Having now seen one of those carvings, and fuck-knows what in a vision, for the second time in my life, they had become something more of a priority in my mind. I asked Gruin about them—told him about them, rather—as we made our way out of the caves. Unfortunately, he was not very helpful.

  “Magic,” he grumbled, “bloody magic. I hate magic.”

  I blinked at that. It was news to me.

  “I thought your lot loved it, you’re always doing that…you know, steam wizardry.”

  His hammer was in my face a moment later, stopping just inches shy of touching the skin as it quivered with its wielder’s anger.

  “Say that again and I’ll feed you your own jawbone.”

  “Okay, sorry,” I raised my hands in what I hoped was a placating gesture, but seemed only to aggravate the Grynkori.

  “Bloody humans,” he grumbled, “always so eager to avoid dying…”

  He sounded disappointed, but I was far too tired to further pry into his madness at the moment.

  My body throbbed for more than one reason, and surprisingly it came mostly from my flight down the tunnels. I’d not actually gotten hit in that second fight, but all the recent excitement had started ripping up muscles I didn’t even know I had. Now, with the frenzy of battle gone, the fatigue was mounting heavily enough that every step was a torture.

  “Your lot are so fragile, it’s a wonder you didn’t die out millennia ago,” Gruin grinned. Clearly he was enjoying himself, so I decided to enjoy myself a bit too.

  “That’ll be why you couldn’t chase me down back there then,” I shot back, “our natural fragility motivates us to run faster. Or perhaps it’s got more to do with your tiny little stub legs.”

  The bickering distracted me long enough to tolerate our walk back out of the mines, though it was halfway through that I finally thought to ask the obvious.

  “What happened to the others?” I frowned.

  “Ha!” Gruin grinned, “fucked off as soon as the first bout of fighting was done. I suppose it was too bloody for the poor little things.”

  I didn’t think I’d ever get over the fact that Grynkori not only seemed not to experience fear, but appeared to even intellectually fathom why another person might.

  We broke out into the daylight to find a great row of men staring at us. Most were miners, though it was almost hard to see that with the lack of characteristic grime clotting their clothes. Others were the mercenaries hired to do the job we’d almost died attempting, and those tiny few still uncounted, I knew, were the Overseers. All looked at us expectantly.

  They wanted us to say something, I realised.

  I glanced at Gruin, who currently had one sausage-sized finger about two knuckles deep in his nose, and realised he probably wouldn’t make a suitably impressive declaration on pain of death. So it was on me then.

  “The shygarin are all dead!” I roared, opting for simplicity. It was really meant to just make them go away, but I hadn’t been thinking, in my exhaustion and misery, about the implications of my wider situation.

  As far as these people were concerned, Gruin and I had disappeared into the mines after every other man still with us had emerged bloody, beaten and carrying the dead body of an ally. That was, like it or not, quite an heroic thing to do, and the reception it got should not have surprised me half as much as it did.

  They started cheering.

  A while later, once my initial shock had started to wear off, I was hastily escorted to speak with the Overseers, Gruin alongside me. It seemed the whole pack of them, at least the ones running this mine, were gathered up in one place, and I could practically smell the money on the air. Call it a family gift. Fortunately, though my sheltered upbringing had not imparted me with many gifts worth crowing home about, one of the ones I actually was confident in was handling rich old bastards.

  “We did what we were paid to,” I told the group, “now I hope I can trust all of you to hold up your end of the deal.”

  “Should do,” Gruin piped up, “I killed all the mercenaries they paid to subtly do us in mid-fight so they’d get out of it.”

  I blinked. That was…news to me. The bastards.

  “Do you deny it?” I swept my gaze across the men, feigning a strength I didn’t feel. As far as they were considered, I was a legitimately dangerous individual who’d just fearlessly killed a dozen monsters after voluntarily delving down into their underground lair to do it. I hoped that was enough incentive to have them not order me killed on the spot. Now that Gruin had brought up the attempted assassinations, my previous sense of safety was rapidly evaporating. Murder was on the air, and it was making me twitchy.

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  I grinned.

  “Of course we do,” one of the Overseers hurriedly answered, a thick weight of panic layering his voice, “this is all just a big misunderstanding—”

  —”misunderstanding, eh?” Gruin cut in, fingering his hammer as he did, “what are we misunderstanding exactly?”

  I did not actually want to turn this into a massacre—mainly because we’d lose—so I hurried in speaking up.

  “Of course it is,” I nodded, “you wouldn’t try to get out of paying us what we’re owed, would you? After all, everyone agrees it’s a fair price. Just look at your workers.” I nodded towards the miners at that, and they looked just as incongruously cheerful as ever.

  This was, essentially, the entirety of my bargaining power. If I tried to get what we wanted purely on the threat of two angry men retaliating physically, we would lose. These Overseers had enough hired thugs that there was no reason for them to fear Gruin and I for strength of arms, and if they focused on that fact we were fucked.

  Fortunately, and quite contrary to what I believed then, most men of property are idiots. These ones were no exception, and they lapped up the chance to weasel out of another problem using their wealth as instantaneously as a starving man might have pounced upon hot broth.

  “You will be fully compensated, naturally,” the one I took to be leader hurriedly answered, “more, in fact.”

  “How much more?” Gruin asked instantly, trying, and failing, to maintain a show of anger now that money was being mentioned. The Overseers looked at one another, seeming to have an unspoken conversation contained purely within their own minds. Merchants had a way of doing that, and I actually picked up a smattering of what was discussed. It wasn’t hard—mostly just greed.

  “Twenty grains,” the leader said at last.

  I actually missed a beat at that. Not because twenty grains was an unheard of sum for me, I’d heard plenty of it, but because having that much in my possession was a novelty even I hadn’t yet enjoyed. My father was as stingy about spending money for his sons as he was about everything else, and even in my time away studying at one university or another he never granted me allowances nearly so vast as that.

  “Each?” I pressed, aiming to consolidate the victory rather than dwell and let them regret handing it over.

  Eyes hardened instantly of course, the way only a merchant being asked for money could manage. I met those gazes and didn’t relent. We went back and forth for a bit, but in the end I was forced to ‘reluctantly’ concede that the sum would be split between Gruin and myself.

  I’d just about predicted this from the start, of course, but by giving them this victory I’d made the group far less torn on accepting the loss of their twenty grains in the first place. Another negotiating tactic I’d have to reluctantly thank dear old dad for later.

  Or would have, if the nasty fucker hadn’t kicked me out.

  After sticking around exactly long enough to receive our money, and literally sprinting to the nearest inn that wasn’t in one of the high-robbery zones so that we could semi-safely store it, Gruin and I did two things in a very specific order. We purchased about as much food as we could eat, both famished after so much high-intensity movement, and then we went to sleep.

  I ended up being the one who needed waking by the other.

  Gruin did so as nicely as ever, this time just lifting me cleanly from the bed and dropping me quite hard on my face. I lay there spasming for a few seconds, body having learned well over the last few days and, naturally, assuming I was under attack.

  “Bastard!” I growled, leaping to my feet and realising only by the time I’d already gotten up onto them how easily the motion came. I relaxed, moved my body experimentally and found it responding well and smoothly. There were still twitches, aches, but the bulk of my damage seemed gone.

  “How long have I been out?” I frowned, suddenly fearing days, even weeks had passed.

  “A while,” the Grynkori grunted, “close to a full day and night. It’s almost evening again.”

  That didn’t sound at all right to me, and I checked the brightness outside my window before responding.

  “I feel fine,” I frowned, “did you…Did you have a Thaumaturge heal me?” the thought wasn’t a pleasing one, and I was actually relieved to see Gruin scoff.

  “Don’t insult me with an accusation like that again, human.” His disgust actually reassured me somewhat. If I could trust one thing about the Grynkori, I supposed, it was his hatred of magic.

  Once I’d finished waking up and stretching my limbs—all of which remained as surprisingly strong and swift as when I’d first been forced out of my slumber—I was hit by a new sensation, the strongest one yet. Hunger. Apparently my body had been busy while it slept, because I felt like the giant meal I wolfed down before bed had already disappeared.

  Gruin was ahead of me on that mark, though, and the inn we were staying at prided itself on cooking facilities somewhat superior to the half-bar-half-kitchen of our last accommodations. I came down stairs to a table practically lathered with food, and all of it smelled delicious. Not that I’d have appreciated middling cuisine—weeks on the road had inured me to such things.

  I actually gave the Grynkori a run for his money as we both ate, and neither of us was finished filling ourselves until close to a full hour had passed. By the end of it I felt as if my body were heavier. Thinking back, it probably was. I must’ve eaten at least a tenth again my own weight.

  “First time in a while I’ve had a proper meal,” Gruin sighed. I saw him leaning back with a terrifying and unfamiliar expression upon his face, that I took long seconds to recognise as satisfaction. I supposed the sensation was alien enough to him that it was only natural it appear so wrong.

  “What is a proper meal for you, anyway?” I sat back, similarly satisfied though keenly aware that my body was not made to hold so much food at once. I couldn’t help it though. Something had me feeling empty and drained, hollowed out. I needed the energy, and I couldn’t digest fast enough.

  “Meat,” Gruin barked with a grin. “Lots of it. There’s these grubs you find under the mountains, proper deep I mean, and they’re just the fattest things you’ve ever seen. Oh, just thinking about them…” He grinned wistfully, “imagine larvae as long as your arm and thick as your leg.”

  I was imagining it, but doing so did not make me half as hungry as it seemed to him.

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