“Sharp left here,” Hesperus said after a long while. “Keep your left hand on the wall and you’ll be fine.”

Hesperus rounded the corner, keeping his hand flat on the wall as he went. With a steadying breath, Caledonia followed. Her light showed that the path did indeed turn sharply left, continuing down the wall of a massive cavern. Beside the path was nothing but a long drop.

“Keep your eyes on the stairs.” Hesperus’s voice carried in the wide space of the cavern, fraying around the edges as it found the far reaches of the room. “If you get dizzy, stop and sit. I don’t want your crew thinking I killed you unless I actually do.”

If it weren’t for the gaping maw beside her, Caledonia might have laughed. As it was, she clenched her teeth and cautiously maneuvered around the corner and onto the hewn stairway. She wasn’t afraid of heights the way Pisces was, but this made every muscle in her body contract.

To distract herself, she returned to the question of Hesperus and his ambiguous loyalties. “Would you turn me over now?” she asked.

There was a slight hitch in his step. He thought for a moment before responding. “No.”

“Because of what I know?”

Again, a span of thoughtful silence. “Because I have a feeling you’d find your way back. You’d keep pestering me until I gave in and helped you on this damn foolish aim.”

She smiled at the words and the gruff manner in which he’d spoken them. “I may make an ally of you yet.”

“Caledonia.” He stopped three steps below her, spinning to place his right hand against the wall. “You are clearly a girl of vision, and it seems I am destined to help you in spite of my better judgment. But I have an entire city to consider. I won’t put them in danger to foster a small war that will likely get the smallest players killed. We are the smallest players. And I don’t intend to die tomorrow or anytime sooner than many long years from now. I’d also rather you didn’t die. But better you than me. You should know that will always be my final reckoning: better you and yours die than me and mine.”

She considered the man before her. He was several years her senior, though still quite young. And in spite of his thirst for power, every word he said circled around to a desire to keep people other than himself safe. He was a caring man even if he didn’t want to admit it.