For Rain, she reached past the bends, grabbing him by several points, before flinging him backward, hurtling at about a hundred miles an hour toward the wall by the front door. He stopped abruptly in his path.

Cradle proved harder to grab. He could move in an instant, and as fast as those tendrils seemed to be, they took a bit more than an instant.

But as we’d seen when Foil went on the offensive, he reacted to surprise with randomness, before he settled on his game plan. Four or five teleports in short order, long enough to put a thought together and assess the threat.

Sveta reached out for every point, every place he could be. It made an audible sound, like a few seconds of intense rainfall.

She got tendrils on Cradle, and Cretan raised up a wall, singular, between Cradle and Sveta. The tendril was pinched between wall and ceiling, unable to retract, reel in, or rope around Cradle enough to take any part of him. Other tendrils tried to reach around the breadth of the wall, and they didn’t extend far enough.

My role in things was to distract, to force him to play the cards he had in hand. For me, Cradle made the glowing lines. X’s in space.

Sveta pulled Cradle’s equipment out of his hand. With a flick of the trapped tendril, the equipment was sent skittering across the floor.

My goal, my plan, had been a raw one. To trust the team. Knowing that we had some good people beyond the wall, and thinking that they’d bring the wall down once they’d won, to reclaim the remaining mercenaries and assert dominance over Bluestocking. They didn’t lower the walls. No Harbinger, no Damsel, no Cassie and her hound, no Prancer…

But I’d had Sveta, my best friend. Who was more trustworthy than I was.

And Chastity, who’d earned another so-very-important friendship in Cassie, was in the station.

Chastity had to run to grab the whip that had been sent across the floor. She picked it up with two hands, fumbling with the controls. A dial on the side.

More lines barred my way.

The whip flared to life, but it was too much, producing a high-pitched whine.

Fucking tinkers, Tattletale had said.

Trapped, or too hard to use. Chastity tried to manage it, using her facility with whips to whip out in Cradle’s direction.

Too fast, too hard to hit. The same evasive maneuvers that served against Sveta served against Chastity. He produced glowing lines, and she slashed them. Banishing them.

The crackle of electricity was reaching a fever pitch now.

She whipped Cretan instead. Cutting him across the body at nipple height. He tried to scream and didn’t find the air.

Cradle turned around, staring. He touched his headgear, his hair.

“All alone,” I said. “Because that’s what happens when you act like an asshole.”