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G RAYLIN SCALED SIDEWAYS down a narrow crack in the sandstone. To squeeze along, he had to carry his pack in hand. He panted through his dust-scarf. Sweat glued cloth to skin, while grit covered every surface of him. Still, he hurried after Esme, fearful of losing her in the dark.

Overhead, the storm still raged, howling its fury. Occasional gusts swept deep, scouring stone, ripping past them, forcing them low. Still, Graylin appreciated those moments. It allowed glimpses of the sky, and the pitch-darkness of the tunnels brightened to a murky gloom.

Otherwise, the group crept through dark passageways, their traverse lit by a lone lantern carried by Esme. They were often forced to crawl on their bellies over crumbling bricks and plaster. Broken spears of pipes and jagged pikes of curled iron threatened to impale the unwary. Many times, their trek involved moving backward as much as forward, as if Esme’s scouting expressed some hesitation on her part.

Though at the moment, the young woman hurried onward. Her dexterous form moved swiftly. Above her head, her crab matched her pace, his chitinous legs outstretched between the walls, their sharp tips balancing atop pebbles of rock or spiking into crevices. The beast moved as easily as a horse fording a shallow stream.

The thought of water dried Graylin’s mouth.

Behind him, Jace followed with Fenn, trailed by Rhaif and Vikas. The group had begun to drape out, separating from one another as the strain of this traverse challenged them. Only Fenn kept close, looking ready to leap past Graylin, fear for his sister clearly stemming any exhaustion or thirst.

Still, the others dragged farther behind.

“Slow down!” Graylin yelled to Esme. “Let’s close our ranks.”

“A way opens ahead,” she called back. “Not much farther.”

She rushed on, vanishing around a bend with Crikit.

Graylin grumbled under his breath. He slid and scooted, but her words proved true. The gloom lessened, and the winds picked up. After a final tight squeeze, he fell out of the crack and into another corner of the ruins. The storm howled overhead. The sky remained black with blowing sand.

Fenn followed and dumped next to him onto a wide ledge.

Ahead, a deep chasm blocked their way.

So far, the group had managed to avoid having to break out their ropes. Esme had found other ways around, often using ledges and outcroppings to skirt past such obstacles.

Again, luck favored them.

As Graylin waited for the others to exit the ravine, he studied this lonely corner of the necropolises. Across the chasm, the entire facade showed an eroded surface of bricks, twisted metal, pocked by chambers and tunnels built by the ancients. Rockfalls scarred vast swaths. The rest had been worn by the grindstone of ages into a dusty sculptural smoothness, creating a haunted skeletal feel to this place. But more than that, the air hung with a melancholiness that weighed on the heart. The wail of the storm overhead and its shrouded gloom added to this impression.

These ruins had been deserted long ago, well before the Forsaken Ages—only to be abandoned again more recently. Ropes and ladders were strung throughout its tiers, draping down into the dark depths. Ore carts lay topped or crushed. Anything of value had been mined out long ago. All that was left were these moldering trappings and useless tools, discarded by laborers who had moved on to richer veins.

Still, a thick rope remained, strung across the deep canyon, creating a ready bridge for them to cross.

Fenn reached up to test its merits as Jace and Rhaif joined them, panting heavily, sweating even more.

“It won’t hold,” Esme warned without looking up, rummaging through Crikit’s pack.

Graylin frowned. The rope looked stout, as thick around as his wrist.

Fenn must have doubted her, too—or maybe anxiety goaded him to avoid any unnecessary delays. The navigator leaped to the cord and hung there, swinging slightly. “Looks plenty—”

The rope did not snap. Instead, a section in the middle simply dissolved to dust, as if it had been an illusion, a mirage of the desert. Fenn crashed to the ledge, corrected by the mercilessness of time and decay.

Esme had another lesson for him, too. She stood and tapped to a sign tacked under the iron hook holding this end of the rope. The board was covered with cryptic scrawls, symbols, and arrows.

“If you can’t recognize a bad rope—something anyone who survives Seekh quickly learns—there’s a warning written right here, telling no one to cross.” She stood and tapped a crude skull. “This is the fate of anyone who dares try.”

Rhaif helped Fenn up.

Jace leaned closer to inspect the old sign. “What do all these other scrawls tell you?”

“Directions mostly. From miners in the past. To various regions of the ruins. It’s easy to get turned around down here.”

“What about this one?” Jace asked. “Does it indicate a path that might take us toward the Bhestyan warship? According to Fenn’s chart, we must be close to it by now.”

Esme stared to the northeast, where they had spotted the Sharpened Spur. “The sign does mark an old dig site, one in that direction. If it’s a well-traveled route, it should be reinforced. If so, we’ll make good time.”

Jace nodded, turning away.

As he did, Graylin caught Esme’s gaze swinging to the west, with a contemplative cast to her eyes.

Fenn scowled and dusted off the seat of his breeches. “We still must get across here.”

Graylin nodded. “Can we find another path around?” He looked to either side, searching for ledges, outcroppings, any way to skirt around it. “Or must we backtrack again?”

By now, Vikas had squirmed her large form out of the ravine, her skin raw, her clothing torn in places. It had been an extraordinarily tight fit for her. She heard Graylin’s inquiry and let out an exaggerated sigh. She tossed her pack down and thrust her hand up and flicked her thumb—the Gynish equivalent of Sod that.

“We don’t have to backtrack,” Esme declared. She had returned to her pack and withdrew a thin rope. Its length glinted in the gloom. “A climbing line, threaded through with draft-iron fibers. Much like your ship’s mooring cables.”

“And what do you plan to do with it?” Rhaif scoffed. “Leap over there and tie it down?”

“Not me.”

Esme bent and held out the length toward Crikit. The crab grabbed an end with the larger of his two pincers. Esme then pointed to the ruins across from them.

“Can you make it?” she asked, as if the crab could possibly understand.

Crikit’s eye-stalks waggled. Some tilted toward the chasm, others toward Esme. Finally, the crab scuttled to the edge of the drop.

Esme straightened. “He can make it.”

Before Graylin could question this, Crikit lowered to his belly, cocking his jointed legs under him—then sprang away, shooting impossibly high. The crab flew across the chasm, dragging the thin line. Crikit landed on the far side and skidded into a chamber’s shadows. He jarred back into view, skittered over to a spar of torn metal, and danced around it, anchoring the cable.

The crab had clearly done this many times.

Upon witnessing this, Graylin had a greater appreciation for such a companion among these ruins.

Esme acknowledged Crikit’s feat with a wave of her arm, then tied her end of the rope to the old hook in the wall. She then took a nub of charcoal and crossed out the skull, marking the crossing now safe.

“I’ll leave the line hung,” she said as she yanked it tight. “In case we have to retreat this way.”

Graylin hoped that wouldn’t prove necessary.

In short order, they readied to cross the bridge. Vikas went first. If the rope could hold the quartermaster’s bulk, it should hold all of them. Once she was safely across, Jace, Rhaif, and Fenn followed.

Graylin waved Esme to go ahead of him. “I’ll bring up the rear.”

The woman didn’t object, which Graylin appreciated. Esme grabbed the line, hooked her legs, and scooted swiftly, going headfirst. Her lantern hung from her belt, swinging wildly.

As he waited, Graylin secured his pack over his shoulder and cinched its straps. His bag was the heaviest, and he dared not lose it. He stepped back to the cliff’s edge. Esme was already halfway across.

Movement below drew his eye, from a lower section of the ruins. At first, he thought it was a trick of the light from Esme’s bobbling lantern. Then something clearly crept out of one of the shadowed chambers and crawled up the wall. He could barely make it out. Then it stopped, nearly disappearing against the bricks, looking more boulder than life now.

“Esme!” Graylin called over. “Below you! There’s something—”

As his eyes adjusted, he realized it wasn’t just one boulder, but dozens protruding from the rock face, already perched there, waiting. Some as large as a full-grown ox. Then, upon some silent signal, they all began to lurch upward with a faint scrape of claws.

He remembered the skull drawn on the sign behind him.

It hadn’t been a warning about the rope.

“Esme! Hurry!”

E SME FROZE AT the first shout by the gruff knight. Hanging by hands and legs, she twisted her neck to explore beneath the sway of her rope. Shadows filled the depths, all the darker due to the ishuka. The jiggling lantern at her belt made it difficult to judge movement.

She squinted, searching for any threat.

Then a darker patch surged upward, leaping from a lower tier of the ruins to a closer one. Then it went still again. She quickly realized the shifting shadows below had nothing to do with her swinging lantern.

Danger stalked upward.

She could guess what. She freed a hand and opened her lantern’s shutters to their widest. The flare of light stung but confirmed her worst fear.

Yinkan…

She had only heard of this scourge. They were a rare threat found in the loneliest corners of the ruins. They were said to hunt by ambushing prey.

Like now.

A swing of her lantern stripped shadows from the closest one.

A squat shape bulged from the wall, its skin pebbled like a rock to keep it camouflaged. Even the shine of its globular eyes was dulled by an inner lid. Its wide mouth, stony lipped, looked like a fissure across a boulder. To either side, legs ended in splayed footpads with hooked claws. The hind pair were far larger than the front, to aid in leaping.

Caught by her light, those inner lids blinked open—then the beast bounded upward. At the same time, that fissure in the boulder cracked open. A black tongue spat out, faster than a striking viper.

Esme let go of her hands and swung down, hanging by her crossed legs. The tip of the tongue hit the rope, striking where she had been, and stuck there. The slimy surface shone with oil, a paralytic meant to stun its prey.

Below her, the beast swung by its long tongue. As it retracted the appendage, the yinkan’s bulk shot up toward her. Such creatures normally feasted on crabs, giant cave spiders, birds, even the orange-tinged crakadyls that swam through the poisonous lakes in the deepest depths of the ruins.

Only this nest had trapped new prey.

As the yinkan rushed upward, Esme struggled to grab the line again with her hands. Before she could manage it, a sweep of silver passed beneath the curve of her back. A sword severed the tongue just as the beast was nearly upon her. She caught a glimpse into its fanged maw, lined by row upon row of sharp teeth that ran deep into its gullet.

Then the creature fell away, tumbling into the dark with a sharp screech.

“Go!” Graylin shouted.

Esme got one hand back on the rope, but they’d never make it across. A dozen more yinkan perched below, ready to ambush. They looked momentarily frozen by the death cry of the dispatched beast.

That would not last.

Already another shifted forward, leaping to a higher tier.

Esme grabbed for her only weapon. With her free hand, she unhooked the lantern from her belt and swung it hard. She tossed it toward the wall. Its flame blew brighter as the lantern spun. Then it smashed into the bricks, exploding into a wash of fire.

The crash struck close to a yinkan, spattering flaming oil across its eyes. The beast hissed, tried to retreat, but in a panic it dislodged from the wall.

It fell, flailing away.

Without waiting, Esme sped down the rope, scurrying along its length. Below, the fire drove several beasts back. A few held firm. The brightness likely blinded them, too, but the flames had begun to burn out.

As Graylin jostled the rope behind her, she rushed on, expecting to be struck at any moment, yanked from the rope. But she finally reached the end. With a gasp, she swung off the rope and rolled into the others.

As Vikas helped her up, Esme choked out a warning and pointed to a crumbling passageway. “Into the ruins. Away from this chasm.”

Graylin landed behind her with a grunt. “Do as she says.”

The yinkan, being ambush hunters, would likely not pursue them.

At least, I hope that’s true.

The group rushed off—but one was too slow, too distressed.

Crikit bleated out a sharp note.

Esme swung around. Crikit got yanked away, struck by the tip of a black tongue. It had glued to one of his packs. His eight legs scrabbled and dug for purchase, but it was to no avail as he skidded backward.

No…

Then a dark shape leaped from the side, shoulder-rolling to Crikit. Jace deftly swung his ax off his back and slammed its blade across the tongue. Blood spattered far, and Crikit was released.

The molag rushed toward her, chittering in panic. His pack had been ripped open during the struggle. From inside, something clattered free. It bounced and rattled across the stone, flashing tarnished bronze.

Jace scooped up the broken ta’wyn limb as he followed behind Crikit. He knew how much she treasured it. Once he reached her, he passed the cargo into Esme’s embrace and herded her forward.

As she hurried with him, she glanced down at the bronze arm, then up to him and over to Graylin. The Chanaryn believed in blood debts, often spanning generations. But she knew that wasn’t what motivated her next action.

She gripped the ta’wyn limb and flung it away. It flew far behind her, out across the chasm, and fell away into oblivion—where another hunter might eventually stumble upon such a rich find.

Let them.

Jace stared at her with a puzzled expression, clearly wondering why she had discarded what she had held so precious.

She looked across the group ahead, at those who had saved her, at those who had rescued Crikit. She silently answered Jace’s query.

Because this is treasure enough right here.