Sorin reached the second floor just in time to see a man walking away from Rue and Nemari’s room. Instantly, he was on his guard, but the man didn’t do more than nod his head as he walked past Sorin and started hustling down the stairs.

  Frowning, Sorin rushed over to the door and knocked once before entering. Odric was standing there, clutching a letter in his hands, while Rue stood next to them. They both looked up as Sorin entered. “Letter from Nemari,” the big man explained.

  “Came by courier? Skinny guy with curly hair?” Sorin asked.

  “Yeah. Why?”

  “I saw him near the room and thought he might be spying on you. I already had two run-ins today; one more wouldn’t be much of a surprise.”

  “You what?” Rue asked sharply.

  “Well, only one of them was related to your problem,” Sorin told her. He paused for a second. “Probably. I didn’t stop to ask who they were. I’m just assuming.”

  “Fuck,” Odric said, not looking up from his letter. Sorin and Rue both turned to look at the big man. He couldn’t remember ever hearing Odric swear, though admittedly he hadn’t known the man all that long.

  “Nemari’s not coming back,” Odric explained, gesturing with the letter.

  “What do you mean? Is she in trouble?” Rue asked. “Does she need our help?”

  “Nothing like that,” Odric said bitterly. “Here, read it for yourself.”

  He shoved the letter into Rue’s hands, who straightened it up and angled it so that Sorin could see it, too. It wasn’t a very long letter, only a few short paragraphs written in a tight, angled hand.

  Dear Odric and Rue,

  I was not able to discover as much as I wanted about the Black Hellions, but I did learn a few things. Like so many of our recent problems, this ties back to Sorin. Their leader has taken an interest in him personally. I can only guess why. In all likelihood, he learned of Sorin through Rue’s spying, but that’s neither here nor there.

  Rue, you’ll be happy to know that beyond Raf’s interest in keeping you under his control, the gang as a whole doesn’t care about you. Not to downplay the situation, but your problems are manageable. Sorin is a dead man walking. The Black Hellion goes by the name Samael, and he’s reported to be rank 25.

  For the time being, I’ve decided to remain in my family home. It is the safest place for me right now. I recommend distancing yourself from Sorin if you want to survive the coming storm. No matter how impressive he might be, he can’t stand against the powers arrayed against him.

  Rue’s own betrayal of my abilities and secrets shared with her in confidence have convinced me of the necessity of dissolving the team. I wish the both of you the best and hope that you survive, but I will not work with you again.

  With respect,

  Nemari

  “That bitch,” Rue said. “Shit gets rough, so she’s just going to run out on us? Well fuck her! We don’t need her anyway.”

  Rue ranted for a while, stopping only when Odric admonished her rising volume by reminding her that they were supposed to be hiding. That just made her shift to swearing under her breath while she tried to pace across the room. Given its size and that there were two other people in there with her, that was an exercise in futility.

  Mentally, Sorin started revising the route he’d mapped out. With Nemari gone, their firepower, in both a literal and metaphorical sense, had gone down drastically. Monsters that were particularly vulnerable to flames, like those bark elementals from the previous floor, were no longer lucrative targets without Nemari to counter them. Certain soulprints, while still valuable, weren’t worth the effort of getting without their mage to use them.

  “Are you going to take her advice?” Sorin asked, cutting Rue’s tirade off.

  “What advice? To run away and hide in a hole while the Hellions kill you?”

  “Yes. My presence is complicating your lives. Nemari wasn’t wrong to retreat back to the safety of her family. It’s probably her best chance at surviving this mess.”

  “We aren’t abandoning you,” Odric said, his voice solid and assured.

  Not even a shred of hesitation. Sorin felt a flicker of warmth in his chest. Odric would have fit in well with his real team. Well, no. They’re all far too rambunctious for him, but they’d like him anyway.

  Rue, on the other hand, spent a few seconds actually considering the possibilities. That pragmatism would get her far as a climber, but only if she lived long enough to start gaining real power. Eventually, if she got that far, she’d learn that soulprints and tower-forged gear were all well and good, but a team with unassailable loyalty was priceless.

  If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

  The tower loved to put climbers in situations where they might survive if the whole team worked together flawlessly, but where they’d certainly die if even one person buckled and abandoned everyone else to save themselves. Sorin himself had survived that particular fate twice, once by setting himself back two years burning through resources, and once through what he could describe as nothing less than divine intervention.

  All that aside, his association with the siblings was only a few weeks old. That was far too early to form the kind of bonds that veteran climbing teams had. The smart thing to do was to cut Sorin loose, and he wouldn’t blame them for doing exactly that. Their insistence on staying together was heartwarming, but foolish.

  “Are you sure? I can’t promise to keep you safe if a team of rank 10s attacks us,” Sorin said.

  “They’ll have to catch us, first.”

  Kids always do think they’re indestructible. You’d think the fact that her ribs are still broken would put a damper on that sort of behavior.

  “Take some time to talk it over,” Sorin advised them. “I’ll be in the other room. Discuss the risks. Figure out what this is going to cost you. If you still want to climb with me, we’ll go over my strategy. The only answer here is to disappear for a long time while we get stronger. You could be going months or years without seeing other people again.”

  He didn’t let them answer. Rue tried, but he just held up a hand to stop her. With a nod to Odric, he turned and left.

  * * *

  “Of course we’re not abandoning him,” Rue said. “Fuck Nemari. I can’t believe she just bailed on us the first time things got rough.”

  Od just gave her that look. She hated when he did that. When she glared back at him, he said, “You betrayed her first, Rue.”

  Rue sputtered out a half-hearted protest, but it failed before she could find words for it. Finally, subdued, she said, “Yeah, I know. I fucked up. This is all my fault. But still, how could she? I thought you two had a thing going on.”

  “We had no such thing,” Odric said, his voice steady. But Rue could see a faint tinge of red in his cheeks.

  Normally, she’d tease him, but right now, she didn’t have it in her. Nemari’s abandonment stung a lot more than Rue had thought it would. If the team was going to split up, she’d thought it would be mutual. They’d have an argument and neither side would give, or one of them would want to keep climbing and the other wouldn’t. Anything like that, she could have accepted.

  But not this. This was bullshit.

  And it’s your own damn fault. Od’s right. If I hadn’t gotten involved with the Hellions, none of this ever would have happened. The shit part is that even if we did abandon Sorin, it wouldn’t stop Raf from coming down on me.

  “I vote we stick with Sorin,” she said.

  “I agree. We need each other right now. None of us is strong enough on our own to stop these people.”

  Neither of them suggested begging for help from the powers-that-be. The idea of any of them stirring themselves to save three nobodies was laughable, especially if it meant aligning themselves against the undisputed ruler of the underworld. No, there’d be no safety there. Their only link to Floor 0’s high society had been Nemari, and that had been more like upper-middle society, anyway.

  That bridge was pretty thoroughly burnt now.

  “What about Mom and Dad?” Rue asked.

  Od sighed. “I don’t think there’s anything we can do except maybe send them a letter explaining the situation, and then staying as far away as possible. If the Hellions think they can use our parents as leverage against us, they won’t hesitate. Keeping to ourselves might be the way we can actually protect them.”

  “Do you really think we can climb up to Floor 20 in a year?” she asked.

  Od shrugged. “No. It’s impossible. But I think Sorin believes he can make it happen, and I won’t complain about only making it to Floor 10 in a year. Being a trio of rank 10s would get us a lot of security.”

  “Not to mention make us insanely rich compared to the rank 0s.”

  “Maybe. I hear climbers invest almost all the money they make back into the tools they need to keep climbing, anyway, if they even have any. Lot of trade happens up on the higher floors where the stuff they find is too valuable to just sell.”

  “That just means we only have to sell one thing to be set for life,” Rue said.

  They fell silent for a few minutes, each lost in their own thoughts. Then Od snapped out of it and asked, “Did Sorin say something about having a run-in with someone when he came through the door earlier?”

  “Oh yeah! He never did explain that. I think he said it happened twice, but only once was the Hellions.”

  “I suppose we’ll have to make sure to get that story out of him, too. I wonder what the other incident was,” Od said.

  “Knowing him, he probably tripped over some random asshole, beat him up, and took his stuff.”

  Od sniggered. “Yeah, probably something like that. He does seem to encounter trouble far more often than he should.”

  The laughter died down after a moment. Rue looked around the too-small room with the flimsy, thin walls and was glad for her Aura Sense soulprint. She knew there was nobody in the rooms on either side, either because they were unoccupied or because whoever was renting them was out on business.

  The afternoon sun coming in through the small window was entirely too cheerful, almost making the wood seem to glow in the light. Some petty part of Rue wanted it to be dark and black so she could feel properly frightened.

  “I’m scared,” she admitted. “This… No matter what we do, it’s too much for us. Are we just fooling ourselves thinking we can outrun these people? Raf’s intelligence guy is rank 6, and he’s got plenty of soulprints like my Aura Sense. He’s actually who I got the umbral goat eye from. How do you hide from a guy like that?”

  “I don’t know,” Od told her. “I’m scared, too. But what’s the alternative? Just give up? No. We’re handling this together this time, as family.”

  “With our adoptive brother, Sorin?”

  “Did you know that the really powerful climbing teams, the ones that have been working together for years, are closer than family? Those people would give their lives for each other, without hesitation. That’s how much they care. I’ve always admired that.”

  Rue couldn’t say she’d jump in front of a crossbow for Sorin. She liked the guy well enough, but he was still a near-stranger who was keeping a fuck load of secrets. Their relationship had been transactional up to this point. If they were going to keep working together, that needed to change.

  The irony that we might finally pry his secrets from him, and Nemari’s not here anymore to hear them.

  “I guess we should go talk to him and let him know we didn’t change our minds,” Rue said.

  “I’m sure he’ll be happy to hear that.”