The warehouse at the top of the stairs looked like it was being held up more by thoughts and prayers than structural integrity. Beams sagged, holes dotted the roof, rotted planks covered the floor, and the smell of urine was everywhere.

  “Your friends really put us up in a nice spot,” Mitchell told Lethelin, but gave her a grin to let her know his sarcasm was playful, not angry. She chose not to respond, just huffed and kicked some bit of wood across the floor and scowled. Her hand was inside her cloak and that usually meant she was fiddling with Mira’s handle, which she often did when she was frustrated. Given how she was feeling responsible for them being trapped here, he could understand why she was feeling a little stabby.

  The room was longer than it was wide. At one end there was a large set of ramshackle double doors that looked big enough to fit a good-sized wagon through, and indeed, Mitchell could make out ancient grooves in the stone floor in front of the doors where generations of vehicles would have been brought in and out. There was an office area off to the right with one wall collapsed and the ceiling sagging precariously. A stiff breeze looked like it would be enough to send it caving in.

  Maybe twenty feet up, some space that had been built creating a sort of makeshift second floor but the steps leading to it had crumbled long ago, the remnants of which were now in a pile of rotted timber and planks on the floor. Vras had quickly ascended the wooden beams and was now prowling around up top. Mitchell trusted he would report back if he found anything of interest. Occasionally there was the sound of wood creaking as the cat made its way across the second level.

  “Tell me about the Dregs,” Mitchell said to Allora as they circled their cage.

  “It is as Jonan said,” she replied. “One of the oldest parts of the city near the original wall. It was an area not well-spoken of with only the roughest sorts of people. Many taverns and brothels reside within and attract mostly a criminal element.”

  “Sounds like my kind of people,” Lethelin chimed in with a small grin.

  “Are there lots of places to hide?”

  “Almost certainly,” Allora nodded. “Many places like this, and given what I saw below, who knows how many warrens cut under the streets. They could lead anywhere. Jonan and this Edrokii Sereg had ample time to prepare, so I do not doubt that there are agents watching the building. If we leave they might be under orders to attack us, or keep us contained. It is impossible to know.”

  “Would killing them cause the same sort of trouble as killing Jonan did?” Mitchell asked. Then he felt somewhat shocked at even asking the question. How quickly he had become accustomed to the notion of violence in this new world. But he shoved that thought aside to deal with later.

  “It might,” Lethelin said. “It would be a matter of debate. So far, we have not been harmed, we’re merely being held. If he tries to attack us first, then the drake’s out of the egg, and – since we have not attacked any interests of his – we would be free to retaliate in kind. But if we attack him on his territory first, assuming we survived, I’m not sure that the other edrokii in the city would stay out of it. They take threats to their authority seriously.”

  Mitchell expelled a breath through his nose.

  “So it comes back to waiting to find out what he wants.”

  “Unfortunately,” Lethelin said and slumped a little. “I’m sorry, Mitchell. This is my fault.”

  “No, it’s not,” he told her. “You did what you said you could do. As far as I can tell, we’re in the city, slipped in right under the noses of the guards, and we've even got Vras with us. It’s the other side that didn’t keep the deal. And, if I’m understanding you correctly, they are walking very close to a line that would break the rules of their society or whatever this is.”

  “There is something I am confused about,” Allora broke in. “What is to stop this Sereg from just killing us? No one in Varset knows you are here, you are not acting under any sort of orders from your…” Allora paused as she worked to say the distasteful word, “edrokii. What repercussions could there be for him?”

  “Word would get out,” Lethelin explained, “that he’d killed someone in the guild who had not broken the accords. He would lose respect, even among his own gang and the other edrokii would let it be known that he wasn’t worthy of the title. Eventually, people would start coming for him, seeking to supplant him. Maybe even from within his own organization.”

  “Actual honor among thieves,” Mitchell said. “Small comfort, I guess.”

  Vras came padding up then and bumped Mitchell’s thigh.

  “There are many two legs prowling outside. Some have magic.”

  Mitchell relayed the information.

  “Can he say how many?” Lethelin asked.

  “Numbers are hard for him, but probably more than we could safely deal with.”

  “I could slip out and take care of them. Some of them, at least,” Lethelin offered, perhaps hoping to make amends for getting them stuck here.

  “No,” Mitchell mused. “Given what you said, fighting our way out is a last resort. We already have the entire city watch, or military or whatever is running things in this city, gunning for us. We don’t need to add all the gangs as well. Let’s not borrow trouble.”

  “Agreed,” Allora said. “I think our original plan of waiting is our best choice at this time.”

  “Could they be listening in on our conversation?” Mitchell suddenly asked.

  “It is possible, yes. There are runes which can be crafted to pick up sounds, as well as items that can be created to transmit it over distances. We should be careful of our words.”

  Magical items or runes, Mitchell thought. Something was tickling his memory. Then it clicked.

  “I have something!”

  He reached into his bag and pulled out his spell book, flipping to the divination section until he found the first circle spell he wanted.

  “This one,” he said as he turned the book around to show it to Allora. “Detect Magic. Would it tell us if there were magical items or runes in here?”

  “It would, indeed,” Allora said with a smile. “I find it very sexy when you are clever, my lord.”

  She blew him a kiss.

  “Heh. I’ll keep that in mind.”

  “If you two are getting a room, I want to come, too,” Lethelin said. “Don’t be greedy.”

  Allora and Mitchell both chuckled.

  “You know,” Mitchell said. “I rather like that we can be in this high stress situation but still be a little flirty. Let’s not lose that.”

  Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

  “Fine with me, Captain Tight Pants!” Lethelin said with a grin, and swatted him on the ass.

  “Okay, let me settle in and try to learn this. I haven’t had much practice with divination, only the speak-with-creatures spell I use for Vras. So the rune style is still a little unfamiliar.”

  Mitchell sat down on the filthy floor and folded his legs to study the book. Vras returned to the second floor to keep watch, and Lethelin and Allora took up flanking positions and walked in circles around the perimeter, hoping to catch any signs that their “host” was going to make an appearance.

  Divination was difficult for Mitchell to get his mind around. The runes always seemed indistinct when he looked at them directly. As such, it was harder for him to keep the images clear in his mind when he tried to channel into them. Initially he thought it was something particular to the way magic worked here, but after spending so much time with the Evocation and Conjuration schools, he knew now that such was not the case. Divination definitely had a distinct flavor to it.

  It took him nearly a half an hour just to get the rune firm in his mind before he risked channeling mana through it, and those first several attempts saw the rune just… dissolve, like cotton candy in water. A rune losing cohesion with Evocation and Conjuration spells was much more jarring. Evocation was akin to an electrical shock. But this one merely evaporated. There was a mild sense of feedback as the accumulated mana flowed back into his body, but it wasn’t painful. He thought maybe a higher circle wouldn’t be as gentle, but so far, this one was.

  Finally, though, the rune held, and he was able to fill it with mana and cast it. Immediately, the colors washed out of his vision. It was already dark in the warehouse, with only moonlight coming through the high windows for illumination, but what color there was became shades of black and gray. Except for Allora and Lethelin. Both of them glowed with magical energy. Well, their items did, anyway. Allora’s sword was a lighthouse beacon in the muted vision of the spell, nearly blinding him with its magical power. The stones in her krisa were also glimmering magical energy, even though she wasn’t casting anything, and the electrum it was made of glinted softly, as well. Mitchell supposed it was residual magic from being used so frequently. When he checked his sevith, he found the same thing for the stones he wasn’t using, and the star sapphire he was channeling the divination mana through was a tiny sun. Looking up at Lethelin, he saw her cloak, which was enchanted, gave off a warm golden light, almost like the soft yellow of a child’s nightlight.

  “It’s working,” Mitchell called out, and even that little break caused him to nearly lose focus and drop the spell. He quickly firmed it back in his mind and then noticed the slight mana drain as he maintained it. This one wasn’t a one-and-done, it seemed. He needed to channel continuously to maintain it. Slowly he got to his feet and began to prowl around the room, looking for signs of magic.

  “Do you see anything?” Lethelin asked.

  “So far,” Mitchell answered slowly, trying not to lose focus, “besides you two, nothing.”

  He began making a circle around the grayed-out space, similar to the path that Lethelin and Allora had been walking, trying to examine his surroundings while also holding onto the spell. Nothing caught his attention until he got near the collapsing office. There, he detected a faint glow coming from between some cracks in the flooring. He relayed the information to the girls who had been following a few steps behind him.

  “Should we have a look,” Lethelin asked as Mitchell dropped the spell.

  “Might as well,” he told her. “Seems an odd place to put something, but it is magical, whatever it is.”

  “Let me squeeze in,” she said. “I’m smaller than the two of you.”

  She handed her bow off to Allora, and Mitchell dropped the detection spell, quickly casting a magelight into the space so the thief could see what she was doing. She nodded her thanks and turned sideways, trying to slip between the beams without touching anything. Mitchell guided her to where the light had been coming from, and she knelt down and started poking at the gaps in the floor board with Mira.

  “No obvious trap door,” she called back. I’m going to try and pry up the floor boards.”

  The wood was rotted and came away with surprising ease. After just a few moments, she had created an uneven hole in the floor, about three feet by four feet and she peered into the darkness.

  “It’s an old safe,” she said. “I don’t think anyone’s using this to listen in. I can see etching on the metal. It’s a shock ward, if I had to guess.”

  “You do not use magic,” Allora told her. “How would you know what it is?”

  “I know a booby trap when I see one,” she retorted. Mitchell could hear the eye roll in her voice. “I’ve tripped enough of them, and this one looks like a shock ward. Try to open the safe and it will fry you. Might be a little shock, might be strong enough to kill.”

  “Can you disarm it?” Mitchell asked her.

  “I think so. This one is pretty basic. I’ve seen some complex enough, with double and triple redundancies worked into the runes, that you would need a caster to disarm it. But this one is fairly crude. Can you get my pack?”

  Allora sniffed, but went over to where they had set their packs down. A moment later she was handing it through the boards and Lethelin took it up, then began digging around in one the outer pockets. She quickly found what she was looking for. It was a set of lock picking tools as near Mitchell could tell. She opened it up and he could make out a number of long instruments of various design, from needle thin, to about a centimeter in thickness, as well as what looked like files and other things that he couldn’t guess at. The thing she ultimately extracted from the kit looked to be about as long as his hand and about as thick as her pinky finger. It had a gemstone at each end, secured by a delicate latticework cage. She spun it around, examining each end and then selected one before tugging at the tool which extended it to nearly as long as her forearm. Then, gemstone point leading, she stuck it down into the hole and Mitchell saw her inch it forward very carefully.

  “Almost…” she said softly, and then there was a small flash and everyone jumped. “Gotcha!” she cried out in triumph.

  “Are you okay?” Allora yelled as she blinked to clear her vision. She sounded surprisingly worried, which made Mitchell smile to himself.

  “I’m fine,” the thief said as she pulled the tool up out of the hole. The gemstone at the end was glowing now. “It was a small one, as I said. Didn’t even fill up my extractor. Give me a minute and I’ll have the safe open.” She eyed it closely. “Actually, less than that. This thing is shit.”

  She pulled out some other device from her kit and unwound a length of wire, the ends of which were attached two small, peanut-sized objects. Then, taking her extractor, she touched the glowing end to each one, and they began to illuminate softly in turn, while the light from the gemstone on the extractor dimmed slightly. She placed one of the ends in her ear, and stuck her other hand down into the hole. A moment later, Mitchell could hear the distinct clicking sound of a safe dial that began turning.

  “Only three,” she mumbled to herself as the grating sound of unoiled gears filled the quiet space. “No wonder these boys got run out of business.”

  As promised, less than a minute later, there was a click and the squeal of rusted hinges as she pried the door open with a grunt.

  “Oh,” she said at last. “I call first bite!” she said then, and looked at the pair of them with an excited grin. “I did get it open, after all.”

  “What is it?” Allora asked with undisguised impatience. Mitchell agreed with the sentiment, but held his tongue.

  Lethelin began to pull up things from the hole in the floor and one of the bags clinked in a very familiar way. There was also the rustle of paper, and the clinking of bottles.

  Once she’d gotten everything out, she packed up her tools, handed the bag off to Mitchell and made two trips to bring over the bottles and the bag of coin. Once done, she squeezed back through the beams and the three of them took their loot back to the center of the warehouse.

  “These are health potions!” Allora said with awe in her voice as she examined two maroon flasks. Setting them down she picked up another one in a black flask. She cleared away the dust, looking for a label, but there was nothing. “I do not know about this one,” she admitted and began to examine the fourth bottle. This one was in a white flask, and had a black stopper in it, wrapped with wire. It also had no label.

  “I am afraid I cannot identify the other ones,” she said, sounding defeated. “We will need an alchemist. But the two health potions are very valuable.”

  “Are those hard to get?”

  “Somewhat, yes. And expensive. I haven’t had access to them since the city fell. There is a good supply in the armory of the Knights, but those are behind the shield now.”

  “I claim the white one,” Lethelin said, plucking it deftly from Allora’s hand.

  “You do not even know what it is!” Allora said.

  “Don’t care, whatever it is, I want it.”

  It was Allora’s turn to roll her eyes then. “Fine, take it.”

  Mitchell was peering into the sack of coin.

  “There’s a good amount here,” he said. "Maybe close to a hundred crowns."

  Lethelin and Allora’s eyes both went wide.

  “Whatever they were smuggling through here must have been profitable,” Lethelin said appreciatively. “Ours now.”

  “Ours now,” he repeated, and pulled her in for a kiss. “Great job!”

  “Thank you, sir!” she said playfully and rubbed her nose against his.

  “I think–”

  But whatever Allora was about to say was cut off as Vras gave a hiss from up above.

  Mitchell turned to find him gazing down over the lip of the second floor.

  “Two legs come.”

  “Okay. Stay out of sight, Vras. Only show yourself if there is combat.”

  The shadow cat flicked his ears and retreated back into the darkness, quiet as a shark beneath the waves.

  “I think our host has arrived,” Mitchell said. “Let’s pack this up and get ready.”