Tam and Val stood before what looked like… a wall. There was nothing remarkable about it, except for the fact that it was a wall in a place where there was no reason for one. All other space around the chamber’s edge was taken up by storefronts with full-length windows, by gates, or by doors to smaller service tunnels, like the one Marvan had apparently found. That one led to a small room from which one could presumably have collapsed the hallway that fell away under Mak’s feet. Nowhere else was there just a blank ten-foot stretch of wall.

  “What do you think?” Tam asked as Herald came close.

  “I think it is a wall,” she said. “Is there something out of the ordinary about it?”

  “With your eyes, and a closer look, we hoped something might be discovered,” Val said, holding the lightstone close to the stone, right at the center of the empty patch of wall. “See?” he asked. “Is the stone not worn in a line here?”

  “Huh,” she said, “so it is.”

  I honestly had no idea what she was talking about. She was standing several feet away from the wall, and with her eagle-eyes I was sure she could see every pore in the stone. Unfortunately, I didn’t get the full benefit of that. Maybe I could only see as much as my brain could process; I had no idea. Whatever the reason, I couldn’t count the hairs on a fly from fifty paces the way she could, and I certainly couldn’t see what she was talking about from where she was standing.

  Then she said, “Extinguish the lightstone, would you? I would like to take a look with my shadowsight.” Tam complied, and the nearby area was plunged into near total darkness. A moment later the world brightened again as Herald blinked, and darkness became light.

  “Ah, there we are,” she said, and now I saw what she meant.

  Shadowsight didn’t show color. Writing, paint, dyes, they all became meaningless as long as they filled pores or stained fibres without making a notable change to the surface they colored. All we had to work with in shadowsight was values of gray. Darkness, and light. What shadowsight was very good at was showing any unevenness on a surface. Scratches, chips, and things like that stood out much more clearly than in normal vision. And total darkness meant perfect lighting in shadowsight, which meant that down there in the chamber, with the only light being a distant lightstone and a tiny trickle from the door we’d come through, Herald could see almost perfectly.

  She surely saw a lot more than I did, but even I could see what she’d meant now. Especially once she approached the wall. From the floor to a height of perhaps eight feet was a discontinuous line of subtle wear and tiny chips in the stone. A patch here, a few chips there. Nothing major; really, nothing anyone would have noticed unless they were curious about the strange wall and then preternaturally lucky enough to happen to spot the one chip somewhat easily visible to the unenhanced eye — assuming the lighting was right. Which it had been, of course, Tam being Tam.

  Herald followed the line of worn stone from the floor to its peak, where it split at right angles in each direction, carrying on for four feet either way before turning again toward the floor. The appearance was very familiar, except for one odd detail.

  “This is a gate,” Herald declared. “Only there is no magical light around it. Odd, that.”

  “So what do you make of it?” Tam asked.

  “I really do not know. It seems… my best guess would be that the enchantment is broken. I wonder…” She looked around the chamber, focusing on the three open stone gates she could see, the fourth being hidden by the other group’s lightstone. “Stay here,” she told Tam and Val, “and please do not light the stone. I need the darkness.” Then she started around the circumference of the chamber toward the nearest open set of stone doors. “Draka,” she said as she walked the short distance, “you did not see any light bordering the doors of these gates when you were in here, did you? I most certainly did not.”

  “No,” I said, diving deep again for long enough to speak. “I didn’t really think about it, to be honest. I figured, if you can cut stone the way they could, why not make some normal stone gates as well as magical ones?”

  “Why make mundane ones when you can make magical ones, I would say,” Herald countered, “especially in a place as wealthy as this. And look here.”

  She’d reached the open gate, and was peering behind one of the great open doors. With darkness being light, it was as bright and easy to see back there as anything. “See?” she asked. “No handles, and no hinges. This door should not be able to move.”

  “Another busted magical gate, then?” I suggested. “Don’t see what else it might be.”

  “I think it is,” she agreed. “Though why they are broken, Mercies only know. There are the broken lightstones, too.” She paused. “The gate at the rotunda was fine.”

  “That one’s special, though,” I pointed out. “It uses a whole damn Rift’s worth of power to open. And it’s outside.”

  “True. Could be localized,” Herald mused, stepping back from the door and checking the other one. There was nothing there, either. “I was about to say that we have not seen any broken gates in the mountains, but we would never find them, would we?”

  “Not without the devil’s own luck,” I agreed. “Which pretty much just means that we need to want it enough then set Tam down, spin him a couple of turns, and follow wherever he goes.”

  My last words were broken up as Herald fought for control of her mouth for the noble purpose of laughing at her brother. “I can see it now!” she giggled. “Him just stumbling onto one of those trenches. Falling into it, more like. And then when we get in it contains the hidden treasury of Malyon or something ridiculous like that.”

  “Hey, don’t tempt me to fly him out right now,” I said, also laughing softly.

  “He can hear you, you know,” Val called from the darkness. “I would thank you not to joke about setting the light of my life to stumble aimlessly about the mountains.”

  “But the gold!” Herald laughed. “Think about the gold!”

  “We can find plenty of gold without tempting the fates. There are hidden ravines in those mountains, and holes deeper than… how high can you jump, love?”

  There was a clap of palm on flesh, followed by a snort and a chuckle from Val as Tam, full of mock indignance, said, “Don’t you start! And… about two feet, two-and-a-half on a good day.”

  “Deeper than eight feet, then,” Val finished, sounding very pleased with himself.

  “All fun aside,” Herald said as she returned to Tam and Val, “the adventurer in me says that once we finish looting what we can, we want to get past these doors. Light the stone, would you?” Then she turned to the blob of darkness in the middle of the chamber and called, “Sarina! Come here, would you? I need your nose.”

  “Coming!” Sarina called, and the blob of darkness began moving toward us — until everything became darkness when Tam lit his own stone, and Herald switched back to her normal sight. Sarina soon arrived, with Mak, Marvan and Maglan in tow. “I suppose you’re curious about this… door you’ve been talking about.”

  “Right,” Herald said. “Do you sense anything from behind it?”

  “Hmm…” Sarina focused, which really told us everything we needed to know. Her face fell. “Sorry, can’t say that I do. My nose still wants me to follow the stairs down.”

  A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  “No worries,” Herald said. She touched Sarina’s shoulder gently, and the enthralled woman looked up with relief and gratitude. “How are we going with the jewellery and purses?”

  “Love?” Sarina said, turning to look at Marvan who held a largeish sack.

  “Tricky to say.” Marvan hefted the sack. It was clearly heavy, and it rustled. I imagined it would have let out a puff of something wonderful if I’d been there to smell it with my own nose. “Most of the bodies had purses, right? The, ah… the adults, at least. Can’t say I looked too closely at the smaller bodies, if you’ll forgive me. And I’d say all of those purses have had silver in them, though there were some bronze and copper coins, too, by the tarnish. No gold, sorry to say. Still…” He hefted the sack again. “Twelve to fifteen pounds of this might be silver.”

  “Another good ten pounds from the shops, and the bodies within,” Val added, hefting his own bag. “We’ve ignored the copper and bronze.”

  “And a bit of jewellery,” Tam said, handing another bag to Mak, who poured it into her own with a very satisfying clinking and clanging. “Not so much, though; doesn’t look like the shopkeeps were quite the same class as their customers. But this is only from about half the shops, so at this rate we should have another ten pounds plus rings and all!”

  Herald hummed. “So, call it fifteen once we’re done with the bodies, and ten and another ten from the shops, then maybe twelve pounds of jewellery, with a quarter being gold… Draka?”

  “Thirty-five pounds of silver in coins,” I replied through her. I’d been doing the math as she spoke. “That’s fourteen-hundred eagles. Then if there’s nine pounds of silver and three of gold from the jewellery, that’s another three-hundred-and-sixty eagles, and two-hundred-and-forty dragons. Seventeen-hundred-sixty eagles is about… actually, that’s twenty-two dragons even. So two-hundred-sixty-two dragons total.”

  The chamber erupted into hugs and echoing cheers at that, including Herald’s once she wrenched her mouth back from me. The least enthusiastic was Maglan, who, though he grinned like a fool as Herald kissed him, had a whole host of conflicting emotions on his face.

  “You okay there, Mag?” I asked, making him blink with confusion before he answered.

  “Ah… yes’m,” he said. “That… that was Draka speaking, right?”

  “Yes, it was,” Herald said with an amused creak to her voice, adding to the poor boy’s confusion.

  “So, she just speaks through you? You just speak through her? It’s all…? And the dragon does numbers? Just like that? And over two hundred dragons and…” Maglan blinked, long and slow. The poor boy looked even more overwhelmed than usual. “Is this just how it is now?”

  “It is, pretty much,” Herald said softly. “Though it is not every day we find another fortune. Does that…” Herald’s voice became very small, and as deep as I was I could feel her face fall with worry. “Does that worry you, Mag? Does it, um… scare you?”

  The confused emotions on Mag’s face collapsed into only two: adoration, and the kind of desperation that only comes from hurting someone you love. “A little,” he confessed. “It’s a lot to take in. Having travelled with this party for a while now… the things I’ve seen, what you can do, how Marvan and Sarina treat you, like… like a queen, really. And then the city, and today… It’s a lot to take in.”

  In the background the cheering and happy chatter went on, everyone else seemingly oblivious to the charged moment between the two young lovers. That, or they weren’t willing to interrupt. Hell, I was waiting with bated breath, both worried and so damned curious about how this would play out.

  “Is it… is it too much?” Herald asked.

  Maglan, bless his honest heart, actually took a moment to think about it. “Did you do something to them?” he asked. “To make them treat you like that?”

  “Yes.” Herald’s admission was barely a sound.

  “Why?”

  “They found Draka’s hoard. They were going to rob her. It was that, or kill them.”

  Mag worried his bottom lip between his teeth, his eyes flitting this way and that. “Would you ever do it to me?”

  The world went dark as Herald closed her eyes, and I felt the burn of threatening tears. “If… if I thought you might put my family at risk, yes. I might.”

  “That includes Draka.” It wasn’t a question.

  “Yes.”

  “Okay,” he said, and when he didn’t say anything for a while, Herald opened her eyes again. Her vision was blurry until she blinked it away. “In that case… No,” he concluded, his eyes widening a little, like this was a startling revelation to him. “It’s a lot, but for you… No, I don’t think it’s too much. I trust you. But I can’t say I’m entirely comfortable. She’s… Draka, you’re not always there, are you?”

  I stayed silent, letting Herald handle the talking. “She’s not,” Herald said quickly, and though I couldn’t read her mind, I could tell very well where it went by the feeling of a blush stealing over her face. “That was the only kiss she’s shared. She’s never been there when we…”

  Herald trailed off, adorably embarrassed to actually mention sex, so I hopped in for a moment to say, “And I never will be. Believe me, I have no interest in violating your privacy. If I should happen to be watching when the two of you start to get frisky, I’m getting the hell out of there.”

  Maglan’s eyes widened again, just for a second, before he said, “I’ll just trust you on that. But, Herald, Starlight, all of that aside… you’re too important and amazing to let something I don’t understand get between us. I love you. Whatever this thing with Draka and Marvan and Sarina is—”

  “And Lord Exchequer Soandel and Lady Admiral Yakamo,” Herald added timidly. It was an incredible thing to hear from her, timidity.

  This time Mag’s eyes didn’t just widen — they bugged out for a moment. “Uh… okay. Them too. Why not? Whatever it is, I’ll trust you to be… to be your own kind and generous self. You’ve changed since I fell in love with you, and I don’t know if it’s all for the better, but everything I truly care about is still the same, alright?”

  “Even the eyes?” Herald murmured. “You always said you loved my eyes.”

  Mag smiled up at her softly. “I did. And I still do. It wasn’t the color I loved, though I’ve never seen a brown quite like that before or since; it was the kindness, the wickedness, and the wit. Those are all still there.”

  “Flatterer,” Herald said, slapping him playfully on the shoulder. “Two-bit poet.”

  Mag just smiled at her lovingly. Then he reached up, and I felt him run his finger from Herald’s temple and over the golden dragon crouched on her ear. “Besides,” he said. “Gold looks damned good on you.”

  In the interest of keeping the promise I’d just made to Mag, I had to remove myself to Mak at that point. I was very pleased with how that conversation had turned out, though a treacherous little voice in the back of my head named Conscience helpfully pointed out, What the hell was he supposed to say other than “This is fine. I’m okay with the events that are unfolding currently”? He knows that he knows too much already!

  And, I mean, yeah. I knew that very well. I wasn’t sure that Herald did, besotted as she was, but I was still going to keep an eye on Mag. Conscience was entirely correct. That didn’t mean she had to say it out loud!

  Mak had, at some point, taken Sarina and Marvan to finish looting the ancient dead. She was very studiously not looking in our younger sister’s direction, though I could hear a suppressed giggle or happy hum from her every so often. Say what I might about what I’d done to her — and there was a lot I could say to myself about what I’d done to Mak — but she sure had mellowed out about pretty much everything. And perhaps it was selfish or narcissistic or downright villainous of me, but I couldn’t feel guilty about turning Mak into someone who could just let herself be happy about Herald finding love.

  By the time they’d gathered all the valuables they could find from the food court — I really couldn’t think of it as anything else — it was getting late in the afternoon. People were getting hungry and tired, and though we were all excited about what might be behind the closed door, it was time to call it a day. The people downstairs gathered their treasure, stopped at the exit to say a common prayer for the souls of the dead, and returned to the light. I didn’t need to be riding along with Mak to know when she came out; her dismayed cry of “Every Sorrows-beloved time!” as she forgot to cancel her darkvision was signal enough.

  “So,” I said as Herald and Maglan approached me, keeping my voice low-enough that only they could hear. “‘Starlight’? That’s new.”

  Mag blushed slightly, but he looked pleased with himself all the same. “Heard that, did you? Of course you did.”

  “It is not new,” Herald said, looking down at Mag almost shyly. “Mag has called me that for years. It has just… it is our thing. Our secret. Please do not tell anyone?”

  “Sure, no worries,” I said. “But ‘Starlight’? Where did that come from?”

  “You tell her,” Herald told Mag, and he chuckled awkwardly.

  “Well, you may have noticed that this girl we both love is rather tall,” he said. “And one evening she was— are you sure?” He turned to ask Herald, and she nodded. “Well, she was crying about it a bit. About how she barely felt like a girl sometimes, when everyone had to always look up to see her. So I told her, ah…”

  “He asked why that mattered,” Herald said. “I was no different from the starlight. What was so wrong about having to look up to see me, when he had to look up to see the stars, too?”

  I finally made my mind up on Maglan. I decided I liked him.

  That night I watched — holding myself back from interfering — as Zabra, Tammy, and their men caught up to the hunters.

  Holding myself back at first, that is. Events forced my hand pretty quickly.

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