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Scion rolled his eyes and made a disgruntled sound in the back of his throat. “I suppose I can guide you.”
“Excellent,” I said loudly, before Ambrose could say anything that might make Scion change his mind. “See you all in a moment, then.”
Without waiting for any of them to speak, I took a small step forward, falling into darkness.
It was only very recently that I’d been able to shadow walk at all, but as with all my other abilities I’d been practicing. Scion had once described it to me as if you folded a map, and walked in between the creases. I still wasn’t entirely sure what he meant by that, but more often than not I found I was able to move from place to place without difficulty.
Indeed, when I opened my eyes again I immediately knew I was in the right place. The headquarters of the thieves guild was located in the very heart of Inbetwixt. The majority of the enormous compound was underground, with only a townhouse and a neighboring tavern representing the front-facing exterior. Unless you were invited inside, you would never know that some forty thieves lived and worked underground, moving all over the city by way of an enormous tunnel system.
I arrived in the middle of the den. It was a long room with a bar on one end and a large training ring on the other. Whenever I’d been here before, Cross and his crew used this room as both workplace and recreation. I’d never seen it entirely empty before.
I turned in a small circle, blinking to clear my eyes. Within seconds, Bael appeared beside me, followed closely by Scion and Ambrose.
“Cross?” Scion called, his tone wary.
His voice echoed all around the empty room, and no one replied.
“Where is everyone?” I asked nervously.
Silence answered me, as we all looked anxiously around. The entire guild was gone, and that either meant they’d fled…or someone had come here and taken them.
18
LONNIE
THE CUTTHROAT DISTRICT, INBETWIXT
"You said Cross would be here," Scion spat, crossing his arms over his chest.
Ambrose spun toward him, anger flashing in his dark gaze. “I also told you he was going to move his people out of the city in a matter of days. It happened sooner than I anticipated.”
I tuned out their bickering and instead turned in a slow circle, scanning the large room for signs of where Cross might have gone. Everything looked the same as usual, though perhaps a bit cleaner than was typical. I noticed that the large wrack of weapons that usually stood by the training ring was empty. I swallowed a lump in my throat, hoping they hadn’t needed those weapons for anything more than practice.
“Well, now what?” I asked the room at large.
The silence that answered me was deafening. No one seemed to know what to do, including Ambrose, who’d I’d expected to invent another plan on the spot.
With little else to do, we moved to sit at the deserted bar where Cross, Scion and I had once sat planning how to capture Ambrose. A mostly silent hour later, we’d still not come up with a new plan.
I massaged my temples, feeling discouraged. I’d assumed that the jewel of Inbetwixt would be the simplest to retrieve—given that Cross possessed or at least had knowledge of every treasure in the city. Without his guidance, however, the city seemed enormous, and the task in front of us even more so.
“We could visit the Lord and Lady of Inbetwixt,” I suggested half-heartedly.
“No point, love. They don’t have the jewel anymore.”
“Maybe they know who took it?” But even as I heard my own words, I realized how stupid a suggestion that was. There was only one thieve’s guild in the city. If the jewel was stolen, either Cross had it somewhere or he’d sold it. Without him here to ask, there was very little we could do.
Scion glared at Ambrose, his lip curling in disdain. "That’s it? You’re out of ideas so easily?”
Ambrose set his jaw, looking like he was doing his best not to hit Scion.
I pinched the bridge of my nose and closed my eyes in frustration. I didn’t know why I even cared. It wasn’t my concern if they liked each other, or could even stand to be in the same room. Still, they’d been inexplicably getting along so much better for the past few days that I thought we might be on the verge of a real truce. Apparently the chaos of last night had put an end to that as quickly as it had begun.
“Does Cross have a vault?” I blurted out, more to interrupt the tension than anything else. “Perhaps if he stashed the jewel somewhere nearby we wouldn't need his help to find it.”
“That’s a good idea, rebel.” Scion swung around on his stool to face me. His expression was perhaps slightly guilty, as if he realized that all the fighting was starting to get to me. “The only problem is I have no idea where it would be. There are thousands of miles of tunnels down here, and half the doors are hidden in the rock.”
“I remember,” I grumbled. “When we went through the sewers the last time we were here, I never would have been able to find the door without someone pointing it out.”
