Guild Of Zeroes

Chapter 26

Quin nearly spat their tea across the table. "No way," they said. "I took his arm off and ran him through."

"I remember," I said. "I was there. I don't know how, but he lived. Seemed pretty damn smug about it too."

Quin leaned forward, resting their elbows on the table and hanging their head in their hands. "Who the fuck can do that? He should have bled out within a few minutes at most."

Mouse took a book off the top of his stack and flipped it open. "We'll have to double check next time. Incinerate the body or feed it to a dragon or something."

I rolled my eyes. "Mouse, you know there hasn't been a dragon here for the better part of a century."

"Hyperbole," said the wizard. "The point is, we feed him to something big enough to crunch him up into little pieces. Let's see him come back from that."

"I don't know about you two," said Quin. "But I'm hoping there won't be a next time."

Mouse looked up from his book with a long sigh. "There will be."

"How do you know that?" asked Quin. "I'm sure he got what he wanted from the Tower. This has gone beyond us. It's time for someone at the Phoenix Roost, the Blackstone, hell even Ren's Hollow, to take the lead here. Anyone is a better choice than us."

Mouse reached down the collar of his robes and drew out an amulet on the end of a slender chain. "But only we have the key he needs."

I shot the wizard a scowl. "What in all hells are you talking about?"

"The seal he took from the Tower before he tried to kill the two of us. It's the family crest. Whatever he's looking for, I have the only way to open the vault it's in. I hate to say it but we're on borrowed time here."

"This didn't seem like something you should have mentioned earlier?" I asked.

Mouse shrugged. "For the past little while, we've been busy keeping you alive, and before that we were trying not die, and before that we trying to keep Quin alive, and then we're back to trying not to die again. I haven't exactly had ample free time to think about it."

"Point taken," I said. "So this vault, what's in it?"

Mouse ran his hands through his hair and looked up towards the ceiling for a moment, thinking. He looked like he was trying to peer into his own brain to find the thought he wanted.

"I'm not exactly sure," he said. "We had a lot of ancient stuff from the Empire, the Wars of Collapse, the Dark Times. My great-grandfather had a soft spot for history and nearly spent the entire family fortune on antiques and old relics. He filled a whole tower full of them, and then the library that cataloged what everything was burned down. We have a whole tower filled with mysteries."

Quin let out an acidic bark of laughter. "Well if that doesn't scream 'we have too much money' I don't know what does."

"Look, Quin," said Mouse. "If I could have gone back in time and stopped him from buying all that garbage in the first place I would, but I can't change the deck now. We just have to play the cards we've been dealt."

"Could always sell." Quin waved a hand at the few people milling around behind us in the tent. "I might know a trader or two here that could make that happen."

Mouse tucked the amulet back into his robes. "You're not the first person to have that idea. It didn't end well." He grew distant, staring off into the middle distance, lost in memory. "Not in the slightest."

I reached across the table and put a hand on his arm. "It's not a weight you have to carry alone. We're here if you need it."

Mouse nodded and blinked away a tear. "I know. Maybe some other time. For now, I think I'd like to spend some more time with the books. Focus on work, you know? There has to be something written somewhere that will point us in the right direction."