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But before I could swing, all the guards were called to the mine entrance to control the Kovak bear.

“I’ll deal with you two later,” Meat spat, jogging away with the other guards. He had a slight limp that I hadn’t noticed before.

“What have you done?” Hen hissed at me when he was gone. She looked thinner and weaker than she had mere moments ago, but her voice still cut like glass.

“I couldn’t just stand there!”You’re the only family I’ve got.

“Now he’s got his eye on both of us!” she snapped. Underneath her anger, I could hear a tremor in her voice. She turned back to her work, but her grip was so weak that the axe slipped out of her hands and clattered on the hard ground. I stooped to pick it up before anyone noticed.

Seeing the raw fear shimmering in Hen’s eyes terrified me. We both knew what would happen next. There was no way to hide among the mass of workers now. Meat would find us. And if we weren’t dead when he was done with us, we’d wish we were.

2

Jeddak

“You know this is a terrible idea, Jeddak.”

“Don’t be so pessimistic,” I whispered to Kah. “It’s going to work. Trust me.”

“Well, don’t blame me for saying ‘I told you so’ when they beat you to a pulp.”

“Promise,” I said with a sly grin. It was strange to talk to Kah without him at my side. The Magi’s spell had temporarily transformed him from my burly black bear companion into a disembodied voice contained inside the pendant hanging around my neck. Yet, the Magi definitely hadn’t taken away his slew of opinions about everything.

“Try telling them who you really are. That’ll start a fight,” Kah said.

He was right about that. The spell I’d purchased from the Magi a week ago had worked … surprisingly. In the marketplace, I’d walked into her tent as my seventeen-year-old, full-blooded Kovak self with Kah at my side, and left ten minutes later looking like the enemy, with only Kah’s voice to take with me. No one in this dingy tavern in Malengard would ever guess that I wasn’t a loyal Rathalan guard, just like them.

“I’m trying to be a bit more subtle,” I murmured under my breath so the Rathalans to my right couldn’t hear me.

“Nothing you do is subtle,” Kah said in his typically deadpan tone.

Fair point.

“Do you even have a plan?” Kah asked.

“Start a brawl. Distract the minemaster. And steal his keys.” I studied the layout of the tavern from my seat at the end of the bar. There were three separate groups of Rathalans drinking that night—the towerguards, mineguards, and forgeguards. I’d already located the minemaster sitting at the middle table, directly underneath the messy tangle of antlers and candles that passed as a chandelier in this place. He’d come in five minutes ago along with a small horde of mineguards who looked ready to drink the place dry now that their shifts had ended.

“Hmm,” Kah murmured.

“It’ll work,” I assured him.

“Mm-hmm.”

“Trust me.”

“But I thought you said the minemaster wasn’t easily provoked,” Kah said. His voice was almost lost in the sudden outburst of hollers and shouts that erupted when a mug shattered on the floor. One of the barmaids hurried over to clean it up.

“No, but I’ve noticed he craves order among the guards, so that might prove to be even more useful.”

“And how do you plan to start this brawl without messing up that handsome new Rathalan face of yours?”

“Watch me.”

I could feel the heat from the roaring stone fireplace along the side wall as I casually strolled toward the table of towerguards in the back of the room. Banging my ale mug heartily onto the wooden tabletop, I straddled the vacant chair. Ionly recognized one of the men at the table because of the thick scar running down the side of his neck. Otherwise, Rathalans all tended to look the same to me—thickset, grisly, hairy, ugly. I think this one’s name was Varmeth. Yesterday, the guard commander stationed both of us at the entrance to the throne room in the Obsidian Tower where Lord Thrailkull was having an important “meeting”—which, from what I could tell, was less talk and more shouting and spilling blood.

When the men didn’t pause their conversation, I took a swig of ale and butted in. “We could take them,” I said in response to one of the guards griping about the mineguards and forgeguards hogging all the ale every night. Towerguards clearly felt superior to the other guards.

“That’s funny, coming from a baby guard like you,” a beefy, thick-skulled guard said with a hoarse chuckle. The other men at the table laughed.