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I clenched my fist under the table, controlling my anger. He might not know it, but I could smash in his face if I wanted to—alltheir blazen faces. But then I’d get a big, fat I-told-you-so from Kah when I sabotaged my own plan. Not worth it. At least, not yet.

“Did you guys hear the mineguards over there calling us a bunch of pansies?” I said, taking another swig like I hadn’t heard his insult. That got their attention. “Puffpansies. Yeah, that’s what they said. They were talking about one of us, Ver— Var— Oh yeah, Varmeth. They were saying, ‘Varmeth’s too much of a cream puff pansy to work down here like us.’” I paused for dramatic effect, taking another drink of ale. “If I were Varmeth, they’d be dead already.”

“Cream puff pansy?Really?” Kah murmured to me from the necklace. He might be invisible, but I could still tell when he was rolling his eyes. I shook my head for him to shut up.

“I’mVarmeth,” the guard with the neck scar said, his dull eyes turning feral.

On the hook.

“It’s time we teach them a lesson, Varmeth,” the beefy one ground out as they stared down the mineguards drinking at the next table. The rest of the men grunted in agreement.

Varmeth took a long gulp of his drink and wiped his hairy upper lip with the back of his hand. He sneered at me. “Boy, it’s going to take more than name-calling to make me waste a good ale like this.”

Blackhell!He wasn’t taking the bait.

I debated throwing the first punch, just to get this stupid brawl started, but I’d definitely get pummeled that way.

The whole table was now glaring at the mineguards. Maybe this could still work. I just needed to tip the scale from anger to violence.

I glanced around the bar, thinking. The Rathalan barmaid behind the counter caught my eye. She was as rugged as the tavern itself, with a stocky body and a scowl that looked like it was permanently knitted into the fabric of her face. Seeing her gave me an idea.

I strolled up to the counter, palming the rusted iron coins in my pocket. Rathalan money was different than ours, so I didn’t know how much to offer her for the favor I was about to ask. I settled for all of it.

She snatched the coins out of my hands, scowling—well, scowlingmore—at my request. For a moment, I thought she was going to punch me in the face. Then she gave me a slight nod, indicating we had a deal.

I settled back at the table of towerguards. The enemy’s coins had left a dirty film on my hands that looked like dried blood. I decided to take this as a positive omen.

Ten minutes later, the barmaid delivered a round of ale to our table, each mug with a colorful pansy poking out of the top. I’d noticed the tiny patch of flowers struggling against the cold on my way in. It was the only color I’d seen since I’d gotten to this bleak city. “Courtesy of the mineguards,” she grunted.

“They’re dead!” shouted Varmeth, pushing back his chair so hard it toppled over. The other guards followed suit, launching an assault on the adjacent table. Fists flew and mugs shattered while fighting broke out across the tavern.

I grinned before leaping into the brawl and shoving the guards out of the way to make a path to the minemaster. No one would dare touch him, but he’d joined the fight by grabbing the guards by their throats, throwing them to the ground and ordering them to cease. In the chaos, no one was obeying. The sounds of chairs splintering, noses breaking, and shouting were deafening.

It was a beautiful thing.

When I got close enough to the minemaster, I turned to the man fighting beside him and punched him square in the jaw with asmack. He lost his balance and took down the minemaster with him as they tumbled to the floor. Sweat was dripping down my back from the hot fire as I ducked a punch and pretended to trip over the minemaster, grabbing his keys out of his belt when I hit the floor and rolled. I also swiped up a leather flask that had been dropped in the shuffle. Because who could pass that up?

While I was shoving the keys and flask into my pocket, a fist collided with my jawbone, whipping my head to the side. “Blazen skies,” I muttered, shaking off the blow and hurling my attacker halfway across the room. He landed on the floor with a satisfying thump.

Face throbbing, I winked at the scowling barmaid and strolled out the front door into the frosty night air.

Despite the commotion happening behind me, I clearly heard Kah’shmph.

“You got lucky,”Kah said when we arrived back at the Obsidian Tower.

“If byluck, you mean a combination of bravery and skill, then yes, Ididget lucky,” I said with a smirk as I rubbed my sore jaw and took a swig from the flask I’d commandeered. The liquor burned in my throat. “It’s not like I had a lot of other options. You know we’re running out of time here.” We only had three more days left until the Magi’s spell ended and we still weren’t any closer to finding the one thing we came here for.

I marched past the towerguards on duty along the first-floor corridor, none of them taking notice of me in my disguise. I’d purchased the gear, including the boots and malarite sword, from a Jakeen in the marketplace. He didn’t question my intentions after I paid him a small fortune not to. Rathalan guards wore a dark, ugly mess of metal and leather armor. Towerguards typically had spikes on their shoulder plates and carried swords, while mineguards and forgeguards had whips coiled on their belts. I’d discovered the only way to tell the latter two apart was because the mineguards wore more underlayers and animal pelts to work deep in the cold earth. The forgeguards were bare armed, always covered in sweat, and tended to smell worse.

When I rounded the corner, I reached my destination, a spiral stone staircase that led down to the tower’s archives. It was obvious from the look of the worn gray stone that this wasn’t part of Lord Thrailkull’s shiny new blackstone tower. Malengard was built on top of a razed Jakeen city, and they’d left the oldcitadel foundation and archives still intact when they’d begun building this tower. I’d been down here before, only to find a locked iron door barricading the entrance. Likely abandoned because the Rathalans weren’t famous for doing much scholarly reading in their spare time. It had taken me and Kah most of the week just to figure out who had a key to open it. As ruler of the Rathalans, I figured Lord Thrailkull had a key, as did his vile guard commander, but there was no way to get to either of them. That left the minemaster. Hence tonight’s little brawl.

“I hope you’re right about the Zavien stone being hidden down here,” Kah said as I grabbed the torch from the wall and spiraled down the stairs to the cold depths of the old ruins.

“It has to be,”I said, unwilling to consider the alternative. “Unless you think it’s stashed underneath Thrailkull’s mattress.”

Kah hmphed at my sarcasm.

For four months now, Kah and I had been trekking across Eastlandra, looking for the Zavien stone without any leads. Until the Magi seer we bought the spell from pointed us to Malengard. Unfortunately, she hadn’t told us where to look.