There were two guards wandering around the dragon flier, occasionally answering questions but mostly turning away curious pirates who ambled close. Cables stretched across the bronze wings and ran to eyelets on the landing pad, as if force were required to keep the craft from taking off. Fliers did look vaguely like crouching dragons, wings spread, ready to leap into the air and take off, but they were ultimately just machines and wouldn’t go anywhere without a pilot. This particular craft looked like it had been pulled out of the depths of the ocean, with brown sludge dulling the hull and crusty grime caking the wings. Some kind of banner or sign hung from the cockpit. Cas thought it might declare the craft’s owner—whoever had salvaged it—but she was too far away to read the lettering.
She crouched on the roof of one of the sturdier buildings, keeping her back to a vent spewing bacon-scented smoke. It wasn’t much in the way of cover, and she felt exposed, since many of the airships docked to either side of the floating outpost had decks as high as her position. She wished night would fall, but she had no concept of how soon that might be. The strange fog that hugged the whole place hadn’t abated.
Shouts came from a nearby street, and a squad of men ran into view. Their eccentric clothing, most of it doubtlessly plundered from ships all around the world, kept them from looking like an organized military unit, but they were sticking together and peering into alleys. They were also armed.
Cas flattened to her belly. She didn’t recognize them as men from Captain Slaughter’s ship, but she hadn’t met everyone there either, having been busy starting fires in their engine room.
What if Slaughter had told everyone on the station about her and had them hunting for her? She craned her neck to look at his ship—she couldn’t see the deck, but its big black balloon was distinctive and visible. Though, oddly, it seemed farther away than before. She risked rising into a crouch again. Yes, it had moved away from its berth and floated perhaps a hundred meters away from the outpost. Something to do with her fire?
A faint rumble reached her ears, and Cas forgot about the searchers and Slaughter’s ship. The noise sounded familiar, very familiar. Propellers.
She checked to make sure the search party had moved off the nearby street and that nobody was creeping up on her before focusing on the nearest of the giant propellers that helped hold the outpost aloft. Their hum was a constant here, and it continued on as it had before. This was a new noise, and it seemed to be coming from the fog beyond the outpost rather than some machinery on it. And there was more than one propeller making the noise, she was sure of it. She couldn’t guess why they were coming—they couldn’t know she was here... how could they?—but the rumbling grew louder and filled her with hope.
An eardrum-piercing wail erupted from horns mounted on poles at the corners of the outpost. Someone else had noticed the noise and knew what it meant.
The first dragon flier came into view, yellow eyes and a gray snout painted on the nose of the craft. Cas grinned so hard her mouth ached. Wolf Squadron.
Several more craft followed the first out of the fog. She couldn’t make out the numbers on the sides of the fliers yet, but she recognized an attack formation when she saw one. She caught herself standing and waving, but forced herself back into a crouch, not wanting to draw the attention of enemies in the streets below. Pirates were flooding out of buildings, shouting over the sirens and racing to artillery weapons stationed along the edges of the outpost and also on some roofs.
Before the twelfth flier came into sight, the first was already firing, strafing the side of the outpost and spraying bullets. No, it wasn’t aiming at the outpost but at the airships docked along its edge. Pirates were out on the decks and running toward weapons, the same as the people on the station were doing, but everyone had clearly been caught off guard.
The fliers streaked toward Cas’s end of the outpost, and she shrank back, bumping into the vent. They couldn’t possibly know she was alive, and they might kill her without knowing she was there. She ought to run for one of the few brick or stone buildings—they would be the most likely to survive gunfire—but if the pilots started lobbing explosives, it wouldn’t matter how thick the walls were. Besides, she wanted to know what they were after.
The answer to her question came almost immediately as the three lead fliers swerved in, under the giant balloons that marked the ceiling of the outpost, and veered toward the flier. Her first thought was that they might have some crazy plan to throw cables around it and take it with them, but that would be dangerous even without the pirates firing at them. A gray cylinder shot from the teeth of one of those fliers, exploding when it struck the landing pad near the salvaged craft.
“They want to destroy it?” Cas slumped. She wasn’t surprised—there were standing orders not to let the power crystals fall into enemy hands—but that had been her ride home. If they blew it up, she wouldn’t have a way to escape.
A bomb landed on the building next to hers. It exploded on impact, and rubble flew in a thousand directions. Cas dropped to her belly, throwing her hands over her head. As the squadron swooped across the outpost, bullets and explosives laying waste to the structures and docked ships, she stopped worrying about escape and started worrying about surviving. To the fast-moving fliers, she had to appear as nothing more than one more pirate to be exterminated.
The locals had found their posts, and the booms of cannons and explosives roared above the buzz of the propellers. Guns fired from the decks of the individual airships too. The fliers weaved, making hard targets, but their maneuverability was limited between the envelopes and the building-filled outpost itself.
More shrapnel clattered down on Cas’s rooftop. She didn’t know where it was coming from this time, but staying up there wasn’t safe.
When another wolf-nosed craft streaked in her direction, she rolled to the edge and scrambled down into the street. It didn’t fire near her though; it was aiming toward the salvaged flier. The seaweed- and grime-covered craft had already been damaged with that first explosive, and its cockpit lay torn open like a flower shredded by the wind. Yet a glow came from its engine compartment. The crystal powering it must have survived even after years in the ocean. Cas grimaced again, knowing she might have been able to get the craft working and flown home. It was too late now.
In an impressive feat of piloting, the flier weaved between the gunfire of two deck-mounted artillery weapons, dropping a pair of hooks on cables as it flew. The pilot was going to pluck out the energy source—or try anyway. Those crystals were securely mounted into their slots.
Cas leaned to the side, squinted, and was finally able to read the numbers stenciled on the side.
“W-83?” she blurted. That was Colonel Zirkander’s flier.
Was he back? Or was someone flying it for him? The pilot wore a helmet and goggles—it was impossible to tell from a distance, but that craft was weaving and dipping in his style of semi-controlled recklessness.
The hooks missed on the craft’s first pass, scraping the surface of the crystal but not finding purchase. By now, the gunners were aiming at it almost exclusively, despite two wingmen flying nearby, trying to take out the nearest artillery weapons. A cannon fired, the black ball blasting past W-14—Captain Crash Haksor—and heading straight for 83. It skimmed across the cockpit.
“It’s getting too hot,” Cas whispered. “Get out of there.”
The squadron might have taken the outpost by surprise, but that was wearing off now. More than that, the pirates seemed to have recognized what the 83 meant too. All of the cannons and guns on that side of the outpost were locking in on Zirkander’s craft. Two of the launched airships were moving away from their berths and veering in that direction too. A pair of large doors, or perhaps sliding panels, had opened at one corner of the outpost. A thunk-clank sounded and a bulky machine rose from the compartment, some giant cup-shaped apparatus holding netting. It almost looked like an old-fashioned catapult. Whatever it was, that netting was more sophisticated than the hammock Cas had tossed over that kid’s head. A big enough net hurled at a flier could be trouble.
The streets were deserted around her now, with all of the pirates manning a station or back on their ships. With her pistol in hand, Cas ran toward the catapult. She had some vague idea of helping by disabling it. More than that, she wanted Zirkander, or whoever was flying his rig, to notice her helping. There wasn’t room in a flier for a second person, but she would jump on the back and cling to the top of the cockpit if it would get her home.
She hadn’t run more than two blocks before a gang of pirates stalked out of an alley with bags and chests balanced over their shoulders. They all carried swords or pistols too. She tried to veer around them to continue past, hoping that in the chaos they wouldn’t notice her, or at least wouldn’t identify her as anything other than a fellow pirate.
But one pointed at her and yelled, “Witness. Get her!”
Witness, what?
Several guns were aimed in her direction. Her instincts took over, and she threw herself into a roll, angling toward the closest cover: a street lamp. Guns fired, and bullets skipped off the pavement around her. She lunged to her feet, firing as she ducked behind the post. It wasn’t that thick, but she wasn’t that thick, either. Besides, there were no other options nearby. Aiming by instinct, and years of experience, she leaned out slightly and fired three times in rapid succession. They fired back. One of their bullets clipped the lamp fixture, and glass exploded over her head. All she did was lean closer to the post and shoot around it twice more.
“Cover,” one of the men yelled, “find cover.”
She thought this was a reflection of her marksmanship—three men were writhing on the ground, after all—but the buzz of propellers hammered her ears as a flier roared over the nearest building. The pirates stopped firing at her, dropped their burdens, and ran for an alley.
As much as Cas would have liked to jump on and get a ride, she doubted the pilot would recognize her. Who was that? Lieutenant Sparks? Smoke combined with the fog to turn the air a soupy gray that made it hard to see more than fifteen meters. She waved anyway, glancing over her shoulder, as she ran. The craft laid down bullets, obliterating the bags and boxes the pirates had abandoned—and obliterating some of the men she had injured as well.
Cas gulped and lunged into the alley—on the opposite side of the street from the pirates—and raced for the next block. Only when she glanced back to check for pursuers, did she notice the gold coins and small treasures that had spilled out of the dumped cargo. Those men must have been taking advantage of the chaos to loot. From their own people. What heroes.
Cas reloaded her pistol and started toward the catapult again. The side of the landing pad and the railing marking the end of the outpost platform were visible at the end of her street. The net-weapon, if it hadn’t already fired its load, would be off to the right. A couple more blocks, and she could reach it. And help her comrades—and maybe be noticed by her comrades. She wasn’t ready to give up on the idea of rescue.
Before she reached the end of the street, a great explosion thundered not fifty meters away from her. The ground—a floating platform thousands of feet above the ocean, she was reminded—heaved like a wave, nearly hurling Cas into the nearest building. Shrapnel pummeled the pavement, some pieces so large they could have killed a man. She ducked into a doorway for protection. A head-sized piece of black pavement slammed down two feet away, its ragged edges smoldering. More chunks hammered the street. The whole platform seemed to tilt downward now. What had they blown up? More than a building that time.
Cas poked her head out of the doorway long enough to look toward the landing pad.
“Oh.” The landing pad was gone. The whole open area she had been aiming toward was gone, too, including at least one of the giant propellers that helped the outpost remain aloft. For the first time, she worried that the squadron might succeed in utterly destroying the floating city. “Not a goal I’d normally object to, but now...” She eyed the six giant balloons above. They at least seemed stable still, some coating doubtlessly protecting them from the bullets. She was surprised any of the fliers had carried explosives powerful enough to destroy the landing pad and the surrounding platform. Then another, “Oh,” slipped out of her mouth. The power crystal. If the colonel hadn’t been able to extract it, he might have blown it up. Yes, she had seen one destroyed before. That had been in the air rather than on the ground, but the explosion had sent a shockwave that she had felt, flying far behind the lead craft.
After the debris quit hammering the street, Cas slipped out of hiding, changing her plan. In case the platform was on its way into the ocean far below, she needed to get to one of the ships. As much as she loathed the idea, that might mean returning to Captain Slaughter. He wouldn’t be tickled to see her after she had started that fire, but where else could she go? She wouldn’t be able to sneak onto anything now; all of the pirates would be aboard and fighting. She didn’t even know if any of the ships were left in dock. She halted, groaning as she remembered that Slaughter’s ship had left to deal with the fire.
“Nice job, L.T.,” she grumbled to herself. “Sabotage the ship you need to get away in.”
She jogged in the direction she had last seen it anyway. Or started to. Another explosion came from that side of the outpost. It wasn’t as violent as the last one, but it filled the sky with more black smoke. It was one of the smaller airships, one that was—she snorted—flying a yellow-and-blue Iskandian flag. Or at least it had been. That flag, its pole shattered, was fluttering to the pavement where what remained of the craft was berthed. What remained wasn’t much. Little more than a charred, smoking husk. No less than six fliers sailed away from the destroyed craft, their mission apparently accomplished.
Strange. What had been on that ship that had demanded such attention? Cas had assumed the salvaged flier was the main mission—keeping it and its crystal from being sold to the highest bidder for study—but perhaps that had been a side mission, or even a diversion?
The pirates had marshaled their forces now, and four airships, cannons and guns blazing, chased after the six Wolf Squadron pilots. Smoke drifted from the wing of one flier and from the engine area of another. Cas clenched a fist, silently willing them to get out of there. She couldn’t tell whose craft those were through the smoke and the distance, but she didn’t want to hear of any of her comrades going down.
They seemed to be done with their mission, though, and were forming up to fly away. Smoke notwithstanding, all twelve fliers were accounted for. The pirate ships sailed after them in pursuit, but couldn’t match their speed. One after another, the fliers disappeared into the fog.
A lump formed in her throat. They were going home... and she wasn’t. Had anyone even noticed she was here?
Someone grabbed Cas from behind, pulling her off her feet and toting her toward an alley. She tried to wrench herself free even as she lifted her pistol to aim over her shoulder. A hand clamped down, pinning hers in an awkward position, her finger off the trigger.
A shot fired, but it wasn’t hers. A bullet smashed into the corrugated metal corner of a building, a building she had been standing next to seconds before. Standing and staring, without paying attention to her surroundings.
“It’s me,” spoke a familiar voice in her ear. “You’re about to be the most wanted person on this station. What remains of it.”
Cas stopped her struggles, though she wasn’t sure Tolemek was an ally after what she had done to his ship. Hells, she hadn’t been sure he was an ally before, either. Someone she was using in the same manner as he intended to use her, perhaps. Still, he had just pulled her out of the line of fire.
“I don’t suppose you have a suggestion on how to deal with this new problem?” she asked.
For the first time in she didn’t know how many minutes, the noise was fading around them—the cannons had stopped booming and the guns still firing were on the ships flying after the squadron, their noise muffled by distance and the fog.
“Yeah,” Tolemek said. “Hide.”
“Hide?” Fleeing had figured more prominently in her mind.
“The captain will need time to repair the ship, which was damaged even before the attack.” His face was next to hers, since his arm was still holding her against his torso, so he couldn’t glare at her, but he was probably trying to anyway.
At least he didn’t seem furious about the fact. But then, he could be hiding it. Cas had seen him vent frustration, however briefly, in that empty library, but when it came to dealing with people, she had a feeling he was the type who could be utterly furious with a person yet never show it... until it was too late for his target to respond.
“I won’t be able to protect you, either,” Tolemek went on, “not after your squadron just laid waste to half the ships in dock. Hells, they’ll want to lynch me when they find out I brought you here. Unfortunately, we can’t leave until the captain does some repairs. So, yes. Hide.”
“On the station, or off? I only ask because I’m questioning the air worthiness of this outpost right now.”
“It’s not going to drop out of the sky. I’ve seen the blueprints; there’s a lot of redundancy built in.”
“Did you by chance have a hand in designing it?” Cas asked.
“Just some of the defenses. Like the fog. Which didn’t fool your people one iota today. If I thought you had any dragon blood, I’d suspect you of calling out to them somehow.”
Cas shuddered at the idea of having witch blood, or even being accused of having it, but she forced a sarcastic indifference into her tone. “If I could do that, I would have called out for them to take me with them, don’t you think?”
“Yes.”
“Now that we’ve settled that, would you mind putting me down? And letting go of my pistol hand?” She had another pistol and could reach it with her left hand, but wasn’t inclined toward shooting him at the moment.
Tolemek let go of her weapon, and the arm around her waist loosened. She slid down him, her toes touching the debris-littered pavement.
A pirate jumped around the corner, pointing a pistol into the alley. Cas cursed—of course the man who had shot at her would try again. She reacted on instinct again, firing a split second before Tolemek dragged her toward refuse bins against the wall.
“Damn,” he whispered, stopping in the middle of his lunge. Cas’s shot had taken the pirate in the forehead. “That’s uncanny.”
No, that was having a dad who had been training her to follow in the family business since she had been old enough to toddle. She wished he hadn’t taught her so much indifference when it came to drilling people with bullets, but perhaps it served her in this situation.
“I’m ready for that hiding spot now.” Cas waved the pistol. “I’m getting low on the ammo I purloined from your trunk.”
Tolemek nodded toward the far end of the alley. “This way.”
Since all she had managed was to get herself shot at when she had been choosing a route, she was content to let him lead. She would be even more content if darkness would fall. With pirates streaming about on high alert, it was going to be hard to sneak anywhere. She reloaded her guns and strode after Tolemek, though she couldn’t help but gaze toward the sky in the direction the squadron had flown off and wish she were with them.
* * *
Tolemek saw the longing looks Ahn sent in the direction the fliers had gone. He chose not to tell her how relieved he was that the squadron had departed without destroying the outpost, his ship, or her. He wasn’t sure when he had started to feel responsible for her safety, and ferocious toward things that threatened it, but when he had been charging around the station, dodging shrapnel and searching for her, he’d had men take one look at his face and then flee the other way. If he’d had a weapon capable of shooting down those fliers, he would have.
The attack squadron had annihilated Stone Heart’s Burning Dragon. Though he had wondered briefly at the notion that Ahn might have somehow summoned them, he had a feeling the Iskandian military had been tracking that Cofah corporal all along. They must have realized someone had survived the battle at their secret mines and wanted to ensure that he didn’t report back to his people.
Tolemek stuck to the alleys, picking a route that would lead to the opposite end of the outpost, though at the shouts he started hearing in the streets, he wondered if a closer hiding spot would have been better.
A cry of, “Ten gold coins to the man who finds her,” from a nearby street did not sound promising at all. Tolemek had hoped the attack would have delayed that administrator from relaying the information on Ahn’s presence, but it seemed not.
“I don’t suppose he’s lost his grandmother and is looking for help finding her,” Ahn said.
“Grandmothers aren’t much of a fixture here.” Tolemek ducked into an alley behind one of the few brick buildings, stopping by a series of metal boxes on its back wall. He spun a lock on the biggest one and entered a combination. “Unless you count that lady who runs the laundry service and keeps all the cats. She calls them her children. And her children are prolific.”
Ahn pointed to the box he was opening. “If that’s access to the control panel that will allow us to blow up the entire station, I think we should make sure we have a way off first.”
Apparently she had escape on her mind, not cat-granny jokes. Appropriate, he supposed.
“Nothing so sinister.” Tolemek opened the door and slid a few levers from a neutral position to the maximum setting, then closed the panel. “It’ll thicken the fog more.”
He led Ahn toward another alley entrance. “I can’t believe Stone Heart had a flier squadron tailing him all the way from the mainland and didn’t notice it. He’s an experienced captain. It’s unthinkable.” He looked at her, in case she might want to posit an alternative theory, but she kept her mouth shut. Her expression was particularly grim this evening.
Tolemek supposed it wouldn’t mean anything to her if he said that he was starting to find even her grim expressions attractive. Maybe it was just the fact that her bruises were healing nicely, and her face had taken on a more normal shape, but he doubted it. He almost grinned at the memory of that cabin boy explaining how she had tricked him into dropping his trousers and holding an innocuous flask of liquid over his head until he had figured out a way to escape, something he might not have been inspired to do if not for the smoke wafting past the porthole.
Ah, but what was he to do about these inconvenient feelings? Nothing. Whether or not he had stopped considering her the enemy, he knew she still considered him one. And rightfully so. Attraction or not, he wasn’t going to pass up the opportunity of using her to get to Zirkander, especially if Zirkander had a witch ally who knew something about soulblades. To finally have a real lead on a quest that had occupied all of his free time for the last three years... he couldn’t pass up that opportunity.
“Am I looking inscrutable?” Ahn asked. “Or is that the look you wear when you’ve forgotten the way to your secret hiding spot, and you’re trying to remember it?”
“I was—” Tolemek stopped and listened as no fewer than ten men strode down the nearby street, their weapon-laden belts jangling. He drew Ahn into the deep shadows of an alcove. “I was merely waiting for the fog to deepen so we could move on with less risk of discovery.”
“Huh, that’s interesting.” She peered into his eyes.
“What?”
“Seems like I’ve been around you for long enough now that I can tell when you’re lying.”
Tolemek avoided her eyes, looking at the cheap veneer on the wall on the other side of the alley instead. “All right, I was scrutinizing you.”
“So long as you weren’t contemplating unique and effective torments as revenge for me stealing some of your goo and making a mess with it.”
“No.” He gave her a curious look. “I didn’t get a chance to see much of the damage, but from the report I heard, you could have done much more.”
This time, she avoided his eyes. “I just wanted to escape, not annoy your captain so much that he’d devote the rest of his life to hunting me down.”
It was silly, but he wished she’d said he was the one she didn’t want to annoy. Tolemek thunked his head against the wall and reminded himself that feelings would only distract him here.
“I’m not sure he’ll appreciate your solicitude,” he said, “but I do. Come, the fog has thickened. We ought to be able to reach the spot I have in mind without being noticed.”
“What is this stuff made from anyway?” Ahn waved at the soupy air as she followed him into a space between two buildings that was too narrow to be considered an alley.
“My special proprietary blend.”
“In other words, you’re not sharing your secret?”
“Not until you renounce your Iskandian citizenship and agree to become my loyal lab assistant.”
Ahn snorted. “Sure. I’ll send in the paperwork tomorrow.”
Tolemek stepped out from between the two buildings, only to halt and squeeze back into the crack. Pirates carrying guns and lanterns were striding down the street that he and Ahn needed to run down to reach the next alley. It was only twenty meters away, but a party was coming from the opposite direction as well.
“Check between those buildings,” someone called, not from either of the groups in the street but from the block they had left.
“These search parties are getting a little too organized for my tastes,” Tolemek muttered.
“We can handle it.” The click of a gun being cocked reached his ear.
“Let me take care of it. These are... Ahn, I can’t be seen with you if you’re going to run around shooting everyone on the station. These are my people, my allies.”
“Yeah? I saw some of them looting one of the shops earlier. Loyalty seems fleeting here.”
“Some of them are closer allies than others.” Tolemek lifted a hand to forestall further arguments—or derisive commentary on the pirates—since the parties had made their way closer. They were going to cross paths right in front of his position. He lowered his voice to a murmur and added, “Don’t shoot unless it’s an emergency. And watch the route behind you.”
“Understood.”
Tolemek remained still, hoping the fog and the shadows might hide him. Maybe the men would simply walk past without noticing.
“Who’s that there?” One of the pirates lifted a lantern in Tolemek’s direction.
He leaned his shoulder against the corner to block the view of Ahn. “Deathmaker.” He made his voice as chill and forbidding as he could manage. Meanwhile, he slipped a hand into a pouch at his belt. Though he hadn’t stopped by his cabin since the meeting, he always kept a few vials and contraptions with him. The pirates might be the only people in the world he could claim as allies, but that didn’t mean he trusted all of them.
The men exchanged glances with each other.
“You seen the Wolf Squadron girl?”
“They say she came in on your ship,” someone in the back of the group added. “With you.”
“She escaped our ship, yes. I don’t know anything about it. I was called out here to fix the fog. It’s thicker than porridge.” Indeed, it wafted down the streets, curling about the legs of the pirates. Tolemek might be able to roll something out there without them noticing. The other group was approaching, so he decided to wait. Maybe he could hit both parties at once.
“Yeah, getting worse by the minute. What happened?”
“One of the fliers hit the control panel and damaged it,” Tolemek said.
A tap came at his shoulder. “The ones behind us are looking up the alleys,” Ahn whispered.
“Strange that the Iskandians found us through it,” one of the men said.
Tolemek slid a leather-wrapped sphere out of his pouch.
“They say there’s a witch working for Zirkander now,” the man went on. “Maybe she helped him find us.”
Huh. Word from that meeting had gotten out quickly.
“What?” Ahn whispered.
One of the pirates squinted at Tolemek. “There’s not someone behind you in that crack, is there?”
“No.” Tolemek pointed toward the roof of the building across the street. “Think I saw someone move up there though. Anyone got a reason to spy on you boys?”
Not all of them looked—more than one man squinted at Tolemek—but he didn’t care. He armed his sphere and bent slightly, to roll it toward the center of the groups without letting it make noise.
He slipped a hand behind him to push at Ahn. They would need to back out of the range of the odor that would soon be disseminated. But she had already moved. He glanced back, afraid she had left for some reason. She was in the center of the narrow alley, down on one knee, fog whispering past her shoulders as she aimed a pistol toward the opposite end.
“What is that smell?” one of the men in front demanded.
“The fog,” Tolemek said. “I’d best see to the repairs.” He backed into the alley, wrinkling his nose as he caught a whiff of his concoction, a faint rose-petal scent not quite masking the more sinister chemical odor beneath it. He would have to work on that, so long as he didn’t pass out from inhaling his own knock-out gas first.
He squeezed through the alley toward Ahn, his shoulders brushing the walls, and knelt behind her.
“You shouldn’t need to fire,” he whispered. “The search parties I was talking to will be unconscious shortly, and we can go that way.”
In the deepening gloom, he could barely see her, but he thought she nodded. Another half hour and night would fall, making it easier to move about, but he hoped they had reached the spot he sought before then. Every moment they were out in the open, they risked being caught—or shot.
Soft thumps came from the street behind him.
“That should be it,” he whispered and started to back in that direction.
A clank-clunk-thump sounded, something bouncing off the wall and into their alley. Tolemek grabbed Ahn’s shoulder, images of grenades bursting in his mind, but not before she got two shots off. One of them seemed to strike the item, for the clanks sounded, going in the other direction. Tolemek had scarcely seen anything. He pulled Ahn toward the street.
A flash of light and a boom came from the object—it was farther away than he would have expected. Shouts of surprise—and pain—arose from that direction. Ahn must have shot the grenade itself, knocking it back toward the men who had thrown it. Tolemek could barely see in the shadows and fog and couldn’t imagine how she had made the shot.
Ahn, less constricted by the narrow walls, spun and pushed at him—as if he hadn’t been trying to pull her in that direction all along. “Time to go. That won’t stop them for long.”
Tolemek jogged into the street where he had rolled out the sphere. Even more fog had gathered, but not enough to hide the lanterns lying on the pavement, lanterns that had been in men’s hands before. He ran past the slumbering figures, leading Ahn up the street, across it, and into a new alley.
“You should have stored those leather balls somewhere obvious, so I could find them in your cabin,” Ahn said. “I wouldn’t have had to burn holes in the engine. Could have just knocked out everyone on the deck to escape.”
“Yes... In the future, I’ll make sure to organize and label my lab for the convenience of prisoners.”
“Maybe add a map and some diagrams too.”
Tolemek found himself grinning despite the circumstances—and the fact that he was going to have a difficult time walking about on the Roaming Curse outpost again without getting shot, assuming he made it off this time without getting shot. He took a final turn, then stopped before a brick wall at the end of an alley. Shouts echoed in the streets behind them, calls for reinforcements. So much for sneaking over to this end of the outpost without being noticed.
“You’d think they would have repairs to worry about,” he muttered.
Ahn tapped the brick wall. “Dead end?”
“No.” The fog obscured the ground, so Tolemek tapped around with his boot until he located a spot that clanged instead of thudding. He knelt and found a grate.
“Sewers? I wouldn’t have thought this place had anything intricate beneath the platform.”
“It doesn’t. These grates just funnel rainwater off the streets and into the sea below. But they also lead somewhere else.” Not surprisingly, the grate was locked.
“Want me to open that?” Ahn asked.
“Your opening method leaves a lot of destroyed evidence behind to mark a person’s passing.”
Shouts came from a nearby street.
“Is that a no?” Ahn bounced on her toes, one of the six-shooters in hand again as she watched the path behind them.
“Correct.” Tolemek pulled out a vial, uncapped it, and carefully poured a couple of drops of gray liquid into the lock hole. “We’re not going far once we crawl down here, so I don’t want anyone noticing that someone passed through.”
“With all this fog, you can’t even see the grate itself.”
“True, but it’s possible someone will turn that down at some point. I’m not the only one on the station who knows how to push a lever.”
“You should have booby-trapped it then,” Ahn said.
“That would have been needlessly destructive.”
She glanced back at him, giving a pointed look toward the grate. He didn’t think she could see the hint of smoke rising from the lock, but she might be able to smell the melting mechanism.
“And possibly a good idea,” he admitted. “Suggest it earlier next time.”
“Next time? Are you planning on escaping from a lot more angry mobs with me?”
“Judging by what I’ve come to know about you in the last twenty-four hours, it seems inevitable. If we continue to spend time together, that is.” Tolemek tried the grate. The locking mechanism had disintegrated, and he opened it with ease. “My lady. Your duct awaits.”