The Neranthian Special Unit was dissolved after the war and its members dispersed. In the debriefings conducted before disbandment, one detail recurs across almost every account: that the unit's most effective member was consistently underestimated by enemies in the field, and that this was not accidental.
One commanding officer wrote: "She understood before any of us that the most dangerous position on a battlefield is not the one that looks dangerous."
Her name was redacted from the public record at her own request.
— The War of the Shattered Spears: A Military History. Compiled for the Cindorian Royal Archive.
The room smelled of ink and damp wool, and beneath that the particular staleness of places where men spent long hours doing work they disliked. It was a narrow office, no wider than twice its own doorframe, with barely enough floor to move in. The tall narrow windows on either side of the door let in almost no light — the shelves had long since overflowed upward past the frames and blocked what little could have entered. What remained fell across the two desks in the room.
Both were set close to the side walls, facing each other, with wide chairs behind them and a single chair in front of each pointing toward the outer door — arranged, it seemed deliberately, so that anyone who sat there would feel the pull to leave as quickly as possible. Both desks were buried under the suffocating weight of daily administration: files, loose papers, ink bottles, the dust of a broken seal, an empty tobacco pouch, a pipe with ash still sitting in the bowl, three unwashed cups.
In the left side of the back wall a door opened deeper into the building; the rest of that wall held a row of hooks, two of them occupied. The room was small enough that almost everything could be taken in at a single glance, which left very little space to conceal the unconscious men they had brought in with them. They had simply left them where they'd dragged them — in the middle of the floor.
Veylith swept the room quickly and turned to the others, who were still looking around. "We'll put the men under the desks," she said, looking at Ravah. Then she turned to Tivver. "Go check the other door." It came out like an order, though her manner carried none of it. Finally she turned to Kaelin and Darian, pointing behind them. "Lock the outer door, or put something in front of it." Then she and Ravah went back to dragging the unconscious men under the desks. No one else spoke. Everyone moved.
Kaelin and Darian searched the door for a lock but found nothing, until Kaelin noticed two metal brackets set into the wall close to the door handles, and a large piece of timber leaning against the shelving beside them. When she pointed it out to Darian, no explanation was needed. Together they lifted the timber and carried it to the door, then slotted it between the metal brackets, wedging it across the doorframe. It was one of the oldest locking methods there was — from the outside the only way through it was to break the timber, which was nearly impossible. By the time they finished, the others had moved over to where Tivver was working on the second door. Veylith had just opened her mouth when Tivver slid his picks free from the keyhole and whispered, "It's open." She closed her mouth again, went to the door, and pressed her back against the wall on the lock side. Her ear was fitted into the exact narrow gap between door and frame. While she listened, no one made a sound. They all watched her.
"Not much noise in the building — most of them must have gone," she said, eyes still closed, only listening. "There are a few sets of footsteps in the corridors, but if anyone shouts the echo will carry through the whole building. One mistake and getting out of here stops being an option." She opened her eyes and looked at them. "Now — does anyone have an idea where Vaelra is being held? Tivver. You've been in and out of places like this."
"I've spent more than a few wild nights in cells. The ones I was sober enough to actually remember usually had no windows — stone rooms, cold floors. So she's most likely being held below us. Or at worst on this level, but a building this size as a main headquarters will definitely have a dungeon."
"So we need to find the stairs first. What about security?"
"Dungeons don't have offices or other rooms — just cells. So there won't be officers wandering around underfoot. That's something at least."
"But there'll be at least two guards posted at the dungeon," Ravah cut in. They all looked at her at once, though no one asked how she knew or what she had lived through. They already knew it wouldn't matter.
"Then we find the stairs going down first," Veylith said, breaking the silence.
"In old stone buildings like this the stairs are usually in the center," Tivver offered. "So most likely we need to go out into the corridor and head left."
"All right then," Veylith replied. "Until we find a better option, this room stays our way out. This time I go first and you follow behind me. But you stay where you are until I give the signal."
"Sir, yes sir," Tivver answered, and Darian immediately shushed him.
Veylith closed her eyes for a moment as if steadying herself, raised her eyebrows, and opened them again. This time she looked at Ravah. "You come last," she said quietly. "If anything goes wrong, you turn around and go straight through everything and out without looking back." Then she turned immediately to the others. "You follow her."
They all nodded, but of all of them only Ravah seemed to have truly understood what it meant. Because Veylith always came last — she always kept everyone in front of her where she could see them. The real plan was not how they entered but how they got out: staying at the rear to buy the others time. It meant she had already decided that if it came to it, she would stay behind. Whether the enemy came from the front or behind, Veylith would always be standing between them and her people. She doubted the others had noticed. Noticing it and giving it its due were two different things entirely.
Veylith eased the door open with almost no sound and looked into the corridor with one eye. They were almost at its end — nothing to the right but a wall. She left the door ajar and in a single fluid movement crossed to the empty desk standing opposite, barely a second passing. The desk had papers and some records on it but no chair — one of those standing surfaces where people jotted notes in passing or dropped off ledgers. When she raised her head and looked from behind it she saw a long corridor stretching all the way to what she believed was the far side of the building. Anyone who stepped out into it would have little trouble seeing them. The advantage was that from here she could see every opening along its length.
Three gaps on the left, three on the right, before it ended at the far wall. The ones on the left she could see directly; the ones on the right she could read from the light spilling out of them into the main corridor. They were clearly smaller branching passages. But what gave her real hope was the middle gap on the left — even at the narrow angle available to her, she could just make out a railing at the far end. She had already found the stairs. The real problem was that the corridor offered almost nothing to hide behind.
She moved quickly out from behind the desk and went to the threshold of the first door she saw on the right. One of the benefits of being slightly built. The door opposite it was also closed. Pressed against the threshold and hidden from the corridor, she listened carefully at the door behind her. It seemed no one was inside, but she could never be certain. Gripping the dagger tightly in one hand, she opened the door fast. An office — hastily abandoned, empty. She leaned back out from the doorway and signaled the others forward, watching the corridor while they filed in. When everyone was inside, she looked at Ravah. "Check the entrance," she said, one eye still on the corridor. Ravah went to the window and swept the outside carefully, leaning her head partially out.
"The courtyard's empty, but I can see two guards at the gate."
Which means we're directly across from the stairs, Veylith thought, but she didn't say it aloud. "We have to move. Wait for my signal." She slipped back out and disappeared from the doorway.
At the first junction she saw that the side corridors branching off on both left and right ended in walls, with doors facing each other along each of them — all closed except one. No moving shadows. Without looking back she signaled the others forward, but the moment they began to move a creak came from behind the open door on the right-hand corridor. The door swung open and an officer who carried himself like someone of rank stepped out. Veylith had no time to think.
In the two seconds the man spent turning back to close the door behind him, she moved silently until she was directly behind him. Before he could make a sound she cut his throat in a single stroke with the dagger. She caught him by the waist while he was still struggling, dragged him backward, and threw him through the open door she had come from. She swept the room in an attack position in case anyone was inside — but it was empty.
When the others reached where she had been standing, Veylith had already vanished. A few seconds later she emerged from one of the rooms, closed the door behind her, and moved toward them; they all relaxed at once. At the corner of the small side corridor she signaled them across. From this angle she could see the stairs on the left more clearly. "Stairs are twenty paces ahead on the left. Wait for my signal." Then she stepped out into the corridor and moved to the far end without a sound.
To her left, a spiral staircase going both up and down. To her right, a double-door entrance opening into the courtyard — the doors pushed open to either side, two guards posted in front of them. At the very corner where she stood there was a small table pressed against the wall facing the entrance, which meant if the guards turned around they still wouldn't see her. But anyone stepping out of the corridor opposite would have a completely clear line of sight. They could run to the stairs quickly enough, but the risk of the guards catching the movement was real. Without looking back she signaled the others forward, and at the same time slipped a single bullet from her pocket.
When the others reached her they saw she was already shaping it between her fingers, turning it into a small round marble. Kaelin didn't know why but found herself unexpectedly struck by it. The others were visibly uncomfortable standing exposed in the corridor even while hidden from the guards. Veylith held up the marble to show them, mimed throwing it outward, then pointed to the stairs going down. They all nodded, though the only one who didn't look unsettled was Ravah. As always.
She looked at them, drew a slow breath, and then — contrary to what they had been expecting — she didn't throw from over the table. She crouched beside it instead and threw the marble as low to the ground as she could. She knew a guard would catch any object moving at eye level no matter how fast it traveled. But something passing just beside their feet, glimpsed only in the outermost edge of their vision — that they would never see in time.
The metal marble shot across the floor past the guards' feet and struck the weapon stand standing in the corner of the courtyard. But instead of ringing off metal, it connected with one of the stand's wooden legs and splintered it clean. The stand — a large part of it already emptied by the men who had left earlier — tipped forward, and the few swords and spears that fell made a brief sharp clatter across the courtyard stone. The guards startled and looked toward it, but since the courtyard was empty they assumed wind, or instability, and didn't move. It was only a few seconds of broken attention — but it was enough for everyone to run for the stairs.
Veylith watched from the stairwell entrance, checking whether anyone had seen them. The others were already on the descending steps below, catching their breath on the landing between floors. Once she was certain no one was coming she turned and moved down past all of them, descending to the last step.
Where the stairs ended, a stone floor began — worn smooth from years of footsteps but still uneven. It felt as if this part of the building had existed long before anything above it was built, had changed nothing while the rest was constructed and reconstructed around it over the years. A hidden passage left behind by time.
She didn't think there were further stairs going deeper — the staircase seemed to open at the bottom into a dimly lit tunnel extending in both directions. She glanced left and right and then turned back to them and held up three fingers. Then pointed left, right, and the diagonal behind. Even Kaelin understood what that meant. What followed was more complicated.
Ravah pointed first to herself, then to Veylith, and spread both hands wide toward the two sides of the tunnel. Veylith shook her head. Tivver raised both hands with index and thumb spread wide and extended them toward her as if presenting an offer. Again Veylith shook her head, then pointed to her own ear. Darian reached into his coat pocket and produced two stoppered vials, but the answer was the same.
Kaelin didn't fully understand every specific suggestion, but she could read the shape of what was happening well enough, and you didn't need to know sign language to see that the options were running out. There were three men, and to avoid being heard they needed to take all three down simultaneously — through this single opening into the tunnel.
Veylith relaxed her body slightly, the way someone does when they accept something they've been resisting. She looked at Ravah and mouthed be ready to run, then pointed to the stairs behind them. Ravah moved one foot up to the next step and settled into position. Kaelin didn't know what Veylith was thinking, but it seemed this time the turn for something reckless had come to her.
She took a bullet from her pocket and placed it between her teeth. Then she gripped both daggers tightly and turned toward the tunnel. She spat the bullet hard at the wall opposite. It wasn't loud, but in the silence of the corridor the sound traveled from one end to the other. Footsteps came immediately and one of the guards walked toward where it had landed. When he bent down to look at it he was standing directly in front of Veylith with his back to her. She knew the guards at the far ends of the tunnel would be watching him. She hoped.
She drew a long breath.
Rising onto her toes at the edge of the last step, her other foot pressed flat against the back of it, ready to push off. Her arms were raised and crossed over her chest, daggers almost touching her shoulders, every muscle drawn tight. When the man finally lifted his head from the bullet, instinct turned him toward the staircase behind him. At that exact moment Veylith threw herself forward, swinging both arms wide to either side, and with both daggers at once opened his throat. As her arms reached full extension she let go of them.
And exhaled.
The man in front of her sank slowly to the floor still trying to breathe, and at the same instant both guards at the ends of the tunnel collapsed where they stood. The daggers had gone exactly through the center of each throat, cutting the vocal cords cleanly — not one of the three made a sound. Three men had tried to scream and died in silence, in almost the same moment.
The others came down from the stairs slowly and found nothing to say about what had happened in front of them. Even Tivver stood pale, looking at the men on the floor. Kaelin was still staring at Veylith, unable to fully process what she had just watched happen. She never would have believed it without seeing it herself. When she met Darian's gaze she knew they were both thinking about the conversation they'd had that morning.
"Quickly — check the cells," Veylith said, breaking the silence. The others remembered at once why they were there and scattered in both directions. Half the doors stood open and the cells behind them were empty. The rest had barred doors through which the prisoners inside could be seen. All but one.
Kaelin had moved almost without thinking, drawn directly and instinctively to the rusted windowless door at the furthest end. When she pulled the bolt back with both hands the sound it made turned every head in the tunnel. It was loud enough to echo all the way to the upper floor. Then she pulled the heavy rusted door open.
◈◈◈
Smoke was rising over the square and the living sound of chaos kept swelling. People were still flowing in from the side streets, and the front of the Ledger building was no different from a battlefield. Tarr'en knew the stone structure had no weak points and that the long narrow windows offered no way in, yet the scene he was watching from the tower had managed to put him on edge. The Ledger building was essentially a fortress — all that needed doing was to hold the front gate. But watching the guild's own guards going down one by one kept raising the threat to a level he couldn't dismiss.
What he feared, though, was not the building being taken. It was the moment the Ledger decided to deploy its real weapons. Not out of any concern for the people who would die — but because he knew he would be the one left to clean up what came after, and that knowledge was what actually bothered him.
While these thoughts moved through him he suddenly noticed something else. A pattern, one he hadn't been consciously looking for — a deliberate movement threading through the chaos. For just a moment he had seen something purposeful among the burning and the destruction. He looked more carefully and began to pick out the threads. A web was forming, centered on the street running diagonal from the Ledger building. A group had separated from the main crowd and appeared to be reorganizing there. And their direction was—
A sound from the courtyard below cut through his thoughts. He looked down and saw the weapon stand in the corner had collapsed — swords and spears scattered across the stone in a heap that had fallen, as far as he could see, for no reason at all. No reason, he repeated quietly to himself. Then he raised his head, looked out at the crowd one final time, and turned toward the stairs leading down from the tower.