Ruin’s voice whispers in her head. “Fortunately for them, you aren’t voidmad. And in time they’ll come to recognize today as a blessing. A day where they were graced by the presence of one touched by the Larex Forge.”

“Shut up,” Misery says. Now’s not the time. She rubs her face and pushes every tab of anxiety and regret deep into the primordial cauldron of her emotions where they belong, far away and out of her conscious mind. These workers will be nothing to her once she’s made her flight from here. In a few years—if she’s still alive—this will all be dust in the wind. A misadventure, getting involved with dukes and the Throne and the Church, places she doesn’t belong, but quickly done with.

For now: Shut up. Focus. Escape. She’s wound up in a service corridor, a grimly lit and humming affair, bank of indecipherable controls to the left and row of supply closets to the right. Locked, of course, but that doesn’t stop her from riffling through till she finds a stack of spare jumpsuits in taffy one-size automesh in that same atmo-blue. Misery pulls off her gray convict’s robe and cocoons herself in a jumpsuit. It takes several seconds to adhere to her body heat. What should she do with the discard? Is there no atomizer nearby? Why are the Faithful allergic to labeling anything on this, their capital city? She’s looking for the holy ruby that would make the heart of the atomizer, but there’s so much background signal.

Ruin points to a recessed square in the left wall, which Misery had taken for a drawer. Fine. There it is. She jaws it open, dumps in the gray robe, and goes back for a fresh raid on the closets. Boots this time, sturdy ones with reinforced soles, vacuum-proof. Gloves. A bunch of toolkits, because she needs shit to trade for credit. A medpack to fix her bleeding face. She even finds a cap to tuck the wild bush of her unsaintly hair under.

There. She’s all kitted out in generics. The only thing separating her from a regular drone, she guesses, is the bracelet around her wrist—holy jasper, irresistibly striated, lifeblood of Rootsdown. A dear friend, now deceased, made it. Then there’s her mother’s amulet around her neck. A circle of strange black rock on a string—maybe holystone? Maybe not?—covered in even stranger inscriptions, almost like circuitry. She’s had it since before she was born. Neither ornament will tuck into the jumpsuit. Whatever. Misery will never lose the two; it’s nonnegotiable. She will deal. Otherwise, she’s ready.

The corridor’s capped by a silver door, rimmed with holy obsidian and graced with a porthole from which light pours. It’s the outside, which glimmers and beckons like an astral promise. Misery marches toward it, practicing her confident stride. Confidence is key.