Ealdhere took a deep breath, brushing over the front of his Scholar's robes. It didn't help, but few things did in this gilded cage he'd found himself in, and there was little else he could do but merely accept it.

Or, to be more accurate—he could play at pretending it, let Lluc think he tamed, and do what he could in the shadows.

Which was why he was here, many hours before the Guild would be allowing today's adventurers into the dungeon, waiting at the door he had propped open with a spare pebble kicked in from the beach to keep from the magical lock from attaching, and waiting with a rather deplorable kind of anticipation before the sun had even risen.

Calarata was a cold icon in the distance, whitetack against pale rocks, the green of the jungle spilling around and beyond; the wooden dock spidered closer, a twisting black shape in the dark of night, framed by the figure striding over its surface.

Ealdhere adjusted his robes again. Gods, how he wished for his colourful coat and brimmed hat, any mockery of his previous trappings. Anything to grant him comfort in what was little doubt the most dangerous thing he would be doing in what was now feeling like a regrettably short life.

Delving the dungeon had doomed him, and doomed his companions; this was a far less impersonal sort of ruin he would be bringing on his shoulders if this fell through.

But the dungeon was alive, in whatever sense of the word he could use. It had kept humans without killing them, had made new and unbelievable creatures, had been born from something. He had to know.

And so Ealdhere nudged the door open, glancing once around to make sure no one else was around, careful not to leave the building himself in case Lluc could sense that, and watched Gonçal of the Silent Market approach the Adventuring Guild.

Three days it had taken him to send a single message to the outer world, a pittance concealed in a street urchin's palm—she had been a straggler since the very opening of the Guild, scrounging in the shadows, a pitiable thing with pale eyes and clever hands. Unranked, just like him, which meant Lluc didn't care about her. Hardly noticed her, if she ever drew his attention.

A ghost. One of the many lost in Calarata.

In return for the fangs of a luminous constrictor, she'd agreed to deliver a piece of paper to the Silent Market, under the guise of the name Alami. It would have meant nothing to anyone but those who had been present for the invasion and its aftermath

And it appeared Gonçal had answered the call.

He ducked through the opening, a faint glow spilling from his eyes, one palm braced on the doorframe in what would have seemed normal if it weren't for the gouges his claws dug into the wood. Ealdhere swallowed.

Gonçal was a terribly intimidating man, both through his own cultivation and his natural state of being. The copper-bronze scales on his face, furrowing over his brow and outlining his eyes like kohl, the flash of canines in his trader-calm smile, the claws poised on the tips of his fingers; also the height and bulk of a man who fought, who made himself strong past just his attunement and ancestry.

But Ealdhere had been invited to fanciful parties and engagements and other extravagances in the past—he knew to look below the surface. Entirely unfamiliar with Calarata politics was he, but he did see that Gonçal was… missing things, in a way. Strong, yes; powerful, yes; and tethered to the Silent Market. Not an unwilling prison, in the way of the Adventuring Guild, but something almost from desperation.

Gonçal was a mystery of a man, and Ealdhere did love mysteries.

But more than that, he wanted freedom, something to untether him from the Dread Crew.

The dungeon was not kind. It had killed dozens, more; slaughtered them with ease unbecoming. But it had done so for those that had delved its floors, rather than apathetic murder.

It would not be an ally, not in the way that Ealdhere wanted one.

But hells, maybe he could get something from it.

The competition was Lluc, who loosed daggers from his tongue and relished in death; black-eyed Ghasavâlk, who smiled without meaning anything; Varcís Bilaro, a man in the shadows who built an empire of marauders.

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Who had buried Neus?

Who would have buried Neus?

Gonçal peered around the room, a bland kind of interest, more glow flickering through his eyes. Maybe his attunement? Ealdhere hadn't seen anything of his power before, other than his ancestry. But he didn't spend longer than a moment before following Ealdhere into his office, strung up with crocodile scales and sketches and pieces of collected moss.

And the ceramic pot, carrying the mangrove sapling. He'd been experimenting with different types of blood, but it seemed to always prefer his, to grow best when it was his arm he cut. Which. He was a firm believer that all things should be explored, that investigation was worth in of itself, but that was a touch concerning.

Gonçal's eyes lingered on a drawing of a shadowy fish, stitched together from some poor description of a group that had only poked their toes into the third floor before retreating. His teeth caught the reflected quartz-light.

"This is not the oddest time I've been summoned to a beneath-ground meeting," Gonçal said, head cocked to the side, bird-like. "But certainly the first from you."

He didn't have to play coy. The implications were rather explicit. Secret gatherings were rarely for genial topics.

Ealdhere splayed his hands over his desk, drumming his fingers on the edge. Sketches, papers, alchemic predictions and estimations. A legacy of work held by one who didn't care about the lives it took to claim it.

"I have," he said, and hesitated; glanced around like Lluc would appear from the shadows, like Ghasavâlk's black eyes would report back to whatever rotten little allyship he had with the First Mate.

But there was no one there. There was never anyone there, because they had caged Baron Ealdhere Darlington in a prison of passion and thought him contained. He was not like these rough Silvers and Golds that called Calarata home, with death on their teeth and apathy in their eyes; just Unranked, a parrot dressed up in fine feathers. Why would he do anything? He was the Scholar, one who stayed in the Adventuring Guild and died there.

He wasn't strong like them.

Perhaps that was to his benefit.

So Ealdhere looked back to Gonçal, straightening his shoulders. "I have a proposition," he said. Behind him, the mangrove sapling shivered, pale white leaves unfurling anew. Another mystery, one made by a dungeon that wasn't just instinct. Something more. "An alliance."

Gonçal raised an eyebrow in a trader's impassive curiosity. "I thought we were already partnered," he said in a deep rumble, crossing his arms before his chest.

That was true. What he would be saying would be revealing something that would bring the axe down on his head if it got out, but, well. The last time he had interacted with this man, it had been over the corpse of a woman he had never learned the name of, Coseth's throatless body, and the ink-drenched Alami, and it had been with Lluc threatening Gonçal's life for obedience. It was hard to be sure of anything in Calarata, but Ealdhere was relatively confident that Gonçal wouldn't go cry secrets to Lluc.

"Not between the Silent Market and the Adventuring Guild," he said. "Between you and me."

Gonçal's eyebrow raised higher, but he stayed quiet.

Well. Cards on the table, then. Ealdhere splayed his hands. "I'm not to leave the Guild," he said, with as much an air of indifference as he could summon. "But I have reason to believe the dungeon is more intelligent than we thought, and it hasn't been conquered yet. There's a chance that it has the potential for communication."

The man stared at him. Not one of many words, it seemed. That was fine. Ealdhere had more than enough.

"An offering," he said. "You delve into the dungeon for me, attempting to talk to it, and in return, I grant you every advantage the Adventuring Guild can offer."

And that he could sneak past Lluc's awareness.

Gonçal hummed, not quite hesitance, not quite curiosity. Or, rather, it was, but carefully packaged up into a trader's calm. Seeming too interested meant poor deals and negotiation, particularly with rampaging creatures as the common target.

But Ealdhere wasn't blind, though many were content to pretend it was so. The adventurer's eyes were a touch too bright.

And the bounty was real, in part. Ghasavâlk had taken his share of gold but left all his findings for study, from the crocodilian's corpse to sections of algae from the fourth floor to the curled white body of the strangely psionic spider. Any piece of those would line the Silent Market's prestige.

Ealdhere had spent three long days planning this out with a delirium that rivaled genius. It was as surefire as he could make it.

Gonçal's hand brushed at his neck, a silver chain that disappeared beneath the collar of his light armour. A lump, over his collarbones, a faint glow spilling through cracks in the leather. He closed his eyes, a rumbling hum of contemplation.

Peculiar.

Ealdhere leaned back, brushing his shoulder against the mangrove's growing canopy. Slow-growing, a mystery apart, something that Lluc had only paid attention to in consideration for strategies to attack or how to harvest it for parts. No wonder, no whimsy; just another cog in the endless spinning wheel of power in Calarata.

The dungeon was dreadfully deadly and dangerous in turn. Whoever claimed it, whoever understood it, would have teeth in Calarata.

But those that tore into it for power would never have the mind to talk to it, to find more than simple pathways to elevation.

Ealdhere had always been a creature of curiosity.

Gonçal opened his eyes, twin stars in his scaled face. His fangs flashed. "I accept."