The rest of the rebels hesitated, but Yora had regained her footing and went back on the offensive. Maya wanted to scream, but she didn’t have the breath.

The golden-haired woman was good, her spear spinning and thrusting unpredictably, blocking Maya’s ripostes with the unmetal haft. The weapon was nicked and pitted where it had stopped the haken—even unmetal would eventually melt under the power of deiat—but Yora skillfully stayed away from a prolonged clinch. Every parry Maya missed sent a wave of cold across her panoply.

She needed a moment to get clear, to blast Yora away, to end this fight, but she didn’t have it. Maya fell into the routines Jaedia had drummed into her, the fighting stances and reflexes, her own blade licking out to score Yora’s thigh. It burned through leather and flesh, and Yora stumbled for a moment, her onslaught faltering.

“Stop this,” Maya gasped. “Help me—”

Something passed across Yora’s body in a clean line from shoulder to hip, a distortion in the air like a line of folded space. For an instant, she looked puzzled, brow furrowed as though trying to work something out. Then a long slice of her body simply disappeared, flesh twisting in on itself. Blood exploded out of the gap, and the mangled wreckage fell away in two separate pieces.

Tanax stood behind her, breathing hard, the blade of his haken a writhing snarl of impossible geometry. Several rebels lay dead in his wake, carved into pieces that still flickered and distorted where his weapon had cut them.

“Are you all right?” he said.

No. Maya gave a brief, jerky nod. Tanax turned away, avoiding Yora’s broken corpse.

“Throw down your weapons and surrender,” he said to the survivors. “Now.”

Most of them did. One man, the older one with the blaster pistol, started to run instead. Tanax frowned and raised a hand, and Maya felt deiat lash out. Space around the fleeing rebel twisted in on itself, folding his body in an impossible contortion with a distant crunch and a spray of blood. No one else moved.

“Well,” Tanax said. “They made an unfortunate choice.”

“They didn’t make a choice,” Maya said. “We were talking, and—”

She looked up at the click of warbird claws. Three riders were approaching from the direction of the city. Two wore the white armor of Legionaries and had blaster rifles slung over their shoulders. Between them rode Raskos Rottentooth.

Raskos. In Maya’s mind, a suspicion hardened rapidly into certainty. She turned to face him, her haken still crackling quietly at her side.

“Excellent work, my friends,” Raskos said, whistling his bird to a stop and sliding off. “I see my trust in you was not misplaced.”