The days following Katya’s duel with her brother were quiet, comparatively. After they peeled Ralt off the wall, the group of siblings and cousins left without a fuss, and there had yet to be any blowback from the failed takeover of the Patrician’s guild. Val took advantage of the period of temporary peace to  spend a few days getting his hands dirty with the work crews refurbishing the newly acquired guild hall. 

Katya found him in one of the dormitory rooms on the second floor, applying a coat of thick, white stucco to the freshly sanded walls. Warm afternoon sun spilled in through the wide, open windows that looked down on the training area, and dust floated in the air, tossed by the soft, temperate breeze. 

She watched as he pulled up his roughspun linen shirt and used it to wipe the sweat from his brow, stepping back to admire his work. There was a kind of satisfaction and contentedness on his face that she was unused to seeing, and she considered slipping away and leaving him to his work until he glanced over, apparently already aware of her presence.

“Looks good,” Katya offered, standing in the doorway.

Val turned and smiled at her. A small spatter of white had somehow ended up in his beard, and his hair and face were heavy with dust, into which small rivulets of sweat had cut clean lines running from his forehead down onto his cheeks. 

“Thanks, Kat,” he said, “Think I’ll be done with this room today.”

“You really enjoy this work, huh?” she asked.

Val’s head tilted to the side, and the edge of his mouth twitched up in a thoughtful half smile.

“I’m good at it,” he said, simply, “And that counts for a lot.”

Katya nodded. 

“What’s up?” he asked her, turning back to his handiwork.

“Oh, no,” she replied, “Nothing, just wanted to see what you had planned for dinner.”

Val walked over to the wall and ran a fingernail along the edge of a panel, scraping off a small fringe of excess stucco before wiping it on the brown leather tool belt strapped around his hips.

“Not a damn thing,” he said, “And the magecrafter is booked up for weeks, so the meat locker is still basically just a closet.”

He turned back to Katya.

“You wanna go out?” he asked, “There’s a place nearby I’ve been meaning to check out, a couple of the guys on the crew were saying it’s the best, cheapest feed in the whole district.”

“I hope the emphasis is on cheapest,” she quipped.

Val and Katya had just managed to stay ahead of the avalanche of invoices with near-daily sojourns into the labyrinth, but the low level loot they were bringing back was not going to keep the wolves from their door for long.

“That’s what they tell me,” Val assured her.

“Done,” Katya responded, “I’ll meet you at the entrance in an hour?”

Val nodded, and Katya turned, heading toward the stairs that would take her to the third floor. She’d only made it a few steps when she heard Val call out behind her.

“Kat, wait!”

She stopped and turned just as he came out of the dormitory. 

“I almost forgot,” he said, “I’ve got to show you something.”

—

Minutes later, Katya followed Val down a long, rickety staircase into a cellar on the northernmost edge of the building.

“Careful,” Val murmured over his shoulder, “They haven’t replaced all the steps yet, and some of them are completely rotted out.”

Katya made a noise of assent, and continued to lightly tiptoe down behind him.

“What are we doing down here?” asked Katya.

“I promise I’m not being cagey for fun,” Val responded, “I don’t really know what it is, or where it’s from, but the foreman figured that you might.”

“Hmm,” Katya replied.

“But he’s terrified of you since you dressed the entire crew down for waking you up the other day,” Val continued, “So he asked me to show you.”

Katya allowed herself a small smile.

They reached the bottom of the stairs and Val grabbed a small crystal lamp off a trestle table, activating it with a thought. The lantern spilled a circle of light out into the darkness of the cellar, which stretched off in every direction.

“It’s massive,” Katya whispered.

“Come on,” said Val, wandering off into the darkness, “It’s over here.”

Val led Katya across the open floor of the cellar, scattered with the rotted out remnants of what might have been racks that held wine or weapons, to the back wall. Katya guessed that it must run the entire width of the building, based on how far it stretched away into the darkness.

“Hang on,” Val grumbled, swinging the lamp in his hand back and forth, “There were a lot more lights down here before.”

Val found what he was looking for after a few more seconds of probing with the crystal lamp, and waved Katya over. She looked at the part of the wall illuminated by the circle of light in Val’s hand.

Chips and streak of the faded remains of once bright paintwork caught the lantern light, chips of inlaid gold and silver glittering in stone of the wall. The surface of the stone was covered in rough-hewn illustrations, carvings, running off into the darkness. Right in front of Katya, at the centre of Val’s light, a to scale representation of the blade currently hanging from an iron hook in the meister’s chambers above her.

The carving was inexpert, bordering on crude, but the deep cuts in the stone had a brutal power to them. They looked as if they’d battered into the stone with a sharp-edged hammer, or the sword itself, so raw and rough were the edges. Katya found herself hypnotised by the raw energy in each line, and it took her a silent minute to draw herself back and see her sword in its full size.

Val let the lamp light drift and Katya followed it with her eyes, noticing that her great sword was not the only one on show. It was surrounded on all sides by similarly brutalist representations of other weapons of war, some of which she immediately recognised. The assortment of weapons she could pick had new wielders, her siblings, cousins and the myriad members of her extended family. The weapons that were once held, over the course of a lifetime of battle and conquest, by Ebid of the Ten Thousand Blades.

Somewhere along the wall were the sabres her brother wielded in combat against her, her father’s shortsword, her aunt’s curved scimitar, her cousins cavalry sabre with it’s pommel of gold and a spellchip the size of a fist that had still never run dry after decades of use, and thousands of other weapons held in storehouses or on display at her family’s estate, or lost and shattered in the labyrinth below. Not all were swords, there were daggers and other short blades, spears and halberds, and even wicked blades mounted to long, swinging chains. Ebid was nothing if not versatile. Some of the weapons were still enshrined with the bright paint and metallic accents that had chipped and faded from the others, but each had clearly been carved by the same passionate and untrained hand.

“It runs the entire length of the cellar,” Val said, “All four walls.”

Katya nodded. Her eyes moved from weapon to weapon, silently cataloguing those that she knew and those that she didn’t. She had started to move along the wall without even consciously realising, and Val followed behind her, holding the lamp aloft. Occasionally she’d reach out and run her hand along the wall, touching the deep grooves in the wall and imagining she could feel the force with which the carvings were made.

“They’re incredible,” she whispered.

Val smiled to himself. He’d known about the carvings since before breakfast that morning, but had kept it to himself until he could show her without a half dozen workmen around, going so far as to pretend he’d almost forgotten about it to throw her off the scent. He had a feeling that she would be excited about the carvings, a secret remnant of her forebear that now belonged to her, but she would be a lot more cagey about her feelings if there were an audience.

“Wait,” Katya muttered, “What’s this?”

Katya moved to the edge of the light, and Val followed her. They’d moved quite far away from the small beacon of light spilling in from the stairs, and were approaching the corner of the cellar.

“Here,” Katya said, holding out her hand behind her.

Val obediently placed the lamp in her hand, stepping up beside her for a closer look at the wall. Katya stepped closer, moving the lamp back and forth and examining the rough fresco.

“No way,” she said to herself, “No way, no way, no way.”

Carved into the wall, in the same brutal hand as the collection of weapons, was a shaky illustration of a broken down fortress. The walls were crumbling and the towers were shattered and fallen, the gates were gone and none-too-gently chipped in representation of what were probably grasses stood tall around the broken parapets. The carving looked to be among the last of those on the wall, its edges crisp and crumbly compared to some of the smoother, more aged pieces. It lacked any sign of the brightly coloured paint and inlay that the weapons carried, and the hand that had carved it seemed weaker and less sure, each line was shallower and more shaky than the others on display.

“What is it?” Val asked.

“I’m not…” Katya trailed off, then her eyes widened in surprise.

Three runes were carved under the building. Sharp and angular, they reminded Val of the markings on his hammers. From what he understood, they had a meaning individually, but were not ever used as a language, instead used only in spells and occasionally as map markers. He watched in silence for a time as Katya moved back and forth, seeking additional details with sparkling, awed eyes.

“What does it mean?” Val questioned.

“A tomb,” Katya replied, her voice tense, “The tomb of Ebid.”