn’t lower his blades. Instead he squeezed them tighter. At his feet, the snake straightened itself, slithered up his leg, and wound around his waist. “We should have left you for the ash to devour.”

Vax nudged the tankard of ale toward Thorn with his foot. “You probably should have left me, and I probably should have left you. Since you didn’t, and I didn’t, tell me what you’re trying to do?”

Thorn stared at him, his dark brows furrowed over conflicted eyes. His scars stood out fiercely with how pale and tired he looked. He sagged down against the wall across from Vax, pulled his knees up to his chest, and lay his blades across his knees. “We’ll fight, those of us who can. We’ll fight here and we’ll die here. And if I can kill the Shademaster in the process, it’ll be worth it. But Sencha and Junel and the others … they deserve to be safe. We’ll fight long enough for everyone else to escape and collapse the tunnels behind them, so that it looks like we were the only ones. So that they have no reason to keep looking for others anymore.”

“Can’t you escape too?”

Thorn didn’t answer that question. The flash of rage in his eyes spoke volumes. “I thought with sufficient funds and evidence that we’re better than the Shadewatch claims we are, it would be easier to find new work and new homes. Tinyn has been reaching out to other mining communities to see if they can take some or all of us. But they know us as the miners who woke the ash. Without letters of proof, we’re dangers to any community. I don’t know if the silver we have is enough to pay for a chance to live.”

“So you keep mining, despite the dangers?” Vax asked.

“Very perceptive,” Thorn said. “Yes. We keep mining. If that disturbs things better left undisturbed, so be it. If it raises corpses that bother a town that abandoned us, then that’s not my problem. They know how to take care of themselves.”

“And the people like me and my sister? The travelers who get caught in the crossfire?” Twin tendrils of anger and fatigue crawled up his spine.

Something harsh crossed Thorn’s face. “My loyalty is to my people, not to anyone else.”

Vax waited for Thorn to say more, and eventually the miner’s shoulders sagged. “We take in travelers if we can, if it’s safe for us to do so. We are careful when we mine, because despite what the people outside think, this is our world. Maybe we are the monsters. I can’t forget that we’re fighting for our lives, Vax. If I let that go, even for a moment, we’ll lose. We are losing.”

Vax sat down too, keeping a careful distance between himself and Thorn’s swords. “I offered to find you evidence before. Let me help.”

“Why?” Thorn reached for the tankard and drank deep.

“Because I owe you a debt,” Vax said. It was the simplest answer at least. He tried for the harder one too. Because of the way Thorn worried about his people and the way they worried about him. Because Sencha and Junel and the others who helped him deserved a home where they could live instead of hide. Because maybe, if the miners were safe and the ash walkers gone, he could steal the Shademaster’s ring without worry. He shook his head. “I know what it’s like not to have a place in the world, only the people—or person—you care about and nothing more.”

Thorn drank deeper still. “A pretty elf like you can’t know what it’s like not to belong.”

Vax leaned his head back against the wall and didn’t say anything. He understood Thorn’s fierce loyalty to his people—to his family. He understood it. He recognized it. It was part of what made it so hard to turn away.

“As soon as you reunite with your sister, you will forget about us, and rightfully so.” Thorn hesitated then pushed the tankard in Vax’s direction.

Vax grabbed the tankard, sniffed, then took a swig of what turned out to be a smooth, spicy ale. “I won’t forget,” he said.

“Sure.” Thorn sheathed his swords. He reached for the papers in front of him and haphazardly stacked them on top of one another. His movements were uncontrolled and sharp, and halfway through he grabbed the whole stack and flung it off to the side, loose pages scattering across the stones.

He put the pencil in his pocket and looked up, tired beyond words. “You don’t owe me anything. We shouldn’t have kept you here.” He rubbed his face. “Any debt you may feel you had, you repaid with your daggers.”

Vax pushed the tankard toward Thorn again, but the half-elf didn’t drink. He stared at his hands. “I don’t get involved with any of the travelers we bring in. Sencha patches them up, we escort them out of the mines blindfolded, and send them off into the daylight as soon as possible. We don’t let them see the caverns. We don’t let strangers come close. I don’t let strangers come close, because we’ve all been hurt too often, and I’m responsible for all these people. All of them, Vax.” He continued before Vax could say anything, the words tumbling out of him, “But Sencha was busy with Emryn, and you were in pain. I couldn’t just let you lie there. It felt so simple. So normal to talk to someone who didn’t put his life in my hands. And then I couldn’t get you out of my head. I couldn’t fucking get you out of my head.” The words cracked.

Thorn’s jaw worked, like there was more he wanted to say, but he didn’t have the words. He pounded his knee with one of his fists. Between the frustration that coursed through him and the questions in his eyes, he had no defenses left. No anger, no challenge.

Just Thorn.

Vax pushed himself to his feet and tentatively crossed to the other side of the tunnel. He sat down next to Thorn and folded a hand over his fist, easing it. “I won’t forget,” he promised. “Let me find the evidence.” Once he found his way back to Vex, once he knew she was okay, they could both help.

“I won’t leave. I won’t stop fighting.” Thorn turned his hand, entwining his fingers with Vax’s. “You’ll have to escape with the others.”

“I will come back.”

“Whatever.” Underneath the layers of exhaustion, Thorn’s mouth quirked up. He glanced at Vax. And here, at the edge of disaster, neither moved away.

Vax leaned in closer, his face inches away from Thorn’s, and reached out to trace Thorn’s jawline. “For the record: this is me trying to get you to like me.”

Thorn snorted and covered the distance between them. “Gods, you’re obnoxious.”