With one backhanded swing of the blade, Taru opens the lanky one’s throat. The force of the blow alone jars his hands free of the spear and he staggers back several feet. Then, as the blood begins to escape, his trembling hands clutch at a throat that’s no longer there. Taru has practically cleaved his neck in half. He’s still searching the now empty space with bloody hands when he falls to the floor.

A moment later, in the lingering silence, Lexi finds she’s clamped both hands over her mouth. She’s staring at the body almost completely separated from its blood, which is seeping through the rug beneath and spread almost to its very edges.

Taru looks from their felled opponent to their mistress, realization dawning on their face. Taru strides over to Lexi and kneels before her, laying weapons down at Lexi’s feet, head bowed in abject supplication.

“I am sorry, Te-Gen. I did not mean to disobey your orders—”

Lexi is already shaking her head. “Rise, rise!” she insists. “Stop all that. You saved my life. He was trying to take yours. You couldn’t know.”

Taru stands and looks down at both bodies.

“Thieves?” they ask, genuinely confused.

Lexi shakes her head, unable to vocalize an answer at first.

“No,” she finally says. “No. They… they came here to k… kill me. That one told me as much.”

She points at the half-face sprawled on his stomach atop her kith-kin’s map table.

“They’re assassins? Sent here to kill you?” Taru can scarcely believe their own words. “No Gen member has ever been assassinated. Such arcane practices have not been seen in Crache since…”

Lexi nods, fully aware of the implications. “Have you ever seen tattoos like these?” she asks. “In the Bottoms, or…?”

Taru shakes their head.

“Summon the Aegins,” Lexi instructs. “We must report this, have an official record of it set down immediately. Wait!”

Taru, who was ready to sprint from the room and down the length of the tower, stops. They look to Lexi expectantly, blood-spattered hands clenched around their blades.

Lexi’s eyes are lost in thought. She’s no longer seeing the bodies or the blood or the chaos of the room.

“Te-Gen?” Taru prompts her, gently.

“They could not have gained access to us without help,” she whispers, talking to herself. “It’s impossible. There are not… they weren’t stealthy operatives. They were… brutes. They were allowed entrance into the Circus, into our towers.”

“By Aegins?” Taru asks, a hateful edge in their voice.

Lexi thinks in silence again before answering. “At the very least there must be Aegins in the Circus who are complicit in this. We can’t know who or how many.”

“Then what is your command, Te-Gen?”

“Go to the cooperative keep and raise the Circus alarm, on my authority.”

“That alarm is reserved for disasters that threaten the entire Circus, Te-Gen—”