Hendrik pushed through the guild doors and let them swing shut behind him. He stood on the top step for a moment with his hands were shaking at his sides. Then he shook his head and walked down.
"Fools," he muttered under his breath. "Sitting in there with their ledgers and their permits. Whole village gone and it's not their problem."
He kept walking toward the wagon. His legs felt heavy, his back aching from hours of standing and pleading and getting nowhere.
He reached the bench and climbed up, the wood creaking under his weight. For a moment he just sat there, letting his head fall back, before letting out a long breath. His eyes closed, but just for a second.
Then he leaned toward the canvas.
"Kael," he called, keeping his voice low. "You okay back there, lad?"
He received no answer, so he took it that the boy was probably asleep. It had been a long day for all of them after-all.
Hendrik sighed and sat up straight, reaching for the reins. But he paused—a small thing, just a feeling—and he turned to slide the canvas open. Just to make sure kael was doing alright.
The space beyond was dark. The grain sack sat in the corner. The blankets lay crumpled where Kael had been hiding. But the boy wasn't there.
Hendrik stared for a second, not understanding the sight before him. He climbed through, his knees hitting the floorboards as he entered the wagon to look around.
He checked behind the grain sack, under the blankets, inside the barrels.
His eyes went to the back of the wagon. The canvas there was loose, moving slightly in a breeze he hadn't noticed before.
He crawled toward it and pushed it open. The rear flap was unlatched and the ties hung free.
Hendrik stared down at the street below, at the people moving past without a care. His hand went to his temple and he rubbed it slowly, realizing Kael was gone.
He climbed down from the wagon on shaky legs. He stood in the side street for a moment, his mind racing in circles.
He started walking back toward the main street where the Guild Hall stood. There would be people there, or someone who might have seen something.
The street was busy—the constant flow of Stormholm's workers moving between districts. Hendrik grabbed the first person who looked like they'd been standing still long enough to notice things: a man with a cart of vegetables, his weathered face suggesting he'd been in one spot for a while.
"You been here long?" Hendrik asked.
The man glanced up. "Since dawn, why?"
"Did you see a boy? Small, dark clothes, maybe ten years old?" Hendrik's voice came out strained.
The vendor squinted while thinking. Then he shook his head. "Nah, sorry friend. Too many people moving around."
Hendrik moved on. He stopped a woman carrying a bundle of laundry. Then a young laborer leaning against a wall. No one had seen anything useful. Or if they had, they weren't paying attention to one small boy in a city of thousands.
He was starting to feel the panic creeping back in when an older man—lean and weathered, with the look of someone who hauled goods for a living—caught his arm.
"You looking for someone, merchant?"
Hendrik turned. "A boy with silver hair, and a small frame. Did you—"
"Saw a kid like that," the man said, nodding. "Maybe twenty minutes ago. Running, like something was chasing after him or he was chasing after something. Headed that way." He pointed down toward a narrow alley that ran beside the Guild Hall.
Hendrik didn't wait for more. He thanked the man quickly and moved toward the alley around the corner.
The opening was tight, barely wide enough for two people to walk side by side. The walls leaned in, blocking out most of the sunlight. Hendrik stopped at the entrance and called out.
"Kael! Kael, are you here?" His voice echoed off the stone, but got no answer.
He stepped inside anyway, his eyes adjusting to the dimness. He looked along the ground, searching for anything that might tell him what happened. The cobblestones were uneven, worn smooth by years of foot traffic and cart wheels.
Then he saw a single shoe lay near the middle of the alley, just sitting there on the stone like it had been dropped or torn away. It was small. Kael's size.
Hendrik walked over and picked it up slowly, with his hand trembling. The leather was still warm from the sun. His throat tightened as he looked at it—just one shoe, the laces still knotted.
He turned in a slow circle, looking deeper into the alley. The space continued for another twenty yards before opening onto another street. But there were no drag marks, no blood, no sign of struggle beyond the single shoe in his hands.
Hendrik stood there, holding the shoe, and he slowly understood what it meant.
Kael didn't get lost… someone had taken him. Forcefully enough that he had lost his shoe in the struggle.
Hendrik's jaw clenched. He shoved the shoe into his coat pocket and turned back toward the main street—heading to the adventurers' Guild. He needed help, and he needed it now.
* * *
Kael woke to a low, rough groan that felt like it had been pulled from his lungs by the cold. It was the only sound in the dark, a small thing that died against the stone walls.
He didn't move at first. His head throbbed, a deep pain that started at the back of his skull and spread through his temples, making the world tilt even as he lay still. He reached up, his fingers fumbling toward the sharpest spot above his ear, and they came away sticky with the warmth of blood.
Then he remembered the man with the yellow teeth in the alley. The one that took his silver pendant hanging from a fist. The heavy sack cutting off the sky.
Kael's eyes flew open, and he forced himself to sit up. His vision swam in the dark, but the shapes around him slowly came into focus. He wasn't in a room. He was in a cage.
The space was tiny, filled with the smell of wet straw and old dust. In front of him were thick iron bars, and beyond them, a hallway lit by a single flickering gold light that barely pushed back the shadows. To his side, a small barred window looked out into a night that offered no help.
He was trapped. The thought made his breath come faster, shallow and quick, as the walls of the cell seemed to press in, ready to swallow him whole.
Kael's fingers brushed the floor, searching for a way out, but his hand stopped mid-motion. He felt something cold and heavy press against his skin.
He looked down at the iron around his wrist and his breath caught.
They were held together by a short, thick chain that lay in the straw like a sleeping snake. He moved his legs and heard a dull clink. His ankles were bound by a longer chain that ran back into the darkness at the rear of the cell, bolted deep into the stone.
The sight sent him into a sudden, white-hot panic. He didn't scream—years of hiding in the valley had taught him that noise drew bad things—but his heart slammed against his ribs like a trapped bird.
He lunged for the bars, his hands reaching out. The chain snapped tight with a violent jerk. The iron bit into his wrists, yanking him back and slamming his shoulder against the cold wall.
He froze, his eyes wide and darting, his chest heaving in shallow, silent gasps.
He didn't try again. Instead, he stayed where he'd fallen, huddled small against the wall. He watched the flickering gold light in the hallway, listening for any boots or voices.
He was like a prisoner, chained like livestock, but he stayed perfectly still, his small body trembling as he tried to hide.
The heavy thud of a door echoed through the stone hallway, followed by the sharp clack of boots. Kael pressed his back into the corner, his small hands holding his chains so they wouldn't rattle.
Three men came into the flickering gold light. Two were the men from the alley—the thick-set one with yellow teeth and the jagged man who had thrown the sack. They walked behind a man who looked wrong in this place. He was large, his belly pushing against a vest of dark blue silk, his face soft and pale.
The man checked a gold pocket watch and snapped it shut. "Nearly midnight," he hissed, his voice thin and sharp. "I was at a table with the High Auditor. This 'urgent discovery' better be worth my time, or I'll have you both in these cages by morning."
The thick-set man bowed, his yellow-toothed grin gone. "It is, m'lord. We got the girl. But there was a... complication." He stepped toward Kael's cage and waved for the other man to raise a lantern.
Light flooded the cell, blinding Kael. He squinted and tried to shrink into the stone.
"We caught this one too," the man went on, pulling the silver dragon from his vest. "He was chasing us for it."
The man in silk froze. He grabbed the pendant and held it up to the lantern. His eyes moved from the dragon to the boy in the corner. He stepped closer to the bars, his shadow falling over Kael like a dark wave.
"The girl was the target," he whispered, his voice shaking. "The heir was supposed to be the girl. That was the deal."
He leaned his face against the bars. The smell of flowers came off him, unsuitable for the rot of the cell. He stared at Kael's dirty face and wide, dark eyes.
"You," he hissed, pointing at the pendant. "Where did a gutter-rat like you get the Dragon of the North?"
Kael didn't answer. His throat was frozen. He just looked at the man, his eyes catching the lantern light—a small, scared secret that had just become more dangerous than any of them knew.