Footsteps. Alaric’s head snapped toward one of the tunnels.
“Shit,” Cedric breathed.
There wasn’t time to extinguish the fire or make it look like they hadn’t been there. Voices echoed down one of the tunnels growing louder with each step.
Cedric didn’t wait. He grabbed him by the collar and yanked hard.
Alaric clutched his fingers helplessly in the still air, as they left the book behind, and ducked into a narrow side passage, flattening against the stone just beyond the arch. He could feel Cedric’s breath beside him, fast and uneven.
Then came the voices.
Two of them. A woman first.
“Well, Karel forgot to put the fires out again,” she muttered. “If you want to hide something, maybe don’t light a beacon over it.”
Alaric dared a glance.
She wore hardened leather, scuffed at the edges. Hood pulled forward, but not so deep that he couldn’t make out the silver hair brushing her shoulder, or the two blades strapped across her back.
The second voice followed, slurred with a northern drawl.
“He was probably in a rush to get back to the whores,” the man was broader, slower in step, hooded too, tattooed, with hands like shovels and the gait of someone who’d never walked silently in his life.
Alaric watched the pair by the altar with narrowed eyes, his fingers resting lightly near his belt. The woman stepped forward first, arms crossed. She glanced around the chamber as though appraising bad interior design.
“We’re too early,” she muttered.
“Do you have something better to do?”
“Not everyone defines their existence by clandestine meetings and mood lighting.”
“Look at that,” the man said, deadpan. “The one with the divine purpose speaks.”
“Shut up, Bryn.”
Another figure entered. The man’s frame was slender, but something about him cut through the space like a knife slicing through fabric. At his side, another man. Thin, pale, staring inthe distance. The newcomer moved to the altar producing an envelope from his cloak and holding it out toward the pair.
“Take this to the Thandros,” he ordered.
The woman hesitated, eyeing the letter with a frown. “What is it?”
The man didn’t flinch. “None of your concern. Just deliver it.”
“I'd prefer to know what I’m sticking my neck out for.”
A long silence followed. Then the hooded man lifted his head slightly and fixed them both with a stare Alaric could feel, even from across the cave.
“I’m not paying you to ask questions.”
That was the end of it. The woman and Bryn exchanged a glance that said more than words. Alaric watched as they turned—not toward the tunnel he and Cedric had entered through, thank the gods—but another, one of the side exits. Their boots echoed briefly as they disappeared from sight.
The third man with his companion didn’t leave.
He stood there a moment longer, his head turning slightly as though tasting the air. Alaric felt his lungs tighten. The man shuffled to the altar, closed the book, and tucked it under his arm.
For fuck’s sake.
Then the man hummed.
