CHAPTER 31

She’s standing at the edge of the platform by the knotted rope we left dangling, her long knife in hand. She’s dusty and ragged, with a thousand bleeding cuts and angry bruises crisscrossing her small body.

Her eyes still speak murder. They’re focused on Gaun, however, not me.

“Stay out of this,” he says. “There isn’t enough for you.”

The up-facing sides of the dice are now blank. My mind latches on to that detail to escape the mess in front of me. Why are they blank?

Wyl doesn’t seem remotely worried about the desperate armed young man in front of her. She strides purposefully towards him, knife to one side, daring him to do something.

Gaun’s not worried, either. With a clear obstacle in the way, past the point where decisions happen and hoping to bring things to their natural end, he lunges at the elf girl with a closed fist. She slaps his hand away, and he actually lets out a yelp.

Wyl advances. She’s almost half his height, and maybe she could reach half his weight if you dumped her in a river first. But he’s the one who steps back, grimacing, and flashes his dagger. When she doesn’t react beyond a small smile, he strikes, the blade slicing through the air and aimed directly at her throat.

She parries. Not gracefully, not dodging or feinting away from his direct and clumsy attack, just putting her blade in front of his like they’re playing at knights and it’s a reed Gaun is swinging at her. By rights, the difference in size alone should have seen the little elf girl crumbling into a bloody ruin. Instead, it’s Gaun’s dagger that’s diverted off track, not even managing to budge Wyl from her position.

She follows through with a step forward and a punch down to his knee, which, impossibly, snaps. Gaun falls forward with a cry and into Wyl’s waiting knife, which pushes out of his back as if he’s as solid as cheese.

Gaun’s expression turns confused, betrayed, sad, and then he slumps down with a groan, dagger clattering to the floor. Rue slithers away from the corpse with a nervous, arrhythmic buzz.

“Right,” Wyl says, bending to pick up the dice. “I’ve got another fifty seconds of added strength. Before that time is up, you’ll have given me those keys, or I will have killed you.”

One hand behind her back, she points the knife at me, the tip trembling slightly. Wyl’s gaze, however, is steady, unflinching, even as she steps over Gaun’s corpse. She means it.

But Hilde doesn’t know that.

She runs at Wyl, a bellowing bull rush that turns her compact dwarven body into a ram capable of overrunning even a strong man’s defenses. The elf girl doesn’t even flinch. With a backhand slap she sends Hilde sprawling to the floor, dazed and bleeding. All without taking her eyes off me.

“Forty-five seconds,” she says.

I force myself to stay in control. Find time. Make time. I take hold of my breath and straighten my back, then pick an emerald and lift it up, exactly like I did back in the laboratory to slow things down a bit. To show who was in power.

“Here,” I say. “You can have it. Don’t do… Whatever you’re thinking of doing.”

Wyl cocks her head.

“I said give me the keys, Malco,” she says pleasantly. “Plural. And I do mean all three.”

No.

“Why?” I ask, panic rising in my gut. “You only need one.” I fumble with the stones. “I’ll let you pick the emerald, if you don’t trust me.”

“Why?”

“It’s unnecessary, it’s—”

“Because you’re a cowardly rat who would have died if I’d had the sense to just loot your body and leave. Because if it weren’t for me falling for your tricks Verra and Dako and Tale would have come with me and not died under a boulder when you didn’t return.”

She says all of this in a lilting, mocking tone, each word slamming into my chest like hammer blows.

“I’m sorry,” I say slowly. I am, it’s true. “I didn’t mean to take so long. I went to save Hilde, and was lucky to find another key, but I had to solve a riddle and—”

“Sure,” Wyl answers. “Or you went looking for the key and were lucky to find Hilde there too. It doesn’t matter,” she finishes, raising her long knife, still soiled with blood. “Give it.”

That’s forty-five.

Rushing Wyl hasn’t proved to be the best tactic, but I’m hoping that has changed now. I step forward, and when puts her hand up to stop me I slap the knife away from her hand. Her amazing strength is gone, just as promised, and we fall together, her overwhelmed, me tripping over her legs. The emerald slips between my fingers and clatters across the floor, dangerously close to the edge.

“Stop!” I say. It’s not hard to pin her down now that she’s back to normal strength. “I don’t want to hurt you!”

She’s thrashing and straining like a trapped eel. I’m forced to slam her hand down hard to try and get her to stop. My violence only makes her smile.

“Hand!” Rue buzzes.

Wyl opens her closed hand and the dice tumble on the floor behind her head. The first stops on a one. The second rolls a little distance more and comes up on a blank face. It’s nothing, I think. It’s the lowest possible result. But she doesn’t seem worried.

“Strength,” Wyl says. And then she bites down on my injured hand.

I yell, pulling away, letting her teeth rip a bloody strip from the paln and giving her the opportunity to knee me between the legs. I don’t know how the dice work and I don’t know what a one means, but it’s more than enough to get me off her.

I fall with a grunt, rolling on the floor and clutching my hand. I see her searching for her knife in the confusing green light, tapping the ground and looking around herself.

“Wyl,” I say, standing.

She turns slowly. I hold her knife in my good hand while blood streams freely from my new injury.

“Should have let you rot,” Wyl says conversationally.

“Maybe. I’m grateful you didn’t, though,” I say.

Hilde mutters and begins to stand back up, dabbing at blood in the corner of her mouth. Wyl stiffens.

“You all right, Hilde?”

“Yeah,” she says, holding her hand up to a large blueish bruise across her face. “I’m fine.”

I nod, then step closer to Wyl.

“I’m going to have to restrain you. We can’t trust you. But I promise that if there’s a key left, I’ll let you have it.”

Wyl’s mouth thins when she looks up at me.

“You promise?”

“Yes.”

She smiles wide, her light brown eyes sparkle with mirth.

“Thanks, Malco,” she says, and flourishes her fingers. The dice are held there, caught between two gloves digits. “But I’d trust Lady Luck a thousand times before giving you the benefit of the doubt.”

She throws the dice to my right with an uncaring flicker and they twist in the air, clatter as they hit stone, and roll on the dusty ground until coming to a stop. Five and four.

“Speed!” Wyl yells.

She’s already running to my left, capitalizing on my distraction. Mid stride the movement and poise of her limbs, always mousy and skittering, transform, becoming fluid, graceful, and quick. I turn desperately, knife held out, but her knee bends a fraction, bringing her lower than the blade, and I barely manage to slow her stride. Wyl runs to the end of the platform, skids as she turns around, and comes up holding the emerald.

“Wyl,” I say. Please. Please don’t. “We can talk about this.”

“No, Malco,” she answers. “We can’t.” Wyl throws the emerald in a perfect arc following the vaulted curve of the ceiling, falling down to the Silver Door. I begin to turn, but it’s like I’m glued to the floor in comparison. Before I can start running, Wyl sprints past me, easily dodging the ridiculous blow I still attempt.

Hilde waits in front of the door, hands raised to catch the emerald, trying to watch both it and the elf girl. Wyl doesn’t give her a chance. She jumps off Gaun’s body with a kick at the dwarf’s stomach, turns to snatch the emerald from the air, and in the same movement slots it down in the waiting pedestal.

Immediately, the light changes, redirected a thousand times within the confines of the emerald. There is a burst of energy around the edges of the door, and it swings open. A bright forest green portal beckons, a swirling almost liquid screen that cuts Wyl’s figure in sharp contrast.

I can’t see her expression. I don’t know if it’s triumphant, mocking, relieved.

“Please,” I say.

I do see Wyl shake her head. And then she’s gone, stepping backwards into the Silver Door. As soon as she passes, the portal disappears as well, swirling into itself until nothing remains. The light streaming up from the pedestal returns to normal, illuminating unperturbed. Hilde struggles to her feet and looks down into the key slot.

“Gone,” she says. “The emerald is gone.”

I don’t answer. I’m clutching my hand, feeling like everything I did to heal it has been in vain, like all the pain I’d avoided now returned to make me want to gouge out my own eyes for an inch of reprieve.

“Malco,” Hilde says, approaching. She kneels next to me, looking down at the little circlets my tears are drawing in the dust. Tears of pain, tears of frustration, tears bringing me ever closer to despair.

“Malco,” she repeats gently but firmly. “We don’t have time for that. We need to decide what to do.”

I bite my tongue and compose myself. Hilde’s right. What’s done is done, and we have, all things considered, been extremely lucky.

“You take this one,” I say, fishing the remaining emerald out of my pocket with my good hand. “It’s yours, after all, and hopefully it will still work.”

“I meant, we need to decide what to do if we want to find your sister and your friend.”

Seconds pass before I can lift my head to look her in the eye. Bathed in the remaining green light, what little can be seen of Hilde’s face is grimy with sweat, bruised and beaten, but her expression, the space between a single lush eyebrow and her long, disheveled beard, is soft and kind.

“Come on, get up,” she says. “The flying beastie is still around, and we’ll both be sorry if it decides it wants another snack.”

“No,” I say. “You have the key and the door, you can’t just… You can’t…”

“Mal, don’t. I owe you my life a few times over, true, but even if I didn’t… I wouldn’t leave you, not now. Not when we’re so close. Not for their game. Now come on.”

She helps me stand. The pain has dwindled to a throb, but each brush makes me grit my teeth and swallow down a scream.

“You can manage the rope,” she’s saying. “Just use your feet to slow your movement and go slowly. I’ll be waiting down there if anything happens. All right?”

I nod vaguely and Hilde disappears off the lip of the platform. I sit down, waiting for my turn, feeling exhausted already, realizing there’s still a long way to go.

There is a slithering and Rue reappears, drawing a continuous S on the dust.

“Thank you for before,” I say. “With Gaun.”

Rue buzzes and lifts a tendril as if in salute.

“You know, Malco,” he says. “What you should do is give her the sapphire and just leave now. It’s what you should do, definitely, but I won’t suggest it.”

“That’s very sensitive of you.”

“It is,” he buzzes. “And you shouldn’t forget these, in any case. They might come in handy.”

Uncoiling, he disgorges two ivory cubes onto the platform, taking care so they don’t roll. I turn one die in my hand. Half of its faces are blank, the remaining pips show the numbers one, three, and six.

“Yeah,” I say. “Yeah, they will. Thank you, Rue.”

“Welcome,” he buzzes. The rope slaps on the platform as Hilde signals she’s completed her descent. “Ready?”

I am. Rue climbs up my hand and settles on my shoulder, and then I dangle my legs out before locking them around the rope. I climb down slowly, carefully, leaving the Silver Door to wait for our return.