NINE
IVALYS
We surface through a trapdoor I never would have found on my own.
The passage from the crypts led through cramped tunnels, then Rathok paused at another intersection, glanced back at me, and we turned there. The bone walls gave way to brick, then to plastered stone marked with symbols I couldn’t read. He moved with the certainty of someone who’d walked this path before—many times, judging by the way he ducked under low ceilings and stepped over loose stones without looking.
Now we’re in a room. Cramped. Barely ten feet square. A narrow bed pushed against one wall. A single chair. A table scarred with knife marks. The air tastes of dust and old chalk.
A safe room. It sits behind a contract-scribe’s shop, according to the muffled scratching of quills I can hear through the wall. The sounds of commerce. Obligation being made permanent, one signature at a time.
“You need to rest before we continue. The wards here are stronger.” Rathok secures the trapdoor, dropping a heavy bolt into place. “The Ledger Master’s direct observation can’t reach this space. He knows the safe room exists, but he can’t see inside.”
“Small comfort.”
“It’s more than most people get.”
I take in the details. Containment sigils cover the walls—chalked symbols in patterns that overlap and interweave, some fresh, others faded from years of re-application. Candlelight flickers in a holder on the table, casting shadows that don’t quite reach the corners.
On a shelf near the bed: medical supplies. Bandages. A needle and thread. A bottle of something amber that might be alcohol or might be something stronger.
The room speaks of function, not comfort. Of a man who’s spent an age expecting to need an escape route more than a home.
My gaze returns to him.
He’s leaning against the wall, one hand pressed to his chest where the wraith’s claws opened him. Blood seeps between his fingers—not the black ichor of the dead, but red. Living. His.
“You need to let me look at that.”
“It’ll heal.”
“It’ll fester.” I move to the shelf, grab the medical supplies. “I watched one of those things rake you open. Four gashes, deep enough to show muscle. That’s not something you walk off.”
“I’ve survived worse.”
“I don’t doubt it.” I turn to face him, supplies in hand. “But surviving and healing aren’t the same thing. You can’t fight if those wounds go septic. And I’m not dragging your corpse through the tunnels when you collapse from infection.”
Something flickers across his features. Not amusement. Recognition, maybe. An acknowledgment that I’m not backing down.
“You have training.” Not a question.
“I raised my brother after our relatives lost interest. Gror was clumsy as a child—always scraping himself, falling, gettinginto fights he couldn’t win.” I gesture at the chair. “Sit. Take off what’s left of your armor.”
He doesn’t move.
Then he pushes off the wall. Crosses to the chair. Sits.
His hands go to the straps of his ruined chest piece. The leather is shredded where the claws caught him, hanging in strips that expose the damage beneath. He works the buckles with fingers that aren’t quite steady, peeling the armor away piece by piece.
I force myself to watch clinically. To see the wounds, not the body they’re carved into.
Four parallel gashes run from his left shoulder to his sternum. Deep. The edges are ragged, already purpling where infection threatens to take hold. Blood weeps sluggishly from the wounds, painting his green skin in streaks of crimson.
I pour alcohol onto a clean cloth. The smell burns my nostrils—harsh, medicinal, nothing meant for drinking.
“This is going to hurt.”
“I know.”
