Teacher’s tinkers, protecting the woman. I saw her past them, looking at me. She’d learned her lesson from previous encounters, and she kept her fire put away. There would be no blowing it up with my aura, getting her minions in the process.

I flew away, instead.

Mom told me to focus on the objective. What does the enemy want?

She wanted away, to get back to where she could help Lung.

Lung wanted to be strong, to stay near the purple fire, to take over this prison for Teacher, presumably because he was getting paid, or because he was a Teacher thrall.

Out through the window, around the building… in through a window with a crash.

Another thrall, an older guy. He was slow to react, slower with my aura blasting out. I shoved him against the wall on my way through the door, and slapped his tinker gun away. The Wretch demolished it in passing.

The mission. There was a dangerous feeling of triumph when it felt like I was taking the bad guys down a peg, dismantling their plans. The tag team was disrupted. She was running, and I was catching up.

She’d gone downstairs, I realized.

My aura burned, pressuring her. “You’ve lost, if you’ve abandoned Lung. Does that mean you don’t get paid? Or will Teacher be disappointed? How does this work, Pharmacist!?”

“Shut up!” I heard her.

I lunged to one side, and then the Wretch tore through the floor. I came down on top of her, catching her while she was bent over, shielding herself from the debris that was falling down on top of her. I shoved her into the ground, hard.

I had spikes on my glove, that started at rings on the fingers and extended back toward my wrist, almost flat against my hand. The points now rested against the most vulnerable part of her throat.

I saw her expression change. Ten emotions in a matter of two or three seconds.

“Don’t even think about it,” I told her.

“More will come,” she said. “He has an army.”

“And we have you,” I said. I reached up to my shoulder, my finger tracing the spikes there. Nothing. I checked my breastplate, where tines radiated up from the icon just above my sternum. I found a loose one and snapped it off.

The point still pressed against her throat, I led her to a standing position. Then we walked, me holding the long spire of gold-layered steel against her jugular.

Fires still burned when we stepped out of the building, but the battle was over. Goddess had brought others, and they all stood by. Byron and Rain were sitting down on rubble, and Rain gave me a bob of the head in greeting as he saw me. There might have been a smile behind Byron’s mask.