Planning goes quickly, since -- like all the best plans -- this one is very simple. There's not much to get prepare, just a bit of arguing over who's doing what. The three shifts have to be split up as much as possible, lest they end up fighting one another instead of the guards.

  Just before the guard shift the next afternoon, Arborough and a bunch of the miners start a food riot. According to Margie, this isn't uncommon, and the guards' standard procedure is to fall back to the armored guard station that controls access to the lift and wait it out. After all, the prisoners can't go anywhere, and the guards have all the food and water.

  At around the same time, the lift starts to descend with the next shift on board. Thanks to Racnaea, however, it breaks down mid-transit, stranding another dozen guards out past the edge of the world. Efforts to fix the problem are complicated by the fact that the communications lines all over the fortress have mysteriously stopped working, again thanks to Racnaea's advice and a little bit of adroit wire-pulling by Agni.

  Speaking of Agni. Yesterday evening, she traded shifts again to get night watch on the wall and spent a few hours with a hand mirror exchanging coded flashes with a nearby dune. As a result, no sooner has the lift drama reached its peak than a much more serious issue crops up: desert raiders, dozens of them, riding their trikes back and forth just beyond range of the fortress' guns and kicking up an enormous cloud of dust. This can only be preparation for an attack, and so the drone of the alarm rings out from the commandant's tower. Without phones, of course, messengers have to dash all over the fortress with orders, which only adds to the confusion.

  I have to imagine most of this, because while it happens I'm halfway along a greasy stone tube, staring up at the bulbous ass of an ugly fellow who goes by Bloodrun and carries a long knife in his teeth. Bloodrun is one of Jena's, but he'd have fit right in with Slaughterborne and his Fifth-worshipping lunatics. A chosen cadre of the fittest and most violent prisoners the mines have to offer are working their way up through the ventilation shaft, equipped with crude slashing weapons that seemed to materialize from every hidden nook and pillow.

  Margie is here, naturally, as is Jena and Arborough's two large friends. Racnaea has remained below with the old man, but Sprocket is in the lead, bearing the keys that unlock the grates and disable various other defenses I've been told not to worry about.

  It's slow going, even with the pitons that Racnaea and Sprocket have hammered into the rock on past expeditions. We started out well before the attack was scheduled, and we're still only nearing the top when the alarm sounds. As the distant wailing becomes audible, everyone moves a little faster without being told. If we give the guards long enough to get control of the chaos, we're all dead.

  Finally Bloodrun's buttocks are pulled out of the way and I see sunlight for the first time in days. Margie's hand reaches down and helps me up the last few feet, and I join a group of stumbling, blinking prisoners. If a single guard had been there at that moment they could have rounded up the lot of us, but Racnaea has chosen our exit point well: the shaft comes up behind the warehouse, close to the wall, so we're on our own in a little alley while we get our bearings.

  "The !" Sprocket squeaks, craning her head back. "Look, the suns!"

  "Don't stare at them," I tell her, feeling like a distant echo of my mother. "You remember what you're supposed to do?"

  "Stay right here," she says, giving me a morose look. "But --"

  "?"

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  "If everyone gets killed, go back down the shaft to Mistress." She bounces on her feet. "But I can help!"

  "You've helped already," I tell her. Racnaea has made it extremely clear that she holds me responsible for the girl's safety, which seems a little rich given her casual attitude toward explosions.

  Sprocket pouts, but seems to accept this. Jena emerges from the shaft, followed by a few more fighters. We've ended up with fifty or sixty volunteers from the three shifts, less than I'd initially hoped for but still more than double the remaining complement of guards. They're a hard lot, too, men and women thick with muscle from swinging hammers, pallid from years underground but leather-skinned from endless abuse.

  "I'll go first," I tell Margie and Jena. "Nobody move until I give you a signal."

  "What if they shoot you?" Jena says.

  "Then that'll be the signal."

  I edge around the corner of the warehouse before they can turn it into a debate. The next building over is the armory, a squat brick structure with no windows and a heavy door. Two guards are on duty in front of it; one of them, I'm very glad to see, is Agni, while the other is a tall woman who looks distinctly nervous thanks to the wailing alarm. I step out with my hands raised and a big smile on my face.

  "Excuse me," I shout. "I seem to be lost!"

  The other guard's brow creases at the sight of me, filthy in my battered prisoner's tunic. When I walk forward, the confusion turns to alarm, and she draws her pistol.

  "What the fuck?" She sights down the barrel at me. "Stop where you are!"

  "I was hoping you could tell me how to get back to the mine? I've taken a wrong turn."

  "You --" the guard says, then stops at the feel of cold steel against her throat. Agni leans in behind her, knife in one hand. She gently plucks the gun from the guard's frozen fingers.

  "Nice and easy, now," Agni mutters. "Stay calm and you won't get hurt."

  "Captain?" the guard says. "You -- What are you ?"

  Agni tosses me the pistol; I catch it and try to look like I know what I'm doing. She produces some strips of cloth and works on tying and gagging her erstwhile comrade, and I duck around the corner and beckon.

  The front of the armory is in full view of the walls, so if anyone is looking our way in the minute or so it takes to get our crew through the door we're screwed. Fortunately, even if anyone isn't fully occupied by the incoming raider horde, the wall guards can't call for help with the phones down. Another con artist trick: as any thief who's started a fire for a distraction will tell you, you can't raise the alarm when the alarm is already raised.

  In the event, there's no sign that we've been spotted. Agni brings up the rear, prodding the bound guard ahead of her and closing the door behind us. The armory has a desk with a few logbooks and racks of equipment beyond: enough rifles to equip the guards, plus extra pistols, ammunition, and other supplies. There's a general rush for the loot, while Margie and Jena shout and try to keep some kind of order. Agni and a few prisoners who did terms in the Navy give hurried lessons in how to shoot and load fresh shells.

  "Stop! Stop right there!"

  It's a young man's voice, and he sounds scared. I catch eyes with Agni and we hurry toward it. Someone in the back of the armory was evidently staying quiet. Now a youthful guard is backed into the corner, pistol out, while Bloodrun, Jena, and a half-dozen other prisoners form a semi-circle around him. His aim frantically shifts from one to the next.

  "Hey!" Agni says. "Hey. Andrupas, right? Put the gun down."

  "You're the new captain," he says. "What are you ? These are , they're meant to be --"

  "I know," Agni says soothingly. "Just put the gun down and you won't get hurt."

  "But the fortress is under attack!" he says, voice rising. "We have to them --"

  Bloodrun lunges. The boy switches his aim with surprising speed and pulls the trigger, the gunshot shatteringly loud in the tight space. Bloodrun stops in his tracks, looking puzzled, a bloody hole the size of my fist in his back. Before he can even fall over, Jena darts forward, fast as a striking mantis, and drives a knife into the underside of the guard's jaw. He staggers back into the corner, blood spilling from his lips as he clutches as his throat.

  "Fuck," Agni mouths, though no one hears it but me.

  Bloodrun topples against a rack of equipment, sending weapons skittering across the floor. Jena steps forward and yanks her knife free, spitting in the dying boy's face. She raises the bloody weapon over her head.

  "Let's kill these fuckers!" she shouts.

  The prisoners give a ragged cheer, rifles raised.