Total pages in book: 142
Estimated words: 134898 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 674(@200wpm)___ 540(@250wpm)___ 450(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 134898 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 674(@200wpm)___ 540(@250wpm)___ 450(@300wpm)
We manage to pull the basket over to the closest ledge and quickly get out. There’s a heavy metallic stink in the air and a scent that reminds me of old garbage. The tunnels always have a strange, vaguely sulfurous smell to them, but today it seems especially pungent.
The fact that we’ve landed at Drop Twenty-Seven isn’t lost on any of us. “What the muck was that?” Buzzard asks.
Shikra gazes up the cavern, back where the rope dangles, cut. “That was the work of a repeater who’s going to get my fist in his face when we get back up there, that’s what.”
“Anyone recognize him?” I ask, flexing my arm and rotating it. I hit the side of the cave wall as the basket careened down, but I can still use the arm, so all is well.
No one volunteers a name.
“No one?” I say, then sigh with frustration. I’m starting to think we’ve been fooled by a uniform. I know I didn’t bother to look closer. Too many years of just blindly assuming that whoever is running the lift is also employed by the guild. It’s my own damn fault. I’ve been distracted. I should have known that whoever is behind all of this—framing Gwenna, killing Hemmen—has their claws sunk in deep. I flare my nostrils and I could swear the stink around us becomes stronger. “I think we need to assume that we’re walking into a problem, my friends.”
Stork squints in the darkness. “Where are all the lights?”
“Lights?” Shikra asks. “What lights?”
“The ones that should be down here to light the way for humans,” Stork replies, putting a hand out in the darkness. “There aren’t any.”
He’s right. I’m so used to low lighting due to my excellent Taurian vision that I didn’t even notice. There’s normally an array of magical items scattered on high shelves or hanging from hooks along the descent to light the way down, and to provide lighting for the more trafficked tunnels. They’re small, unimportant objects like cups or paperweights or even children’s toys, but they save the guild quite a bit of coin on lamp oil. Normally the cavern is peppered with them, but today it’s empty. There’s not a speck of light down here except for what’s coming from far above at the top of the drop.
“It’s entirely possible that they’ve been moved to a more trafficked tunnel,” Master Jay says, his voice faint and growing stronger. “Twenty-Seven has been closed to exploration since last year.”
“And you’re just now pointing this out?” Buzzard huffs with irritation.
“Like you, I thought we were going to Seven.” Jay clears his throat. “And…I admit I have not been myself lately.”
Silence falls. I immediately feel guilty that I haven’t given more thought to how Jay is taking the death of his student and the failure of his Five. I’ve been so wrapped up in Gwenna that I haven’t noticed just how much Jay is suffering. I go to his side and give him a comforting slap on the back, which is about as close as a Taurian gets to hugging another man.
Jay stumbles forward in the darkness, and I have to catch him.
“Here, I’ll light a lantern,” Stork finally says. “This is starting to smell like a trap.”
“That’s funny, because I smell ratlings,” Shikra adds.
Buzzard grunts. “I smell them, too. Their scent is thick in the air. This begs the question: Who is it that wants us down in this particular drop that’s not being used and is full of ratlings, and why?”
I scratch at my jaw, wondering how much I should admit. They deserve to know, since we’re in the thick of it, I suppose. “I might have an idea.”
Everyone turns to me.
We stand in the sputtering light of an oil lamp as I explain about the thieves targeting the guild and the dead repeaters, and my role in all of it.
Jay looks affronted. “How did I not know any of this? How was it that I wasn’t informed that my students were under scrutiny?”
“How did you not think anything was awry when they put this big lug on your team and let him keep his name?” Buzzard gestures at me. “That didn’t clue you in?”
Jay clenches his jaw, and I feel bad for the man. He’s getting it on all sides. I step in to take the blame and put it where it belongs. “Rooster was keeping things quiet because he didn’t know if teachers were involved as well, since it has to do with repeaters. It was easier to keep it as a small investigative group.”
“But at what cost?”
I have no answer for Jay. If it had been a more widespread hunt—or a faster one—would we have lost Hemmen? Or would we have found even more murdered repeaters on our doorstep because the thieves knew they were being hunted? “Just know that the guild is taking this seriously.”