Every so often, Arthie felt the same pinprick panic as the people whose secrets she exposed. Like now, when quick as a trick of the light, Calibore the pistol became Calibore the knife, black filigree scrawling down its hilt, silver blade sharp.
Laith froze in the midst of his struggle, and for a harrowing second, she thought he might have died, but it was only a beat of surprise before he started clawing at the man’s grip anew.
From a knife, Calibore shifted again, this time to a sword, and then finally into what she wanted: a club. Arthie rushed at the man and swung, throwing all her weight into it. She slammed the club against his skull. The impact jarred her teeth. He released Laith with a shout and stumbled back, blinking as he looked from Arthie to her weapon.
And then he collapsed.
Laith gasped for air. “How … how?”
Arthie holstered her pistol again. “He won’t be down long. We need to go.”
There was a tremble in her fingers, and she wasn’t sure if it was because she’d revealed her secret or because the high captain had nearly died. She toed the man before digging through his pockets for the marker.
Laith rose unsteadily to his feet and hesitated. For a moment she thought he might thank her, but then he turned away, and she was thankful. With a wheeze, he reached for the doorknob. It didn’t budge. He threw his weight against it, and something rattled on the other side.
“They’ve locked us in. Drat it all,” Arthie growled.
Their assailant twitched.
Laith gestured to where the curtains fluttered from the open window. “There. It’s too long a drop, but we can escape through the abandoned warehouse.”
But the warehouse window was closed and too far out of reach to open the latches from here. “It’s not—”
Laith sprinted past her, whispering to his kitten to hold fast before he leaped through the window. At this rate, she would need to spend time making sure he didn’t die before they got the ledger.
He landed almost soundlessly. Landed was the wrong word, because he was defying gravity. One of his hands clutched the window’s ledge as the toes of his boots dug into the grooves on the stone wall. With the other hand, he worked at the latches using his gauntlet blade.
A groan rose behind her.
“He’s waking up,” Arthie called.
“Oh, I’m sorry, I thought I had time for tea,” Laith snarked. The first latch clicked open. He turned to the second.
The man huffed, and Arthie turned to find him sitting up. He shook his head and blinked at his surroundings before he fully came to.
And stared straight at her.
Laith shoved the window open as the man rolled onto his feet.
“Jump, Arthie,” Laith shouted.
She tucked the marker into her pocket and braced herself. The ground shook. The man was charging toward her. She ran. Jumped. Her eyes locked with Laith’s for the barest of moments before fingers closed around the heel of her shoe, breaking her momentum. She wasn’t going to make it. When will you acknowledge that you’re in way over your head? Why was the window so far out of reach? Reach, Arthie.
Her fingers brushed the ledge.
Her fist closed around air—before a warm hand engulfed hers.
Arthie opened her eyes.
She was dangling yards above the debris piled in the alley—she wasn’t a heap of bones on the ground.
“I’ve got you,” Laith rasped.
He moved to secure her with his other hand, but she gripped the ledge and pulled herself up to the dusty wood beside him. She huffed, trying to pretend away the panic that flared in his eyes when she’d lost her footing. Laith rushed to close the window and growled.
“I can’t close it. The latches are jammed,” he said. “We need to move. We’re four floors from the ground.”
Their assailant was struggling to brace his own footing in the office window.
“He’ll be across soon enough,” Laith said.
Arthie dusted off her clothes on shaky legs. The warehouse had been long abandoned. It was oddly built. Each of the four levels were more balcony than full floor, though there were no railings to keep anyone from toppling, rickety and rotted stairwells connecting each one. Far below on the ground floor, tatty tables were arranged in rows, moth-eaten manuals spread beside hammers and screws the length of her hand. Giant barrels lined the left wall.
“The stairwells are all shot,” Arthie said.
Laith gagged. “That smell.”
Arthie was well acquainted with the rotten, smoky stench. Sulfur and charcoal. Gunpowder. Sure enough, one of the barrels was broken, and a pile of gray-black powder was strewn beneath it. It was everywhere, dusting the floorboards, trailing the corners of the upper story where they were now.
Chains swayed eerily, most suspended from the ceiling, some dangling from under crates stacked along the upper floor.
“Wait,” Arthie said. Laith turned back, and she struggled to meet his eyes. “This makes us even.”
He chuckled darkly. “For now.”
“Forever,” she deadpanned.
“We’ll see about that.” He glanced at the window before gesturing to a broken stairwell. It looked like a mouth that had been punched in and was now missing teeth. “Follow me, I can lead us down.”
He tucked his kitten into his robes, letting her paws and head stick out, and leaped across, glancing back every ten seconds as if Arthie was a child. She started after him and nearly lost her footing again when the man jumped over in a cloud of dust, disturbing the wood beneath them.
Arthie whirled to face him. He swayed, gripping the back of his head with one hand before he pulled out a knife, swinging it artlessly at his side. Arthie pulled out Calibore, shifting it into a knife of her own before the man could see.
He lunged first, nicking her shoulder. “Give me the marker.”
“This was my best seersucker,” she growled. The man swung again and she evaded, cuffing his chin and catching the sickening bite of his tongue. She slipped and righted herself, nearly tumbling from the narrow shelf of space.
She was backed into a corner. No. Trapped. Never again.
The chains suspended from the ceiling drifted to her side, feet away, enticing her with an idea. It wasn’t too long, falling just to the level of the floor beneath them, but it would allow her to get away from the man. Don’t even dare, came Jin’s voice in her head. If she missed, she would be a pile of bones on the first floor. The wood beneath her shook again as the man trundled toward her. Waiting here was by no means safer.
Arthie jumped, legs kicking air until she grabbed one of the chains, rust in the links snaring her fingers. The musty air rushed through her limbs when she propelled herself forward—
Her arc was cut short, jarring her teeth. Her attacker was gripping the chain in his hand like she weighed nothing.
“Are you trying to prove a point?” she yelled as he started pulling her up. She scanned her surroundings, but the third floor was worse for wear. The stairs were shattered and there was very little ground to stand on, and that was saying something, considering the rest of the more intact floors. She vaulted to the next chain and shimmied up, swinging onto a plank jutting out of the fourth floor. She tasted dust, no, the gunpowder.
It gave her an idea.
“Get out of here, saint,” Arthie shouted. She couldn’t see him, but knew he was waiting for her somewhere.
“Are you s—” Laith began to shout back.
“Don’t finish that question,” she snarled.
The man laughed at her. “Give me the marker and you can go home to your mother, girl.”
“You’ll have to send me to the sea, then,” Arthie replied, shuffling her feet and gathering as much of the gunpowder together as she could. She jumped to another plank.
He vaulted toward her, landing a few feet away.
She slammed her leg down. The wood snapped, splinters falling to the clutter below. The man’s eyes met hers, a flash of fear in the depths of his because any moment now they were both going to join the broken remains beneath them, or possibly fall all the way to the ground floor, breaking both their necks.
Arthie darted along the narrow ledge. There was no stairwell at the end, no chain to rappel down from. Only a large window coated in soot.
The boulder of a man thundered after her. All this for an expired marker.
“Come and get me,” Arthie said. She plucked a match from her pocket and struck it on the bricks of the wall as she ran, tossing the tiny flame into the trail of gunpowder behind her.
The match fell with a hiss and the gunpowder caught fire, the hiss growing into a roar as it struck the pile she’d collected, quickly growing, swallowing everything around it. The wooden board beneath it crumbled, careening to the ground below.
To the shattered barrel of gunpowder.
The man’s eyes flared in realization. He flung back, rappelling down one of the chains. And Arthie leaped, crashing through the window and hurtling through the air as shards of glass exploded into the evening light.