CHAPTER 32

The sky around them darkened further and the first blues of night streaked across the sky. The ground grew colder and the shadows starker. They needed to get up and get to safety, but not without deciding on their next steps. So Vex started a small fire before she grabbed the notebook out of her tunic and wiped at one of the bloodstains. She leafed through the pages and the loose inserts, thumbing one of the names. “If the ring isn’t the key, then the notebook is. It has to be. Everything that happens here is connected.”

Vax paced around her, his hands in his pockets, and the weight of the world on his shoulders. “We could use it as leverage,” he suggested, staring down at Jorenn, where the first lanterns were being lit against the night. It made the town look like a beacon in the darkness. And it would be. They wouldn’t stay away. “Go to Derowen and tell her we’ll release the information unless she releases the miners and hands over the ring to us.”

“She’ll add us to that list of names before she’ll let either of those things happen,” Vex said with determination. “It will leave Jorenn too vulnerable. And I don’t want to fight her.”

“So one of us goes in, and the other one—”

She smacked him with the notebook. “Remember what I said? I’m not letting you out of my sight again. Besides, she watched me search for you for a week. She knows we’re each other’s weakest point.”

He rubbed his arm, recalling the spireling’s words in Westruun with a stab of guilt. She was more right than she knew. “What do you suggest?”

“Let me talk to her about the miners,” Vex said. “If I can convince her that they won’t be a threat to Jorenn anymore, that they just want to leave, it’s the best option for all. She’s not an unreasonable woman, Vax.”

Maybe she wasn’t, but she was still a murderer. Vax didn’t fool himself. If he hadn’t allowed Thorn to escape, he would’ve been dead days ago. And if Thorn hadn’t stepped in front of them, they would be prisoners now too.

Vex’s mouth twitched. “I would like to hear her side of the story. Maybe, instead of threatening her, we can offer to trade the notebook for her promise that she lets the survivors go in peace.”

Gods, how he wanted to be able to do that. To fulfill his promise to Thorn that they’d help. “That still leaves the bloody ring. And she doesn’t deal well with anyone knowing about her side ventures.”

She grumbled.

Vax crawled over and sat behind Vex. With practiced fingers, he took her braid out and ran his fingers through her hair, careful not to snag the feathers tucked behind her ear. Vex kept staring at the notebook, but her shoulders relaxed, and Vax worked on combing the tangles from her hair. With every pass he made running his fingers through his sister’s hair, some of her tension slipped away.

Some of his own tension dissipated as well.

Vex turned to him, the movement pulling her hair out of his hands. “We don’t have the full story,” she said intently. “You told me back in Jorenn that what I’d heard was only half the story, and Thorn’s was the other half. But we’re still missing one side.”

He cursed. “The Clasp.”

“Exactly.” She tapped her fingers on the pages restlessly.

Vax winced. “If you want to tell me I told you so, you’d be right to.”

“I want to tell you that we should never have come here.” She shook her head. “And even that would be a lie.”

Illuminated by the faint glow of the campfire, the wind picked up ash that covered the hills around them and sent it dancing through the air. The swirling clouds reminded Vax of the encampment before it got attacked, before they fell headfirst into the chaos around them. It left him uneasy. Even if there were no shadows in sight here. No darkness deep enough to hide their enemies. The drifts didn’t turn into figures—just clouds. It felt like a warning regardless.

Vex ran her fingers over the list of names again. “There has to be a reason they gave you this assignment. Especially if she works for them. What if we figure out who she works with on the side of the Clasp? Perhaps you’ll recognize names.” She scratched letters on a scrap of paper. “Do you suppose it’s a test? A way to figure out if you can be loyal?”

“No. There are easier ways to test my loyalty than to send us both on a wild-goose chase to a town in the middle of nowhere.” He closed his eyes. Unbidden, the image of Lyre, the thief, changing into his sister, rose before him. He swallowed hard and reached for Vex’s shoulder, to remind himself she was right there in front of him.

She hissed.

He loosened his grip. “Sorry, I—”

“No, this name. I recognize this name.” Vex pulled free. Her hair fell in loose strands over her shoulder. She pointed at one of the lines in the notebook, at the C word under the Westruun column. “It doesn’t say Clasp, like everyone assumed, it says Culwen. Derowen’s brother. I met him the night of the ash walker attack when we were separated, and he’s supposed to come back to Jorenn soon. Aswin said so yesterday too, remember? Uncle Culwen promised her a present.”

Vax breathed in sharply. “That’s not the only time I heard that name.” He stared at the page she held up to him, and at the shapes of the coded letters. The name sounded so familiar.

Then it hit him. “Fuck.”

A conversation between Spireling Gideor and the halfling near the tavern door.

“Is Culwen back from his assignment?”

“I think it means both.” He pulled the notebook from his sister’s hands and checked the code against the cypher. The Shademaster had made a few changes for the coded names, but Vex was right. “Derowen’s brother is her Clasp contact.”

“Are you sure?”

“I heard the name when I was there. It might be a coincidence but I don’t think so.” Spireling Gideor had been very careful about what he’d shared with Vax, and he didn’t seem like the type to accidentally let slip details about members. Information, after all, was as valuable as gold.

Vex got to her feet and fixed her eyes on Jorenn while she ran her fingers through her hair and pulled it into a loose braid. She tied it together with a leather band. “They hardly seem to like each other though … I can’t imagine the two of them running a smuggling operation together.”

Vax shrugged. “Can’t you? If she thinks it’s a way to keep her and her daughter safe? If we’d stayed in Syngorn and become the prim and proper children our father wanted us to be, perhaps we would’ve thought stealing was too big a risk too. It’s an easier choice if the alternative is hunger.”

“She’s secure here. She has everything.” Vex straightened the feathers behind her ear. “She has a home, money, a name. What more could she need?”

If she had a taste for smuggling now, it wasn’t about need, but about want, Vax thought. “I’m not justifying what she did. Before I knew she’d helped you, I was ready to hate her on sight. I’m only saying sometimes people are complicated. Perhaps this is her way to secure her daughter’s future.”

“At the expense of how many?” Vex shook her head. “Brothers and their trinkets,” she muttered.

“What?”

“Something that crossed my mind when Wick—” She closed her eyes, and he could almost see her running through conversations, adding up all the details. “When he told me how Culwen found Fracture. He was the one to give it to Derowen.”

Her words were like individual elements of a trap, all falling into place and snapping together, and he still had no idea how to dismantle it. “So we have a Shademaster who deals with the Clasp, through a brother who is a member of the Clasp, and the one thing to keep her safe is a ring the Clasp now wants us to steal,” he summed up. “Why?”

Vex rounded on him, and she stabbed him in the chest with a finger. “I fucking told you so.”

He narrowed his eyes. “Feel better?”

“No!” She threw her hands into the air. Her voice rolled over the hills. “Culwen promised to come back to Jorenn. Derowen told Aswin he was supposed to arrive today—if he isn’t back already. If anyone can give you the answers you seek, it’s him.”

“What do you want me to say to him, Vex’ahlia? So the criminal organization you’re a member of wants me to steal from your sister, any tips? I don’t think that’ll go over well.”

“Perhaps he’s willing to make a trade. Help and safety for the notebook. Something of equal value, so the Clasp will be satisfied.”

Vax shook his head. “I don’t think that’s how the Clasp works.” And if push came to shove, he’d choose his sister’s safety over that of this deadly, treacherous town in a heartbeat. She’d be angry at him, but at least she’d be alive.

She placed a finger on her lips and looked pensive, worried. She took the notebook and leafed through it. Once. Twice. “If the Clasp wants that ring and didn’t send Culwen for it, there’s got to be a reason. They don’t trust him? They want to send a message? They’re not actually involved in the smuggling? Because from what I can tell, this notebook never mentions the Clasp in Westruun; it only ever mentions him. It may be that he’s doing to the Clasp what she’s doing to the town and that’s why they’re perfectly willing to endanger the operation.”

“If that’s the case, he’ll have a good reason to help us,” Vax said, following Vex’s line of thinking. It opened up a world of possibilities. It would be a dangerous game, but: “That’s an awful lot of conjecture.”

“Can you think of another explanation?” Vex asked quietly.

He couldn’t. At least, nothing that didn’t put Culwen at odds with the Clasp—or with Spireling Gideor.

“This is why I was always the better student, brother.” Vex nudged him, and her eyes reflected the rising darkness around them. “If they both have a stake in making sure this notebook doesn’t fall into the wrong hands, we have a better bargaining position before they can match up their stories. Find their weak spots and press down on them.”

“The last time I did that, you shouted at me,” Vax teased.

“A conversation isn’t the same as standing underneath a spider the size of my bear,” she snapped back.

“It is when you’re walking into the monster’s nest too,” he said simply. “Are you certain about this, Vex’ahlia?”

“I am if you’re certain that Jorenn’s Culwen is also the Clasp’s Culwen.”

He ran the conversation over in his mind. The throwaway comment. The spireling’s threats and the hungry gleam in his eyes. “I am.”

“Then I am too.”

Vax nodded. He slid out of his cloak and laid it out on the ground. He placed the notebook in the center of it then folded the fabric around it. Gently, so as not to tear the pages. Tightly, to protect it from the elements.

“What are you doing?”

“If we talk to them, we can’t have the notebook with us. Nothing would prevent them from simply killing us unless they think the notebook is out of their reach. So I thought I’d hide it here. If we mark it, you’ll be able to find it again, won’t you?”

She made a strangled sound. “Do you know how much that cloak cost?”

He stared at her. “I’m planning to hide it under a few rocks, not send it off to battle.”

She sighed in frustration, but looked for rocks to build a hiding place and a marker to remind them where to find the notebook. With night rolling down from the hills around them, they had to work fast.

When she had her back turned to him, she spoke up again, hesitantly. “If we have to get to them before they get their stories straight, we should talk to them both separately …”

He hesitated, midway through knotting the edges of his cloak together. He paused and waited.

She drew breath to speak, but the words didn’t come. Then she did it again. A whole range of conflicting emotions flashed over her face before she buried her head in her hands and groaned.

Vax walked over to his sister and crouched in front of her. “Vex?”

She peeked up at him, doubt in her eyes. “I know I said I wouldn’t let you out of my sight again, but …”

Vax realized what she wasn’t saying, and his stomach dropped. “Derowen won’t trust me after everything that’s happened, and I will have an easier time convincing Culwen I know the Clasp.” He wondered how well that would go over without a brand, but he bit back the words. This was no time to doubt anymore. He’d have to bluff his way through.

“Exactly.” She made a small circle of stones and gathered enough to stack them on top of the notebook as well. “I can’t think of a better option.”

He knew it wasn’t fair to her, but it had been so much easier when he was the only one running into danger. “I don’t like it, Vex. We thought we’d lost each other once. I don’t want to send you in there alone.”

At this, she turned. “I don’t want you to go in alone either. But it’s better if Derowen doesn’t see you. She trusts me.”

“They saw us in the mines. She won’t trust you.”

“I can get her to trust me again,” Vex said with conviction. “I know what matters to her. I can appeal to her kinder side, because I know she has it. But it’s better if you find a way to talk to Culwen without her knowing you’re back in town. Let the two of them convince each other.”

He gazed at the beacon of a town down below. “No.”

She crouched a few feet away from the circle, at the edge where meadow met steep incline, and placed a trio of stones in the subtle shape of an arrow. “I wasn’t asking for your permission, brother.”

“Vex …” He tied up the bundle like he could tie all his worries and concerns into it.

She rocked to her feet. Some of her anger from the last couple of days slipped into her voice, and determination steeled her. “This is the best chance we have. I want us to be able to do this together and to decide on this together, instead of trying to make decisions for each other.”

“I just want to keep you safe.”

“And I need you to trust me.”

“I do trust you!” He got to his feet too, and placed the notebook in the center of the circle, before he haphazardly covered it with stones.

Vex walked over to him, gently took the stones from his hands, and rearranged the structure so it covered the cloak and the notebook completely and would stand against the weather. She reached out and pushed a strand of hair behind his ears. “We survived a week. We can manage for another day.” She smiled through her worries, and he could see through her strength and her fears before she put the walls around her back in place. “Don’t you see, you fuck, I don’t have to choose between them. I choose you. That’s the only real choice I’ve ever had.”

SHE CROUCHED DOWN AND DREW in the sand amidst the shadegrass. Long lines and small stars, lit by flickering campfire. “This is what the Shade Hall looks like from the inside. You’ve only had a day to walk around; I’ve had a week. Wick mentioned that Culwen has a work space in the Shade Hall, somewhere on the third floor. Shademaster Derowen’s personal quarters are here”—she made a small mark on her makeshift map—“and these are the rooms above her own office. If I were to guess, that’s where her brother will stay.”

Vax committed all of it to memory, overlaying the parts of Shade Hall he’d already seen. “What if he isn’t there?”

“He will be,” she said with such determination that it teased a smile from him. “I won’t leave this bloody place without a solution.”

She talked him through as many of the nooks and crannies as possible, while the ash around them picked up and danced higher until Trinket suddenly scrambled to his feet and growled. Vax leaped up, daggers in hand, while Vex had an arrow on the string of her bow before either of them fully realized what was happening.

From out of the tunnel the twins had used to escape, crumbling gray corpses crawled into the night. Their glowing eyes were embers in the darkness, their hunger sharp and deadly. As if on cue, the wind picked up around them and gray dust danced off their stretched and rotting hides.

“Vax,” Vex hissed.

“Fuck.” He pushed closer to her, his blades at the ready for the moment the creatures would attack.

Another walker appeared, ashen skin and pieces of fabric clinging to protruding bones. While some of the other ash walkers looked fresher, their gray features still recognizably dwarfish or human, this one looked weathered and old. Vex loosed an arrow with the soft twang of her bowstring, and the arrow sped through its rib cage, flying haplessly off the side of the cliff.

“Do you think Thorn …” Vex didn’t finish the sentence.

Vax shook his head. “He said he woke the walkers because he knew the Shadewatch was coming. He would have no reason to do so now, and no time either. He thought they were safe here.” He added, “And I believe him when he said they’ve been careful.”

Trinket slammed into the next corpse that crawled out. His claws raked along the creature’s shoulder blade, and the impact created a cloud of dust—but the lumbering creature didn’t falter.

In fact, none of the walkers paid attention to the bear or to the twins.

Instead they crawled out and kept their focus on Jorenn down below, like they were drawn to its lights.

Trinket backed away until he stood against Vex, and Vax pressed closer too. Back-to-back with his sister, ready for whatever happened next.

They circled, and he could feel her rapid breathing. His own heartbeat was probably as erratic as the scenes around them.

The ashen corpse of what looked like a slender human crouched near the ground and pushed at the rocks, its limbs angled in unsettling directions. It skittered past them.

He pulled his daggers closer. “Why aren’t they attacking us?”

Vex turned and shot at the crawling creature, but while the arrow stuck in its chest, it didn’t pause. It twisted and pulled its limbs closer, and kept moving.

One by one, the ash creatures made their way down on the far side of the cliff, and while some moved graciously, others all but tumbled down, like dolls falling down a flight of stairs. Still they continued their way.

“Like moths to a flame,” Vex muttered beside Vax.

“They are.” Vax sneaked closer to one of the corpses and steeled himself. The ashen figure came up to his chest and moved with heavy, focused steps. Its eye sockets smoldered and one of its arms was nothing more than a sharpened, fragmented bone. Vax reached out and poked at the creature with a dagger.

“Vax!” Vex hissed. “What are you doing?”

The rotten corpse turned to face him, its eye sockets empty and burning. Ash flowed around the figure, like a long mane of hair, and for a moment Vax was certain it was going to attack. It pulled back an arm—

And let it fall limp by its side, turning back to Jorenn instead.

Vax turned to his sister. He frowned. “Stubborn creatures, aren’t they?” And as far as he knew, there was nothing here to disturb them.

“I guess we follow their lead?” Vex asked. She stamped out the campfire and used her foot to wipe away the markings of the map so that only her way signs were left.

Neither one of them could tear their gaze away from the corpses in front of them. Three more appeared and followed the path of the first, fixated on the bright beacon that was Jorenn Village. Gusts of wind picked up rock and bone from the ground, and it danced around them.

Until it finally died down. While the walkers continued their march, no others appeared. The small meadow around them quieted.

Vax and Vex traded confused looks. The only real choice they had was to find their way down as well—back to the town with the answers.