A week later, Leo and Tomasso sat together in the guild’s Common Room. Tomasso had kindled a fire, but it did not warm Leo. There was an empty hollowness inside him that could not be mended. The events of past week were a distressing mystery. He remembered nothing.

What had happened to Gianna? Was she dead? Lost? Had she fled the Guild? Was she angry with me?

Possibilities abounded, and he craved closure. He knew Nico did too, but Nico was elsewhere, brooding in private. He had always been a very private man.

“Just tell me what happened,” he said to Tomasso. It was the third time he had broached the subject. Each time he was more persistent than the last. “Where were we? What happened to our memories? Who was our client?”

Tomasso stared at the crackling fire in the hearth, his eyes unfixed. For the first time, he looked old to Leo.

“I ... I cannot tell you," Tomasso said slowly, as though measuring each word. "I am bound to secrecy, and even if I weren't — I really don't know. I'm sorry, Leo. But I… I fear the worst. I fear Gianna…”

“Is dead.” It was the first time Leo had used the word, and it pained him to say it; the word felt so terribly final.

Tomasso nodded sadly.

Leo looked back at the fire, a single tear forming in the corner of his eye.

“Do you remember how I met her? Slipped the hangman’s noose in front of five hundred onlookers? Guards gave chase after her, braying like banshees?”

“I thought it was a hundred spectators?” Tomasso chuckled softly. “The tale grows in the telling.”

Leo smiled, the tear slowly sliding down his cheek.

“Another time,” he said, “faced a volley of poison-tipped arrows by a troupe of Diji bowmen. I never told you that one — that one was largely my fault. A dozen arrows aimed at her bosom, and they all fall inches away from her. She didn’t take a scratch.”

“Another time,” he continued, “fell a hundred feet into a rocky gorge. Figured at worst she’d been squashed to mincemeat, at best she’d shattered her ribs. When we found her on the riverbanks, again unscathed, she had but one word — one question — for me. ‘Again?’ She wanted to repeat the experience.”

Now Leo looked back at his guildmaster.

“Now tell me Tomasso, how can she be dead? The girl had more lives than a cat. How many times she defied the odds and escaped death… it’s beyond counting. Tell me true, how can she be dead?”

Tomasso rubbed at his stubbled cheeks. His eyes still watched the flickering fire.

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

“Death comes for us all, Leo. It comes in its own time, its own manner. But it’s always there, lurking behind our shoulder. A debt we all must pay.”

“She was a child.”

“In a dangerous vocation. You don’t meet a lot of wizened old adventurers.”

“No,” Leo agreed. “You don’t.”

Tomoasso stood up, and Leo could not help but notice how slow he was to do so. The guildmaster stepped around, laid a hand on Leo’s shoulder and squeezed it.

“Mourn her, Leo. Grieve for her. But you must move on — it’s what she would want.”

Leo gave a single nod, and Tomasso departed, leaving Leo alone with his thoughts. The same thoughts which kept circling his mind. The one question which reared its ugly head again and again, demanding an answer.

How can she be dead?

But the facts led to the same inescapable conclusion.

***

Lucius Ferrera was sacked by Tomasso for disloyalty and breach of contract. Rumor was that he was planning to establish his own espionage guild — he certainly had the contacts and connections to start a thriving business.

If it were up to me, Leo had thought when he’d heard the news, I’d have run him through with a sword. Alas… there’s still time yet.

His departure had left an vacancy in the Espionage & Intelligence subdivision of the Pathfinders guild. Tomasso had eagerly offered the post to Leo, and Leo had eagerly accepted. His first act was to poach Nico. Nico’s Illusion attunement would be enormously consequential to espionage and intelligence gathering. Though he was loath to admit it, Nico was excited about the prospect of using his Disguise spell to go under cover, to (as he put it), ‘attack the wealthy and powerful from within the halls of power’.

It was a lateral move, not a promotion, but it certainly felt like a promotion. And it meant that Leo and Nico now had unfettered access to the Pathfinders Vault.

His second order of business had been to locate any information he could about Gianna and her whereabouts. That well, predictably, turned out to be dry.

But Leo was still adamant about recovering his protégé. He contacted diviners — several of them — and paid exorbitant sums of money, seeking any clues they could offer. That, too, was a vain effort.

***

One night, a thought occurred to Leo. A possibility. A glimmer of hope — just a glimmer, but it was blindingly bright.

***

On the morrow, Leo mustered his most of his collective earthly belongings and liquidated them. At Vespers Bank, he took out a loan of one full golden talent, submitting Wraith as collateral. Parting with his prized falchion felt like an amputation, but it was necessary.

He needed the money.

With it he traveled to Myr and purchased a single vial of Sixth Sense, the potion with faint divinative qualities — which might tell him whether Gianna still lived, and where he might find her.

***

Upon his return to Verona he popped the vial’s cork and downed its contents.

She yet lives, the potion told her. Within the Oculus.

Later that night, Leo stood on the precipice of the Oculus with Nico at his side. Whisper — the blade that could cut through walls when so inclined — was keening. He pulled it from its scabbard.

“Hold on Gianna,” Leo said, voice cracking with a thousand emotions. “We’re coming.”