Chapter 1: Part 7 - Babysitting

Out of all the new recruits to her guild, Erin hadn’t expected Auri Valpari to be the most difficult. Both she and Oska were odd and not always in step with the world around them, at least at first glance. Once you got to know them better, you discovered that Oska was far sharper than he first appeared and had something of an acerbic tongue. Auri, if anything, was even more dreamy and distracted. She had a tendency to finish Oska’s sentences, but a lot of the other things she said made no sense at all.

Unusual, then, but not difficult – until today.

“He’s not here,” she kept saying, tugging on Erin’s arm. “He’s gone.”

Frustrated, Erin peeled Auri’s hand off her arm and tried to get the girl to stand still. They’d come to Divinity’s Reach in a panic after Auri had appeared outside the burnt shell of the guild hall. Erin had brought only Amber with her, leaving the others to oversee the investigation in Lion’s Arch. She wished she could be with them. A missing thief in Divinity’s Reach was the last thing they needed.

“Auri, listen to me.” Erin put her hands on the girl’s shoulders. “Oska was chasing leads in the city. He’s probably still here.”

“He’s not.” Auri was growing increasingly frantic. “He was here, then he was gone. He’s gone.”

Amber held up a hand, forestalling Erin’s argument. “Let’s say she’s right. Practically speaking, how could Oska have been inside the city one moment, then gone the next?”

Erin took a deep breath. All she wanted to do was calm Auri down and leave her to find Oska on her own… But that assumed the girl was exaggerating. If she wasn’t, her brother might genuinely be in trouble. “Practically speaking… A portal?”

Amber nodded. “That’s the most obvious solution. Auri, did you feel any magic in the vicinity of your brother?”

Auri was still wide-eyed, but being taken seriously seemed to have soothed her. “I was too far away for that.”

Erin exchanged a look with Amber, who shrugged. The connection between the twins was unfathomable, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t real.

Amber tapped her chin with one finger. “Could a portal have taken him beyond your senses, or at we looking at something like an asura gate?”

Rather than panic at the suggestion, Auri appeared to be considering it. “It could have been a portal. We were already a long way apart.”

“Where were you?”

“At home.”

“Which is?”

Auri looked momentarily perplexed, as though there couldn’t be anyone in Divinity’s Reach who didn’t know where she lived. “In Rurikton.”

“And Oska? Where was he?”

“To the north.”

“The Plaza of Lyssa?”

Auri shook her head. “Further.”

“Was he moving?”

“Yes. He was… going west.” Auri bit her lip. “I don’t think he was alone.”

Erin and Amber exchanged another look. Oska had been in Divinity’s Reach to do a little reconnaissance, but it increasingly sounded like he’d got in over his head. Was it possible he’d been kidnapped, or worse? Erin knew that Amber would be thinking the same thing she was: there was something other than a portal that could have severed the connection between the twins, and it wasn’t one Oska would be coming back from.

It was clear neither of them wanted to voice that possibility just yet, though. “He can’t have gone through an asura gate, then,” Amber said softly. She sounded like she was trying not to spook Auri further. “There aren’t any in the north-western part of the city. Let’s assume a portal for now.”

Erin finally removed her hands from Auri’s shoulders. Yes, a portal. If they were going to assume anything, it might as well be that. “Meaning he might have left the city, but he can’t have gone far.”

Auri gave several sharp little nods. “He’s close,” she said, sounding like she was trying to convince herself. “He has to be.”

“Give me an hour,” Amber said, gesturing towards the north. “I’ll see what I can dig up.”

She was gone before anyone could argue. Erin fought a sigh. Amber preferred to work alone and she was the one best equipped to track Oska down… But that left Erin alone with Auri, practically the girl’s babysitter.

This wasn’t what she’d expected when she agreed to lead Light’s Memory. In hindsight, she knew she hadn’t really expected anything at all. She’d had no frame of reference for what being a guild leader might be like. Comforting frantic youths with missing twin brothers, though? That was a long, long way outside her comfort zone.

“Are you hungry?” she asked Auri awkwardly.

Auri looked up, her blue-green eyes not quite focusing on Erin’s face. “Oska always chooses what we eat.”

“Perhaps I can choose this time.”

Auri looked dubious, but she nodded.

In the end, Erin bought apples and a loaf of soft white bread from a merchant with a cart. They sat on the edge of the promenade, whilst Auri shoved bread into her mouth with surprising enthusiasm. Erin found she had no appetite at all.

“Thank you,” Auri said, between mouthfuls. “I knew I hadn’t made a mistake.”

“You can’t go wrong with bread,” Erin said, her thoughts elsewhere.

“Not the food. Your guild.”

Erin looked down, to find Auri gazing up with that intense, unblinking way of hers. “You’re the one who wanted to join Light’s Memory?”

“Yes. Oska thought it was a bad idea.”

There was a sharpness to the girl that Erin hadn’t seen before, as though she found it easier to focus on the past than the present. “You didn’t agree?”

Auri shrugged. “Marissa was joining you. She always knows what to do. And…”

“And?”

“And I thought we’d be safe.”

Erin’s stomach clenched painfully. They might be official members of her guild, but these twins were little more than children – and now she’d lost one of them. “What about your parents?”

“Our parents are scared of us. Oska doesn’t see it, but I do.”

Erin could understand that – she couldn’t imagine being mother to this strange pair – but the admission also made her sad. No child should know their parents feared them. “Then I’m sorry I couldn’t keep Oska safe.”

Auri shook her head, suddenly vehement. “Oska is safe. You’re looking for him, aren’t you?”

But would they find him?

Abruptly, Auri lurched to her feet. It took Erin a moment more to see that Amber was approaching from the north. Erin put a hand on Auri’s arm to prevent her running off, but the girl was so still she might have been carved from stone.

As Amber wove through the crowd towards them, Erin levered herself to her feet. “You weren’t gone long.”

Amber shoved her hands in her pockets. “I didn’t need to be. I only had to speak to a couple of contacts to find out there’s someone new in town. She calls herself Ruby. She’s been throwing money around, recruiting as many gangs and lone thieves as possible. She’s building her own criminal network and she’s not being as subtle about it as she thinks she is.”

“What about Oska?” Auri asked, almost breathless.

“I’m getting to that. Luckily for us, Oska made himself visible as soon as he came back to Divinity’s Reach. He was seen with a petty crook called Vilma only yesterday – and Vilma is a known associate of this Ruby.”

“Vilma,” Auri said, the word almost a hiss.

“So which one are we looking for? Vilma or Ruby?” Erin rubbed her forehead. They didn’t have time to go chasing after the city’s criminals, of whom there were bound to be many. This wasn’t getting them any closer to Yinn’s backers.

“If we find one, we find both,” Amber said. She was looking at Auri, her eyes narrowed. “There are rumours that Ruby has a base of operations south of here, just outside Claypool. Does the name Blackthorn Manor mean anything to you?”

Auri blinked, for a moment looking as lost as she usually did. “That’s our grandmother’s house.”

Erin almost groaned. “You’re telling us Oska has been kidnapped by his own grandmother?”

It seemed beyond belief, yet Auri was nodding thoughtfully. The prospect was entirely natural to the girl, which made Erin very glad not to have been born a Valpari. Their family was more cutthroat than the Order of Whispers.

“Taria doesn’t see us any more,” Auri said. “The rest of the family, I mean. There was a disagreement.”

That, Erin thought, was a stone better left unturned. As for Oska… “We go south, then. The sooner we can find Oska, the better.”

Amber and Auri both nodded, but Erin found herself eyeing them uneasily. A thief, an elementalist, and herself. They were skilled, all of them… But she was starting to wish she’d brought the whole guild.