She raced up the next staircase to peer through the window of the eighth floor and saw the same thing. When she reached the ninth-floor landing, she found Teo standing right outside the door, holding the rest of the explosives and the rope.

“You work fast,” she whispered, walking up to him.

“So does your poison,” he said with a grin. “Was it a guard following us?”

She shook her head as he handed her the uniform he’d stolen from the guard below. “It was Kohl.”

He scanned her once, as if searching for injuries. “Are you okay?”

With a stiff nod, she said, “I think he’s working for Bautix to take out the princess, so he ran before either of us could do much damage. I stalled him at least, but we only have a couple of hours left. Let’s do this fast and catch up to him.”

She threw the shirt over her head and checked that the badge was still pinned on. The shirt was big, so she tucked it in and made sure her weapons were within easy reach, then took several of the dynamite sticks, tied together by long wires, along with rope and a set of matches. Then she loaded her own blowgun with a poison dart and placed the other darts within easy reach.

With a quick nod to each other, they walked through the door onto the ninth floor as if they owned the whole prison.

She turned left, and he turned right just as the floodlights above shifted to the lower levels, leaving them with only the dim orange lights spaced out along the walls. The less light, the better.

A guard stood at the corner. Aina nodded at him. Before he could do any more than turn to look at her, she lifted her blowgun and fired the dart.

Before it even struck his skin, she pivoted, catching sight of the next guard halfway down the balcony. The guard’s eyes widened, and she raised a whistle to her lips, but Aina fired a dart into her neck and she dropped to the floor with a dull thud.

Moving quickly, she shoved both guards into the corners of the walkway where the floodlights’ beams wouldn’t fully reach.

On the opposite side of the walkway, Teo had just taken out the last guard and shoved his unconscious form into a corner. When he glanced over, she signaled to let him know she had also finished.

She began unraveling the sticks of dynamite, counting out ten, which would cover half of this floor’s cells while Teo took the other half.

Separating the dynamite to only place one stick on each door would still result in a strong enough explosion to shatter the cell doors, but hopefully not strong enough to collapse the entire walkway like last time. The prisoners would need the walkways in place to be able to escape.

The floodlights shifted then, nearly exposing her. She twisted out of the way and held her breath for a few seconds until they changed once more.