Vax stared at her; the artful hollows of his cheeks and bruised darkness beneath his eyes did little to mask his baffled expression. "You'd like to what?"

Vex tapped one quick-bitten nail against the top of the gem, then thought better of it when someone from the next table glanced over. Perfect prop though it was, she let the hunk of turquoise disappear into its usual home in the pouch at her side. "I'd like to hire us to steal something. Wake up, brother. I've got us a job."

In response, Vax made a sound somewhere along the lines of a constipated night-owl and took a long swig of ale from his mug. Vex watched him, waiting patiently, then kicked him under the table when he took a bit too long. He sputtered, swiping at his face with one threadbare sleeve. "Ow. Don't make me spill, it's not like we can afford another."

Unless she was very much mistaken, that was a glint of real annoyance in his voice. Good. "A job, Vax."

"I heard you the first time. But you giving yourself money isn't generally how this works."

"The gem, Vax. I'll sell the gem."

It took him a moment. She watched his mind's clockwork, rusted from a fortnight of inactivity, slowly grind back into motion. His brow furrowed, and she knew she'd finally got his attention when his fingers started tapping nervously against the table's edge. "You've had that gem for ages. You wouldn't even sell it when Trinket started eating us out of house and home, before he learned to forage for himself."

Vex was positively itching to pull the turquoise back out of her pouch, but there was no sense drawing unwanted attention. "I said I was saving it up for something important. This is it. I'd like to hire us."

Scratching at his shoulder, Vax stared up at the ceiling for a moment before looking back to her. His fingers took up their tapping again. "To do what, exactly?"

"To steal."

He sighed. "To steal what, exactly?"

"Well, that's part of it." She leaned across the table, lowered her voice theatrically; in spite of himself, he leaned closer to hear. "I'm paying for secrecy. I can tell you where, and I can tell you when, and I think I can even tell you what to expect in terms of security, though of course I bow to your expertise when it comes to drawing secrets from the seedy underbelly of society."

His lips twitched. "The seedy underbelly of society?"

"Why not? You're certainly looking seedy, anyway. When's the last time you bathed?"

"I'm not the one who spends all her time living with a bear in the woods." He shifted back in his seat, somehow dodging her next under-table kick. "Listen, Vex'ahlia, I appreciate the thought, but you don't have to invent an adventure to get me out of wallowing."

"Ooh. Look who thinks so highly of himself. Believe it or not, brother, this has nothing to do with you. If you won't take the job, I'll find someone who will." And damn it, how much longer would her voice take on that telltale quaver every time she raised it?

Vax curled back a little, rubbing his brow. "You're serious. Is it dangerous?"

She jutted out her chin, waited until he was looking her in the eyes. "Probably."

"And you're going to do it with or without me?"

"Definitely."

He thought a moment longer. "And for whatever reason you don't want to tell me what it is we're stealing?"

"We've kept secrets for the people who hired us before."

"I'm not arguing our history of terrible decision-making, Stubby." He extended one hand across the table. "I'm in. Of course I'm in. You've hired yourself a couple of thieves. The stories say they're experts in the realm of seedy underbellies."

She shook his hand and managed to keep her stoic expression in place for about five heartbeats before they were both laughing so hard that the barkeep suggested, cracking his knuckles, that the pair of them might find better use of their time elsewhere.

The town of Yellowseed was one of the many small settlements that had undergone rapid expansion in the wake of the dragon attacks along the rim of the Gladepools five years earlier, and was now populated mainly by those too poor, too opportunistic, or too stubborn to pack up and venture deeper into the Verdant Expanse or try their luck further along the coast in the capital city of Emon. A plethora of rickety houses and places of business, originally erected for the purpose of temporary shelter rather than longevity, were slowly but surely resigning themselves to their greater destiny; most of the facades of the huts surrounding the larger estates were slowly being rebuilt with stone and higher-quality wood. It really was a pretty little place, Vex thought, nestled up against the perpetually green foliage of the Expanse with the distant, jagged Stormcrest Mountains to break up the monotony of the horizon on a clear day. Pretty, but unremarkable. The perfect place to disappear for a few weeks after discovering that everything you'd ever cared for had been destroyed years earlier without your knowledge.

She settled one hand on Trinket's back, burying it into coarse fur, and watched Vax treading evenly a few steps ahead, the hood of his cloak flipped up over his head despite the pleasant weather. It was, in a strange way, reassuring to know that her entire world had been reduced to the things she could see before her eyes. No one could take Trinket away while he breathed so reassuringly under her hand. No one could take Vax away while he skulked ahead of her, in plain view. Even her pack and bedroll were nestled snug against her back at all times, comfortingly heavy. Sleep was still difficult, sometimes, knowing that the world would go on turning when she finally laid her head to rest, but in this moment she was secure.

Her smile grew as Vax stopped before a small building, balanced a moment on the balls of his feet, and finally turned to her, bowing with an exaggerated flourish. "Go for it, shit-kicker," he said, and she stuck her tongue out as she pushed past him to shoulder open the door.

The smell of the shop had become familiar to Vex in the two weeks they'd been living in Yellowseed; she had the sense that a lot of small things were sticking in her mind more than they would've before, like the recent reminder of life's impermanence was somehow making her more determined to commit all the little details to memory. The heaviness of dust and mothballs was covered over with a sickly-sweet perfume redolent of some sort of particularly pungent flower. The smell had originally made Vex sneeze uncontrollably—she'd never done especially well with scents meant to mask, accustomed as she was to pursuing more subtle smells in the forests around town—but she was gradually becoming used to it, starting to associate the tickle in her nose with the little surge of excitement that forced a bright grin on her face.

"Ciosa!" she called out, her voice only slightly more nasal than normal.

There was a low, heavy sigh from behind the counter, and Ciosa's head popped up over the edge of it, eyes narrowed. "Pelor preserve us. You again."

Ciosa was a small, slight girl around the same age as Vex, with a perpetually stern and humorless demeanor that extended to the precise, almost military cut of her thick black hair; she might have passed for closer to twenty if her skin weren't quite so pockmarked with distinctly teenaged acne. Now she watched Vex the way a military general might survey a battlefield, her shoulders visibly tensing.

"Ciosa," Vex said, more softly, leaning against the wooden counter on both elbows and eyeing the boxes behind it, full of things that glinted and glistened in the sunlight. "It's lovely to see you again."

With a snort, Ciosa slammed the lid back down on the box she'd been perusing and pushed to her feet. "Don't you try to sweet-talk me, Vex'ahlia. I'm still pissed at you for what you pulled with those rations."

"Those sad little expired rations my poor, starving brother and I purchased with the last of our gleaming coin? Surely you couldn't begrudge me that."

Ciosa stomped over to fiddle with a couple dusty books on a shelf; Vex recognized some sort of farmer's guide and a book about brewing potions. Nothing new there. "I checked our inventory after you left. They weren't in the least bit expired. I'm not even sure why I thought they were. You have this way of saying things that turn out to be completely false. I'm not entirely convinced you didn't use some sort of magic on me."

Vex put a hand to her heart. "I am hurt, Ciosa, appalled at the very suggestion—"

"Of course," Ciosa said, turning with another sigh. "My mistake. If you'd had the ability to charm me by means unnatural, I'm sure I would've mysteriously seen fit to give you the rations for free. Speaking of charming, is that your brother I see outside the window?"

Vex turned to see Vax standing at the window. He was making a point of scratching at his forehead with one middle finger. "I have never seen that scruffy kid in my life."

Ciosa crossed her arms. "Just so long as he doesn't set foot in this shop again."

"Like I told you, those vials merely fell into his pocket as he bumped up against the display case. An honest mistake. He feels terrible about it. May join a holy order to properly repent for his crimes."

"Uh-huh. What exactly are you trying to scam me out of this time, Vex?"

Vex leaned further over the counter. "I'm ever so glad you asked." With a twitch of her wrist, she revealed the turquoise gem she'd palmed from her pack, as though from thin air. "I'm here to sell."

Ciosa, true to form, took a little involuntary step forward, eyes widening. "Oh, that's lovely," she said. "Who'd you steal it from?"

Vex straightened up, tossing the stone into the air and catching it, watching Ciosa's eyes follow its trajectory. "Because I respect you as an aspiring businesswoman, Ciosa, I'll answer truthfully and not bother with any prevarication. This fine gem was stolen from the elven city of Syngorn. It's terribly rare and valuable. I shouldn't even be considering... oh, maybe I won't, after all."

Ciosa snorted, but extended her hand. "Let me see."

Vex pressed the gemstone into Ciosa's palm with a hesitation that wasn't entirely feigned; she really had snatched up the gem from Syldor's house as a final petulant act of defiance. It had never left her possession since then, had been a strangely comforting little talisman to touch whenever she'd wavered in her determination to keep running. But this was vastly more important. Had to be.

Her annoyance with Vex apparently forgotten, Ciosa came around the counter to lean right next to her, squinting at the gemstone through a jeweler's eyepiece. Vex stayed quiet and let her work, watching Vax through the window as, apparently bored with waiting, he walked over to Trinket and buried his face into the bear's fur.

"Why're you here?" Ciosa asked, finally breaking the silence without taking her attention away from the gem.

Vex pushed up to sit on the counter, dangling her legs. "You're holding the reason."

"No," Ciosa said, "I mean this town. You're clearly used to passing through this kind of place, and yet you've been hanging around."

"We'll be leaving soon."

"I can't say I'm sorry to hear that." The corner of Ciosa's mouth actually curled into a faint smile. "You're very entertaining, but you're certainly not making my life any easier. I know you only ever come by when I'm alone behind the counter because if my mother's here she kicks you to the curb."

"Is this the time you usually work? I really had no idea."

A muscle twitched in Ciosa's jaw, but her smile faded. "You said it as a joke, but you really are starving, the pair of you. Wasting away, somehow. I saw it before, when I was a little girl, in the days after the dragon came. I know what it looks like when some part of someone has decided to fade away. I know my mother's a bit of a difficult person, but if you need help I'm sure you could stay—"

Vex hopped down off the counter, heat rising to her face, shivering despite the stuffy warmth of the room. "What I need is to sell that gemstone."

Ciosa finally looked up, meeting her eyes, then nodded. "All right," she said. "I can do eleven gold and four silver for this. That's over a week of travel rations for you and your brother, purchased fairly, or more, the way you stretch the truth. You won't find a better deal."

"Fine," Vex said, and to her horror she felt tears welling in her eyes. "That's fine. I don't care. Just take it."

She stood, trembling, while Ciosa counted out a small coinpurse, then scooped it up without a word, pushed the door open, and started walking, ignoring her brother's shouts behind her. She didn't stop until she was well outside the town, until the grass sprang up tall and waving around her, until the quiet murmur of humanity had been replaced by the soft sound of wind in the leaves, and when she finally did stop it was only because her knees were threatening to buckle.

She reached without looking, found Trinket already at her back, and leaned into him, scrubbing the tears from her eyes with the heel of her hand. "I hate this."

"I know," said Vax, moving quietly to her side. "For what it's worth, I'm sorry about the gem. I know it meant a lot to you."

"It was just a thing," Vex said. "Just a pointless little thing. We needed the money for the job. We'll need it to leave here afterwards, maybe get all the way up to Emon. It's fine."

Vax, hesitant, rested an arm on hers, and she leaned into the too-sharp, angular plane of his shoulder with a sigh.

After a time, she found herself saying, softly, "Do you ever wonder, if we'd come back and found her before... do you ever think she might have refused to take us in?"

"No," said Vax, leaning back to look her in the eye. "Of course not."

Vex sniffed a laugh at his affronted look. "D'you think it might've been easier if she had?"

"Hey. I thought I was supposed to be the mawkish one. You're the mastermind with the grand plan that'll get us super rich or whatever. I'm just the hapless kid pushed unwittingly into a life of crime by his scheming, conniving sister."

Vex shoved him, Vax shoved back, and soon enough Trinket put an end to the wrestling by sitting on both of them. Out of breath from both laughter and exertion, Vex looked up at the blue of the sky past the fur that currently made up the greater portion of her vision and said, "We'll go tonight. All we need is some quality rope. It's a quick job, in and out through the roof. I'll keep lookout while you break in, and we'll both grab the target once I've found it. Trinket's on distraction duty. Coin's to get us out of town fast and grease some palms if things go south."

"Are you going to let me in on the location," Vax wheezed, "now that I've proven myself a trustworthy employee?"

"Trustworthy is a strong word." Vex coughed and shoved at Trinket, who shifted his weight only a little. "Thackeray. Ulla Thackeray's estate."

"I have no idea who that is." Vax was silent a moment. "How do you know who that is?"

"I've been talking to people, brother. You might try it sometime."

"You're the one who hired me expressly because I'm good at skulking around in the shadows. So who's Thackeray?"

Vex sighed. "She's an eccentric scholar. Lives in one of the big three-storey buildings near the center of town, you know the ones. Has a curiously well-guarded estate, but there's a door that leads to the roof. The construction crew I was drinking with the other night say she's going to be building a garden up there. And word is there's some big, central room right down below it where she keeps her valuables."

"That does sound too good to pass up." She heard Vax struggle against Trinket's bulk again, then give up with a groan. "Might need a better set of picks if that's our entry point."

"Really?"

"No, I'm just trying to steal more money from my sister moments after she gave up something important to her. Yes, really. I'm assuming time will be of the essence, and my current set is going to be something of an impediment to that goal if they break apart in the lock."

She huffed a breath, managing to extract her left arm from under Trinket. "I thought you'd been practicing with the locks and such."

"I'm really very good at it," Vax said, his voice climbing an octave in his indignation. "I'm just limited by my tools."

"All right, all right." With her newly freed hand, Vex counted off on her fingers. "New picks, a couple lengths of rope, a quick bribe to have someone wait for us with a stealthy wagon bound for fuck-knows-where the moment we're done. That's all your kind of thing." Trinket snorted. "And I'll go ahead and pick up a nice fish pie for Trinket as a reward for his part in all this. So much for our new windfall."

"I swear I won't ask again if you say no," Vax said, brushing off his tunic after Trinket had finally stepped off them, apparently mollified by the promise of food, "but will you tell me exactly what it is we're stealing?"

Vex opened her mouth, hesitated, then shook her head. "Like I said, I'll know it when I see it."

"Okay," Vax said, simply. "Meet you back at that shithole tavern by sundown?"

"Sure." But they stood in silence a moment longer, as though frozen in place. "We're only going to be apart a few hours. This is ridiculous."

"Yeah," said Vax. "Yeah, it really is."

Vex sighed, heavily. "When do you suppose it stops feeling like this?"

"Probably around the time one or both of us stops breathing." With a strained half-smile, Vax raised a hand in farewell, flipped up his hood, and started back to town.

Vex watched him go until she lost sight of him behind a couple of trees, then scratched Trinket's neck. "All right, darling, let's go over the plan for tonight. You're going to be wonderful."

"Fucking hells!"

"It's a bear! Why is there a motherfucking bear!"

"Oh gods, do you think it could be rabid?"

"It's a fucking bear, Will, who cares if it's rabid?"

"Fuck off, bear!"

"Only my Da said the rabid ones'll just bite you and the sickness'll make you wish you was dead."

"That's bullshit, Will, what's worse than death?"

"The sickness is. Says my Da."

Contemplative silence, broken at last by a low rumbling growl and another round of high-pitched yelps.

Vex leaned over the edge of the roof to grab Vax's hand and help haul him up beside her, grinning in the moonlight. Trinket's distraction-making abilities really were coming along nicely. She'd been worried at the sight of the three armed guards marching the perimeter of the small estate, but they seemed entirely engaged by the curious bear nosing up to them, and nervously good-hearted enough to keep from shooting him on sight with their crossbows. As if they could hit such a quick and clever buddy in the dark anyway.

"Kind of nice to use a rope that doesn't cut my hands to ribbons for once," Vax said, giving the rope over the end of the roof a firm tug to test its strength; it would be their point of egress as well, assuming Trinket managed to keep the attention of the guards to the front of the manor. The rope was spun clambersilk imported from Marquet, according to the dealer Vax had met, which meant that it was almost certainly an imitation imported from a handful of miles down the road, but it served its purpose well: even hauling themselves up with their limited climbing experience, their hands had stuck to the rope as though fastened by paste, and there weren't half as many heart-stopping, palm-tearing slips along the way as they might've otherwise expected of a climb this long.

The roof of Thackeray's estate was a mess of supplies promising the construction project to come; bags of sod lay alongside stacks of wood, and someone had been industriously applying a shiny lacquer to a couple of benches. "Rich people are so weird," Vax whispered as they picked their way cautiously across the roof. "Why in the fuck would you build a garden on the top of your house? It's not like there's any shortage of gardens on the ground."

"I think it's lovely," Vex said. "A place you really know you can be alone. I mean, look at all the things lying about up here. Probably worth a lot of coin, but they're all just out under the open air because everybody knows no one's foolish enough to try stealing it. That's a real luxury: privacy and security under open air."

"Doesn't mean she didn't lock the hell out of this trapdoor, I bet." Vax snorted, finally crouching down next to the trapdoor in the center of the roof. "Besides, you're weird, too."

"Hey," Vex said, "don't forget who's paying your salary, smart-ass."

"Less ball-busting, more looking out for people who want to kill us?"

Vex winked, Vax grimaced, and she moved back to the edge of the roof, slowly drawing an arrow from her quiver. The guards were now gathered around Trinket, and it took her an alarmed moment to realize that he'd just flopped over onto his back and was accepting a cautious series of belly-rubs.

The house itself seemed quiet; they'd waited to move until all the visible lights in the windows had been extinguished. Vex bent down, feeling a little foolish, and pressed her cheek to the wood of the roof, listening for any signs of movement, then went back to the edge, squinting in the dim moonlight. She remembered, without warning and with such vividness that it made her stumble back a step, that she'd once stood atop a tall hill in the night with her mother at her side, that she'd been laughing in the dark and describing all the things she could see that were obscured to her mother's human vision. She'd felt so clever, so special, caught in the spotlight of her mother's gentle awe and amusement.

In Syngorn, the elven kids had taken pains to measure out the exact limits of her half-human vision in the dark, to teach her exactly where those boundaries lay. She hadn't felt so special, then.

The click of the lock jolted her out of the memory, heart hammering, and she whirled to see Vax grinning at her. "New picks are pretty great," he whispered, slowly lifting the hatch of the trapdoor. "This was a tricky one."

"Show-off," Vex whispered, moving alongside him. She nudged him back and leaned down, ducking her head into the trapdoor.

The last embers of a fire in a grate provided all the light in the room, more than enough for her to see clearly. This particular room really was a straight shot down to street level, three stories mainly comprised of empty, lofty heights, with a small series of shelves scattered haphazardly across the ground below. The trapdoor butted up against one of the walls of the room, and a rope ladder hung against that wall, granting access all the way to the floor.

"D'you see what we're looking for?"

Vex withdrew from the trapdoor, frowning. "It's a weirdly empty room, all right. No windows, all interior. Rope ladder leading down the side of the wall, some shelves downstairs. It must be somewhere down there."

"Listen," said Vax, "let me scout out ahead—" He raised a hand to forestall her protest. "I'm not being brave, I'm wanting you up here nocking an arrow, ready to shoot anyone who tries to cut me down. Once I'm on the ground, I can watch for you, but you're a lot better at a distance than I am."

Vex felt something twist and writhe in her gut. What the hell was she doing? "This was a bad idea," she said. "Vax, I don't... I'm sorry, I don't know what I was thinking. This is putting you at terrible risk, and—"

"You said it was important," said Vax, with a gentleness that just made the thing in her gut twist harder. "We need the money."

"It's... Vax, there's no money here."

"Whatever it is we're after, then. I trust you when you say that it's worthwhile. But we can leave if you think it's not." He cocked his head to one side. "Stubby, trust me when I say that I know how to accept reasonable risk by now. We're in this together. We agreed. We made a promise. Is it important?"

Vex bit her lip so hard she tasted blood. "Yes," she said, at last.

"All right, then," Vax said, and eased himself down onto the rope ladder.

Vex shook herself, breathing hard, and nocked an arrow, leaning awkwardly to sight down past Vax's swaying form slowly descending in the darkness. No signs of movement. Somewhere on the other side of the building, she heard a series of worried mutterings indicating that Trinket was switching back from cuddly to maybe-hostile in order to keep the guards engaged.

Vax was about a quarter of the way to the ground when the trap went off.

All she saw from her perspective was a small flash of light to either side of the ladder, a flicker of some runic symbol, and then Vax gave a heavy sigh and slumped against the ladder. Vex was already shoving her bow over her shoulder, already reaching for the ladder, when his grip on the rungs went slack and he tumbled, horribly limp and still, to land with a sickening smack on the ground thirty feet below.

"Vax," she yelped, only half-whispering by instinct. "Vax!"

He'd made no attempt to catch himself and now lay sprawled in a limp tangle of limbs at the foot of the ladder.

She'd know, she thought, over the thrumming of her heart in her ears. She'd know, somehow. Surely she'd know.

"Vax!" she called, louder this time. Would the trap do the same to her? She gripped the edges of the rope ladder, slid down a few rungs, experimentally, and stopped just above where the runes had been glimmering, eyes filling with reflexive tears at the burn of the thick rope against the palms of her hands. "Fuck," she said, and craned her head back, looking for any sign of movement, any sign of—

"Damn it," she muttered, and slid past the runes.

It took her a moment to realize she'd made it past them with no effect—apparently Vax had triggered a one-time trap—and another moment to realize she was doing an extremely thorough job of flaying the skin from her palms. She had to stop twice more on her way down, slowing her slide just enough to make the pain bearable, and she finally jumped off the ladder when she was still four or five feet up, stumbling at the hard landing into a crouch next to her brother's motionless body.

"Vax," she said, grabbing at his shoulder. His eyes were closed, his breathing steady and slow. He looked for all the world like he was asleep, except that one arm was bent at a strange angle beneath him and blood was seeping steadily into the sleeve of his tunic. She slapped him gently on the cheek, then slapped him again with the force of her panic behind it, leaving a smear of blood on his face from her torn-up palm; no response. "Fuck," she said, with feeling. "Fuck fuck fuck." There was no way she'd be able to manhandle him back up that ladder. There was—

There was a voice, growing louder, directly outside the room's single door that lay right in front of her. Loud footfalls. Lantern-light flickered under the door.

Vex stood over her brother and nocked an arrow. She felt like she should be shaking, like the whole world should be trembling around her, but the draw of her bow was smooth as she aimed at the door, the set of her jaw was steady, her breathing was slow and careful.

When the door swung open before her, she bellowed, in a voice that echoed and boomed through the empty space of the room, "Back the fuck up or I'll take your eye out!"

The musclebound guard now looking her in the eye raised his crossbow, but someone behind him said, in a thin, reedy voice, "Hold."

"Get out," she said, and couldn't keep herself from glancing down to check if Vax had moved at all in the commotion. "Put your weapon down and get out. I'm warning you."

"She's warning you, Rylan," said the soft voice again. "You should probably put your weapon down."

"She's not gonna fire," Rylan muttered, so Vex snarled and loosed an arrow into his shoulder.

He stumbled back, stunned, then growled and took a step forward, raising his own weapon before she could fumble for a second arrow.

Behind him, the door pushed open further, and a hand reached past Rylan's bulk to shove the tip of his crossbow down to the ground. "I said hold."

Clumsily, with her bloodied fingers, Vex drew out another arrow and nocked it. "I'm warning you. Get back."

"He's already put his weapon down, for Pelor's sake. You've sent a pretty effective message straight into his pectoral. Let's have a more civilized conversation." The woman standing behind Rylan pushed past him impatiently—he gave a affronted yelp when she patted him on the shoulder—and padded into the room, sweeping a lantern out in front of her.

She was tiny, frail, and looked older than anyone Vex had ever seen; humans aged relatively quickly, but this one seemed impossibly ancient. Her thin white hair was drawn up in complicated braids, her skin looked like it had been drawn thin across a ragged structure of bone, but her dark eyes were quick and alert. She was also wearing a threadbare nightgown and a pair of slippers, and appeared to be carrying no weapons. "Hi," she said, setting the lantern down on a small table. "Any particular reason you're in my house in the middle of the night?"

Now her legs were trembling in earnest; Vex crouched a little lower to steady her stance. "What the fuck did your trap do to my brother?"

The woman—Ulla Thackeray, Vex presumed—made a point of glancing past Vex to the body at her feet. "Sleep spell," she said. "Rather potent one of my own creation. Tends to work more effectively than an arrow or poison darts, especially if the victim is up on the ladder when it triggers."

Fucking magic. So much for unarmed. When Ulla took another step forward, Vex shifted so that the wandering tip of her arrow was pointed directly at her throat. "I wouldn't do that. Just tell me how to get out of here and no one has to die. He's hurt."

"Looks like a badly broken arm. Poor boy," Ulla said, clicking her tongue, but she stopped walking and raised both hands in front of her. When Rylan growled a warning, she sighed. "At the risk of repeating the mistake of the last person to utter this phrase in this young lady's hearing, she's not gonna fire, Rylan. Calm down. Why are you here, girl?"

Vex glanced over, cursing when she realized Ulla's sidelong walk across the room had effectively left Rylan out of the line of fire; Vex couldn't aim at him without completely losing her bead on Ulla. A nervous laugh bubbled from her lips. "We're robbing you, darling. What does it look like we're doing?"

"A lovely job of it," Ulla said, glancing up the rope ladder to the open hatch beyond. "I'm a little surprised you've gone to all this trouble. I suppose the loud noises I've been hearing at the front door are your distraction?"

Vex set her lips in a scowl.

Ulla shrugged. "I can't help wondering why. This is a very strange room for a couple of young, clever thieves to shake down, especially given that my parlor has several valuable jewelry boxes within reach of a window. Why here?"

For the first time since she'd dropped into the room, Vex glanced around. She could see five shelves, a couple of comfortable chairs scattered among them. On the shelves were...

"Books," she said, softly, her arrow drifting slightly toward the floor. "This is a library."

"You sound surprised." Ulla took another step forward, and when Vex didn't whip her arrow back to the ready, she took another. "I don't mean you any harm; curiosity has always been my downfall. If you know anything about me, you know that much. Let me send your brother here back with Rylan. I have a physician on retainer given my, well." Ulla gestured at herself. "Advancing age has its disadvantages."

Vex laughed, a thin, nervous sound. "I'm not letting anyone take him."

"He's bleeding," Ulla said. "I've seen that kind of break result in the loss of a hand, when it was left too long without treatment. You understand that you're still something of a wild-card to me and I'd rather not bring another person into this room to be put at risk—Rylan may be an ass, but at least this kind of risk is what I pay him for."

Somewhere to Vex's left, Rylan snorted.

"Back up," Vex said, darting a glance down to Vax's motionless body. "Just, just back up and let me think."

Instead, Ulla stepped forward. "He's bleeding rather badly. If I give you my word that nothing untoward will happen to him, I'm happy to stay here under the threat of your rather formidable archery skills. Rylan will leave the two of us alone."

"No fucking way," Rylan said, but Ulla silenced him with a glower.

"Your word," Vex said, hating the quaver in her voice. "You're a magic-user. You're never unarmed."

"And if I wished you harm, I clearly could have done it by now." Ulla's voice was beginning to fray with an exhausted impatience. "I'd rather not have that boy die on the floor of my library because his sister was too frightened to—"

Vex loosed her arrow, this time aiming just over Ulla's right shoulder; the shot struck true, quivering as it landed in the richly paneled wood just behind the old woman.

"Well," said Ulla, blandly, "now you're going to have to get another arrow out before you can fire again. Rylan, take the boy to Ashby."

"I won't let you take him," Vex said, but as she reached for another arrow her limbs froze in place.

She would remember that moment for years, wake sweating in the night at the vivid after-image of being frozen in place, unable to speak, while Rylan walked right up to her and slung Vax's limp body over his good shoulder. Being frozen in place, unable to speak, while Rylan walked out the door, her brother's blood dripping onto the floor in their wake.

"I'm sorry," Ulla said, her voice soft. She walked up to Vex, still moving slowly with her hands raised in a placating motion. "I really am. And I really do mean it when I say he'll be all right. Why did you come here?"

Vex felt control come back to her limbs and gasped for breath, her bow clattering to the ground as she stumbled back a step. She couldn't stop looking at the trail of blood leading out the door.

Ulla sighed, and shuffled away to sit heavily in one of the overstuffed armchairs at one side of the room. Vex, watching her warily, saw that the woman was breathing hard, her forehead gleaming with sweat. "Are you all right?" she asked, and felt heat rise to her cheeks at the foolishness of the question.

"I'm old," Ulla said, with a smile. "These things happen. What's your name, girl?"

Vex set her jaw. She could make a break for the door, but if Vax was in the hands of that brute, what exactly could she do? "Vex'ahlia."

Ulla turned a heavy gasp for breath into a sigh, looking up at the high ceiling. "That's peculiar etymology. Neither human nor elvish, I think."

"My mother," said Vex, feeling the flush on her cheeks deepen, "thought it sounded elvish when she named us."

"Much becomes clear," said Ulla. "And the boy?"

Vex glanced down again at the spatters of blood on the wooden floor. "Vax'ildan."

"Vex and Vax. Good gods." Her breathing finally evening out, Ulla leaned forward, resting her elbows on her knees. "And I'm Ulla, although I suppose you already knew that. So why, Vex'ahlia, have you found yourself robbing an old lady's library?"

"I didn't think this was—" Vex looked back over her shoulder. "I really thought—" She shook her head, looked Ulla straight in the eye. "Around town, the people I talked to. They say you have weapons of some sort, powerful, magical weapons. They call you the Dragonslayer."

A series of expressions crossed Ulla's face: surprise, curiosity, and finally an amused bafflement that faded slowly to something that looked uncomfortably like pity. "Oh," she said. "I see. Port Udar? Byroden?" Vex flinched at the name, and Ulla nodded, slowly. "All right," she said. "Like I said before: much becomes clear."

"I want," said Vex, and looked down at the bow on the ground. "I wanted to find something I could use to track it down. To fight it. To kill it. It sounds so foolish when I say it out loud, but... but if it were a bow or an arrow, I could use it myself. My brother's incredible with a dagger. If it were a greatsword or a battleaxe, we could, I don't know, we could find someone—"

"You only just found out, didn't you?" Ulla said. "I recognize that particular brand of frustration. Whoever died did so when you weren't here to know about it."

"I'm so glad," said Vex, clenching her fists at her sides, "that everybody recognizes the way I act. It's so reassuring to know that I'm just playing out some script—"

"Oh, there is no script for grief," Ulla said. "Trust me. You'll find as you grow older that the impossible variety of grief just gets stranger and less predictable the more you experience it. The only comfort you will ever have in grief is finding some small measure of it that you might share with another soul. Forgive me if I offended you."

Vex blinked. "You lost—"

"—a wife and two grandsons. Port Udar, for me." Ulla sighed, heavily. "I was away, across the sea in Wildmount, studying. As I do. As I have always done."

"I'm sorry," said Vex.

"Me too." Ulla laughed, softly, staring back up at the ceiling. "Dragonslayer. Gods. I'm a scholar, Vex'ahlia. I study dragons. My field of study took on a particularly intense focus five years ago, when the dragon came." She raised a hand to indicate the volumes around her. "This is my library, all the knowledge I've accumulated over years of scholarship. These tomes are my weapons. I'm sorry to disappoint you, but I'm just an eccentric old scholar with an occasional interest in architecture. I'm barely even that, these days. My physician's been telling me I won't last the year for the past five years. Sooner or later she's bound to be right."

"But all those guards-"

"I've made some political enemies in my day. Old paranoias. That's all."

Vex sat down, hard, on the floor, then flopped back, staring up at the square of sky through the trapdoor above. "Gods, I've fucked this up. Vax didn't even know why we were coming here. I didn't think he'd come if he didn't have the weapon right there in front of him. And he was wasting away, I guess we both were, and I just wanted to do something, anything." Her bloodied hands were throbbing now with a terrible ache, in time with her heartbeat, and she knew she was babbling but couldn't quite stem the tide of words. "I sold my favorite gemstone for this."

She and Ulla were silent for a long, long while, both breathing hard. Then, slowly, Vex sat up. "Teach me," she said.

Ulla glanced at her. "What?"

"I, I can't pay you much, but maybe I can help out wherever you need me. I'm smart. I can read and write, I'm good with sums, I think I'd pick up languages quickly. But let me study with you. Let me learn some of what you know about dragons."

One of Ulla's thin eyebrows quirked up as though of its own volition. "You broke into my house, shot my guard, nearly shot me, and now you're asking me to teach you about dragons?"

Vex drew her knees up to her chest, smiling crookedly. "You have to admit, it's a novel way of getting your attention."

Ulla coughed a laugh. "You certainly don't lack for nerve."

"I don't," Vex said, pushing back up to her feet. "I really, really don't. Teach me something. Draconic language, how to track them, what their habits are, what their weaknesses are. Maybe we can find a way to end this thing, or at least make sure nobody else..." She swallowed, shook her head. "Please."

Before Ulla could respond, there was a knock at the door, somewhat tentative. "Come in," she called.

Rylan opened the door, pushing ahead of him a very pale, trembling Vax. Vex took about half a second to recognize this fact before she was sprinting across the room, flinging her arms around her brother, drawing him into a desperate hug.

"Ow," Vax whispered, and she felt him lean more than a little of his weight on her.

She backed up, reaching down to his arm, which was splinted and bandaged. "Are you—"

"I'm all right," Vax said. "You're—"

"Little fuck tried to stab me when he woke up," Rylan grumbled. "Would've skewered me in the gut soon as look at me. Lucky he was too fucked up to get a solid hit on me..."

"Brave Rylan," Ulla said, with a chuckle. "Hello, Vax'ildan."

Vax glanced over Vex's shoulder; she watched his frown deepen in confusion. "It's all right," she said. "How's your arm?"

"The, ah, the doctor back there said it was pretty fucked up but also said she was pretty fucking good at what she did, so I guess it all evens out. It'll be a week or so before it'll be back to normal, even with the potions she gave me."

"You scared the absolute hell out of me."

Vax smiled, weakly. "I guess that's what we do, now. Until one or both of us stops breathing, right?"

"I should say," Ulla said, pushing to her feet with a visible effort, "that I won't be around much longer. Your education will be slapdash at best."

Vax blinked. "Education?"

Beside him, Rylan muttered, "Education?"

"Shush," said Vex to the both of them, and turned to smile at Ulla. "I understand. But you know full well what's motivating me, and that it'll grant you some measure of peace along the way. The only comfort in grief is sharing it with another soul."

Ulla was silent for a long moment, stroking absently at one of the long braids in her hair, then said, "I'll expect you at midday tomorrow and no earlier, given how you've already disrupted the sleep of this household."

"I understand," said Vex. "I'll be here."

"You will?" said Vax.

"She will?" said Rylan, rather more pointedly.

"I recommend leaving by the front door this time around," Ulla said. "And Rylan, get up there and close the trapdoor. Your little rooftop garden project's given us enough trouble for the night."

"So fucking weird," Vax muttered, and Rylan shot him a poisonous glance before starting up the ladder, favoring his right arm on the way up.

"Thank you," said Vex. "I don't... I don't know how to thank you."

"You know exactly how to thank me," Ulla said. "Go on. I'll see you at midday tomorrow."

Later that night, after having collected Trinket from the exhausted and baffled group of guards who'd spent the better part of an hour alternately cooing over and flinching away from him, Vex and Vax walked out to the edge of town under the pale gleam of moonlight. Rather, Vex walked while Vax rode on Trinket's back, slumped over his broken arm, drifting in and out of sleep.

Eventually, Vax asked, his voice hoarse and dreamy, "What in the hell happened back there? Did we get what we wanted?"

"Not what we wanted," Vex said, "but maybe what we needed."

"She said something about teaching. What exactly will you be learning from that weird old woman?"

Vex rested a hand on his shoulder and pressed another to Trinket's haunch, comforted by their reassuring warmth under her abraded palms, and felt the edges of her world unfurling, hesitantly, beyond the limits of her vision. "She's going to teach me to slay dragons."