Tif was covered in sweat by the time she got to her parent’s alley. She hadn’t stopped to rest once the whole way, couldn’t if she wanted, her feet too eager to stop. Tif’s fa wasn’t around, which was odd with night coming on, but her ma was sitting on their pallet, back against the alley wall, sucking on the paper from yesterday’s meat buns.
“Ma!” Tif cried. “Where did you put the other tickets?”
Her ma popped up. “Why?”
“I won!” Tif said. She dropped her crate beside the pallet and pulled her ma into a tight hug.
“You won?” her ma said, jerking away from her so she could look Tif in the face. “You’re sure?”
“Yes!” Tif said, hopping up and down in her ma’s grasp.
Her ma let go of her and dashed over to the wall, long fingers working the edges of a brick set at waist height.
“You’re sure you’re sure?” her ma said, glancing from her work to Tif and back again. “It’s a lot of symbols to remember.”
“I remember,” Tif said. Her fingers itched to help her ma with the wall, but her ma was possessive about it, so she said, “I was up all last night looking at them.”
Her ma finally pulled the brick free, dropping it to the ground, and stuck her arm into the newly made hole.
“Square, triangle, circle, star, triangle.” Tif smiled broadly. “I’ll never forget that sequence.”
The words were enough to melt her ma’s doubt, and her frown was replaced by a look of budding wonder.
“We’re going to be merchant class…” she breathed.
“I’m going to be a knight!” Tif said, clapping her hands.
“A house in the mids.”
“A knight!”
Her ma’s frown returned, just a touch of it as she shifted her feet to get a different angle
“Ma…?”
Her ma grunted, reaching her arm in further, but didn’t answer. A terrible fear suddenly twisted through Tif’s gut. Uncaring of how her ma would react, Tif stepped up beside her. She put her hand into the opening, but no matter how far she stuck her arm in, all she could find was he ma’s hand and stone, no paper.
She turned to her ma, their noses barely an inch apart.
“Your fa must have…” her ma couldn’t even finish saying it, her eyes no longer meeting Tif’s.
The bee had turned into a hive under Tif’s skin, filling her with a frantic energy but also pain. She understood now why he wasn’t home. He was avoiding her, and finding him at this point wouldn’t help any.
“I’m so sorry--” her ma began, but Tif wasn’t listening.
She knew where she had to go.
***
Tif pounded on the door to a building in the lows that looked no different from so many others. When nothing happened, she pounded again. Eventually, a slat slid back revealing a pair of human eyes.
“Whaddya want?” a gruff female voice said. It sounded like the guard had been sleeping of all things.
“I’m here to talk with Awt,” Tif answered. She clenched her hands into fists outside of view, trying to keep the anger in her body and not in her voice.
“He’s busy,” the woman said. “Come tomorrow.”
“I need to talk with him now.”
“About what?”
Awt had made her promise to only come to this place if there was an emergency, but Tif couldn’t tell this guard about the winning ticket. If she did, anyone within earshot would be scrambling to get it. Tif thought she knew something else that would work though.
“About what he brought back from outside Lercel.”
The woman’s eyes flashed. “Don’t be talking about that where anyone can hear.”
“Then let me in.”
The guard slid the eye slat closed so quickly it snapped, making Tif step back. If the front door was barred from her, she’d just have to go through a window. The only ones she saw on this side were both two stories up, but the one on the left was near some empty barrels, and she might--
The door creaked open, revealing a robust woman wearing mismatched leather standing in a narrow entryway. Tif saw that where was a highstool a bit further in and a spear leaning on the wall beside it.
“He’s back there, in his office,” she said, pointing down a narrow hall that led further into the building. “Be quick about it, and don’t come crying to me when he bites your head off for bothering him.”
The door the guard had indicated was about ten paces away, and Tif made a line straight for it. She had to get the tickets from Awt before he sold them.
Tif turned the knob and wasn’t surprised when the door opened quietly unlike the front door had--even when Awt had only owned a thimble and some twine, he had kept both in as good condition as he could. It was a small room, dark, with only a single lamp burning on a small desk, which Awt hunched over.
“Who--!” he started, spinning around in his low stool of a seat, but stopped when he saw her. He instantly stood and took hold of her shoulders. “Tif? What are you doing here? What’s wrong?”
“Where are my lotto tickets?”
“Your...tickets?”
“The ones fa sold you. They’re what I spent my duel winnings on. You still have them, don’t you?”
Like usual, Awt’s expression didn’t reveal much, which left Tif’s heart thumping like mad in her chest. She had to be right about this. Her fa wouldn’t have trusted anyone else to sell them to.
Awt reached into the purse at his waist, a purse that was too small to hold tickets. Her heart shriveled, and she no longer wanted him to speak. If he did, her hopes would be gone with his words.
“Here’s the money I made from selling them,” he said, offering some flats to her.
It was like her legs stopped working and suddenly Tif was sitting on the floor.
Awt reached over her to shut the door and then crouched down beside her, the room was so small their knees pushed into each other.
“I won…” she whispered, looking at the floorboards as she said it, the details of the wood hidden in the darkness of the room. Tif couldn’t believe that the Aspect would bring her so close to her dream--her fingertips ghosting the edges of it--to then rip it away like this. She felt tears dribbling down her cheeks and raised her eyes to Awt’s. The lamp was behind him now, making his features even harder to make out than the floor.
“Don’t you have anything to say?”
Tif thought she saw a bit of pain enter his face but it might just have been a shadow.
“I’m sorry.”
“That’s it? You’re sorry? You had to know they were mine. Why did you agree to buy them? Or if you did, why not just keep them for me? We would be on our way to the vault right now if you had.”
He was quiet for a time, and Tif used the silence to wipe her face with her sleeve.
“It’s bad luck to be sure, but nothing worth anything comes that easy. I know a man who won the draw two years ago. He’s worse off now than he was before.”
Tif pulled as far back from him as the small room would let her.
“You never told me that…”
Awt shrugged, as if it was of no great consequence. “Playing the lotto made you happy, and I thought that if I kept working hard enough, maybe someday I could make it true for you, or at least part of it.”
His words were a cold dread that slipped into her, just as terrible as realizing that her tickets were gone.
“You don’t believe in me.” It was like her fa but worse. At least her fa told her what he thought. “You don’t think I can’t do it.”
“I didn’t say that--”
“You never say anything!”
He went to hold her shoulders, and she shook him off.
“You’re sad and angry,” he said, voice still frustratingly calm. “I understand, I do. Go home and I’ll be there as soon as I can. I promise.”
The door opened, bumping into Tif’s leg and casting light on where they both crouched.
“Boss wants to see you,” the guard said to Awt and then eyed Tif with a smirk.
“Thank you, Viv,” he said. The look he gave the woman was cold even for him, and when the guard noticed it, she started, closing the door with a grumble.
Door shut and the woman’s footsteps moving away, Awt sighed. Tif felt a jolt of anger. He seemed more put out by his work than their conversation.
He stood, and Tif did too so he could get out--she had plenty more to say to him before she left. As the two of them shifted around each other, she ended up beside Awt’s desk, the top of which was taken up by an old book with yellowed pages. The ink was faded brown and there was a type of ris pictured she’d never seen before. Not a full sleeve of the Gold geometries, but a single symbol drawn large. It looked sort of like an arrowhead but wider and with side points that curved inward.
“What is that?” she asked.
Awt quickly reached around her and closed the book. “Nothing,” he said.
“Nothing doesn’t need hiding that fast.”
“Nothing I can tell you about right now,” he amended. “Tif, wait here and don’t touch anything, please. Vak-Lav probably just wants to see me about what I’ve been researching, but it might be about you being here. I’ll come back to tell you it’s okay to leave as soon as I can.” He paused as if he was considering whether he should try to kiss her and then wisely decided to go, slipping out the door quickly.
Tif let out a breath--it felt like every one she’d ever had balled into a single exhale--and her shoulders sagged at the lengthy release. She used the last of her energy to flip the book back open. She thumbed through a few pages but couldn’t find the one she had seen before. Most of them didn’t have pictures, just crabbed writing, so small she was sure she’d get a headache from staring at it too long. She couldn’t read, and Awt had never told her that he had learned.
“Just another way we’re growing apart,” she said to Pep.
She plopped down on the stool and spun around. Despite the roil of emotions she was going through, Tif knew it wasn’t all Awt’s fault or her fa’s. They were both just doing what they thought they had to to survive. She didn’t like that Awt had kept his true feelings from her, not the barest bit, but looking at the last few years from his eyes, what had she done in truth? Hustled on the street playing a game, learned snatches of forms she had to stitch together on her own, and then put all her hopes on the lotto. Of course he thought he had to do it for her. She just had to prove him different, and they’d be right again.
“And I would have if they hadn’t both been so stupid.”
She brought her Pep hand up to her face and stared at the two dots for eyes.
“You’re right,” Tif finally said, “enough of that.”
Tif had seen too many people in the lows get caught on what ‘could have been’ or ‘should have been,’ so stuck they never got past it to anything better. She knew that looking back wasn’t the way forward; she had just been so close.
Tif sighed again but then forced herself to sit up straight.
“I only need to win two games to buy a second chance lotto ticket,” Tif said to Pep. “If I wake up early--” She stopped and shook her head. No, no more lotto. She needed to do something she could control. “...Sur-Rak told me to come back tomorrow,” Tif began again, “so she’s free before recruitment. If I show up, I bet she’ll play me, just to prove she can win.” The way Sur-Rak had stared at the final board nearly guaranteed it, but would she pay like she had before? If so, Tif could start saving for her first inch of ris.
Or maybe she should apply to the Das Guild. If they took her, she’d have to go through at least a year of training to become an adept, true, and another five after that to be a journeyman. But once she was an adept there would be official tournaments she could play in with prizes, some against other territories, which would let her make flats and travel like she wanted. Her parents could surely make it through that first year on their own.
Or maybe she should bet at the Lane like Yeq had suggested. After watching so many duels, she did have a good eye. And if either of her other plans worked, she’d have the money for entry.
Tif was standing now. Even if it took another five or ten years she would become an Aspect knight and then, eventually, the Archon. Even if she had to crawl every step of the way up the mountain from the lows, even if no one believed in her, she’d--
A low groan cut through her thoughts, and Tif immediately poked her head out of Awt’s room. The guard was snoozing against the front door, but the sound Tif had heard had been much deeper. She stopped breathing to listen as best she could and was reaching the point where her body was straining against the lack of air when she finally heard it again. Tif followed the sound further into the den, eventually reaching a split in the hallway. She waited, wondering if she was getting close to where Awt was, but she didn’t see anyone else or hear anyone talking; she supposed this was when the members of the underground were out doing their business or that this particular safehouse wasn’t used by many. The return of the groan took her to the left, but it was quieter this time, so Tif sped up, taking another left and then going down a corkscrew stairwell.
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At the last curve of the steps, torchlight flickering in the room beyond, a thought struck her: what if the sound was Awt, and they were hurting him for telling her the location of this hideout? Reflexively, Tif balled her fists and stood on her toes. She had been in a number of scraps over the years, and she knew the best way to win was to get in and out as quickly as possible.
She heard another groan, the softest of all, and knew she couldn’t wait any longer.
“Counting on you, Pep.”
Tif dashed around the corner only to immediately pull up short. It was a tall, wide room, with large stones making up the walls and floor. However, the feature that dominated the space was a cage, nearly as tall and as wide as the room itself, and in it was a cyclops. Tif had heard that men and women who lived in the Blood Plains were said to be hulking brutes and that the cyclops who also lived there were even bigger. This one was certainly large, three times the thickness of a man, but he was sitting on the floor, putting his head only a few inches above hers. His single eye was looking down at his bare feet, one of which he was massaging with his equally wide hands.
He barely glanced up at her entrance. “This is what captivity has brought Torgath to, rubbing his feet. In Torgath’s defense, your floor is much too hard. No one should have to stand on something so unforgiving.”
His voice was deep and filled the air with a pleasant weight--a weight Tif imagined drifted the words to the floor after they had touched her ears.
“Torgath thinks that’s why you wear those things,” he said, gesturing at her shoes. “But isn’t that backward? Protecting your soles against the paving and ground, when if you had just left things the way they were, you wouldn’t need to?”
This was far from the situation Tif had expected to find herself in, so found it easiest to start by answering his question. “It’s a mountain, it’s all hard.” Then she realized what else he had been implying. “And it’s not my floor. I’m not part of the underground.”
The cyclops, Torgath, groaned like Tif had heard before as his fingers worked what she assumed was a particularly tender spot. When he finished, he gave her a knowing look that took in their surroundings. “Circumstances suggest otherwise.”
“I was…” Tif crossed her arms. It felt odd to be defensive with someone who was caged, but after what she had just lost, she refused to be associated with the underground. “Visiting someone.”
"Ah, an associate but not a follower."
If not for his enormous size and single eye, Torgath looked rather human to Tif, with his parted grey hair that fell to his ears, his salt and pepper beard, and the lines on his ruddy skin that marked him as older than her fa. Even his single eyebrow reminded her of some humans she knew in the lows. He didn’t have any Blood ris from what Tif could tell, which was a disappointment--she had never seen it before and wondered what pattern it took.
“You're not what I expected from a cyclops,” she told him.
"A savage drenched in blood?” Torgath asked in that heavy voice of his. “Well, cultivating that image can ward off enemies, or perhaps it used to before Death fell on us all like a rolling storm, but it is hardly the whole of the Clan."
Tif had a million questions bubbling in her, but it would be selfish to start with anything other than the obvious.
“Why are you locked up?”
“You...don’t know.” His lone eyebrow arched in a way that Tif took to mean surprise.
"I told you. I'm not part of the underground.”
“Well,” he harrumphed, letting his foot go and leaning against the back wall of his cage, “if you join, don’t go back on an agreement. Vak-Lav doesn’t take kindly to that.”
Tonight wasn’t the first time Tif had heard that name, but she knew next to nothing about the supposed leader of the underground--whether they were human or keshe, male or female, or even one person or many.
“What agreement?”
The large cyclops smiled wanly. “Torgath didn’t have the stomach for what the Clan demanded and thought it would be better here. But when the moment came, Torgath lost his nerve again. It seems he’s just a terrible waffler, no use to anyone.”
Tif knew that when people danced around specifics they either wanted you to ask more questions or let it go. She hoped it was the first.
“What did your people want from you?”
“It wasn’t all of them, truth be told, just a few who knew. But those…” he trailed off, and the set of his face was enough to tell Tif that she had already reached a dead-end.
“Do you want me to get you out of here?” she tried instead.
This time his brow lifted into his wrinkled forehead, forming a crescent moon above his eye. “Just like that, you offer to help Torgath escape? Without knowing his crimes?”
“It’s the underground who jailed you, not Aspect knights,” she said dismissively.
“Ah, yes, your famed knights. Torgath has stood both beside and against them over the years. The stories he could tell.”
Tif leaned forward, eager to hear exactly that.
“Flinging their ris around from afar like cowards, almost as silly as shoes--”
“They’re not silly at all!” Tif said, feeling her face heat at the unexpected offense. “You’re the silly one, making me think you were hurt and saying your name so much!”
The cyclops seemed confused by her outburst, pausing to take it in and then waiting to see if she would continue. For her part, the anger drained quickly out of Tif, and she began to regret her words. She never would have yelled like that if she hadn’t been having such a dump of a day.
“Forgive Torgath,” the cyclops said when Tif remained quiet. “He should not have insulted your warriors. As for how Torgath speaks, he says his name so you may use it, which you haven’t done him the honor of. Nor have you given him the honor of letting him know your name. In this, you have been quite...”
Tif’s regret deepened. “Rude?” she ventured.
He nodded with an apologetic smile, as if he felt bad having to point out her misbehavior.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “Sorry, Torgath,” she added, embarrassed that she had made the same mistake again. “My name is Tif. And this is Pep,” she said, lifting her hand, palm side facing him.
His eye didn’t look there though, just right at her. “Ah, two names, so you are merchant class in this city. Greetings, Tif-Pep.”
Tif started to correct him, but then decided against it. People in Lercel had a hard enough time understanding, and she didn’t want him to think her combative.
The cyclops eased back, looking relaxed of all things despite his predicament. “Now that we are introduced, Torgath thanks you for your offer, but this is probably the best place for him.”
Tif hadn’t expected that answer nor did it make any sense to her. “How can that be?”
“In the Clan, touch is part of most conversations,” the cyclops said, answering her without answering as he had before, “but especially goodbyes.”
Goodbye wasn’t where Tif had wanted things to go, but even if she could figure out how to open the cage, it’s not like she could make someone of his size go anywhere he didn’t want. She wasn’t going to leave him like she had found him though, and she reached into her pouch.
“Here,” she said, holding out to him a thin slip of rice paper.
He squinted curiously, and with a grunt Tif could tell pained him, the cyclops slowly picked his thick frame up from the ground. Once he was on his legs and steady, he took the two steps needed to reach the spot Tif stood beside the front of the cage. With his advance, Tif felt a moment of worry--the bars were wide enough for Torgath’s arms to reach between and grab her if he wished. He was very large standing, like a mountain in his own right looming over her. However, she didn’t let her feet take so much as a shuffled step back. When she became a knight of one of the patrol divisions, she’d be interacting with other territories and their people and this was good practice for that. Tif also meant what she had said about not trusting the underground--Torgath probably just had some gambling debts or information they wanted and was being kept this way to sweat it out. At least that’s what she hoped.
He took the paper from her in two fingers, the small square looking even tinier in his oversized hand.
“It’s from a meat bun,” she explained, and when he kept staring at it, she added, “I haven’t sucked on it yet.”
“This is what you eat?”
Tif shrugged. “For tonight. I’ll make more flats tomorrow.”
He looked down at her with his one eye, still seeming confused. “And you give it to Torgath when you are so thin and frail?”
If he thought she was unhealthy, he’d think her parents were skeletons. “I’m not thin, I’m wiry. I train all the time to be a knight.”
“Do you?”
Tif could hear the doubt in his voice, and after getting the same from her fa and Awt, she found herself punching the air, just like she did on the street. She made the blows sharp, with tightly controlled twists of her fist right before the strike completed.
“Impressive,” the cyclops said, but to Tif the compliment sounded more placating than true.
She switched to kicks with her right leg: a front kick, a roundhouse kick, a side kick. She held the side kick when she finished, twisting her hips and lifting her leg until her sole was nearly pointed at the ceiling. She then changed to her left leg, going through the same series to show him she was equally strong with each.
Torgath was looking at her more consideringly now.
When both her feet were on the floor again, Tif took a breath and then jumped, doing her favorite and hardest series. It started with an airborne roundhouse kick with her right leg that was high enough to reach Torgath’s chest. She touched the ground only briefly with her back partially to him, leaping again and using the momentum of her turn to whip her left leg around in a spinning wheel kick, her heel even higher than her first kick had been.
Tif landed exactly where she had planned, a smile finally on her face again. There had obviously been more regret and frustration in her to burn off about the lost lotto ticket than she had wanted to admit to Pep.
“You must have a good teacher,” he said.
“All of them in the mids,” she told him with an even larger grin, which, of course, he didn’t understand. “I don’t have the money to train at a ris school in Lercel, so I listen and watch where I can.”
Torgath looked down at the paper he held and seemed to connect the parts of their conversation together.
“But I’m good, see?” Tif said. “You were saying about touch and goodbyes?” She didn’t want to stop talking to the cyclops, but if Awt wasn’t back already, he surely would be soon, and Tif doubted he’d be happy to find her here.
“Yes,” Torgath slowly agreed in his deep voice. “When you first arrived, since you were visiting, Torgath should have had his hands like this.” The cyclops held out his wide hands, palm up. “And you would then place yours atop them in greeting.”
Tif reached through the bars to do just that, aware that he could even more easily grab her this way but pushing that worry down. Strangely, he did the opposite, letting his hands fall before she reached him.
“And if Torgath was visiting you, the positions would be reversed.”
“What if we happened upon each other on the road?” Tif asked, thinking of her future travels.
“We’d place our hands like so,” he answered, putting his palms forward, fingers pointed out on both sides, almost like he was preparing to push against something.
Though she had to reach up because of his height, Tif tried to mirror the gesture, but again he pulled away before they met. He had said how important touch was to his culture, and yet he refused contact with her. Was it because she had waited so long to use their names?
“Of course, ‘goodbye’ is what is needed now,” Torgath said, lifting his wide arms above his head, touching his thumbs together to make a point. Unlike the last two gestures, this one was much too high for Tif to reach even jumping.
She looked up at him and his worn features. He was sadder than she had realized at first, and there was a heaviness about him that matched the weight of his voice. She didn’t think meeting her was the cause--the hurt seemed more well worn than that.
“Did you believe you were doing the right thing when you left your Clan and came here?” Tif said.
“What now?” he asked, looking at her between the gap in his raised arms.
“Did it feel right when you left your home?”
Torgath’s single brow drew down over his eye. “At first, yes.”
“And did you think you were doing the right thing again when you refused the underground?”
His hands lowered past his face as if he had forgotten about them, though he continued to keep them together. “Torgath supposes, but--”
“What more can we do in life than be true to ourselves?” His hands were now at a height Tif could reach but she didn’t move to touch them yet. “That’s what Pep always says.”
The cyclops stared at her, his frown deepening, and then pronounced, “You remind Torgath of his granddaughter.”
“I...do?” she said, suddenly trying to imagine what a cyclops version of herself might look like.
He chuckled at her reaction, his features softening. “Not in form,” he said, guessing her thoughts, “but disposition. You both have no trouble inserting yourself into the lives of others, whether they wish it or not.” Tif opened her mouth to say something in her defense, but seeing her about to speak, he added, “Though it may be where you are needed. Torgath would say it’s just the bullheadedness of youth, but that would cheapen the truths that reside in your hearts. Again, Torgath thanks you. He will think on your words.”
Tif didn’t know how to answer such a compliment, but because of him she did know now how to properly say goodbye. So, she reached out again and this time managed to touch his much larger palms with her own.
He jerked away from the contact, and for some reason her hands were tugged along with his, like their skin was connected, nearly making her collide with the cage. Tif would have voiced her concern, but she found her energy suddenly gone, and she slumped forward against the cold, iron bars.
Torgath’s lone eye looked down at her with a disconcerting mixture of worry and hunger, but then Tif thought she heard him whisper, “Aspect, perhaps you wish it so.”
Whatever had stolen her vitality returned it in a rush so quickly it left her dizzy. Their hands parted as if there had never been anything keeping them together, and Tif grabbed hold of the metal bars to keep herself upright on shaky legs.
“What, was that?”
“Are you alright?” Torgath asked, his heavy voice falling over her from above. “You look like you could faint.”
“I almost did.” Tif blinked, trying to rid herself of the dizziness but it clung like wet clothing. She shook her head, which didn’t help, and looked up at him. “Don’t you know...I thought you said something?”
Torgath watched her with his eye. “You must eat more than this,” he said, handing the piece of rice paper back to her.
Tif’s stomach didn’t feel any worse than the rest of her body, and she had gone much longer without food before. However, today had certainly been one of the most draining of her life--from the absolute high of winning the lotto to then guttering low of...not. It was possible things had caught up with her, just like it was possible that Torgath was hiding something from her. She may not be familiar with cyclops, but she knew the look of someone who didn’t want you to know what was underneath their tiles.
But if Torgath wasn’t willing to share, Tif wasn’t sure how to force him, especially not with her mind feeling like sludge. And she really did need to get back to Awt.
“Maybe so,” she managed to say, accepting the paper. “Goodbye, Torgath. Thank you for teaching me about your people.”
“You are welcome, Tif-Pep,” he said, staying where he stood. “Thank you for honoring Torgath and sharing with him your heart. If you continue to listen to it, he is sure you will end your days in a place much better than this.” The statement was said with such seriousness Tif nodded to him even though she wasn’t quite sure what he meant.
She was two steps up the corkscrew staircase when he called after her. Tif turned, still able to see him.
“Best not tell anyone we spoke,” he advised. “They might kill you if you do.”
Tif snapped upright, the dizziness she’d been suffering from finally pushed to the edges of her awareness by his words. She nodded again, taking steps as she did. Tif didn’t think Awt would let the underground hurt her, but the size of his room made it clear that he still had a long way to go up the ranks. In some ways that was good--it meant that he couldn’t possibly be in charge of imprisoning a kindly cyclops.
Tif didn’t encounter anyone on her way back up the stairs, and she managed to get back into Awt’s office without waking the still sleeping guard. He wasn’t there, his lamp burning low on oil. Tif looked to Pep. If she waited, it would raise less suspicion. But Awt had known her too long and was good at telling what she was thinking. She wasn’t sure that she could talk to him more than a few moments without giving away that she knew about Torgath, which apparently wasn’t safe to discuss here.
“Better to leave now,” Tif agreed with Pep. If Awt asked, she could just say that she needed to run an errand for her parents, and when he took so long she didn’t have a choice but to go.
Opening and closing his door for the last time, Tif approached the snoring guard quietly, stopping a few feet away.
“I’d like to leave, please.” She said the words in as clear and even a tone as she could muster.
The woman shook awake, squinting her eyes at Tif. “Where’s Awt?” she asked, voice gravelly.
“In his office.” Tif didn’t think she’d be allowed to leave if Awt was still with Vak-Lav in case the sudden meeting had been about her.
The guard snorted. “Didn’t even have the decency to walk you out. He’s a catch, that one.”
The woman seemed gruff but not evil. Did she know about Torgath caged only a story below them? Tif wanted to ask but knew it would be beyond foolish, so kept her mouth shut.
The guard put her hand on the door latch but then stopped. “Boss didn’t come down on him for telling you ‘bout this place?”
Tif tried to turn the sudden fear she felt into a look of confusion. “Don’t know anything about that. Awt just told me I should go.”
The woman stared at her.
“Ask Awt if you want,” Tif said, adding some exasperation to her tone to cover the dread beginning to scrape at her belly. “But don’t blame me when he bites your head off for bothering him.” The guard pursed her lips at the same threat she had used on Tif being tossed back at her but didn’t unlatch the lock. Tif let out an audible sigh and started marching toward Awt’s office as if she was going to get him. Once she reached the door, she’d just have to sprint off down a side hall and hope it led to another exit. She could feel sweat building in her armpits and down her back.
Hearing the door creak behind her was one of the most beautiful sounds she’d ever heard, more than a chorus of people with Gold ris.
“Fine,” the lady grumped. “Sooner you stop yacking, sooner I get some shut eye.”
Tif turned around and walked out the entryway before the guard changed her mind.
“Thank y--” Tif started, but the door slammed shut behind her. She walked away stiff-backed but with even steps in case anyone was watching her from some unseen place.
As soon as Tif was around the corner from the den though she broke into a run, wanting to be far away before anyone in the underground discovered what she knew.