Behind a half-eaten loaf of bread, dropped on the street the night before, my rat waited. I had to time this perfectly, so that I could get my minion to slip in unnoticed. The leaving guards split into two lines, one marching in a left-curving arc, the other in the opposite direction. Then the incoming guards marched through the space between the lines. It was a clever tactic; if anyone thought they could rush the guards at this somewhat vulnerable time, the outgoing guards could easily form themselves into a tight defensive square in seconds.
Of course, I wasn’t about to rush anyone in this tiny form. I waited until the last ingoing guards marched in, then watched as the enormous doors slowly began to swing closed. The outgoing guards positioned themselves into two rows forming a wedge, blocking the entrance completely, with the rearmost guards right against the wall. This formation protecting against any slippery street urchin or thief ducking swiftly in before the doors were completely closed …
But none of them thought to look down at the litter on the cobbled street for an intruder. Weaving through dropped cabbage leaves and bread crusts and darting from spot of cover to spot of cover, I raced toward the closing doors. I scuttled behind the rearmost guard’s boots and slipped through the last crack of open door, scurrying through the gap just before it shut completely. One second slower and my undead rat would have been flattened like a bloody piece of parchment.
I was in, but I wasn’t about to hang around and wait for some eagle-eyed guard to notice that a rat had gotten into the vaults; the marble-floored corridors in here, like those of the palace, were kept spotlessly clean. Being the greedy, money-grubbing asshole he was, this was Elandriel’s favorite place in all of Luminescent Spires, and he insisted on every surface being clean enough to eat off of. If my rat’s digestive system had still functioned like that of a living creature, I would have made sure to drop rat shit and piss all over the place to spite the asshole. As it was, though, I had to be content with simply dirtying the place with my creature’s presence.
Back in the sewers, where my actual body was, I now had to rely on Yollah for directions.
“All right, I’m in,” I said to him. “Where do I go from here?”
Yollah gave me detailed directions, and, communicating with him every step of the way, I directed my undead rat through the labyrinth of corridors.
The interior of the vaults had been constructed in such a manner that it was part of the protection against thieves. There were no paintings on the walls, no statues, and no decorations of any sort. The whole place was constructed in the form of an extremely complex maze, with every corridor and door looking exactly alike, and with each corridor splitting up into two more corridors. The idea was that if you’d never been here before and didn’t know the layout of the place, you would get hopelessly lost. Furthermore, not only would you not be able to find the entrance to the lower vaults, you wouldn’t even be able to find your way to the exit again. The only way you’d escape without starving to death or going mad would be by being escorted out—directly to the dungeons of Luminescent Spires—at swordpoint by the guards when they eventually found you.
The maze was so complex, and the surfaces so identical, with every wall, floor, and ceiling being exactly the same dimensions, and the same smooth white marble, that if you stayed in this place too long you’d start to forget which way was up and which way was down, and which way was forward and which was backward. Every guard and treasurer who served in the vaults spent their first few months of work simply memorizing the intricately complex routes in and out of the vault mazes.
Thankfully, Yollah’s memory of the interior of the vault was flawless, and he was able to guide me through the immensely complicated maze and get me all the way down to the secret escape tunnel at the bottom. There were two elite guards watching the entrance to the tunnel, but I was able to scamper past their feet when they started engaging in idle chatter. We’d have to deal with the two of them and take them out swiftly and silently when we made our way in, but I figured that it wouldn’t present too much of a problem, since I had over a dozen elite assassins behind me.
Once inside the tunnel, which was gloomy and dimly lit by only a few burning torches spaced far apart, I sent my undead rat scurrying down the winding passage that led to the sewers. Unlike the rest of the interior of the vaults, the walls of the tunnel were of rough brown and gray stone, and the floor was uneven and rocky.
“Where’s the switch?” I asked Yollah. “I’m at the door.”
“There should be a rock sticking out of the wall that’s a slightly different color to the other rocks,” Yollah said. “That’s the switch.”
I sent my rat scurrying up the wall, which was easy to climb owing to how rough and uneven the stones were. While my rat wasn’t exactly colorblind, it did take some intense focus to notice a jutting stone with a reddish tinge to it, which was different to the gray and brown stones. I used my little minion’s paws to press it, and found that I had to exert a lot of force before I heard a click and the stone sank flush with the rest of the wall. Then, with a deep rumbling, the door began to slowly creak open. In my own body, I watched the entrance to the vaults open.
“How many guards do we have to deal with?” Friya asked. For a
