The bar still didn't like her when she walked back in, but they weren't coming at her with guns. Everyone took a short glance at her and shuffled back to their positions, crouched over their drinks or playing some card game at their table, shoulders all now broader than before. Ramona looked around, searching for Rory amidst the crowd. If he was as smart as he seemed to believe he was, the man would have covered up his fancy clothes and shut himself up in a corner. 

And that was where he was.

Sitting in the corner, what looked like a brown rag stolen from a homeless person wrapped around his shoulders. He was squinting out a tiny window, a smirk on his face. 

He'd seen her walk in. Then again, so did everyone. 

Ramona made her way by the tables, making sure not to brush up against anyone. Too many sensitive items on her now: a crown, a ring, a picture, knives and weapons galore. She kept her coat tight around her. 

She pulled a stool out with her foot and sat down. 

"I thought you might not show up. Instead, you make a show of yourself as you walk in," he mumbled, turning to look out the window. 

"It's a bit hard when you don't look like anyone here." Ramona sighed and leaned against the post beside her, meeting his eye in the reflection of the window. She raised an eyebrow at him. "Then again, I'm pretty pleased I don't have your ugly mug." 

Rory sputtered at the window and pushed away from it, meeting her gaze directly. "No need to be rude. It's your fault we're in this situation."

Ramona shook her head and leaned in. "My fault? No, no, no, this is not my fault. You are the one who started this whole process. I know it was you who hired Leif in the first place."

"Leif?" 

Ramona felt heat rise to her cheeks. Whether he actually didn't know or was just trying to get a rise, she needed to shove her feelings down. At this moment, they did not matter. "You hired him to take the feeble boy off the streets. Then you changed your mind, or maybe they cut you, I don't care but suddenly you're hiring more people to make a bigger mess. Then, you murder someone to get your way. What has happened to you my friend, you've had coming."

"And when will you get what's coming to you, dear? You're certainly no delicate flower in this whole thing. Need I remind you, you're a murderer too?" 

Ramona bristled at that, her neck feeling like stone and her gaze hard as iron. To her, it felt like self-defense, revenge, necessities. The intent was different. Wasn't enough, though, was it? She shook out her shoulders and relaxed. If he got to her now, she was never going to finish the job. "Let's talk about the job."

"The job," he laughed. "So vulgar and loud, keep quiet you. You just follow my lead and do as I say." 

With a kick of her heel, she bashed his stool. "Not so fast. I don't just take orders."

"I don't know, I must have an influence over you. You came here just for me." 

Ramona kicked up a foot, but brought it back down. Instead she scoffed: "I did not come here for you." Leaning back, she tried to recollect herself. Fumbled for her gun, just knowing it was close and an option a comfort. "This is a collaboration there, Rory. You may have the details, but you're old and you're slow."

Then her knee stung, and she recoiled, bashing her knee against the table. Everything rattled, and she became acutely aware how quiet the tavern was getting. 

"Am I really so slow?"

Ramona brought her knee to her more slowly and swiped off the blood, then stared at her thumb. She then moved her gaze from the cut on her knee to his face. An oddly familiar smile on his face, common among the bottom-feeders, and common among the indignant nobles too, she could see. 

This smile reminded Ramona of the first pet she brought into her home. A bigger than average, scraggly cat, with a scalped chin and scratched face. Young, ugly and fluffy, like a war-bear cub. Her family didn't want it in the house, but Ramona had been so insistent. While her father pretended it didn't exist, her mother worked hard help Ramona treat it as a family pet.

The cat didn't go three days without striking. Ramona had fed it, petted it and poured all the love a six-year-old child had into it. Still, it was a disturbed animal. Ramona had been petting it, and it had this fanged smile, and a gleam in its eyes like she'd never seen. Ramona had confused it for a deeper bond. Then the cat leapt up and scratched the hell out of her, biting her ear while it tore at her jugular. It took three people to remove it. 

Her father never spoke of it, staying stoic as ever. Her mother treated it as a sort of lesson: There are some creatures that are just out to do what's best for them. No matter how much time you spend cultivating that relationship, the most important relationship is that with their own ventures. They'll kill you if they need to. 

The smile was a good reminder for Ramona. It would have been nice to develop a rapport that was not made out of mutual selfishness. However, he was no Leif, able to strike deals and appeal to a kind side, even make a friend. No, if this man had a kind side, it was reserved to few; there was nothing Ramona could buy, steal, or do to win his favor. 

"We can't kill each other, or maim each other, or we'll get nowhere," she said. 

The curator rolled his eyes. "Please, if you didn't need me, you'd kill me in an instant." 

Ramona scoffed at him. "You the same. That's what I mean, idiot. We need each other, whether we like it or not. So no ruining each other." 

He leaned forward and tapped a closed fist with his fingers. "What if I just got another henchman — or henchwoman, as it may be?"

This time Ramona drew out her weapon. "By the time you stabbed me with that knife of yours, you'd have a shot in your stomach and die." She clicked off the safety under the table so he heard it. "Is this how we go?" 

The curator leaned back and showed her putting the knife back into its sheath. Ramona showed him the same with her gun. "We have a deal, then?" 

Rory breathed out a sigh and nodded, leaning back. "I believe we do." 

The light was blocked all of a sudden, causing Ramona and Rory to look up. A big, burly man and an even broader woman was standing at their table. 

Ramona and Rory blinked at the two bartenders, and in return they got a shared sneer. "Get out. We don't want trouble, we don't like Merinne travelers, and we don't their lackeys." 

Flabbergasted, Rory puffed out his cheek. "Lackey?" Ramona rolled her eyes and started gathering her things. As subtly as she could, she brushed by the bartenders. Surveying the crowd, she realized how many eyes were on them. If they stayed any longer, a bar brawl would definitely ensue. 

Back out in the cold, Ramona sighed. "That went well," she mumbled. 

Rory huffed. "I have never been so mistreated in my entire life. Lackey. Don't they know who I am?" 

Ramona raised an eyebrow at that, but brushed it away. No use getting to know the troubles of indignant ass-face nobles. "So, when do you want to start?"

Glancing back at the tavern that just kicked them out, Rory brushed his hands off and got a wicked grin to his face. 

"Does now work for you?" he asked. 

Ramona opened her mouth to contest, but he grinned. 

"I think now will be perfect."

With that, he made way for the tunnels. Ramona hesitated. She wanted more details, she wanted to understand what she was about to go into. 

Instead, she gripped onto the crown hooked on her back loop. It was still there. There was still a job to do. 

Ramona followed Rory without a word. 

The tunnels have paintings on the wall, ornate and designed like a rug on a mansion interior. It wasn't everywhere, but there were patches where artists designed filagree and painted stories. Other spots were more barren, red-earth and colder. The ceilings felt like they were vaulted they were so high. They were deep in the underbelly of the tunnels now. 

This part was more busy than she saw before. People setting up their shops, beautiful glass counters or wooden crates, whatever set up the better aesthetic. Woolen socks made by a woman four times Ramona's age, and just down the way a little boy selling mechanisms from music boxes to lock-picking sets. Jewelry and bourbon, corn and silken gowns, this really was a world of trades. Cold too. The Icebox was a fitting name. 

Ramona tried to keep to herself, but the curator had a sort of relationship with the people that made her presence known instantly. It made Ramona skittish. Everyone knew Rory, and everyone was happy to see him. Greeting him with happy smiles, showing him their wares before they even set up shop. Pushing themselves to the side to let him through. Greeting her as though she were a good friend, just because she knew him. Not like a foreigner whose people once may have killed a grandfather or a sister or a child. 

"Beautiful again this year, my dear. Good luck to you when it all opens," Rory finished with an older woman but not ancient. She'd been showing him painted leather wallets, some in the shapes of animals like turtles or serpents. He patted it dotingly and continued. 

The entire time, Ramona didn't speak. Couldn't speak. Ramona's sister once told her that psychopaths were the nicest neighbors, and that the most successful serial killers made the best workers. It was a tactic to terrify her when they got a new helper around home, but she couldn't help but wonder the truth of it. Ramona liked to believe that everyone awful had a red-flag tied on them somewhere, but that just wasn't true. Even she'd believed Rory was the victim when she first met him. Everyone here was just as convinced. 

The crowds began to wean, and eventually Ramona was among fishermen-like strangers. Ragged but kind-eyed, with tools or instruments, finding spots to do... something. Perhaps dig ore? Find minerals? She couldn't say. They walked as though they'd been navigating these dark tunnels most of their lives. Knew just where to go, she supposed, to get what they wanted. 

Rory navigated with just the same prowess, and seemed even more pleased that Ramona didn't know where they were going. When they made it to the rundown set of tunnels they were supposed to go down, Ramona walked right by, assuming it was just like all the other collapsed and ruined tunnels from a time gone by. Rory hooked finger around her arm, and Ramona spun so hard his smile went away and instead he was shaking his hand to wring out the pain. 

"We're here? This doesn't look like anything." 

The other collapsed masses had more to them: there was old infrastructure that crumbled away, some even had light in them from use, signifying that some people were there -- likely drug addicts according to the locals -- but nonetheless more life to them. This one was a duller one, broken down and dark. 

She supposed that made sense. 

Rory hopped on top of a rock and sat on it, before pushing himself over the wall. He then stuck out a hand to help her. Ramona initially did not want to take it, but the rocks were unstable under her feet, and she didn't have the height to be able to completely follow him. When she did finally grab his hand, he threw her to the ground, letting her scrape against the rocky floor. 

This is why she hated having people on her jobs. This is why she hated jobs like this. This is why she hated Rory. 

Brushing herself off and cleaning the dirt off of her face, a cut on her cheek began stinging with the grime. She winced and wicked the dirt away, but didn't allow Rory to see. She merely followed. Rory lit a torch and started walking, a hand splayed on the left wall. 

The first thing Ramona noticed was that this was not like the other tunnels. No real infrastructure, like it was still in construction when it collapsed. 

"This one never got finished, did it?" 

She could hear Rory's laugh, though there was no voice to it. Just a puff of air and surely a grin. 

"Yes, it is different."

There were several branches going off of this tunnel, far too soon, unlike the others. Whereas there were a stretch of paces from the start of a tunnel to its first branch off, this one was made hastily. With no infrastructure, and none of the techniques used before, it should give itself away as being unique, yet no one goes this way. 

"Why?" 

"This is similar to the first incarnation of these tunnels. Before people who were more knowledgable built the underground city. It was made with the intent of looking unstable." 

This tunnel was never meant to become part of the underground city. Crafted just for the intent of crooks and thieves out to destroy the royal family. The more Ramona found out about the operation before her entry, the more anxious she got. This wasn't a botched snatch and grab with a bunch of coincidences on the side: the heir's family had been sabotaged. 

Ramona kept her mouth shut, not wanting to expose how little she knew, how much she knew. A lot of it speculation, but damn good speculation. Enough to be a threat, enough to wind up dead. Then again, operations like these, for her to know anything at all about it put a target on her back. 

Instead, she followed aimlessly, unsure how one rock noted the correct path compared to another. 

Rory relished in the fact that he knew where he was going and she did not. In her book, all it did was exemplify that he was willing to do an infinite amount of horrible things. 

"Miss glass eyes, are you unsure where to go?"

Ramona blinked at him, unfamiliar with his expression. She grit her teeth and sighed. "I want you to have the reigns -- it's good practice for when you have to navigate hell," Ramona quipped. 

"I'll likely be your guide there, too." 

He was quick, which annoyed her, but also made this a bit more bearable. If he was a grouch who couldn't take a joke, she might have had to shoot him long before this. 

Rory made a sharp turn, Ramona struggling to follow. He got faster and faster, his gazes more wary as he looked around and behind her. 

"We must be very careful. The son may be here, and he is already not fond of me."

The son? Ramona wasn't sure what he was talking about, and then -- the son -- the new royal family's boy, a member of the family that wagered the rightful heir. Ramona's heart spiked, but she forced a laugh. "How surprising."

Feet shuffled in the dark, wind blew down the tunnels behind her but never through where they were going. Everything roared, but at the same time muffled. The Icebox was not within Ramona's comfort zone, preferring open spaces and, if possible, a body of water.

 "Keep quiet." Rory pushed himself against the tunnel wall. Ramona did the same. "From here on in, you are an assistant, new to the operation."

"What am I going to see in there?" Ramona asked. "What am I looking for? How will we find the prince?"

Rory rolled his eyes and dropped the torch, then putting it out with the water satchel on his hip. He then took a sip. "He hasn't gone anywhere."

His voice was edged, vindictive and morbid. It made Ramona shiver. "And where am I going?"

"I'll let you know. From now on, follow my lead." 

Behind him he brushed his hand, and a shadow covered it. This area somehow getting even darker. Then he seemed to vanish into the wall. 

Her stomach in knots and her fingers cold, part of her wanted to run away. Let him get eaten alive by whoever was on the other side. 

Cold and curious, Ramona stepped into the dark.