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“And how do we get into the vaults?”

Ekhaas turned to face Kitaas. Geth felt the archivist stiffen in his arms, her anger becoming alarm at the icy distance in Ekhaas’s eyes. “My dear sister will help us,” she said.

CHAPTER

FIVE

16 Aryth

The entrance to the vaults of Volaar Draal was a wide maw, cast into shadow by pale ghostlights hung beneath deep eaves. It was an unfriendly building, jealously guarding the secrets it had swallowed over the centuries.

No guards stood beneath the ghostlights, though. None lurked in the shadows. From the cover of the nearest building—a good fifteen paces across a dark-flagged plaza—Ekhaas stood with Geth and Tenquis and watched the massive doors.

“I can’t believe it isn’t guarded,” murmured Tenquis. His quiet words were at odds with his appearance. Disguised by illusion with her magic, he wore the face and body of a bugbear.

“There are always archivists inside,” Ekhaas told him, “but they don’t need guards outside. Intruders would need to pass the gates of Volaar Draal and then the entire city if they wanted to reach the vaults. And none of the Kech Volaar would dare to trespass without permission.”

“You’re going to.”

The words were a twisting knife. Ekhaas scowled at him.

“Quiet,” said Geth. Cloaked, like Tenquis in the illusion of a bugbear, he didn’t take his eyes off the doorway. “I think I saw Chetiin.” He pointed. “There was movement just below the light on the left.”

“There’s a bat lurking there. You saw it.” Chetiin’s voice emerged from the shadow just at Geth’s elbow. The shifter jumped, and even Ekhaas felt her heart leap. Chetiin gave a wry half-grin of amusement at his own stealth. “There are no traps, no warning magic,” he said. “Nothing to stop us entering.”

Ekhaas nodded. “Remember to walk like bugbears until we’re past the archivists inside,” she told Geth and Tenquis. Two shaggy heads bobbed. Chetiin simply faded back into the shadows once more. Ekhaas braced herself for what she was about to do and stepped out into the plaza.

The unfamiliar length of Kitaas’s black robe tangled around her legs almost immediately. She twitched it free and strode on with as much arrogance as she could muster. How her sister managed to walk in the garment every day was beyond her, but at least it was bulky enough to conceal her own clothes underneath.

Kitaas slept beneath the table in the room where they had confronted her and Tenquis. Her towering anger had been no match for Ekhaas’s song. Soothed by the magic, she would sleep through the night. She’d been frightened at the end of their confrontation. Ekhaas could only imagine what Kitaas had thought she might do, but all she’d really wanted was her robe. Kitaas would have enough to worry about when she woke in the morning. The thought of Kitaas trying to explaining her actions to Diitesh gave Ekhaas a warm, satisfied feeling.

It was almost enough to quiet the doubt that pulled at her.

When did I stop feeling what she feels? Ekhaas wondered. When did I stop defending the sanctity of the vaults and the honor of the Kech Volaar?

Not so long before she would have been beside Kitaas in challenging any suggestion of chaat’oor entering the vaults, the one thing they might have agreed on. Instead she stood with the defilers. What they did was bigger than honor or family, she told herself. It was a duty to the future of the goblin people. Her muut to the dar.

And yet a small part of her could only think one thing. Kapaa’taat. Lowest of the low. Traitor.

Ekhaas clenched her jaw and marched on across the plaza.

Beneath the eaves of the building, it was possible to better appreciate just how massive the doors of the vaults were. Three times as tall as a hobgoblin and solid stone—yet when Ekhaas laid a hand on one, it swung open as easily as the door of a cottage.

She passed into the hall beyond with her head up and her stride brisk, concentrating on projecting an air that she belonged there. It worked—or perhaps the archivists they passed were really