Overheating, a warning blazed in the back of his head.

He boxed it away.

“You cannot choose both, Dmitri,” Mellifare said, and from the hedge Viera dragged a prone Robb by the collar of his coat. Her eyes blazed a terrifying red. She tossed Robb onto the grass in front of her, and he groaned, slowly regaining consciousness. There were blackened marks across his coat like lightning blooms.

Viera . . . was a Metal?

How had he not sensed her before?

Now, where is it, brother? He winced as the Great Dark tore through his thoughts, picking through his memories, his programs. He tried to stop her, but with his functions split between trying to fend her off and keeping the garden afloat, he was not strong enough.

She found the node of information and picked it from his head.

So, the shrine.

No, no, no no no—

From Viera’s mouth came Mellifare’s voice: “Do you save the Ironbloods, or do you save her?”

Then they both turned away. He tried to stop them, but if he moved and let go of the garden, it would crash. He did not know how many casualties, but was he prepared for that? His grip on the garden began to falter, lean to one side, imaginary tethers snapping off and disintegrating into nothing.

Mellifare and Viera were ten feet from the edge, then five.

Then Mellifare pulled up her hand, as if commanding a puppet, and a skysailer swirled up from below and settled down level with the floating garden. Mellifare boarded, Viera behind her—

And they left.

Straight toward the heart. The shrine. Ana.

Di watched the skysailer become a pinprick in the Nevaeh sky, too far away to do anything, and he gritted his teeth. He sank his anger down into the garden and pulled as hard as he could to stop its descent. He could feel the ground close, but not close enough.

His arms began to shake.

Ironbloods were clutching the ground around him, crying, curling into each other waiting for the impact. For death. It reminded him so terribly of the Plague hospital, of the rows and rows of people just waiting for the inevitable, hope growing thinner and thinner until it snapped.

He had had enough of hopelessness.

OVERHEATING, the warning in the back of his head said again, and he could feel his insides this time beginning to burn. It hurt somewhere in his chest cavity.

With a cry, he pulled all the energy in the garden into the magnets. From the lampposts, the electric doors, the skysailer docking clamps, the levers for the irrigations systems—everything. And with an enormous groan, the garden slowed its descent foot by foot, until its bottom clanked against one of the market streets of the city of Nevaeh and began to tilt over like a top that’d stopped spinning, and settled on its side.

Di waited a moment for the garden to move again, but when it did not, he slowly drew himself out of the control systems and relinked electrical currents. The fountains began spurting water, and the lampposts flickered on with a pop.