They finished cleaning up, and once that was done they poured every ounce of salt they had on the bodies in the secret room, the smell dwindling enough that Ellis wondered why the neighbours hadn’t come knocking on the door.

  Afterwards, Ameena broke out some stale bread and warm wine. They righted a table and found two chairs that had survived the earlier fight, and placed it in the center of the spotless lounge, the full moon casting a silver glow into the house that mixed with the candlelight. They sat down with their food, both of them far apart from one another in case Michael woke up and got the wrong idea. The warmth of the wine spread through his stomach and spread out across his body as they went through the same argument for the fifth time.

  “‘Hunting an animal you know nothing about is a fool's errand.’” Ellis quoted as he munched on the bread. “We’re hunting the Archduke. And from your repeated annoyance at mentioning him, I assume you don’t want to share what you know about him?”

  Ameena gave him a look.

  “Right. Let’s not argue about that again. So, I shall substitute the Archduke for where he lives, the palace. Tunnels are a no go and probably suicide, the front door is definitely suicide… any other possible entrances?”

  “None that I know of.”

  “What about the mountain the palace is built into? We could scale down it? Drop a few ropes down from the top and then we’re on the roof.”

  She raised an impressed eyebrow, “If only it were that easy. The entire reason the palace was built into the mountain was because it is practically made of salt. It's where the city gets its name, after all. The top of the mountain has a small but formidable fortress manned by palace guards, which can hold back an army if need be. If we could get into the palace, the tunnels within will get us past the rest of the barricades that cut off the exposed parts of the palace from its interior… but the mountain is not a way for us to do so.”

  Ellis took a swig of the wine. “Do you know the amount of palace guards that roam the mountaintop? Maybe we could… remove them, then hang ropes down? Like you said, once that fortress is passed we no longer have the same problem.”

  Ameena shook her head. “You forget, we’d have to leave the city to do that. And we can’t leave since we were ratted out. The guards would kill us the moment they saw our faces, and I don’t know if I have enough mana to hide us for long enough to slip through their patrols. If by some miracle we did manage to get out of the city, we’d still have to hike up the mountain then face the palace guards… and admittedly, I don’t know their number. There are roughly two hundred in the palace, so there might be only a fraction on top of the mountain, say twenty to thirty. But they’d see us coming and would have all the time in the world to prepare. We barely made it through thirteen regular guards and we had the drop on them. Assume the mountain is also a definite suicide.”

  “Well isn’t that fantastic,” Ellis muttered. “Okay. Mountain and the palace entrance are suicide and the tunnels are probably suicide but we don’t wanna go down that one. You got any other ideas?”

  “We can go through the tunnels… we just need to avoid the people living there. Go around them, rather than through,” Ameena offered.

  Ellis thought of the lie they needed to tell. “We can tell Michael it’s to flank the people staying there. He seemed to like that idea earlier.”

  She nodded. “Smart. But to do that, we’d need to find a new entrance.”

  Ellis raised an eyebrow, “How do you know there’d be a new entrance, for one? And two, if we did manage to get back into the tunnels through this new magical entrance, we’d still be stuck. We don’t know where to go, clearly, since we ran smack dab into that barricaded place yesterday. So we get into the tunnels, get lost, then run into them again… and twenty minutes later we’d be right back here with a few new arrows in our asses.”

  “A single point of entry and exit is downright stupid. So there has to be another entrance, somewhere. But that second point…”

  She shook her head before finishing the thought. But her behaviour told him she had the answer to his proposed problem.

  He suppressed the need to argue. “You have an idea, don’t you?”

  Ameena didn’t answer for a moment, glancing back at Michael before she did so. “Not one I wish to use.”

  “Let’s hear it, then we’ll try and do something else.”

  She glanced up at Ellis, sighing. “‘Hunting an animal you know nothing about is a fool's errand’, or so some boy keeps repeating. When the mercenaries I traveled with as a child wanted to sack a city, but couldn’t figure out a way through their walls… They would capture an enemy soldier, torture them for the information and within the week the city would be burnt to the ground.”

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  “You want to capture someone? ...that… they would know the tunnels… but…” Ellis muttered, shaking his head.

  “Exactly. He would never let them live,” she said, wrapping her magical cloak around herself.

  Ellis let loose a deep sigh. “Michael, Michael, Michael… He really is one of a kind, isn’t he?”

  She snorted. “That he is.”

  They shared a quiet moment of judgement for their companion. He both made this possible and impossible just with his very existence.

  Ellis finished his wine with a deep gulp. “Well, you know that quote about hunting. Why did you start traveling together?”

  Ameena raised her eyebrow at the question, before shaking her head and looking toward Michael’s sleeping form, like she could gleam the answer from his silent skull. “I am… not sure. We met in a bar about a week before we bumped into you. I’d just left my mercenary band, and was asking around to see if I could recruit anyone to my cause. He walked up with that usual smile, and asked what I needed recruits for.”

  She paused, as if reliving the memory. A shudder went through her spine as she did so, turning away from Michael like he would wake at any moment. Taking another bite of her food, Ellis tried to get more information out of her.

  “What happened after that? How did you convince him to join you in killing the Archduke? Or… did you even need to?”

  “You really do like your questions,” Ameena said with a snort, before she shrugged. “I’d had a few drinks, so my tongue was a bit loose. I didn’t think anyone would believe me until we got to the city anyway. Most of the bar fell over the chairs laughing when I told him I wished to kill the Archduke, but three men happened to be soldiers. They took offense at my little comment and got their swords out…”

  That shudder returned, and she munched harder.

  “I assume you witnessed his brilliant sword play?” Ellis said, trying to lighten her mood.

  She gave Ellis a half smile. “I witnessed his utter barbarity. He killed everyone in that bar. Every man and woman. After burning the place down, he stepped through the flames with his hand outstretched. ‘Let’s be partners!’” she mocked, her eyes far away.

  “And you… didn’t try to run away?”

  She shrugged again. “On the contrary. I thought it would be useful.”

  “Oh, so we’re all mad. That’s comforting, at least,” Ellis said, pouring himself another glass of wine.

  His sarcastic remark made her laugh. As she did so, the curve of her face glinted with the candle light, dimples appearing on her cheeks as a rare smile touched her eyes. Ellis thought Michael would like the look of her now… and the answer struck him.

  “...not if they’re pretty,” Ellis said, his eyes growing wide as he looked back at Michael, thanking the gods he had kept note of his weaknesses.

  She stopped smiling and looked at him like he was the mad one. “What? What are you talking about?”

  “The answer! We can capture someone! As long as it's a pretty woman, I don’t think he’d kill them! I know you’ve seen how he looks at you!” He said, gesturing at her like she was a view.

  Ameena chewed her lip, “...I have. But that doesn’t mean his one desire is enough to curb another. And be practical, she would know where we’re going and could alert the rest of her people. We could never let her go.”

  “He spared that lookout because you batted your eyelashes at him, if you remember correctly. And why couldn’t we let her go? She leads us toward the palace which we’re gonna have to fight through anyway, and then we let her go. She’ll run back to her people, tell them our insane plan of trying to kill the Archduke, they’ll call us fools before going back to abusing the next poor soul who runs past their entrance! They wouldn’t come looking for us, the Archduke would probably be dead and we’d be full of arrows! Win win for everyone!” Ellis finished, raising his wine glass in a toast, only half joking with that last part.

  He got another smile from her. “I don’t think we’d die.”

  “It was you who said the palace guards made the regular guards look like puppies, and there are two hundred of them in that palace. Getting in and killing the Archduke might be possible… but leaving won’t be.”

  She nodded, her smile more macabre now. “Leno is— Was an average palace guard, and Michael toyed with him. More importantly, you forget we have a travelstone, so leaving is actually the easy part. However… you are right. About capturing one of them, I mean. Just… just maybe, we could pull it off.”

  Sitting back in her chair, it was the first time he had seen her like this. Happy, the smile she wore growing less dimmed the longer they spoke. He shared that feeling for a different reason. Because once they broke into that palace, he would steal that travelstone and make sure her and Michael both died in the attempt at killing the Archduke.

  He pinched the skin on the back of his hand until it bled. Because for the first time, he didn’t salivate at the idea of killing Ameena. He almost wanted her to succeed, just because of how badly she wanted it.

  She spoke up after a moment, “I get my revenge… but you don’t get yours, Ellis. Where does the Ant Killer die in all this?”

  Ellis was stunned. He hadn’t expected her to care enough to notice. “I… well, I… Uh, assume with all the commotion the strongest man in the city would come running, and then I can just sic Michael onto him. I’ll probably manage to kill him in the ensuing melee.”

  She studied him for a moment, then nodded. “Fair enough. Come on. We need to move before he wakes."

  Ellis scrunched his eyebrows. “We’re going now? It’s the middle of the night!”

  Her joyous mood turned sour, and her smile turned sad. “Exactly. The darkness will hide this ‘pretty girl’ better than we ever could.”