“She’s not kidding,” one of the men said. “I’ve seen her do it. Boy was walking around with all his guts hanging off his outside. So, fucking behave.”

Oh, dhak.

The child’s voice had come from the edge of the cavern. The cages. Peering closer, Maya could see that some of them had their doors hanging open, while others were closed and padlocked. Behind the grills, she could see movement. Have they really got them in cages?

Whether Reese was there or not, going back was out of the question. She had no idea how long it would be before they discovered the dead plaguespawn, but Maya wasn’t going to risk it. And if I can’t go back, then the only way out is forward. She stepped out of the tunnel entrance and straightened up.

“All of you,” she said, her voice shakier than she would have liked. “Stop and drop your weapons.”

The three figures froze. After a moment, the closest, a thin man with a ragged fringe of orange-red hair, snatched up a lantern and stalked toward Maya.

“What the fuck?” the woman said from behind him. “How did she get in here?”

“Plagued if I know. It’s some girl.” The thin man raised his lantern in one hand, a small crossbow pointing at Maya. “You picked the wrong place to wander around—”

Maya could see his eyes go wide as he recognized the haken in her hand. She was already pushing off into a sprint as he squeezed the trigger. His aim was bad, and the bolt flew wide. She’d covered half the distance between them as he scrabbled to draw a sword, letting the lantern and crossbow fall.

“She’s a centarch!” he screamed, as her haken ignited with a flaming hiss.

Then she was in front of him and he had his blade out, swinging clumsily for her throat. Maya parried, automatically, the brief contact with deiat carving a glowing notch out of the ordinary steel. Fast as thought, she went into her riposte, a simple upward slash across his body.

If she’d been fighting Jaedia, this would have rewarded her with the blue flare of a panoply field and perhaps a word of praise when the fight was done. Instead, her haken carved a long, charred path across the smuggler, from his hip to his shoulder, flaming blade shearing through clothes, flesh, and bone and leaving smoldering ash in its wake. The man managed a choking cry as he fell, sprawled motionless in the dirt.

Maya had killed plaguespawn. She’d even killed ordinary animals, deer or rabbits for food, once a loadbird that had broken a leg and needed to be put out of its misery. But, until that moment, she’d never turned her power on a human, never snuffed out a life with deiat.

It was horrifyingly easy.

“Plaguing fuck!” The other smuggler’s swearing refocused her attention. He was a larger man, stripped to a tunic and trousers for hard labor. Another heavy coat lay nearby, and he scrabbled with it, searching for something. Maya leveled her glowing haken.