“I,” Stix said, lowering her voice in a lethal imitation of Vivia, “am not like you, Admiral. I am my own person, and soon these voices will go away. And you?” She motioned between them. “Are not my ally and never will be.” She turned on her booted heel then, water from the Ring sloughing off her as she aimed for the doorway.

The cat’s ears perked at her approach.

“Enough,” Kahina snapped, and though all of Stix’s instincts shouted at her to keep going, she let her feet slow beside the gray cat. It opened a single green eye. “We are running out of time. We have been waiting too many years for you to find us—your memories have come late—and now the end approaches. We must find the tools, Water Brawler, and we must restore them.”

“Tools?” Stix asked innocently. She swiveled her head toward Kahina. “What tools?”

Kahina scowled. “You know damned well what I mean. I can see it on your face, even if you hide behind those spectacles. The blade, the glass. The tools from a thousand years ago that disappeared after our world collapsed and that we must find again before a new collapse sets in.”

“So … you want them.” Stix spoke this as a statement, not a question, and the gray cat popped open both eyes. Meanwhile Kahina cocked her head to one side, studying Stix with a raptorial stare.

It was not the frustrated scrutiny from earlier, nor even the pitying one. This was the stare of someone reassessing what they’d thought was a known quantity. Stix could practically see the knives sharpening behind her eyes. “You know where they are,” Kahina said quietly.

“I don’t.”

“Of course you do.” Kahina flipped up her hand and flames ignited around her fingers. “Tell me where you found them.”

Where I found them, Stix thought. Not where they are. And just like that, she saw a solution—a bargaining weight that tipped the scales in her favor. Kahina was a Master of the Ring; her power was vast. She could fling prisoners into the arena as easily as she emptied her pipe bowl. Which meant she could also …

“Free the prisoners, and I’ll tell you where I found the blade and glass.”

Kahina’s pipe ignited. “I could free a few.”

“All of them.”

Kahina scoffed. Then, after several seconds when Stix offered nothing else, she gave an outright laugh. “You cannot be serious. I can do many things, Water Brawler, but freeing every prisoner from the Ring is not one of them. Many people own them.”

“Then buy them.”

Kahina’s left eye twitched, a movement Stix would never have noticed without her spectacles. Behind her, the Ring’s chaos continued unabated, while beside Stix, the cat stretched onto its feet. Moments misted past. Stix refused to break eye contact with Kahina.

Vivia would have been proud.