The brass jaws clipped the sole of my left boot, shearing the vulcanized heel clean off. "Filing a noise complaint, darling! Your dog has bad manners!" I yelled back toward the crimson optics, leaning all forty-five kilos of my torso into the lanyard hook. Friction set the hemp-core cable smoking. Sixty feet below, the cargo cable car rattled along its steel haul-rope, chugging toward the sulfurous belly of the Seventh Tier. Its corrugated roof looked about as inviting as an anvil dropped off a pyramid peak. I popped the carabiner. The drop lasted two beats—just enough time for the sulfur wind to whip my teeth dry—before my knees hit the iron ribbing of the gondola. Pain flared through my shins, delicious and hot. I rolled, tucking into a roll across the roof that rattled my molars, and slammed boots-first into the brass escape hatch. The hatch gave way with a groan, plunging me inside atop an embroidered feather mantle. "Ow. By the Nine Hells, my ribs." The voice underneath me drawled with velvet insolence. "If you're an auditor from the Sapa Guild, I already paid the dock tariff in uncut copal resin." I rolled off, coming up in a low crouch with my obsidian-tipped pocket shiv flicked open. A young man sat sprawled against crates of fermented maguey liquor, casually smoothing out a turquoise silk tunic. He wore gold ear-spools that swung with the sway of the suspended car, and rings carved from jade nestled across every knuckle. Matlal. The slickest scoundrel running contraband between the Tlecuil Republic and the southern highland leagues. "Not an auditor," I said, wiping soot from my nose with the back of my wrist. "A customer. You have papers leaving the city tonight. I need them." Matlal didn't scramble for a weapon. He simply arched an inked brow, surveying my torn leather harness, my missing boot-heel, and the black engine oil smeared across my collarbones. "Ah. The runaway songbird," he murmured, crossing his legs at the ankles. "You have terrible timing, sweetheart. Ten minutes ago, you were worth fifty score jade cobs alive to the Minister of Alchemy. Three minutes ago, a runner tapped into the sky-wire with an update. The Jaguar Claw syndicate put up sixty score for your severed right hand alone. Apparently, you know something about an alchemical core that makes rich people nervous." "I know plenty of things," I retorted, flashing a grin that had far more teeth than warmth. "For example: your right flank-shutter has a bent hinge, your engine intake is choking on ash, and three heavily armed goons are currently rappelling onto your roof." The iron roof buckled under sudden impact. Dust rained from the ceiling seams. Two hooks tore through the side slats, spitting sparks as heavy cables pulled taut outside. "Ah," Matlal said, the smirk slipping from his face as his hand dropped toward a double-barreled steam pistol at his hip. "The Claws don't usually do house calls mid-transit." "They didn't come for your liquor, pretty boy!" The timbered side-door exploded inward. Splinters sprayed like shrapnel. A warrior clad in cured ocelot hide and brass-plated bracers filled the breach, swinging a spiked macuahuitl with brutal speed. Behind him, another silhouette clung to the car's exterior frame, leveling a hand-ballista loaded with barbed wire. Matlal fired. The steam-slug clipped the first killer’s collar, turning hide into mush, but the brute barely flinched. He swung the obsidian club down, aiming to cleave Matlal from crown to groin. Matlal scrambled backward over a crate, kicking empty bottles aside in frantic haste. "Excuse me! Coming through!" I shouted. I didn't draw a gun. I launched myself off the maguey barrel, grabbing an overhead balance strap with both hands. The cable car swayed violently as it hit the canyon bend, leaning twenty degrees over open air. I swung my legs upward, locked my ankles around the first brute's neck, and used the centrifugal whip of the turning gondola to yank his bulk sideways. His own momentum betrayed him. He tipped, roaring, his wide torso wedging straight out the shattered doorway. "Hold this for me!" I chirped, and planted both soles against his armored backside. I kicked. The brute vanished into the fog with a trailing shriek that echoed off the basalt cliff faces. The second assassin on the exterior rail stared at me through his slotted brass visor, fumbling to reload his ballista. I reached out, grabbed his ammunition sash, and flipped the release pin on his pressurized gas cartridge. "Have a nice flight!" The tank vented in an uncontrolled burst of white steam, rocketing him backward off the car like an errant sky-fire rocket. Silence reclaimed the freight cabin, broken only by the rhythmic clanking of the cable pulleys and the hiss of cooling pipes. Matlal stayed sitting on his crate, staring at the empty doorway where two professional executioners had stood five seconds earlier. His jaw hung slightly loose. He looked down at his smoking steam pistol, then up at me, taking in my panting chest, my soot-smeared smile, and my lack of a left boot. "What in the searing sun was that?" he breathed. "Kinetic physics, darling," I said, dusting off my forearms to work out the sting. "Now. About that bounty. Are you going to shoot me for the sixty score, or are you going to realize I'm the only person in this canyon crazy enough to keep you alive?" Matlal stared for another three seconds before a slow, crooked laugh broke across his features. He tucked his pistol back into its holster, shaking his head until his golden spools chimed. "Mad. Utterly deranged," he declared, dusting off his turquoise silk. "I like it. Sixty score is chump change compared to what I actually came to Tlecuil to steal. But I need someone who can dance across a three-inch cable without wetting themselves." "I do my best work when there’s no floor," I replied, hopping onto a dry crate. "Talk. What's the job?" "The Republic’s Grand Geothermal Vault beneath the Pyramid of Quenched Ash," Matlal said, leaning forward, his dark eyes sparkling with naked greed. "They’ve locked down the central furnace. Inside sits the prototype for a total energy grid—or an engine that can crack an entire tectonic shelf, depending on who you ask. My buyers across the border will give me ten million gold marks and absolute diplomatic immunity for the core." "And what do I get?" "A clean border pass. An imperial identity blank signed by the Southern Regency. You can vanish to the coast, buy three plantations, and spend the rest of your days drinking fermented sap in the sunshine. No warrants. No syndicates. No possessive madmen hunting your shadow." A free life. No golden cage. No surveillance hounds snapping at my heels. "Show me the layout," I said, keeping my tone light, tossing my hair back. "If the ventilation runs narrower than eighteen inches, you’re crawling through the pipes yourself." "I wouldn't dream of making a lady squeeze through soot," Matlal purred. He pulled a brass canister from inside his silk tunic, twisting the cap to break the wax seal. He spread a folded sheet of parchment across an overturned barrel between us, weighting the corners with spare ammunition cartridges. It was a schematic of the deepest subterranean chamber, drafted in crisp, white-ink lines. Pressure valves, steam conduits, blood-alchemy cooling channels. I leaned over to trace the emergency service hatch, ready to point out three different structural flaws in the catwalk design. The quip died on my lips. My hand hovered an inch above the vellum, freezing in place. Across the lower margin, scrawled in unmistakable, razor-sharp copperplate ink, ran a series of handwritten notes altering the air-filtration fail-safes. The strokes were meticulous, jagged, and mathematically flawless. At the very bottom, written directly beneath the containment override switch, sat three lines of cursive: *Seal chamber upon her arrival. The nitrogen mix will induce sweet, dreamless sleep. She will never have to run again. Mine.*

The Smuggler's Bargain