The afternoon passed without incident. Illara and I stayed mostly in the inn; with our purse nearly empty, wandering the markets felt less like leisure and more like hunger on display.

  By evening we were properly hungry again, so we made use of the supper that came with our rooms. Tonight it was pea soup and weak ale — nothing inspiring, but it filled the hollow in our bellies. Our prepaid nights were nearly spent. One way or another, tomorrow had to be a success. If it wasn’t, we’d be sleeping in the street.

  In the night Illara’s dreams turned on her again. She thrashed, slick with cold sweat, whispering as if someone stood over her.

  I held her until the shaking eased, rubbing slow circles into her back. I lay awake afterward, staring at the ceiling, wondering how long these nightmares would tighten their grip — and whether the road was feeding them instead of burning them out.

  Morning came clear and bitterly cold. The streets outside glittered with ice, slick and treacherous in the dawn light. We ate a quick breakfast of dry-cured bacon. Cold, it was only serviceable — the kind of food meant to endure, not delight — but it gave us strength, and that was what mattered.

  When we were ready, we headed for the gate. There were no town bells or clocks that I’d seen, no shouted hour markers, so “morning” meant sunrise. We reached the gate just as the first light spilled over the walls.

  Norman was already waiting.

  He stood hunched against the cold with a small pack at his feet, staff planted for balance. From a distance he looked fragile, more like a traveller who’d lost his way than a man who had once thrown fire into battle.

  “Good morning, Drisnil. Illara,” he said. “Given my age… would one of you mind carrying my pack?”

  Before I could answer, Illara was already smiling.

  “Of course. With pleasure.”

  Kindness still came easily to her. If someone asked for help, she didn’t pause to measure whether they deserved it.

  She hoisted Norman’s pack and lashed it to her own. It was small, but heavier than it looked. She didn’t complain.

  And then we set off.

  The pace was slower than before. Norman limped and shuffled, leaning on his staff with every step. I found myself glancing back more often than I meant to — gauging, calculating, impatient despite myself.

  Norman noticed.

  “Don’t worry,” he said mildly. “I can keep this pace all day. I just can’t go faster than this.”

  A master of unspoken conversation, as always.

  He fell quiet a few minutes, then tilted his head toward me.

  “So, Drisnil… shall we begin?”

  I couldn’t back out now. I gave a short nod.

  “Yes.”

  “What are your earliest memories?”

  I sifted through Drisnil’s recollections until I found one sharp enough to speak aloud.

  “I was small,” I said. “Not much older than twenty. My mother was showing me how to handle a slave properly. What to do when they disobeyed.”

  Illara’s shoulders went rigid beside me.

  Norman didn’t miss it, but he didn’t stop.

  “And what was the punishment for disobedience?”

  “For that slave — who was considered valuable — it was whipping. Enough to draw blood, not enough to ruin them. I remember being taught how to strike… where to lay the lash so the pain was clean and the damage controlled.”

  Illara made a sound under her breath — half disgust, half rage — but she kept walking.

  Norman’s pen scratched softly on a small notepad.

  “Interesting,” he murmured. “So control and superiority are taught before you’re even grown. For curiosity’s sake… what kind of slave?”

  “Elf,” I said. “Long-lived. Skilled. That made them worth keeping.”

  Norman wrote that down, expression tight with a scholar’s hunger.

  “And entertainment? What passed for joy where you grew up?”

  I swallowed once, then let the memory surface.

  “The pain orchestra,” I said. “Slaves chosen for their voices. They were made to scream in harmony. It was… considered art. It took skill to conduct.”

  Illara’s face was pure revulsion now. She stared straight ahead as if looking at me would make her sick.

  Norman, for his part, only wrote faster.

  “How was leadership decided?”

  “Each house had a ruling matriarch. Usually seniority. Sometimes a succession war — factions fighting until one was left standing. The losers became slaves.” I exhaled slowly. “Between houses it was much the same. The strongest families fought to rule the whole city. But above them all was the Spider Queen. Her authority was absolute. No one survived trying to unseat her.”

  Norman’s eyes lit at that last piece of structure. He scribbled furiously, slowing us further as he walked.

  The questions continued. Drisnil’s answers came too easily. Illara endured them in silence, jaw clenched, the air around her growing colder by the mile.

  By late morning the wrecked caravan came back into view — the upturned cart, the rotting horses, the four-toed trail leading into earth. We turned toward the hollow that hid the lair.

  As we walked, I caught Norman up on everything Illara and I had seen below: the oil trap, the decoy door, the murder holes, the spike pit. We traded ideas in low voices and started to shape a plan that didn’t rely on luck.

  This time, we would go in prepared.

  As we approached the hole in the ground, nothing looked disturbed. The softening-scroll’s mark was still visible in the rock and packed dirt, a pale scar where we’d forced our way out.

  We climbed down in order: me first, then Norman, then Illara. Norman had to lower himself carefully, stiff and slow, but he managed without slipping.

  Once inside, Norman lifted his staff and murmured a short incantation. A pale sphere of light rose from the tip and drifted up near the ceiling, casting a steady glow ahead of us. The stale air still carried that faint oil-stink, and the first door waited in front of us like it had never moved.

  I moved up to it alone, rapier in hand, and checked every inch before I touched a thing.

  At the base, I found the first trap: a thin wire running along the floor, pulled tight and vanishing into the wall. Opening the door would slacken it. Whatever that triggered, I didn’t want to learn firsthand.

  I braced the wire with a stone so it stayed taut, then sliced it cleanly. I tied the cut end around the stone and jammed it in place so the tension wouldn’t change.

  I stepped back and waited.

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  Nothing happened.

  Then I checked the top edge. A second wire, same wall, same tension. I disarmed it in the same way.

  Only then did I open the door.

  The corridor beyond was still blackened from two days ago, and the floor still gleamed slick with oil. I drove a metal spike into the ground to wedge the door open, then scanned the ceiling.

  Unlike last time, the roof was sealed — no grate, no obvious drop-point.

  “Stay here,” I said quietly. “I’ll clear this passage first.”

  Norman nodded.

  I slipped inside. The air had changed. Under the oil and damp stone was something sharper and fouler — a sour, rotten-egg reek that prickled at the back of my throat.

  Gas.

  I followed the smell upward and found the ignition trap: flint mounted to a spring, wired to spark if the door moved or the floor flexed. With a pocket of gas in a narrow tunnel, it would have turned us into smoke.

  I continued slowly down the hall, testing the stones with my blade and my boot. Halfway along I found a tile that shifted a fraction too easily. I didn’t dare trigger it with the gas still hanging thick in the air, so I chalk-marked it instead and moved on.

  No more traps that I could see.

  At the far end, the false door still stood — but its handle looked too clean, too tempting. I didn’t touch it.

  The secret door was still where we’d found it before, untrapped, unaltered.

  I returned to Norman and Illara and repeated what I’d found, including the marked tile.

  “These little buggers are vicious,” Norman said dryly once I was done.

  “Can you send a poison cloud down the next passage?” I asked. “It slopes down into murder holes. Might make it safer.”

  Norman looked to me for confirmation. “Is that corridor safe to traverse now?”

  “As safe as I can make it,” I said. “But there’s one stone marked in chalk. Don’t step on it.”

  He nodded and shuffled to the secret door. There he planted his staff, spoke a longer phrase, and swept it forward.

  A plume of greenish vapour billowed out and rolled down the sloping passage like fog poured from a kettle.

  Then he eased back toward us.

  “Give it ten minutes,” he said. “It’ll settle, then thin. Anything breathing down there won’t enjoy it.”

  We waited in the entrance, listening for screams or scuttling.

  Nothing.

  For a moment I wondered if the kobolds had abandoned the place, leaving only their trap-laced maze behind.

  When the ten minutes had passed, I went first.

  The secret passageway was coated in slick, stringy goo. One wrong step on that slope and I’d slide straight into whatever lay below.

  So I took out more iron spikes and used them like climbing picks, digging them into the stone as I eased myself down.

  Through the murder holes I caught glimpses of bodies — several kobolds sprawled awkwardly, faces twisted, hands clawing at their throats. The sight brought me a dark, guilty satisfaction.

  Halfway down I spotted another trap: a razor-wire stretched across the passage at chest height.

  If we’d slid, it would have opened us like fish.

  I cut it carefully and held my breath, waiting for the counter-trap to snap.

  Nothing.

  At the bottom I kept to the right-hand edge, away from where the pit had opened last time. I tested the floor with a heavy stone, tossing it onto the lip.

  The platform tilted a fraction, exposing the spike pit beneath.

  Worse now — the goo ran right along the edge, leaving no purchase if someone fell.

  I tested other sections with more stones. They didn’t shift. That didn’t mean the trap was gone; it might need multiple bodies to trigger, or weight in a specific spot.

  I made a note: no clustering, no rushing.

  Across the chamber stood another door.

  Before I risked that, I needed Norman and Illara down here.

  Getting Illara and Norman safely into the chamber took rope work and patience. The slope was slick with goo, and neither of them was thrilled about the mess, but they didn’t complain. Norman grumbled once when his boot skated, and Illara only sighed and tightened her grip.

  Once we were all down, I kept to the edge, one hand on the wall and a spike wedged into a crack just in case the floor decided to bite again. I moved toward the door across the chamber and inspected it.

  Fake.

  Solid rock sat behind it, but the hinges looked real — too real. I didn’t touch them. Another lure for panicked intruders.

  I started tapping along the stonework instead, listening. Most of the wall answered dull and stubborn. Then one stone rang hollow. I found a thin seam around it, pressed, and the section shifted inward with a gritty scrape.

  A hidden passage. This one sloped down into a natural corridor, rough-walled and narrow. Far ahead, a broader glow hinted at a larger room.

  I motioned Illara and Norman to follow and went first.

  Not ten paces in, I caught the glint of a tripwire — thin thread, almost invisible in the dim. I stepped over it, then crouched to find what it triggered.

  Four tiny holes waited in the wall at ankle height.

  Darts. Needles. Something worse.

  I packed them with dirt and small stones until the openings vanished, then nodded for the others to pass.

  We crept forward.

  The corridor opened into a wide cavern.

  And there they were.

  One massive kobold stood at the center — taller than any man, easily three metres, broad as a wagon, holding a cleaver that looked forged for a giant. Around him clustered two dozen smaller kobolds, all staring at us with the stillness of a trap that’s just been set.

  Norman didn’t wait for a cue. He lifted his staff and hurled a blazing orb into the middle of them.

  The blast turned the front line into ash and screaming scraps. Ten kobolds dropped instantly, and even the towering one staggered, scales blistering where the flame kissed him.

  The rest surged at us in a shrieking wave, aiming straight for Norman.

  Illara and I met them head-on.

  Steel clashed in the tight space. I took a hit low — a short sword scraping through the gap in my leg armour — and pain flared hot. I let Drisnil rise, cold and precise.

  One kobold fell with my rapier through its heart. Another lost its sword hand to a clean cut. I kicked a third away hard enough to fold it over itself.

  Two more went down to Norman— twin bolts of pale light driving through their skulls so fast they barely had time to register fear.

  I flicked a glance at Illara. Her mail turned most blows, and she moved with a grim, practiced steadiness. One attacker’s blade skittered harmlessly off her side. She answered by driving her mace into its face with a crunch.

  Then the giant came.

  The leader barreled at us, cleaver swinging in a brutal arc. I ducked under it — felt wind shear my hair — and rolled behind him.

  I leapt, caught his back, and drove my rapier in between heavy plates. His breath went ragged in a wet rasp. He roared, grabbed my arm, and flung me.

  I hit the ground hard, rolled with it, but still felt the bruise bloom deep.

  Illara raised a hand and spoke a binding prayer. The giant froze mid-step, muscles locked like stone.

  Norman seized the opening. A stream of fire poured from his staff into the kobold’s face, and the leader’s scales blackened and split.

  I surged in and buried my rapier in his gut.

  When Norman’s flame died, I finished it — a sweeping cut across the throat. Blood sprayed hot, and the giant toppled with a shudder that shook dust from the ceiling.

  Silence crashed down after him.

  Only dead or dying kobolds remained. I moved through the chamber, ending the last twitching bodies cleanly.

  Norman wore a grin so wide it looked painful. “I haven’t felt this good in years. That was fun.”

  “Speak for yourself,” I muttered, reaching for my leg. “I got stabbed again.”

  “Don’t worry,” he said lightly. “Your healer’s got you.”

  Illara knelt and pressed her hand over the wound. Warmth spread through my thigh, knitting flesh until the pain faded to a dull ache.

  “You’re always getting injured,” she said, half scolding, half relieved. “Try not to make it a habit.”

  Deep down I knew I could avoid most of it if I let Drisnil take full control. But I didn’t say that.

  “I only do it so you can feel heroic when you fix me,” I said, forcing a smile.

  Illara huffed a laugh despite herself.

  Norman leaned on his staff, looking between us. “You know, I don’t think I’ve ever met someone who fights and heals like you do.”

  “The only cleric I know well is Jenna,” Illara said, shrugging. “So I don’t really know what’s normal.”

  While they talked, I gathered ears — left ears, as Percy required. When I’d counted enough, I searched the chamber.

  Another secret opening waited behind a stone slab.

  It led to a small storeroom piled high with stolen goods: dried food, tools, folded clothing. And tucked in a clay jar near the back, a pouch of coins and gems — maybe ten gold worth, all told.

  I split it with Norman, keeping the rest for Illara and myself.

  “Not bad,” Norman mused. “Caravan-raiders tend to hoard well.”

  I found one more tunnel angling upward.

  “I think this is the way out.”

  It was a tight crawl even for me without my pack. At the end, a “dead wall” turned out to be a barrel-lid disguised with sod and grass. I pushed, and cold air spilled through.

  We climbed out into open plains, the entrance vanishing behind us the moment it settled back into place. From the outside, you’d never know it existed.

  We’d cleared the warren.

  We’d met the terms.

  And for the first time since taking the job, I could breathe without counting the cost of failure.