Westkings Heist: The Complete Series

by Beth Alvarez

  Nia scoffed. “Like we'd be able to see them. Neither one of us brought a lantern.”

  “We don't need it.” Tahl fished a coin from his pocket. “But you can't tell anyone you saw me do this, understand?”

  “Saw you do what? I can't see anything, Tahl!”

  He ignored her protest and trained his thoughts on the small coin in his hand. This was one of the only tricks he practiced in his loft above the stables, one that wouldn't show and wasn't impressive enough that anyone would notice the magic at work. Weak as his power was, there were still a few practical things he could make it do.

  The coin in his palm grew warm as he shifted power into it. A sense of cold ran down his arm as he transferred his own strength into the threads of magic that trickled into the coin. Ever so slowly, it began to glow. A hint of red light outlined his fingers. The light swelled, and he let his grip ease, his fingers separating to let narrow beams shine through.

  Niada gasped. “What is that?”

  “A coin,” he replied with a grin as he rolled it between his fingers. It was incandescent, too bright to look at directly, but cast more than enough light by which to see. “It's a mage-light.”

  A hint of wonder colored her expression. “You've never done that before.”

  “Well, thieves and shadow go together better than thieves and light. I haven't had many reasons to use it.” Tahl bounced the light in his palm and then pointed it toward the path ahead, using his hand to shield them from the direct light. “This way.”

  They padded down the shadowy tunnel together, Nia close at his heels. All the while, her eyes were fixed on his hand and the light that issued from the coin.

  “How many new things have you learned to do?” she asked in a whisper.

  He raised a brow. “What makes you think this is new? I can do lots of things. Most mages can do lots of things. I just couldn't do anything at a high enough level to be useful.” The last word escaped with a hint of venom. He couldn't help it; those had been their words. Too low a level, they said. Too weak to ever be useful. It still raised his hackles every time he remembered. One hand drifted to the back of his neck, unconsciously smoothing the prickle of irritation that bunched in his shoulders and crawled up his scalp.

  “You never showed me, that's all,” Nia murmured.

  “That's because it's called a secret.” He flicked his hand sideways to flash her eyes with the light. With a startled yelp, she fell back, hands to her face.

  “What was that for?” she cried.

  Tahl closed his hand a little more, blocking off extra light when he aimed it back toward the ground. “If you're going to look into someone else's business, you'd better be ready for things you don't want to see.”

  A sullen silence grew in the wake of his words. Content to let her brood, Tahl turned into an adjacent tunnel.

  He hadn't visited the sewers more than twice, and while he'd drawn a few crude maps of the tunnels and entrances he'd found, he didn't have any real idea how big the sewer system was. Most of the entrances were sealed, but he suspected it wouldn't be hard to chisel the mortar out from around the stones and work out some sort of trick to open and close them without needing a great deal of strength. Though Tahl figured himself clever enough, he didn't have as strong an education regarding complex mechanics as he would have liked. He didn't doubt he'd puzzle out something eventually, but with fortune, there would be others he could delegate such jobs to once the guild was reestablished.

  “What's that?” Nia asked, interrupting his thoughts.

  Tahl paused to inspect what she pointed at. A tall iron grate sat in an alcove in the wall. At first glance, he thought it merely for ventilation, but then the slender hinges along one bar caught his attention. He made a small sound in his throat as he turned the light toward it. “A gate. Wonder where that goes. Should we look?”

  She cocked her slim hips to one side and crossed her arms. “I thought exploring was the point.”

  “Yeah, but if you want to chicken out, now's the time.” He ran the fingers of his free hand over the hinges. They weren't as rusted as he would have expected, but a touch revealed the presence of grease. He wiped his fingertips on the coarse stone of the wall. “It's pretty old. The lubricant feels tarry. But it should open.” Assuming he could find the latch, that was. The other side of the grate bore no obvious lock.

  “Down here.” Nia crouched beside him and dug a tangle of half-decayed leaves from the bottom bar, where a pin driven into the stone lay half hidden. She dusted her hands against her skirt and grasped the pin. “Won't budge.”

  Tahl nudged her aside with his leg and bent to wrap his empty hand around the angled top. The pin was stuck fast in the stone. “Step back.”

  She scuttled backwards until her back touched the wall.

  Tahl, too, stepped back. He gripped the top of the gate for support and then launched his heel full force at the pin.

  The gate clanked and shuddered. He kicked it again and the pin shifted beneath the heel of his boot.

  “Got it.” He leaned over to jerk the pin free. Rust and mud caked the bottom half and fell away in large chunks when he touched it.

  “Looks like it's been there for ages.” Nia took the pin from his hand as he jerked the gate. The hinges moaned a long protest as the gate's bottom scraped through dirt and rotten leaves.

  “Well, not ages. Just as long as the sewer's been here. It's younger than us, anyway.” Tahl held the mage-light out ahead of him and motioned for her to go first.

  She shook her head vigorously and stepped back. “You've got the light. You go.”

  “Sure?” He offered the glowing coin on his palm.

  Nia winced and turned away from the brilliant light. She considered it for a moment, then tossed the gate pin to the tunnel floor and gave her head a shake. “Thanks, but I'll leave the magic to the mage.”

  Shrugging, he ducked under the top edge of the gate's frame and strode onward.

  The tunnel beyond the gate was unremarkable. Dark lines on the stone along the bottom of the walls marked where water had run for however many years the sewers had been there. The water line was lower than he'd expected, but then again, most of the drains were blocked off. The ground underfoot was damp, if not muddy, which meant there had to be access to the city somewhere down the passage.

  “Are you sure this is connected to Orrad?” Nia asked, as if to question his thoughts.

  Tahl paused to trace the turns they'd taken in his mind. “We're headed... south? No, back west. We just turned again.” Unlike the rest of the sewer, this tunnel lacked the twists and turns he'd expected. It ran straight for as far as he could see—which was farther than he'd expected. The stone walls were light, save the darkened stains along the bottom, and the light cast from his coin bounced well ahead down the passage.

  Nia squinted at the shadows beyond where the mage-light reached. “Why run the sewers that far? There's nothing out there but farms and forest.”

  “Maybe it doesn't run the way I thought,” Tahl mused. “I thought it fed into the tunnel we were in, because the dirt that was all ridged up at the bottom of the grate seemed like it was collected on the back side. Like it was catching on the grate as water poured in. But maybe that's not it.”

  “It could go the other way.” Nia nodded as if it had been her idea. “Maybe the water pours from the other tunnels into this one. Like a drain out... somewhere. I thought you said it went to the Ranton, though?”

  He'd thought it did. “Maybe only part. Maybe the rest pours out here. There are creeks that run through the forest, little tributaries that feed into the river. Maybe this is supposed to catch the overflow, when there's too much water for the sewer system to feed everything into the Ranton.”

  With a snort, she kicked a clump of dirt toward the stains on the walls. “Doesn't look like that's a problem.”

  “Well it wouldn't be, not with the drains all plugged. It—” Tahl stopped short and his feet stilled. She walked straigh
t into his back and squeaked in alarm.

  “What?”

  He inched aside and pointed ahead.

  The bright cut stone of the walls ended abruptly, replaced by deep, muddy brown rock and a yawning hole that swallowed all light.

  Tahl expected her to be dismayed. Instead, Nia scuttled to the edge of the tunnel and leered out into the shadow with a gasp of delight.

  “I can't believe it!” she cried.

  Hesitant but curious, Tahl crept after her.

  Before them, the tunnel fell away in chiseled terraces, rather than a sheer drop. Beyond the last terrace—a shade too tall to be comfortably called steps—the light glinted off the damp stone floor of a cave. Something dripped occasionally, a soft and steady plink in the silence.

  “Wow,” Tahl said. The single word echoed back, more skeptical than he thought he'd sounded.

  “I didn't know there were caves outside Orrad,” Nia said in a rush. She hopped down onto the first terrace and almost lost her footing. Her arms shot out to the sides to restore her balance.

  More cautious, Tahl stepped down behind her. The stone was slick and the dank must of mildew rose to meet his nostrils. He held the coin at arm's length, letting the mage-light reveal more of the cavern ahead. It was generously sized, perhaps half the length of the sanctuary inside the Temple of Brant.

  Nia spun to face him. “We could set up here. Put a lock on that gate so that only initiates with a copy of the key could get in. No one would think to come this far.”

  “We'd have to scrape every bit of mud out of the bottom of the tunnel, or the footprints would be a dead giveaway,” Tahl replied, tone flat. “But maybe. I think we need to see more.” He pushed past her to take the next step down. Descending the terraces was difficult, each level knee-high. It was a long, uncomfortable descent, not enough to warrant crouching to slide down, but enough to put unpleasant amounts of pressure on his knees. Mindful of the risk for injury, he opted to slide down the next level as a precaution.

  Nia followed his lead. “We'd have to put some blocks here to make it easier to get up and down.”

  “Do you hear that?” He cocked his head as she grew still beside him. A soft whoosh carried through the cave from somewhere to the left. Wind or water, he wasn't sure, but it could be another opening. “This way.”

  She trotted close at his heels as he led the way. “We would have room for beds down here. Maybe we could wall off some sections of the cavern and have real sleeping quarters.”

  “And a treasury,” Tahl said. “The last thing we want is any thieves in the guild having free access to everything we scrape together.”

  Nia sniffed as if she didn't appreciate the addition. “How is that supposed to work, anyway? People in the guild have expenses too. You can't just take all their money.”

  “Nobody takes all their money.” Tahl fought the urge to roll his eyes. “They bring in their goods and gold, the treasurer takes it and weighs it, and they get their fair share of coin back.”

  “What's stopping them from keeping their gold for themselves?”

  “It's dirty, usually. The goods always are. They need the protection of a fence and few thieves in the city have that right now. The guild won't be too concerned about pocket change. If they scrape together a few pims on their own, they're welcome to keep it, but anything big? That goes through the guild.”

  She considered that with a thoughtful tilt of her head. “Almost everyone who visits in the taverns I work at pays with pims.”

  “That's because Orrad's official currency is silver.” He gave her shoulder a playful nudge. “If anyone's paying with actual gold, that's always a problem. There's gold currency floating around, sure, but almost all of it is from the northern kingdoms. Atoras has done his best to suck up as much gold as he can.”

  “What do you suppose he wants to use it for?” Nia's eyes took a distant look and he could almost picture the thoughts that had to be running through her head. Piles of gold and gold-plated treasures heaped around inside the castle, the very place they planned to infiltrate.

  “I have some theories, but it's too soon to speculate. Over here.” The mage-light in his hand revealed an opening into a sloped tunnel. It ran uphill and while a pool of water sat at its mouth, the tunnel itself appeared dry. “The sound's coming from here. I'm pretty sure it's wind.”

  If the tunnel opened into the fields west of the city, it would be the luckiest find Tahl could imagine. An easy avenue for escape from the city opened countless new opportunities. Smuggling, for one. It wasn't his specialty, but it had lined Bahar Eseri's pockets well, and Tahl was sure he could find someone to manage an operation within the new guild. New passages and recesses opened up along the way, promising countless hiding places for his thieves.

  “I couldn't imagine anything more perfect,” he murmured to himself as they walked.

  Nia frowned. “What was that?”

  “I was just saying—”

  “No,” she interrupted, her eyes skimming past him to search the nooks and crannies behind them. “I thought I heard...” She trailed off, uncertain.

  Tahl turned and the light that radiated from his coin glinted off something in the dark. His stomach dropped to his boots. “Run.”

  “What—” Nia started, but he clamped a hand on her shoulder and spun her toward the darkness.

  “Run!”

  Chapter 5

  “Go!” Tahl shoved Nia ahead as the beast's furious snarl reverberated in the tunnels. The path ahead was dark, save the fifteen feet or so illuminated by his mage-light. Or was it ten feet? He skidded hard in the gravelly dirt and altered his course to follow Nia down a new passage. His mage-light was fading and he didn't dare stop to recharge it.

  Behind them, heavy breath and heavier footfalls signaled the beast's location.

  Tahl wasn't sure what it was. Big, furry, and angry, no doubt. Too large to be a wolf, but he wasn't as familiar with the empire's wildlife as he supposed he ought to be. Whatever was chasing them, from the sound of its footfalls, they couldn't outrun it for long.

  Its den had been in the worst possible position. Angled so it could rocket out after them, and their only choice was to flee farther down an unknown passage. Even had they managed to get past it to retrace their steps, there were the long tunnels of the sewer to contend with.

  “It can't be that far,” he said between breaths, though he didn't know if he meant to reassure Niada or himself.

  Nia did not reply. The patter of her feet against the packed tunnel path came twice as fast as his. Her steps covered half as much ground. Tahl could have outpaced her easily. To do so would have sentenced her to death. Instead, he put a hand to her back when she faltered and pushed her onward.

  The mage-light in his hand guttered. That was unusual. When magic gave out, it typically faded slowly, it didn't flicker like a dying flame.

  And there are much more convenient times to think about that, he chastised himself. Ahead, the path split. Above the heavy thudding of the monster at their heels, the whisper of grasses and leaves in the wind caught his ear. They had to be close to the surface. How else would the beast have made the cave its home?

  A soft stirring of air brushed his cheek. “Left!” he barked as they hit the split. Inexplicably, Nia veered right.

  Cursing, Tahl skidded to a stop and threw a look over his shoulder. Down the passage, glinting eyes reflected the dying light cast from his coin. The monster thundered forward and Tahl lingered as long as he dared. The beast's shadowed maw opened, revealing glistening teeth.

  “Bear,” Tahl spat. “Bear!” He didn't know if Nia could hear him. Part of him hoped not—if she'd gotten far enough, the rock would absorb any sound he made.

  Undisturbed by its identification, the bear barreled toward him. Tahl did the only thing that crossed his mind.

  With all his might, he flung his mage-light at the bear.

  The brilliant coin struck the beast square in the eye. The bear faltered a step
and bellowed, more in anger than distress.

  Tahl grimaced and spun away. Smart. His only source of light now lay behind him, on the other side of an angry bear who stalled for only a moment before it resumed its chase. A few more steps plowed Tahl into a stone wall. He skirted to its edge and charged forward again, an ache of mingled breathlessness and panic gripping his chest.

  The bear's sight was no better than his and as Tahl scrambled farther up the passage, the ground underfoot shuddered with the impact of the beast striking the wall.

  Great. I'll just crash it to death. He fought back a grimace and let his fingers rake the damp walls. It offered little assistance in finding his way forward. If he thought he had a moment, he would have made another light. The loping footfalls behind him reminded him he didn't even have a second.

  Another twist. He followed the wall around the curve and his shoulder slammed into stone. His teeth clacked together to hold more curses at bay. Somewhere ahead, the darkness began to look more gray. Whatever lay ahead had to be better than the bear at his back.

  Tahl willed his footing to be sure, even as he felt the weight of the bear's gait hit the ground behind him. An oak leaf skittered across the floor, carried by the wind, and he granted himself a fleeting moment to be aware he'd seen it.

  Another twist. Daylight poured into the tunnel ahead. With renewed vigor, Tahl pumped his burning legs and prayed it would be enough.

  He burst from the cave's entrance and stumbled two steps before he fell to the rocky hillside. Seconds too late, he shifted into a roll and tumbled through the scree. Jagged edges of broken stone gouged the exposed flesh of his arms and scraped or bruised everything else. One more somersault and, by some miracle, he landed on his feet.

  Maybe the Lifetree did favor thieves.

  Too breathless to offer prayers of thanks, he staggered forward and regained his stride. His left leg protested but he refused to break his stride. A tree waited ahead and Tahl vaulted to catch the lowest branch. With a grace that hid his injuries, he sprang from limb to limb until he was certain he perched too high for the bear to follow, the branches hardly able to support his weight.