The Shard-Bearer

Chapter 4 - The Job’s Beginning

The stink of the sewers clung to us all the way back. Even when we climbed into cleaner air, the rot seemed worked into my skin, into my lungs.

Corin didn’t say a word as we walked. He kept ahead, hood low, shoulders stiff. I knew the silence wasn’t safety, it was a blade turned edge-in, waiting.

We reached the crooked townhouse on the riverbend, Fennric’s den. A light burned in the shuttered window, sickly yellow, the kind that never meant comfort.

Corin pushed the door first, knife in hand.

Fennric was where we’d left him, hunched over his table, piles of parchment around him like driftwood, ink splattered across his hands. Only now the table wasn’t scattered nonsense. It was covered in one great sheet, patched from scraps, stitched together with wax and thread.

A map.

Lines crisscrossed like veins, marked with runes I didn’t know. Circles, Xs, little notes in a spidery hand. Some places were burned through, as if fire had tried to erase them.

Fennric didn’t look up. His voice was a whisper, quick and fevered. “Stone beneath stone, paths beneath paths. They buried it deep, thinking depth means safety. Fools.”

Corin sheathed his knife slow. “What is that?”

At that, Fennric’s head snapped up. His eyes gleamed too bright in the lamplight. “The way in. The vault’s bones. The Guild thinks only they know the undercity, but I’ve been listening longer. Rats tell me things. Walls too. All stone remembers.”

He spread his hands wide over the parchment, as if he’d laid bare a treasure.

I stepped closer, drawn before I thought. The map’s lines pulled at me, the symbols twisting like they weren’t ink at all, but something alive. My head buzzed faintly as I stared.

Malrik.

The whisper slid through me again, brushing against the inside of my skull. The map pulsed in my sight, and I knew whatever waited in that vault was already calling me.

Corin’s hand clamped my shoulder, dragging me back a step. His voice was hard. “Maps don’t mean truth. He could be sending us into a hole we don’t crawl back from.”

Fennric smiled thin, lips cracked. “Truth? Truth is what you survive. You want coin, you want freedom, this is the only path. And I…” His eyes flicked to me, not Corin. “I know Malrik feels it.”

Corin stiffened beside me. “Feels what?”

I couldn’t answer, not without telling him the whisper was real.

Corin stepped between me and the table, putting himself squarely in Fennric’s line of sight. His voice was a growl.

“You’ve got scraps of parchment and the word of rats. That’s not a plan. That’s a grave with our names on it.”

Fennric didn’t flinch. If anything, his grin sharpened. “And yet you’re here. That means you’ve run out of better graves.”

Corin’s knife flashed free in a blink, the edge pressing under Fennric’s jaw. “Tell me what’s real. No riddles, no games. What’s waiting in that vault?”

Fennric went very still. His eyes never left Corin’s, but his voice was steady, almost calm. “A shard. Not coin, not jewels. Something older. Shaped when Drakemire was still swamp and smoke. The Guild keeps it locked below because they fear it more than thieves.”

The word shard curled in my skull like a flame, feeding on the whisper already smoldering there.

Corin’s blade pressed harder. “And why should we believe you?”

Fennric’s smile twitched, but his voice didn’t crack. “Because you’ve already seen it.” His gaze slid to me. “Haven’t you, Malrik?”

Corin’s head snapped toward me. His eyes were knives of their own. “Seen what?”

The room tightened around me. I felt the whisper coil again, warm and urgent, but when I opened my mouth, no sound came.

Fennric leaned into Corin’s blade, letting it nick his skin. A bead of blood welled. “Kill me if you like. Then you’ll never find the vault. Never touch what’s inside. And Malrik will never know why it calls him.”

The knife trembled, just barely.

I stepped forward before Corin could answer, my voice low but firm. “We need him.”

Corin’s eyes widened, fury flashing in them. “You’re siding with him?”

I didn’t say yes. I didn’t say no. I just looked at the map again, and the whisper in my skull answered for me.

Fennric finally leaned back from the blade at his throat, chuckling low. “Tools, rope, oil, masks. Bring them here by dusk tomorrow. The vault doesn’t open to empty hands.”

Corin lowered his knife slowly, but his glare promised this wasn’t finished. He stormed out first, pushing the door so hard it cracked against the frame.

I followed, leaving the map and Fennric’s smile behind me.

The city felt sharper that night. Every alley mouth, a jaw waiting to snap shut, every shadow a cloak ready to move.

We started with rope from a dockside chandlery, the kind tarred thick to last through seawater. The old man behind the counter counted out coin without looking up, but when his eyes did lift, I saw the flicker of recognition. He dropped the coins fast, as if touching us too long might burn.

Next was oil, thick in clay jars, from a lamp-maker near the tannery district. His apprentices whispered behind their hands as we left. I caught the word rats hissed between them, the syllables sour.

Finally, masks. Not fine carnival things, rough cloth that were cut quick and stitched with twine. We bought them from a rag-picker who watched us like she was weighing whether to call for the guard.

Corin pulled me aside in the smoke of a forge street, his face hidden deep in his hood. His voice was low but tight. “They know us. Every eye we pass sees blood. We can’t move like this for long.”

He wasn’t wrong. On a tavern wall, we passed a poster nailed fresh, two faces sketched rough, names spelled wrong, but close enough. Wanted for Guild murder. Dead preferred.

I stopped and stared at it. My own eyes stared back at me, jagged and furious in ink. For a moment, I felt a rush that stole my breath.

Feared, hunted, known.

Something in me thrilled at it.

Corin grabbed my wrist and dragged me away. His grip was iron, his voice harder. “That’s not pride you’re feeling. That’s a noose tightening.”

I didn’t answer. But the whisper in my head coiled tighter, and I couldn’t shake the thought that maybe the noose was just another kind of crown.

We holed up in a loft above a dye shop, the air choked with the stench of chemicals and boiled cloth. It was safer than the streets, safer than the sewers, for now.

I sat on a crate, sharpening my knife out of habit. The scrape of steel on stone was steady and comforting.

Corin leaned against the far wall, arms crossed. He hadn’t spoken since the posters, since the rag-picker’s wide eyes. The silence stretched until it frayed.

Then his voice cut through.

“What’s gotten into you?”

The question hit harder than the Guild’s fists. I looked up, but his face was a mask, unreadable in the dim light.

“You saw that poster,” he went on. “And you smiled.”

“I didn’t.”

“You did.” His jaw clenched. “And when Fennric spun his riddles, you leaned in like a dog begging scraps. You’re not thinking straight, Malrik. You’re letting him put hooks in you.”

The stone slipped in my hand. The knife edge bit my thumb, a sharp sting. I watched the bead of blood rise, dark in the lamplight.

“He’s not wrong,” I said quietly. “The shard’s real. I know it.”

“How?” Corin pushed off the wall, stepping closer. “Because you feel it? Because some itch in your skull tells you so? That’s not knowledge. That’s madness.”

I stood, knife in hand, not pointed at him but not put away either. “Maybe madness is what it takes to crawl out of the gutter.”

Corin’s eyes hardened. “No. Madness is what gets you buried in it.”

For a long moment, the room held its breath. The dye stink pressed close with a heavy and chemical scent.

Finally, Corin spoke again, softer but sharper. “If it comes to it… would you choose me, or that voice in your head?”

I didn’t answer. I Couldn’t.

The scrape of my knife on the whetstone was the only reply, steady but relentless and hiding the truth I didn’t dare give voice.

The graveyard crouched on the city’s edge like a broken jaw with crooked stones jutting up. The night air was cold and damp, the fog curling around the graves as if even the dead wanted to hide.

Fennric moved quick between the markers, a hunched silhouette, lamp swinging from his hand. The light painted his grin sharp and skeletal. “This way. The Guild walks above, but the old bones walk below.”

Corin muttered under his breath, “Mad bastard,” but he followed. So did I.

We came to a tomb half-sunken into the ground, its door cracked with age. Fennric dropped to his knees, brushing moss and dirt aside until a slab of stone showed beneath. He pressed a pattern into the cracks, three quick taps, a pause, then two more.

The slab shifted with a groan, revealing blackness and a breath of air that stank of dust and long-dead things.

Corin pulled a cloth over his mouth. “Smells like a pit.”

Fennric’s eyes gleamed. “It is. A pit that holds history.”

I stared into the dark mouth of it, my skin crawling. And then I heard it, not faint this time, not a brush or suggestion. The whisper filled me, warm and insistent.

Malrik. Deeper. Come deeper.

My hand clenched on the hilt of my knife. My heart beat faster, not with fear, but recognition. It was waiting.

Corin’s eyes caught mine in the lamplight. He didn’t hear it, I knew that. But he saw something in me, and his mouth tightened.

Fennric lowered himself into the hole, lamp swinging, his voice echoing up the stone throat. “Down. If you want the shard, if you want freedom, down.”

I didn’t wait for Corin. My boots hit the first step, the stone was slick and cold, and the darkness swallowed me whole.