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“We owe the market—” Iriani began. Biri-Daar raised a hand to silence him.

“We will go,” she said. “But it will go hard with you if this delay does harm to our greater mission. Know this before you insist.”

Zegur shifted his weight and nodded toward the drain. “I must insist.”

Biri-Daar turned her back on him. “This is likely an enormous waste of precious time,” she said. “Let us do it as quickly as it may be done.”

One by one they dropped into the drain, landing on a smooth stone floor. As Zegur had said, the passage they found was no longer used as a sewer. Directly below the stable drain, a vertical pipe drained the stable’s waste down and away. To either side of them stretched dry and flat passage. By torchlight they clustered around Keverel as he unfolded the map. “Let’s go this way, toward the wall,” he said, pointing to the left. “The other direction siphons into sewers that are in use. Not even hobgoblins would swim for long in that.”

“We’d fit right in with the rest of the sewage after the way Zegur treated us,” Lucan complained.

“No matter,” Biri-Daar said. “He was correct. If we brought a threat to this place, it is our responsibility to end that threat.”

Moving quickly, they followed the passage. Iriani lit the tip of his wand and illuminated each side passage they encountered. All were too small for a troglodyte to have traversed. Soon they came to what must have been the edge of the market, and there they found a rough hole torn in the passage wall. By Iriani’s light, they saw that a short tunnel had been excavated from the passage to a natural cave. “Now we will have our answer,” Biri-Daar said as she plunged in.

The floor of the cave was ancient silt, and heavily tracked. The hobgoblins and troglodyte had clearly come this way. “Enough,” Keverel said. “Let Zegur send sappers down to collapse this, and let us be on our way.”

“If it was dug out once, it may be dug out again,” Biri-Daar answered. “We must find the outlet and tell Zegur where to watch.”

“Sometimes I wish you were a bit less of a paladin,” Kithri said.

“Sometimes I wish you were a bit less of a thief. Now let’s go.”

The cave was broad and winding, easy enough for all of them to stand up in. Here and there were remnants of long-forgotten camps and graves. They kicked through these to see what might be learned or looted, but found nothing. The cave descended slightly, and water began to seep from the walls. “Carefully now,” Keverel breathed. His holy symbol had begun to glow.

Emerging into a rough oval chamber, they saw a flash of movement. One of Kithri’s knives flashed in the magical light as she threw it, but it clanged among the rocks on the far side. “After it,” Biri-Daar commanded, and they picked up their pace. “If it is a sentry, we must not let it get out a warning.”

Kithri and Lucan were the fastest of them, especially in the darkness. They were across the chamber and out of sight before the other four had gotten halfway over the broken floor. Remy stuck close to Iriani, just behind Biri-Daar with Keverel right behind them. Ahead of them the chamber narrowed to a passage whose walls Remy could touch simultaneously with extended hands. “Tight fit for a troglodyte,” Iriani commented.

“It couldn’t have come any other way,” Biri-Daar said.

Shouts sounded from ahead of them, and the clash of steel. They ran as best they could over the slippery rocks, coming into a large flattened chamber just as a thrown spear deflected from high on the wall to their right. Remy saw Kithri dodging and feinting between two hobgoblins, their axes striking pieces of the rocks away in showers of sparks. He closed on one of them and ran it through as it raised its axe for another stroke. The axe flew from its hands and struck him on the shoulder, numbing his sword arm. He cried out and the other hobgoblin lunged toward him—then slipped and skidded as Kithri deftly slashed the tendons at the back of its knee. As it hit the ground, she was on it, cutting its throat.

“Where’s