CHAPTER 21

Three days passed following the incident with the guards, and while Shadewatch presence in the area increased every day, they hadn’t marched on the mines yet. Instead they spread out across the hillside in a clear attempt to block every possible exit.

Three days passed, and every miner inside the cavern knew it was only a matter of time until they attacked. Restlessness battled with determination. Vax was as agitated and impatient as the rest of them, especially once Sencha judged his back to have healed adequately. If not for the guards outside, he would have tried to sneak out the hidden exit Thorn had shown him. But with the Shadewatch roaming the hills, there was no saying what they’d do if they saw him come from the mines. He wasn’t about to risk a stray arrow or crossing an overzealous guard. He couldn’t be responsible for another compromised passage. Even so, every hour that passed between now and the inevitable was an hour too long.

The only distraction came from the people around him. With Thorn’s tacit approval, the group of miners expanded to fold Vax in for what little time they had left. Vax managed to gather as much information as he possibly could: on the Shademaster and her ring, on the layout of Jorenn and what Vex might face on the outside, and on their plans for the oncoming battle.

During the day, he joined the miners in their weapons practice. Thorn told Vax about the songs the miners would sing while working, their voices echoing for miles, accompanied by rhythmic knocking. He hummed one with a playful melody, and others in the cavern immediately picked it up. “Ash walkers aren’t the only creatures that hunger below the surface,” he sang softly, while Vax remembered Sencha’s words that they were always the ones who died first. “We’ve learned to respect and give thanks to the ones that let us work in peace and plenty.”

Later, Thorn told him about the belt—after making proper introductions between Vax and the snake. It was a present from his master, he said, when he was still an apprentice who longed to see the world. “To keep me company in mines so deep the light won’t reach.”

“Grim,” Vax muttered.

Thorn shook his head. “Townsfolk like you have no appreciation for our work.”

On the third night, after one of the guards had reported Shadewatch scouting out the entrance to the caves, Thorn sat Vax down and mapped out the way from Jorenn to what would be the survivors’ hideout—even though Tinyn scolded him for it. Thorn’s second-in-command still didn’t trust Vax and wouldn’t trust Vax, and Vax couldn’t fault her for that.

But Thorn made Vax repeat the route back to him over and over, until he was certain Vax would know how to get to the hidden drifts and tunnels. “After all,” he said when they sat alone near the stream, the glow of the glass orb fading to a dimmer light, “you promised to come back.”

The words took an effort, and Vax didn’t immediately respond. He still felt tense and restless. He stared at his fragmented reflection in the gently flowing water. His hair rippled around him. His eyes were indefinite. “I did.”

“So you should know where to find the survivors,” Thorn said, trying valiantly to make it sound like it was no big deal—and failing equally heroically. His distorted, rippling reflection made his eyes look darker, like shards of iron that didn’t move with the stream itself, and his determination anchored them.

After a moment, he lay down and stared up at the glowworms above them, like a pale imitation of a sky full of stars.

Vax leaned back on his elbows. “As soon as I’ve found my sister and know she’s okay, I’ll find a way to get you your evidence.”

Thorn kept his eyes on the ceiling. “As soon as I know my people are safe, I’ll fight until I can’t fight anymore.”

And in the end, it was as simple as that. It was the determination and loyalty that Vax admired and that drew him to Thorn that kept them both at arm’s length too.

ON THE MORNING OF THE fourth day, Thorn woke Vax before the light turned to dawn and dumped Vax’s old clothes and patched-up cloak on top of him. He was pale and his eyes were expressionless. “They’re here.”

“This is it?” Vax asked, changing into his old outfit. The shirt and cloak had been cleaned, but the smell of ash seemed to persist. As did the bloodstains across the back of the cloak.

“This is it,” Thorn said, his words flat. The gentleness he’d shown Vax over the past few days had disappeared under his mask of responsibility and purpose.

On the other side of the cavern, Felric strapped on a crossbow and a quiver full of bolts. He tipped his head when he realized Thorn was staring. The other two halflings carried swords and brave smiles. The dwarven woman with the bad leg, the one whose pain Sencha eased when she didn’t need healing spells for others, juggled a heavy steel warhammer. Junel wrapped a tablecloth around their knives.

Everywhere Vax looked, miners were preparing their weapons and gathering their belongings, while others were getting ready to leave. Junel had gathered the children who’d imitated Vax’s weapons practice, and they all looked somber and scared. The oldest miners carried the littlest ones, and two teenage girls had heavy bags with supplies and memories slung over their shoulders.

Two young dwarves grabbed picks and hammers and ran past them all, deeper into the mines.

Vax slid into his boots and pulled the cloak on over the musty shirt. Relief and anticipation coursed through him. He’d find his way out of here today. “What will happen to you?” he asked.

“We’ll fight,” Thorn said simply. “I’ll fight and if I’m lucky, I’ll take the Shademaster down with me.”

Vax pressed his lips together. He’d tried to convince Thorn that instead of fighting, the miners could all flee, deeper into the tunnels and caverns, out of the Shadewatch’s reach. But Thorn had made up his mind. “The Shademaster doesn’t know how many we are, and that’s our luck. That’s our chance.”

Thorn straightened. “This is what we decided on together. No one here fights because I ordered them to. They fight because they chose to. If I could think of a way to keep them all safe, I would. I won’t deny them the chance to make a difference. We fight, so that the others may live. If we flee, the guards will keep coming after us, and that puts everyone at risk.” It was a plan of desperation, made to steal time not victory away from the enemy.

On some level Vax understood Thorn couldn’t escape either. He’d keep searching for vengeance if he didn’t find some semblance of justice. It was an inevitable collision course.

“Get out with the others when we give the sign, Vax,” Thorn said, not for the first time. “Once the Shadewatch is distracted by the fight, make your way to Jorenn and your sister, and if you can find proof for the survivors, that would mean the world. But don’t get in too deep. It’s hard to find the surface when you do.”

Vax drew in a sharp breath, ready to tell Thorn that he knew what he was doing, that he’d fast-talked his way out of plenty of tight spots before—though never quite as dashingly as his sister—when he stopped. To Thorn, he and his sister were still regular travelers, on their way to Jorenn Village running errands or looking for work, like so many others before them. Thorn wondered, but he hadn’t outright asked, and Vax hadn’t volunteered the information.

So instead, he simply held out an arm and waited for Thorn to grasp it. “I’ll find something useful. I promise.”

Thorn clasped his arm, and nodded. Without another word, he turned and walked to the center of the cavern.

And the mood changed, with the snap of a finger. A wave of fear rolled through the cavern, so palpable everyone felt it.

Thorn climbed on top of one of the tables. His voice carried, steady and brooking no argument. “The Shadewatch made their move. They’re on their way to the mines, and they outnumber us three to one. We can’t all fight. We won’t all fight. I won’t put the children or the families at risk. Not again.” His words were met with stony determination. “We’ve discussed our escape plans. Those who will stay and fight come with me. The rest will follow Junel. You know what to do.”

No one present looked happy about the plans, but no one hesitated either. The miners who would stay and fight fell in around Thorn, and the others made their way over to Junel. They clasped hands, held on to each other, whispered goodbyes, and Vax kept his distance, unable to take in the scenes in front of him and unable to look away.

If he had to choose between his sister’s life and his own, he’d choose Vex in a heartbeat, but he could not imagine being torn apart like this.

“We all knew it would come to this, especially when no one else wanted to take us in. This is the best chance we have. We are the best chance they have.” Tinyn wandered up next to Vax, and she stared him down with deep, steady eyes. “I will come back to haunt you if anything happens to the survivors or if you endanger them.”

“I would never,” Vax said steadily.

Tinyn considered the words, then she shrugged. “Thorn trusts you. I don’t have to.”

“Understood.”

Without another word, Tinyn reached for her scimitars and her eyes found her dwarven partner Faril, who lined up with those sneaking out of the cavern. The space between them was emptying—except for Sencha, who lingered near the cots with her bag full of medical supplies—but the unspoken words between Tinyn and Faril could fill the whole chamber.

At that point, a loud clanging began to echo through the tunnels. Metal on metal. Swords on shields. And the pounding of footsteps.

Junel called for the survivors to follow them into passages that led deeper into the hills, away from the Shadewatch waiting above. Sencha would be the last to escape, collapsing the tunnel behind those who would stay and fight.

Tinyn led the first group of miners up toward the surface, with a deep sigh, a squaring of her shoulders, and a determined frown.

And Vax hesitated.

On the other side of the cavern, at the head of the second group of warriors, Thorn called out to him. His eyes sparkled dangerously. “When you get back to the rest of the civilized world, anywhere but Westruun, tell the most outrageous stories about us,” he called out. “What we do here should live on.”

His words were met with cheers and laughter.

“Westruun isn’t civilized enough for you?” Vax wanted to know. He reached for his daggers and stole another glance in Junel’s direction. There too, groups were making their way out of the cavern.

“Wouldn’t know, never been. But the Shademaster deals with the Westruun Clasp. They’re her intermediary between the mines and the market. So I’d prefer it if they didn’t find out about us. I have too many powerful enemies already.” Thorn grinned. All the tension he’d carried with him had fallen away when he picked up his weapons. All his gentleness was gone. All that was left was the fight ahead.

With a final nod, Thorn walked toward Felric and out of the cavern, oblivious to the fact that his words still echoed around Vax.

The Shademaster deals with the Westruun Clasp.

It clashed directly against another comment, from longer—half a lifetime—ago.

Much like gold, information must be earned.

“Fuck!” The cavern emptied around them. The last of the miners who hoped to escape turned around to stare at him, and Vax snarled, a thousand questions swirling around him. He should follow. He should get out of here, find Vex, and let what would happen in the fight happen. He owed Thorn and the others nothing more than to try to aid them. He could find answers on his own, with his sister by his side.

But if the Clasp assignment had been a trap all along, he needed to know what they were getting into. He didn’t need a powerful enemy either.

If he believed the miners, this plan, to stay and fight or to escape, was a choice between certain death and certain survival. But it wasn’t. It couldn’t be. It had to be a choice between likely death and possible escape.

Thorn had warned him not to get in too deep, but that warning had come far too late. He already was, and long before he got here.

Vax palmed two of his daggers, and ran into the tunnel toward the fight.

VAX FOLLOWED THE PATH UP to the higher levels, miners in front of him and tension all around them. He expected chaos. He’d fought before. He’d been trained to fight. He’d been at the center of some painful misunderstandings in various towns’ seedy underbellies. Nothing could have prepared him for this.

Everywhere Vax looked, he saw red uniforms and miners covered in the soot and dirt of the mines. The dust on the ground swirled around his feet, like the ash had in the encampment. He clung to his daggers and pushed through.

He made it to the main level, where the kitchen had once held the sounds of laughter and now held the sounds of dying. In the room where Vax had recovered from his wounds, five Shadewatch were facing off against two miners—and the miners were losing. Everywhere people were fighting. Tinyn was locked up in a battle with three guards at the same time, and while her rage was potent, so were their weapons.

Three groups of a dozen miners each had left the cavern, and at least half a dozen of them lay dead in the tunnels already, while the Shadewatch guards streamed into the tunnels, shoulder-to-shoulder. The sound of metal on metal filled the space, of swords hitting shields and blades glancing off armor. Grunts and shouts and screams of pain.

They fell. One by one, the miners fell.

Vax felt cold. He reached for a dagger and sent it flying without allowing himself time to aim. It buried itself in one of the guards’ shoulders, but it didn’t stop the man from swinging down his sword and cleaving into the young dwarf in front of him. Death was loud and messy.

One of the other miners—a young halfling woman—managed to stab a long, slender blade into the side of the guardswoman in front of Vax, sneaking underneath her breastplate. She gargled and blood streaked from the corners of her mouth. She looked at the miner with such rage before her eyes broke.

Vax swung around to stand with his back to the halfling, and he parried a guard who slashed a sword in his general direction. He followed through with an easy swipe of his dagger, but it barely drove through the man’s armor. And behind him there were three more to take his place.

He glanced around to locate Thorn. The other man was nowhere to be seen.

He ducked out of the way of another blade and hooked his foot around a guard’s so the man went crashing to the ground. Even over the din of battle, Vax heard the sickening crunch of bone breaking.

It wasn’t like when the guards had found their way in. That fight had been quick and brutal and though it was bloody, it was survival. This was slaughter. And the Shadewatch kept bleeding into the tunnels, with endless blades and merciless cruelty.

Felric darted past him, his crossbow loaded. He twisted and shot a bolt at the guard who took a swing at him, but before he could straighten and dart deeper into the mine, to find a safe vantage point, a tall woman in Shadewatch colors slammed her quarterstaff into his knee and sent him tumbling to the ground. Another guard followed through with an ax.

Vax shouted. The butt of a polearm crashed into his side, and he doubled over. He brought his dagger up out of reflex more than strategy, and stars danced in front of him when the blade of a spear glanced off his weapon. By the time he straightened and could bring himself to attack, Felric was bleeding out on the floor. He mumbled something and tried to bring his hands up to his throat, but the fight bled out of him too.

In the chaos that followed, multiple things happened at the same time.

The dust around them kicked up and one of the guards called out a warning. “Ash walkers!”—as a trio of lumbering, cadaverous creatures crawled their way up from the deepest tunnels. One of the tallest cornered the guard and used its claws to cut deep into his chest.

At the same time, the Shadewatch kept filtering in, with a group of guards forming a tight formation around a pale human woman, who held a broadsword like it was a rapier. She had her brown hair tied back in a thick braid, and she shouted commands. “Break in two! Beven’s squad, keep an eye on those bloody corpses! Do not engage unless you must! Olfa’s squad, continue your assignment! We have to clear these mines.”

Two guards—presumably the people she’d named—responded with a crisp, “Yes, Shademaster.” They followed her orders with some of their own, and a handful of guards pushed deeper into the mines while others strengthened the protective forms around the brown-haired woman.

Vax expected Shademaster Derowen to be a monster, based on the stories Thorn and Sencha had told. He thought he’d see the bloodlust in her eyes. He didn’t. She wasn’t. She focused on something far beyond them both, and he saw the dark circles underneath her eyes. The way she clung to the hilt of her sword with her gloved hands folded over each other. Her carmine overcoat showed the wear and tear of many hours of weapons practice, but her sword and armor were bloodied, and she and the Shadewatch gave no quarter. Two of the guards in the Shademaster’s retinue ran their swords through a miner without hesitation, like she was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Vax pushed himself into the shadows that hugged the walls when he stilled.

Coming up behind the Shademaster was a figure he knew all too well. He saw the tip of a bow point out over the Shademaster’s shoulder before he saw anything else. An arrow flew out into the fray, and Vex stepped out from behind her. She had her cloak pulled tight around her, and her eyes scanned the area. Looking. Searching.

Vax didn’t think. He stepped forward, oblivious to the fight around him. Oblivious to the Shademaster’s guards who immediately tensed. When their eyes met, everything that had mattered so much only minutes ago disappeared to the background.

He took another step forward. “Stubby?”

And right at that point, another face became clear in the blur around him—and Thorn sprinted toward the Shademaster.