Kit raised her eyebrows but said nothing. After a moment’s glare, Yora turned away, tossing her spear from hand to hand.

“How much cash are we talking about?” Gyre said.

“Hard to say,” Sarah said. “I can make a scouting trip tomorrow—”

“Boss!” A young woman in rough laborer’s garb burst into the chamber, panting. “Auxies!”

Gyre was on his feet instantly, and Kit bounced up with her usual grin.

“Where?” she said. “How many?”

“Twenty at least,” the scout gasped. “Coming this way. I left Villam to keep an eye on them.”

No sooner had she spoken than a rumble echoed through the tunnels, attenuated but clearly recognizable. Blaster. Yora slapped her spear into her other hand and turned to the pair of guards.

“Gul, Hil, check if the other exits are clear. Go!”

Nevin was frantically gathering up his maps, and Sarah had pocketed her notebook, pulling down a pair of dark-tinted goggles. For a few heartbeats, they waited in silence.

Gyre knew—because he’d mapped it himself—that of the six tunnels exiting the meeting room, three were dead ends. Only one had originally been open, but a little patient excavation had cleared a narrow path through the others, precisely for this sort of situation. Unfortunately, the tunnel the scout had come down was one of the backups, which strongly suggested that the dux’s people had stolen a march on them.

Which leaves us with plan B. He’d never been particularly happy with plan B.

The snap of crossbow bolts echoed down one of the other tunnels, and a moment later the responding roar of blasters. One of Yora’s people emerged, badly cut up and bleeding from splinters of flying rock.

“Parak’s dead,” he reported. “Lots of ’em coming, loaded for fucking thickhead. Not getting out that way.”

Yora glanced at the third tunnel, where there’d been only an ominous silence.

Plan B it is, then.

“Get away from the table,” Gyre said. “Back up. Now.”

Nevin scrambled back, clutching his notes, and the others followed suit. Gyre dove underneath, pawing through the dirt until he found the long, coiled shape of the fuse. He sparked it with a firelighter, then shuffled backward as fast as he could. Flame raced across the floor and then down into the stone.

A batch of Lynnia’s special mix went off with a muffled boom. A cloud of dust and smoke engulfed the room, and stone and bits of furniture pattered down all around them. Where the table had been there was a dark hole in the floor, parts of it still crumbling away from the force of the explosive.

“You never bothered to mention we were meeting on top of a bomb?” Sarah said, waving away the smoke.