As soon as Kinfild took a deep breath and unveiled himself, Jace did as well. Neikir was far enough away that he didn’t have to stay veiled.

  “Alright,” Jace said, stepping out of the engine room. “We know where to go, and how to get into this dungeon, but…just have to wait until tomorrow?”

  “You must’ve really made that guy mad,” Lessa commented, pulling off her helmet and deactivating the voice modulator. “He came looking for you, at least. Not going to be so much of an honour duel if he kills you beforehand.”

  “I didn’t…I didn’t do anything too horrible. Just distracted him a bit.” He could explain everything once they were more relaxed. “He took it poorly, though.” Jace sat down on the back of the couch. “Didn’t think he would. Most other Wielders we’ve met haven’t.”

  “We also haven’t met many Wielders from the inner sects,” Kinfild said. “Not that the Brakamen are, but it seems like they’re making a push up the ranks.”

  “By inner sects, I don’t suppose you mean…center of the galaxy,” Jace said. The star-nations’ capitals and important worlds were rarely even in the perfect centers of their territory, let alone the galactic core.

  “Sort of,” Kinfild said. “The central zone, once the core of the galaxy and the home of the ancient Luminians and their galactic empire…is still occupied, and…” He walked over to the table and activated the holographic map. “The planets are rich in Aes and other advancement resources, so the truly powerful Wielders maintain their sects in the ruins of the old empire. But no nation truly controls them.”

  “The galactic core is still technically Starrealm territory,” Lessa said, pointing at the holographic border markers.

  “But the Starrealm lets its sects coexist, and in exchange they send a tribute of their highest-potential Wielders to the Wall.”

  “That’s where the Watchmen come from?” Jace asked.

  “Indeed.”

  Jace chewed his lip. “So, the most powerful sects are the inner sects, the ones that the Starrealm allows to exist in the galactic core?”

  “Less of ‘allowing’ and more that the sects have agreements with the non-Wielder politicians of the Starrealm. They benefit from the Wall, too, and they deign to honour the agreement.” Kinfild grimaced. “But make no mistake: the inner sects are the true power of the galaxy, and they’re the major partner in any alliance, the ones who dictate the terms, the ones who can cut off an agreement at any time.”

  “I don’t suppose all the inner sects are dark-aspect, then,” Lessa asked.

  Jace shrugged. “All the Watchmen are.”

  “There are foul forces at play.” Kinfild shut off the map and leaned against the table. “But she is correct: there are many aspects of Wielders within the inner sects. Someone has been careful to only send dark-aspect Wielders to the wall, to corrupt and put the Watchmen out of balance.”

  “The Generous Hand,” Jace said. “Knowing what we know? He’s a person with great influence, and the Watchmen seem to be doing his bidding.”

  Kinfild nodded. “It’s likely, though I imagine there’s more to it that we don’t know. We’re up against the galaxy’s wisest and most powerful, and we cannot assume anything is an oversight. If we’ve thought it, then so have they. Do not think for one moment that you are smarter than them.”

  Jace nodded. “One step at a time. Dungeon delving.” He pushed off the couch and walked to the pantry, then pulled it open.

  They had some supplies—canned vegetables, dried meat, nuts, flour and grains, but not in large quantities. In the cooler, they had more, but they couldn’t exactly go lugging a fridge around with them, especially if this dungeon was anything like the dungeon on Maehn.

  “We’re going to need better supplies for delving,” Jace said. “We only have enough non-perishable food for a few days’, and we don’t want to use up all our supplies.”

  “There wasn’t much notice,” Kinfild mumbled. “But yes, we will need more supplies.”

  Jace tapped his foot within his boot. After the excitement of landing, he wasn’t exactly feeling in the mood to sleep, and a resource gathering mission couldn’t hurt. A little walk to calm himself down.

  “I’ll go.” He pulled open his backpack. Without the armour and scavenger garb, there was enough room inside for condensed ration packs. Someone had to be selling them in the city. “Got room.”

  “You’re not going out alone this time,” Lessa said. “By the Split, perhaps I can keep you from getting yourself in trouble.”

  “Then lose the armour,” Kinfild said. “Once you get into the city, you’ll blend in with regular civilians, and we don’t need the scavengers mistaking you for one of their own. Or worse, realizing that you stole it.”

  A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  “Are you coming?” Jace asked.

  “I figure I should stay back and hold down the ship,” Kinfild said. “Just in case those scavengers return.”

  “But tomorrow, we’re all going into the dungeon, right?” Lessa asked. “Or does someone have to stay behind?”

  “Once all the other small freighters start coming and going? There’ll be too much chaos, and no one will pay mind to a light freighter who’s under orders from Seik Tar himself.” Kinfild walked back to the boarding ramp and hoisted up his staff. “But until tomorrow, you two are on your own for gathering resources.”

  “We’ll manage,” Jace said. “Right?”

  Lessa shrugged, then began unbuckling the stolen scavengers’ armour and dropping the plates on the floor. “I can still carry stuff. We’ll be good.”

  “Then you’ll need money,” said Kinfild.

  Jace pulled open the front pouch of his backpack, where he’d been keeping a few copper coins within an inner pouch. They each had a hole in their center so they could easily be put on a string or a stick, but he didn’t trust that method yet. Strings broke easily, and where was he supposed to keep a stick of coins? No, better to just use the earth method of dropping them in whatever pocket suited them.

  He wasn’t the only one who did that, right?

  Either way, he pulled out a handful of copper coins and a single silver. “These should be good, right? Unmarked, useful on a world like this, where there’s no Starrealm influence?”

  “They’ll work,” Kinfild said. “Now go, before it gets too late and the vendors close down for the night.”

  Once Lessa had her armour off and returned to her plain tank top and trousers, they set off. She and Jace crept across the landing platform, then climbed up the ladder to the pier above. Jace paid close attention to his senses, so that if Neikir was anywhere nearby, he’d maybe notice something, but he wasn’t at the soul-circle opening stage yet, so there was no reason he’d notice anything. Except maybe spiritual pressure.

  But either way, as they ducked from crate to crate, moving in and out of cover, they approached the warehouses on the wharf, and the city beyond. Though it had to be midnight, neon lights still glowed in the streets, and holographic signs blazed on the rooftops or in alcoves.

  When they reached the end of the pier, they looked both ways to make sure the wharf was clear, then darted across to the gaps between the warehouses. They slipped through an alleyway, dodging debris and broken crates, then emerged on a walkway beyond.

  Most of the city’s walkways were stoutsteel, but old wooden remnants remained below, spanning between buildings like a crane’s trellis tower had been tipped on its side. Near the docks, the walkways were nearly empty so late at night, save for shadows in the alleyways. A cat with reptilian scales darted across the street, and a wild gysalemeer perched on the rooftops, sniffing them. When a patrol of non-Wielder scavengers marched down the street in the opposite direction, Jace and Lessa ducked into an alcove, and the scavengers paid them no attention.

  They continued along the walkways until the glow of the signs grew brighter, and until streetlights shone on the walkways, bathing everything in a warm yellow glow. Here, the walkways grew more crowded. Men and women of all sorts of species dipped between stores or took rickety stairways up to establishments on the buildings’ second or third storeys.

  The houses here were all wood and steel, with sparse windows and curved roofs, but at least they were clean, and nothing on the main thoroughfare was falling apart. Restaurants’ signs blazed neon, and holographic statues of dancing figures signalled the entrances to clubs. With everything on stilts, the only way the city could grow was up, and most of the buildings were at least four or five levels tall, with new attachments built on top of them, or on their sides, or hanging off the upper walkways.

  “Where would we find supplies?” Jace asked softly. “I think we’ve ended up in a restaurant district…of sorts.”

  Here, it didn’t seem like the scavengers’ occupation had changed much about the city—except for their presences. Well-dressed men on street corners handed out pamphlets to off-duty scavengers, and women sat on patios, wearing dresses with plunging necklines and lavish jewelry. They beckoned to any scavengers they saw.

  But to the residents of the city, the scavengers must have just been customers, like the miners before them. Less-shady establishments projected tiny posters on their walls, displaying advertisements for distant resorts near the equator, and a species of two-foot-tall mouse-human hybrids scampered across the walkways, shouting out prices for the restaurants they worked at.

  Ground-floor establishments still fried seafood in woks or grilled meat and baked bread, and the scents all wafted out across the street. His stomach gurgled, but they needed to save their money for supplies. They could eat something when they got back to the Wrath.

  Jace glanced back at Lessa. She picked up her pace and walked directly beside him. “The good news is that there’ll be food here. We can still find a supply store somewhere.”

  “Bad news?”

  “Lots of scavengers.”

  “Chances are, none of them will recognize us. Or me. The guys I pissed off are still at the wharf.”

  “You’d better be right,” she said. “By the Split, it smells good.”

  She glanced around, wide-eyed, taking in everything, and Jace figured he probably looked the same—though he hoped he was a little more reserved than her. And, he kept to the mission. Finding supplies.

  Finally, when they’d walked ten minutes through the restaurant district and still found no signs of a basic supply store. Jace pulled aside one of the mouse creatures. The little man wore a dark red waistcoat, and his pointed nose trembled—along with his round ears.

  “I’m not going to hurt you,” Jace said. “Just need to find a supply shop. There are some, right?”

  “Or some must have opened recently,” Lessa said. “With all the hubbub and dungeon stuff going on.”

  The mouse-creature’s eyes widened, and he pointed down the street, then to the left along a steep walkway.

  “Thank you,” Jace said, but the creature was already scrambling away, running back to the restaurant he’d come from.

  Turning to Lessa, Jace said, “I think we have our…uh, destination.”

  “What?” she asked. She was staring off across the street at a rooftop patio, where a bunch of scavengers stood, leaning on the railing, staring back. “What’s wrong?”

  “Let’s just keep moving,” Jace said. “I don’t get the impression we’re welcome here.”