We crouch down in the shadow of Yezakh’s apartment block, panting. For a long time neither of us can think of anything to say to each other.

“You get what you need?” he finally says, grinning a little.

I look into the sack. The glow makes my pupils sting. “Yeah. Think I got enough.”

“I want to count out the gold. Should we do it here or inside?”

“Here of course. Then we’ll divide it.”

“Divide it as we agreed,” he warns.

“Of course. One third to me, two to you.”

He nods and begins to pull clinking handfuls of coins from his pockets. The pre-morning glow from the mirrors isn’t bright enough for us to tell their colors, but we can tell which is what by size and shape as he sorts them into piles on the paving. The small hexagonal ones are gold, the bigger thinner circles silver, the small circles copper. I end up with thirteen golds, five silvers and nine coppers; accordingly he gets twenty-six golds, ten silvers, seventeen coppers.

“Good haul,” he says. “I should make a spear, you say?”

“Yes. Maybe one shorter than mine so you can have a shield, a solid metal one, with runes of fire-reflection.”

“What if they don’t send a salamander next time?”

“Whatever the monster, like I said before, just wait until it’s had a go at everyone else. It’ll get tired out.”

“What if—”

I place my hand on his shoulder and squeeze. “You’ll be fine. I survived. You will too.”

“Thanks.”

We part ways. It is dawn by the time I arrive back at my room, and after stuffing the sack under my bed, I only allow myself a short sleep.

Two months and twenty days are left exactly.

Down in one of the guild forges, I lay a gauntlet on the anvil, then take out a salterite crystal and place it on a side table. I’m wearing gloves; my hands still feel a little raw from when I grabbed them, and my thigh too where I got it on me.

With a small hammer I break the crystal into tiny pieces—each twists itself into a new hexagon in an eerie display of magic. I take one of these pieces, only slightly larger than a grain of sand, and place it on the rune I want to remove.

I touch the hot end of a thin poker I’ve had resting in the furnace to it. Its pale glow flares to white, and the light feels like it penetrates right through my eyeballs into my skull, touching my brain with acid. When the flare dies I see it’s worked, though. The rune is gone and the sense of power emanating from the gauntlet diminished slightly.

One by one, I remove the rest of the runes. The air fills with an odd smell that isn’t quite a smell, more a feeling—an unpleasant sense that something has gone wrong with the world, that something vital has been drained. It’s an ugly sensation, and it pains my heart as well to see the runes I worked so hard on vanish, but this needs to be done.

Once the gauntlet is scrubbed clean, I pick it up and hold it up for inspection. There’s some slight white marks on it, salterite burns, and some tiny flecks of metal from the runes where I didn't quite apply enough. I’ll have to do better on the next pieces.

It ends up taking a week. The breastplate alone takes two full days. If my runes of mimicry are to be perfect, undetectable and taking on both the visual and physical properties of their disguise, they need to be laid properly. And damaged metal is no proper foundation for runes.

I feel slightly sick as I look over the full suit; it’s like a dead body in some ways. All that made it what it was, I have stripped away to leave but a husk. It nearly makes me cry.

After a half-day’s break, I’m back in the forge with the book of mimicry runes and a roll of shining gold thread. Gold was the only material I could get enough of at an acceptable price, and although it’s terrible armor usually—heavy yet soft—it does have magnificent resonance with enruned rubies, the illusion of which I can write on cheap almandines.

I twist the gold threads into the runes of mimicry. They must be written in a runic script that, unlike nearly all others, is thin and looping, almost like commoner letters. It’s tricky to get exactly right, but it’s vital that I do. If the illusion unravels, I am dead.

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The main part of the script is to give the colors and properties. The runic poem I’d write on normally, if this was true gold, I insert backwards within the looping letters.

Again I test on the gauntlet. I wind the carefully twisted gold around the fingers and wrist, place a circle of it on the backhand plate, place the almandine ovals at resonance points. Finally I brush over incandesite which I’ve ground, very slowly and carefully, to powder.

The gold shines brightly, the almandine brighter. The steel fades to a colorless gray matte, like stone or wet dust. For a moment I think the process has gone wrong, then the gray becomes yellow then shining gold. Spots of blood appear, and reform into rubies. Finally appears the poem of strength and lightness I wrote backwards into the mimicry runes, and the gauntlet is finished.

I put it on. It feels no different to steel, and I start to worry that I’ve only accomplished half of what I set out to replicate, only the visual side. But this gauntlet was the messiest scrub-job. The other pieces will be better.

And they are. The finished armor takes my breath away. It emanates majesty and ostentation, but also power. The rubies across it form a network of meridians that confer a repelling force—when I put my hand close I can feel it being pushed away. If they were real, of course, no weapon from a lesser runeknight could come within a foot of it, but even this fake power will be enough to give me a useful advantage. The rubies also confer a resistance to heat. The suit is cool to the touch, and nearly icy against the skin to wear.

Yes, I’ve done the best I can. I saw a solution, the only solution, and I executed it.

Now I will put it to the test.

----------------------------------------

The guildhall of the Troglodyte Slayers is buried deep. It is not carved geometrically like many similar guildhalls, but instead retains the natural shape of the original cave, a long curving tunnel, walls rippled slightly and organically. Many parts are green jade, and the lights high in the ceiling are jade-treated glass. Their calming turquoise plays across everything below.

Kazhek sighs. He’s sitting in a corner, like he often does recently, with a book.

It’s called Bats and Their Many Sub-Varieties: Illustrated.

He flicks from page to page, not really reading, not really looking at the pictures either. They’re not interesting. What did Polt use to find in this kind of thing? Kazhek can’t understand, they always were polar opposites. Maybe that’s what made them such good friends.

He takes another drink from one of two glasses he’s put out. The other is empty, and will remain so. It’s Polt’s glass.

He should stop this habit, he really should. But he can’t bring himself to. He hasn’t gone out on a single job, hasn’t gone down to a single bar, hasn’t been with a single girl. He just can’t bring himself to. Life has become a dark pit for Kazhek, and he doesn’t have the energy left to climb the walls.

“Hey, Kazhek,” someone whispers behind.

“What?”

His guildmate sites down heavily. It’s Bhatak, who failed the job of trying to get Zathar killed in the examination. “News,” he says.

“Oh?” Kazhek looks at Bhatak nervously. The big dwarf looks worried, like the news he’s about to deliver is very bad indeed.

“I’m not sure how to put this. We got some new information from our contacts in the exam board.”

“I see. He’s trying to move up again.”

“To somewhere we can’t reach. He’s skipping straight to the fifth degree. Applied this morning.”

“What!” Kazhek shouts. He sits up straight, accidentally spills his drink over the book, but is too panicked to notice. “Straight to what?”

“Straight to fifth. Fifth!”

“How?”

“I don’t know. His armor is impressive, apparently. A real well-crafted suit. And his weapon is downright frightening.” Bhatak grimaces. “Another spear.”

“The bastard. Murdering bastard!”

“Calm down, Kazhek! People are staring.”

“So fucking what? Shit! What are we going to do?”

“I don’t know. None of the higher degree runeknights are going to play along with us, I don’t think. But we can’t get into the fifth degree exam. The examiners will be from the Runethane’s guard.”

“We have to do something. How did he move this fast?”

He clenches his fists, smashes both down onto his sideways-fallen glass, obliterating it and driving its shards into the table. A bang resounds around the cavern. A lot of dwarves are now staring.

“I don’t know how he moved so fast,” Bhatak says. “His guildmaster must be helping him.”

“Maybe he didn't even forge his armor himself. You remember what he was wearing last time—crap. I don’t understand what’s going on.”

“Neither do I. But we have to do something, or he’ll be out of our reach forever.”

“I can challenge him,” Kazhek says desperately. “Once he passes, he can’t refuse a challenge from a lower-ranked runeknight.”

“You’ll challenge a fifth degree in seventh degree armor? Kazhek, that’s suicide. And he’s a killer.”

“No.” Kazhek’s handsome face twists into a snarl. “He’s an accidental killer. He hasn’t got any real guts. He’s pulling some kind of trick. No, I can take him.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes, I’m fucking sure.” He stands and raises up his warhammer. With a mighty overarm swing he brings it down onto the table. Splinters fly, the table cracks in half, and the glass he laid out for Polt breaks on the stone floor.

Everyone in the hall is staring at him now. He doesn’t care. He will have his justice, his revenge, and a path out of the deep dark pit of despair whose walls he finally has the strength to climb.