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“Sparrow. Get up.”

I jerked awake, muscles tensing to dodge or scramble back before my brain could even register what was happening. I was an

extremely light sleeper, and my door creaked horribly, a defect I left unfixed so no one could sneak into my room while I

was unconscious. Because nearly everyone in the guild could pick a lock, and because a locked anything announced to others

that you might have something to hide or protect, no one bothered locking their doors. But the shadow looming over me had

either opened the door without making anything squeak or had ghosted right through it and floated to my bed without touching

the floor, because I hadn’t heard so much as a whisper in my dreams.

“It’s me,” the shadow said before I could leap off my tiny cot and scramble upright. Hearing Vahn’s voice, I relaxed, but

only a little. He rarely came into my room, and never at night. Had something happened?

“Vahn?” I blinked at him blearily, then gazed at my boarded-up window. Through the slats, it was true dark; the stars glimmered

like distant gems, and a thin crescent moon hung against the navy-blue sky. “What’s going on?”

“Get up,” Vahn repeated. “Come with me. Don’t ask questions, and speak to no one. Let’s go.”

Even more confused and more than a little alarmed, I pushed myself off my cot and rose, shivering a bit in the chill.

Demon Hour might scorch the skin from your bones, but once the suns went down, the temperature plummeted as well.

Vahn said nothing else, just turned and glided silently from my room without looking back. Rubbing sleep from my eyes, I followed.

The guild warehouse was deserted as we made our way down the stairs and onto the first floor. Because nights were so short,

guild members took advantage of the darkness while they could and planned jobs around the few hours of true dark. The lights

of Rala’s tavern gleamed orange in the corner, but no one sat at the tables or the bar. Rala herself was not in the tavern,

either, probably catching a few hours of sleep while the place was empty.

I started toward the back entrance, but to my surprise, Vahn snapped his fingers at me, shaking his head. “Not that way,”

he said shortly.

I blinked. “We’re not leaving the building?”

“I said no questions,” he replied. “We’re not leaving by the normal way, is all.” He headed toward the back of the warehouse,

then down a long flight of rickety wooden steps to the basement level of the building. This chamber was rarely visited and

had been given over to storage. It was large, with dusty stone floors and a low ceiling. Stacks of crates, pots, pallets,

and containers had turned it into a miniature maze, and it was impossible to see the farthest corners of the room through

all the junk.

Vahn didn’t hesitate, weaving through the labyrinthine aisles without pause, heading for the far end of the room.

I followed until we came to the far wall, cloaked in heavy shadow.

Bewildered, I gazed around. There were no doors, no exits or entrances, no windows, even.

Just crates of junk and flat, solid brick walls.

In the corner, Vahn paused, then turned to me. His dark eyes glimmered a warning in the shadows. “What I am about to show

you is of the utmost secrecy,” he said in a low voice. “Under no circumstance are you to reveal what you learn here to anyone,

inside the guild or out. Breaking this rule will result in intervention by the Circle. Is that understood?”

A flippant reply rose to mind, but I knew better than to press Vahn when his eyes were hard and scary, so I just nodded. He

turned toward the corner. One hand rose, and two fingers pressed into one of the many bricks along the wall.

There was the faintest click , and the brick Vahn was pressing slid back like it was some kind of large button. Part of the wall detached and became a

door that swung slowly outward, making my breath catch in my throat. Beyond the opening, a narrow tunnel snaked away into

the darkness.

My eyes widened.

Vahn pinned me with a narrowed gaze. “Remember, not a word of this, to anyone. This door, this tunnel, does not exist.” He

jerked his head at the dark space beyond. “Let’s go.”

Heart pounding with excitement and a tinge of fear, I ducked through the secret door into the dark tunnel beyond. “What is

this?” I asked once Vahn had stepped inside as well. My voice echoed down the tunnel, making me shiver. “Where are we going?”

His jaw tightened, but he didn’t chastise me for breaking the “no questions” rule again. Maybe he realized it was a lost cause.

“Beneath the city,” he replied, taking a lantern from beneath his cloak. He lit it and held it up, casting a weak orange glow

over the tunnel around us. “We’ll be taking the sewers most of the way. Stay close—it’s easy to get lost down here.”

“Most of the way to where?”

He didn’t answer, but I hadn’t expected him to.

The narrow tunnel quickly led us into the sewers, which, in a city like Kovass, were a marvel unto themselves. Sewers required

water, and aboveground, at least, water was nearly nonexistent. But eons and eons ago—so long ago that no one really knew

exactly when—there had been a terrible cataclysm. Mountains crumbled, the earth split apart, and the ocean disappeared, draining

into the cracks and sinking deep below the sands. For many years, it sat there, silent and untouched, as the world above withered

and died beneath the merciless glare of the twins.

Obviously, life cannot exist without water, and necessity is the mother of invention. The underground sea was eventually discovered,

and the ancient builders and architects of Kovass designed a vast network of copper pipes to pump the water from underground

and distribute it across the city. It was stored in reservoirs and public fountains, where the citizens lined up each morning

to fill their daily buckets and jugs. That water was used for cooking, bathing, drinking, and washing waste down the drains

into the sewers below.

The sewers I found myself in now.

Vahn and I didn’t speak as we continued through the maze of tunnels, pipes, and narrow corridors.

Unsurprisingly, it stank down there, and there was a chill in the air that I suspected wasn’t present when the suns were up.

Vahn moved quickly, giving me little time to look around, but I tried to memorize all the twists and turns in case I needed to find my way back alone.

The sewers were sprawling and ancient, but for some reason, few in the Thieves Guild used them.

Entrances were difficult to find and harder to access, and the sewer itself was confusing and not laid out well, according to some.

I had a good memory when it came to remembering my surroundings, but I would have to concentrate if I ever had to navigate my way down here.

As Vahn and I continued on, I had the impression that we were moving downward, deeper into the undercity, into the belly of

Kovass. We walked down a flight of stairs and descended a rusty ladder, and then, abruptly, the narrow tunnels opened up and

I found myself staring at a large cavern. The chamber was man-made, its smooth walls and ceiling indicating this was not natural

stone. The temperature had dropped sharply, probably because the cavern floor was filled with dark water, throwing off waves

of cold as we stepped into the room. A narrow walkway cut straight through the middle of the cavern to a door on the other

side.

“What is this place?” I asked Vahn, my voice echoing into the vastness above.

“An abandoned cistern,” he replied. “Before the pipes and pumping stations were constructed throughout Kovass, water from

the underground sea was stored here. Few come down here anymore. Fewer still remember that this place exists.”

We passed through the chamber, the dark water lapping at the edges of the walkway and sloshing over the path.

Icy droplets fell from the blackness overhead, hitting my skin with tiny stabs of cold.

I stared out over the opaque water and felt the hairs along the back of my neck start to rise.

It was probably my imagination, but I could almost feel something watching me from beneath the dark, chilly surface.

Something old and terrible that could reach out of the water and drag me down into the darkness with it.

I stayed to the middle of the walkway as much as I could, and was relieved when the chamber finally came to an end.

“Sparrow.”

At the door, Vahn turned to me once again, his face a mask of stone.

“I know,” I said before he could say anything. “Whatever I see, whatever is waiting for us beyond that door, tell no one what

transpires here. This never happened.”

His lips thinned, but he gave a short nod and turned away. I followed him through the doorframe and down another narrow, shadowy

tunnel, and finally, into the last chamber.

Even though I had been bracing myself for what could lie down here, forgotten by the world, I still felt my stomach drop with

amazement. The room we found ourselves in was dim, vast, and circular. A wide ledge surrounding the perimeter dropped down

to a second level perhaps five or six feet below, a single set of roughhewn stairs leading to the lower floor. Stone columns,

broken and crumbling, ringed the edge, and torchlight flickered from braziers surrounding the circle.

In the very center, standing around a large stone altar, five dark-robed figures turned to watch us come in.

A quiver slid up my spine and lodged in my stomach.

Their cowls were drawn up, but peering out from the darkness of the hoods were the bleached, hollow faces of skulls.

After a moment, I realized that they were masks, that it wasn’t really a group of living dead staring at us.

Still, it was eerie and unsettling, and I suddenly wanted to find the nearest clump of shadow and disappear into it.