The Vengekeep Prophecies (14 page)

Callie held the lantern up. “This must be one of the old catacomb tunnels. If we follow it”—she looked back and forth, to get her bearings—“that way”—she pointed to the right—“we should be at Glenoak Falls by sundown.”

“Let's go,” I said, and we made our way down the tunnel.

We marched along, casting the occasional eye over our shoulder to make sure we weren't being followed. “Isn't your uncle going to notice you're gone?” I asked.

Callie didn't seem concerned. “I left him a note saying I was going to find Talian. Don't worry. He'll never follow us. That would mean breaking quarantine and Uncle would never go against the High—”

Callie stopped suddenly and looked around. “Is that,” she said, cocking her head to listen better, “rushing water?”

I listened closely and heard what she heard: a low, dangerous rumble behind us.

“Sounds like it. Maybe it's the waterfall at Glenoak Falls.”

Callie looked unconvinced. “There's no way we've gone that far.”

“So, then what …?”

We listened and the ominous sound grew louder. And it was getting closer. A sudden realization hit and my jaw dropped. I thought about the heavy rains in Vengekeep above us. I thought about Da and his trenches, the ones meant to keep Vengekeep from flooding. The trenches drained into a shunt that sent the water underground. What if that shunt had tapped into these old catacomb tunnels?

As if to confirm my theory, the rumble became a roar and was now the unmistakable sound of a wall of water bearing down on us from behind. Callie's face filled with a mix of terror and excitement. I slipped my belt and pouches into the leather backpack, knowing we were sunk if they got wet. In the dim light, my hand found Callie's and our fingers locked as we both yelled:

“Run!”

“Fear is just Bravery's older, wiser brother, leading the charge away from danger.”

—
The Lymmaris Creed

M
a and Da raised me on stories of their exploits. Before I was born, they traveled the Provinces as carefree rogues, moving from town to town, bilking marks wherever they went. I always imagined living a similar life, full of intrigue and danger on the open road.

In all their stories, Ma and Da never mentioned that the open road sometimes involved being covered with sparkleeches.

“Ow!” I cried.

“Hold still,” Callie said, “and it won't hurt. At least, not as much.”

The sun had just started to rise. I knelt near the edge of our campsite on Glenoak Lake, shirtless and cowering. Dark red splotches dotted my body, marking where dozens of sparkleeches had previously attached themselves. Only two of the parasites remained. Callie reached out to my chest and grabbed one by its thorny tail. “Ready?”

I whimpered. The sparkleech, with its hard yellow shell atop a green gelatinous belly, squirmed between Callie's fingers. I could feel its mouth pinch tighter to my flesh. Callie gave a quick yank. As the sparkleech detached, a blue spark jumped between its mouth and my skin. I yelped. Again. Callie held her arm back, then pitched the sparkleech back into the lake as she'd done with all the others.

Nearly drowning as the wall of water in the underground tunnel swept us away wasn't bad. Being forcefully ejected through a small hole that came out beneath the powerful waterfalls at Glenoak wasn't bad. Setting up camp on the banks of a lake and falling asleep, soaked and shivering, wasn't bad. But waking up to find our tent infiltrated by dozens of sparkleeches—most of which had gleefully attached themselves to our bodies in the middle of the night—was absolutely terrible.

That's a lie. All of it was bad. But the sparkleeches were the worst.

Callie, not even a little squeamish, had immediately ducked out of sight behind the tent to doff her clothes. She emerged later, fully clothed and sparkleech free. Meanwhile, I stood in my underclothes, too paralyzed with revulsion to do anything. Callie took the liberty of wrenching them from me, spark after painful spark.

I cringed as she reached out for the last one.

“Maybe we should leave it,” I suggested. It was just one sparkleech, right? A little blood seemed a small price to pay to avoid another excruciating shock.

“Do something to take your mind off it,” Callie said. “Quiz me again.”

Callie's thieving lessons weren't limited to lock picking and sleight of hand. Ma insisted that if I was going to teach her, she should get a well-rounded education. Lately, we'd been studying thieving history.

I looked away so I couldn't see her grab the sparkleech. “Erm … Who are the Seven?”

“The seven thieves who created the Lymmaris Creed after the Great Uprisings,” she answered automatically.

“And their names are …?”

“Unimportant, except Quorris and Harjina Grimjinx, who probably wrote most of it themselves.”

I laughed. “You're a quick study. If you're not careful, we might have to make you an honorary Grimjinx.”

I felt a tug and an electric jolt that turned my laugh into a howl. Callie held up the last sparkleech. “Now you see it”—she threw it into the lake—“now you don't. Ta-da!”

I rolled my eyes. “Every time you say ‘ta-da,' you make my little sister cry. I think we can assume your sleight of hand career is over before it's started.”

Callie stuck her tongue out as I put my shirt back on. Together, we packed up our camp and marched around the edge of the lake until it turned into the River Honnu, snaking its way north. We followed the riverbank for hours, taking a short detour to climb a hill to get our bearings. At the top, we could look south and see the back of the Provincial Guard barricade surrounding Vengekeep at the rim of the valley. They were small, nearly invisible on the horizon. But they were a reminder that we had a lot farther to go.

With the midday sun beating down on us, we sat for a quick break. As Callie downed water from her flagon, I pulled two parchments from my pack. The first was a still-soggy map of the Five Provinces. The second was the list of solvent ingredients. I'd already crossed off the ingredients I knew we could get in Vengekeep. That left five we needed to acquire:

horvax

wraithweed

sap of an ernum tree

naxis root

mardagan

stems of a corraflower

minzgrass

powdered veezus horn

seeds of a firestalk

emion

rankstamen

musewood

I indicated the missing five ingredients, then pointed to the map of the Provinces. “We've got two things making this difficult. First, these items are very, very rare. Second, they're scattered all over the Provinces, tucked away in forgotten valleys, rocky crags.... You get the picture. Once we get to all these locations, it could take us days to find the actual plants.”

Callie nodded. “But just traveling all over will take weeks. Or months.”

“Which we don't have. We've got three weeks to scour the Provinces, track down the plants, and return to Vengekeep. Three short weeks …”

“Until mooncrux,” Callie finished.

I was starting to see the problem with leaving before we had a solid plan. I sighed. “It'll take too long to do this on foot. We need to hire some sort of transport.”

Callie groaned. When the wall of water dumped us into Lake Glenoak, the supplies tied to the outside of my backpack scattered. We lost all the food Nanni and Aubrin had packed. We also lost the moneypurse Ma and Da had given me. We currently had six copperbits between us, not nearly enough money to hire so much as a mang to carry us around.

I rolled up the map and tucked it into my pack as Callie studied the list of ingredients.

“You forgot the spiderbat milk,” she said, handing me the list back.

I checked. “Oops. Guess that one's important. Got a quill?”

She crossed her arms. “Does it
look
like I have a quill?”

“Well, I'm sure we'll remember it.” I folded the list up and returned it to my pack.

Staring off into the distance, Callie suddenly pointed north. “Look,” Callie said.

I followed her finger to a meadow, near where the river bent. A thin trail of campfire smoke rose up from a cluster of ragged-looking tents. We could make out people and animals.

“Sarosans?” she asked.

I shook my head. The Sarosans rarely came this far south. Nomads by nature, they wandered the land, living simple lives. They abhorred all forms of magic and wandered from town-state to village preaching against it. They stuck to the Northern Provinces, where magic use was more abundant.

I squinted. “No. That's Graywillow Market.” I explained the improvised clearinghouse for thieves to her and her eyes lit up as her imagination took hold.

My stomach growled and Callie looked at me sadly. “I'm hungry too,” she said. “Think we can eat at the market?”

I reached into my pocket and pulled out the little money we had. “Six copperbits. It'll buy us a decent dinner at Graywillow Market. We should be careful, though. Given the market's reputation, we might look like a couple of easy marks to everyone—”

“That's it!” Callie cried, jumping up. “We're going to a marketplace, right? A marketplace that we know will be crawling with thieves.”

“Right,” I said, slowly.

“That paste of yours,” she said, eyeing the pouches around my belt. “The stuff you use to help open magical locks. That
must
be valuable to other thieves, right? Why don't we sell some of that?”

That had never occurred to me. I'd only ever made the paste for family use. The formula for the paste wasn't widely known. We could probably make a mint selling the stuff to other thieves and buy transport anywhere we wanted. My pouches had been safe inside the leather backpack when we ended up in the lake. That meant the ingredients were still dry … and usable.

“Help me,” I said, taking off my belt and selecting the necessary pouches. “We're about to go into business.”