“Drothe?” It was Degan.

“Here,” I called.

I listened to him thread his way through the barrels and crates, then saw the glow that came with him. He must have taken one of Shatters’s lanterns. I squinted and purposefully turned my back to him, but the illumination still made my eyes burn. The place must have been dim enough to start awakening my night vision after all, even with the candle.

“Anything?” he said as he came up beside me.

“A name,” I said, blinking rapidly as my eyes gave one last fiery protest and then settled into normal vision. “Ioclaudia.”

“Old name,” observed Degan.

I nodded. “Know anyone who goes by it?”

“Nope.”

I nodded again. It would have been too much to hope for, anyhow.

Degan waited. I remained silent. “Tell me that isn’t all you got,” he said.

“That’s all I got.”

Degan set the lantern down on the crate and rubbed the bridge of his nose. “Why is it always like this with you? Why is it never easy?”

“Luck?” I said. Degan didn’t smile. I sighed and reached for the lantern. “Come on,” I said, turning away. “The smell in here is-” I froze in midmotion. “Damn.”

Degan’s hand drifted ever so slightly toward his sword. “What?”

I set the lantern back down and leaned forward over the crate. There, on one of the pipe tapers, just visible among the folds and twists of the paper, was an ideograph.

I picked up the taper and carefully untwisted it. No, it hadn’t been a trick of the light. The symbol pystos, along with a host of other random markings, had been inked on the scrap of paper. Pystos meant “relic.” And near it, the block symbol immus, simple shorthand for “emperor.”

Degan bent down and peered over my shoulder. He chuckled.

“Luck, indeed,” he agreed.