“Bad trim stinks,” he said, which was the first time Baru realized he might be mad.

*   *   *

THE heart of the station was a crack in the world.

Eons of water flowing down from Moem mesa had carved a tall thin chasm in the rock. Narrow wooden walkways let them cross beneath enormous anchor-chains. Just as in the Elided Keep, the Morrow Ministry had safeguarded its files and secrets in huge swaying gridwork shelves, hanging all around them in frightful suspension, each volume insulated from the humid cave by sacks of gut as the whole library poised on the edge of precipice.

“Good Devena,” Baru breathed.

Execarne pointed her to a corroded steel lever. “Push that.” He knelt to align tiny codewheels. Baru had a general policy of never pulling unlabeled levers, but given the circumstances she would do anything to get out of this labyrinth before Tain Shir’s gore-spackled mask peeled itself from the shadows.

She threw the lever. With a tortured shriek a gear engaged and pulled a cable. High above mechanisms of brute steel struggled, screamed, and turned. Pins clattered out of their sockets.

All around them, in creaking unison, the shelves of secrets dropped to their doom in the flooded depths below.

“Burn the asset,” Execarne said, with manic intensity. “Don’t let them know what we know. Come on—come on—”

She hurried after him. Darkness and dead lamps. Panting grunting flight through corridors so narrow they had to squeeze sideways through necks of dripping stone. “Where are we going?” Baru shouted. “Where’s the way out?”

“It’s compromised!” Execarne shouted. “We’ll use the gliders!”

“Gliders?”

“It’s been two centuries since a woman went aloft on a kite,” Execarne said, “I don’t understand why everyone’s so afraid of cutting the mooring.”

“You’re mad!”

“I’m optimistic!”

“You’re extremely high!”

“That helps, yes!”

They burst out of the maze into a stone-cut hall supported by columns of natural rock. Execarne ripped his mask off. Baru tried the air, and nearly wept with relief. She could smell the sea. The sea! And there, ahead, the faint light of the sun, they were almost free.

A hand seized Baru’s right shoulder. A papery whisper in her ear. “She’s here.”

Baru froze in terror. Yawa’s gloved finger crept to her lip. “Shush. She’s hunting.”

“Who’s hunting,” Execarne whispered. “Your viper girl?”

“Yes. Iscend. She’s gone to find her—”

“Who?”

A whipcrack voice echoed down the gallery. A woman’s bark of command. “Gaios! Gaios! Walk!”

Yawa hissed in dismay. Baru knew exactly why.

Someone was shouting Iscend Comprine’s command word.

*   *   *

THEY wait at the mouth of the north tunnel for the moment to attack.

Her marines check the soak on their filters. A soft rustling of masks and canteens. The Oriati do not ordinarily use gas, but their scouts have already penetrated the Ministry station. By now they may have stolen any number of weapons.