We find proof of the rumors Koen overheard in no time at all: A dead body is splayed out in the middle of one of the first rooms we come to, his body stiff and oddly contorted against the cracked, dirty floor.
On his crookedly bent arm, I see the familiar Ashwalker symbol.
His face is blackened and swollen, but his features remain clear enough to tell me he was young—eighteen at most—though I don't recognize him. Probably from one of the guilds farther north of here, in the Silverbank region; we don't cross paths with them often, but more of them have been encroaching into our routes as of late, since many of the cities they used to service have been completely abandoned.
I have mixed feelings about that encroachment. In the beginning, our work was as much about providing a lifeline for the struggling kingdoms as it was about earning coin to survive. But as more cities fall and desperation rises, it's hard not to see other Ashwalkers as competition for dwindling opportunities. My parents cautioned against that kind of thinking—warning that we'd need each other more than ever as things got worse.
But I often wonder what they would have thought about the way things are now, had they survived long enough to see it.
Beside the fallen Ashwalker is a leather satchel, its flap hanging open. Carefully, after adjusting the protective cloth across her face, Briar kneels and pulls this satchel toward her, delicately shifting through its contents.
“Well, this is convenient, at least,” she remarks, holding up a bundle of sealed documents tied with string. “He was definitely one of the previous hires Koen mentioned. And it looks like he's done the work of gathering the records for us.”
I frown, my focus still on his gruesomely twisted body. “Poison, you think?”
“Most likely.” She takes an instrument from the bag slung across her chest—a small copper disc. In its center is a glass chamber filled with a liquid that changes color based on what's in the air. It's one of the many tools Koen's uncle insisted we take with us when venturing into this city. I'm not entirely sure how it works; I only know the color shifts when it detects dangerous vapors or other lingering effects of dragon magic.
Briar studies it for a long moment. “Nothing seems to be in the air of this particular room, luckily. Must have been extremely concentrated in whatever vault he got into, though…probably one of the underground chambers.”
Even so, I still don't lower the scarf wrapped across my face; if nothing else, it blocks out the horrible smell of decomposition. I swear all of my other senses got stronger when I partially lost my vision, and I'm really wishing that wasn't the case right now.
Pressing the scarf more firmly against my nose, I putsome space between myself and the body, taking a moment to study the names and declarations engraved into one of the nearby walls.
Cracks split through many of the etchings, rendering them unreadable, and I have to kick aside bits of stone and plaster dust to reach others. The grime that soon cakes my boots makes them feel oddly heavy, as if I’m trying to lift up the entire fallen city with every step I take.
“Wonder what happened to the other Ashwalker Koen mentioned?” I muse.
“No telling,” Briar replies, pushing the papers back into the satchel and tossing it over her shoulder as she stands. “But I'd rather not stick around and investigate further.” Giving the satchel a pat, she adds, “It looks like everything we need is in here.”
“Seems too good to be true.”
“It does. Then again, I think we’re overdue for some good luck.”
Even though I had the same thoughts about our luck last night, I find myself hesitating now. There’s a growing unease in my gut that I can’t seem to shake. “It feels wrong to just take things, doesn't it? To leave him here to decay after he did most of the work?”
She gives me a bemused look. “What do you want to do? Shall we send him his cut of the payment? Doubt he'll need it, but it's up to you, of course.”
I shake my head at her, taking a few steps back toward the body.
It's foolish, I know, but part of me wants to bury him properly. Or at least take some sort of token, some proof of his identity and existence—something I could send to his family, if I could track them down. Though there's a decentchance he has no family; so few with significant others risk this line of work. But I could send it to his guildmates, maybe.
I would want someone to do the same for me.
“I wouldn't get any closer to him,” Briar says, frowning, and I know she's right to warn against it. This kind of dragon-tainted rot is known to cause swelling in organisms that are subjected to it, blowing them up until their insides reach the point of bursting—a disgusting, violent event that I've witnessed only once, and hope to never see again. A single wrong touch could set off the putrid explosion.
Forcing myself to turn away, I follow Briar toward the exit.
She starts thumbing through the documents once more as we walk, double-checking things, comparing the contents to the list that was included along with the job offer. Our footsteps echo eerily in the empty halls. My skin prickles with the feeling that we’re being watched, though no one is ever there when I look.
Briar eventually slows, taking out a sealed envelope and holding it up in a beam of sunlight filtering through a dust-covered skylight. “I wonder what's in these envelopes marked as ‘secret’?”
“I don't know, but we're not going to find out. You break the seal on those and we'll be lucky if we getanyof the promised payment.”
“We might be able to sell whatever's inside them for double what the baron offered us.”
“And end up with a target on our backs, having pissed off one of the richest and most well-connected nobles on the southern peninsula? Yeah, great idea.”
She shrugs. “I'm just searching for more creative ways to line our pockets.”
