“None of this is important,” I boom from the back of the group. “Vanison is finished, whether we agree with it or not. Indokkus is irrelevant. What matters is getting our hands on the silver we promised to get, to further the distribution of the Silverblood and to arm the Nuhavians.”
Garroway pats me on the shoulder and then flaps his hand. “I’m in agreement with the big brute. We must move forward. Vanison is a creature of the past.”
Sephania mewls, “Would hate to see how you guys deal withmydeparture, you toss this guy aside so easily.”
“You two are not the same, silverblood.” My gaze falls on her fair face. “You’re not even on the same plane of existence.”
We make it to the Firehold, standing before the opening. The sun will rise soon, the sky is turning pink, and most of us must be underground before long.
“So what’s the move, then?” Sephania asks, crossing her arms under her chest. She looks at each of us in turn.
I speak for the group, deciding I’m the only one who can make the call on what we’re about to do. “Tomorrow evening, call to your friend Zefyra, silverblood. I believe it’s time we activate the Gilded Ghosts.”
It takes us three days to nail down the location of Sister Zefyra. She is truly like a ghost, that one.
Since losing Manor Marquin, our network of spies and scouts is fractured, which means we have to rely on other means to find her. Garroway utilizes his beast-charming for hours on end, each night, until he’s lathered in sweat and panting. He combs Olhav from top to bottom, spying through rats and owls and other critters in the countryside.
It isn’t until we get word from an unlikely source—one of Tymon Aldion’s treasonous guards in the eastern woods—that we finally put eyes on the specter of Zefyra.
A note comes to us late that evening. By this point, it’s been a week since we were unceremoniously ousted from the North Mines by Cordea, at the behest of Overliege Liolen Sesk. We’re hoping enough time has passed that the soldiers guarding the mines have relaxed their guard.
We meet the former Chained Sister in the shadows of the Commerce Ward, right under Liolen’s nose, where we first ran into her. The colorful district is bustling with so many human merchants and vampires looking to make it rich on their backs that it’s easy to go unnoticed here.
Even when a group of Liolen’s mercenaries passes us on the road en route to Tanmount Tower, they make no note of us. At least not to our faces. I wonder if enough time has passed, too, that our status as fugitives has been forgotten.Unlikely. This is simply one passing group searching countless faces. They can’t focus on everyone.And that’s what we’re banking on.
In the deserted tavern where we first met the halfkeeper ex-miners called the Gilded Ghosts, the troop is absent. Only Zefyra waits for us, and she refuses to tell us where she’s stashed the Ghosts.
“What else can you tell us, Zef?” Sephania asks. She leans against a rickety table, arms crossed. “You’ve been hidden within Aramastun’s army for months. What are his movements?”
“The Night Judge is still focused on repossessing the nobleblood houses in the countryside,” she tells us. “His ploy to lower the gates to Nuhav has bought him time and warm bodies to feed his army. Don’t be surprised if you start to hear of people missing from your city, Sephania.”
My silverblood looks worried about that, and for good reason. “What of Liolen, your employer?” she asks. “Can we assume they won’t hear of this transgression against their mines?”
Zefyra gives her a wicked smile. The sharp scar cut down the side of her pale face glistens in the moonlight through a window. “Just because the Gilded Liege pays me doesn’t mean I’m loyal to them. I fight for the dispossessed, like you. I fight for Ethera.”
She glances at me over Sephania’s shoulder, and I frown. I recall the way my axehead nearly tore Ethera’s head from her body, the wound in her neck was so deep.
“Then I suppose we have to trust you,” Sephania says with a sigh. She sounds racked with emotion.
“I suppose you do.”
“This is all well and good, ladies, but what is the plan here?” Skartovius butts in.
Zefyra pulls out a scroll from her cloak and unravels it on the table. We circle around and she points at the crude lines on the parchment. “What do you know of the tunnels cut through the Olhavian Peaks? The ones that run straight through the heart of the city of vampires . . .”
A few hours later, as the moon reaches its zenith in the sky, we find the entrance Zefyra pointed out on her map. It’s an abandoned mine shaft located on the southwestern edge of the Peaks, boarded and closed for activity.
Here, at the base of the mountain ridge, well out of sight from anyone, we scuttle around in the dark until we find the entrance on a craggy cliffside. It doesn’t take long for me and Lukain to pull the boards away and reveal the dark, yawning mouth of the mine shaft that leads into utter darkness in the mountainside.
“Damned and devils, if this doesn’t look like an ambush in progress, I don’t know what does,” Garroway mutters.
“We have to trust Zefyra, Garro,” Sephania answers.
“Do we?”
“What other options do we have? We need silver.”
The cub shuts up. Sephania lights a spare torch. Then, with Skartovius leading the way, we descend into the deep.