"Shut your squeak-box, Pellin, before I pitch you into the exhaust flue," Tazien hissed, hauling the boy by the collar of his pristine velvet coat. "Unhand my lapel! This is brushed cambric!" Pellin stumbled over an iron grate, his knees knocking against the rusted pipes that lined the lower path to the Sunken Gardens. "We shouldn't even be down here after eighth bell. We ought to be in the library fabricating our courtship diary! If the Warden asks me what your favourite tea blend is tomorrow, I will be forced to guess, and if I guess incorrectly, he will dissect me with a mining rig!" "He drinks boiled mineral broth. He doesn't know what tea is," Tazien spat, scanning the sulfur-tinted haze ahead. "Now keep low. We're going to catch Professor Corvus red-handed with whatever gang-rot he's running, or I’m going to personally shove his head into a high-pressure pipe." "He is the Dean of Sub-Level Hydraulics! You cannot simply 'shove his head' into anything! You possess the physical density of a soggy biscuit!" "I used to crack skullbones thicker than your whole skull, pretty boy. Move." Tazien shoved past a curtain of luminescent phosphor-ferns, molars grinding. Lady Malgrave’s frail ankles burned, and the humid, mineral-soaked air of the crater's middle rim tasted like burnt tin. Down here, deep below the grand lecture halls of the Spire of Prisms, the Sunken Gardens spread across three concentric terraces suspended over the fiery chasm. Broad copper conduits pumped volcanic vapor into rows of glowing orchids and mutated frost-moss. It was isolated, dripping with grease, and completely off-limits to students. Which meant it was the exact place where an Obsidian Coil rat would scurry. She took two strides onto the iron catwalk before the brass grating groaned behind her. A heavy shadow fell over her shoulders, blotting out the ambient orange light. "Nysella." Tazien spun, her fist rising by pure gutter instinct, knuckles aimed at the newcomer's throat. Vorath’s scarred hand closed gently around her tiny fist, stopping it inches from his chest plate. He didn't even flinch. He just held her wrist with the ginger care one might use on an unhatched songbird egg. "Good reflexes," Vorath murmured, his voice rumbling through the catwalk beneath her boots. "Though your stance is wide. You leave your ribs exposed to an upward thrust." "Get off me!" Tazien yanked her hand back, tucking it against her bodice. Her ears burned. "What are you doing skulking in the compost, sir? Don't you have a war to wage, or a scaffold to build, or something else suitably morbid?" Behind a cluster of copper-spored shrubs, Pellin gave a faint, terrified wheeze and sank entirely out of sight. Vorath did not look toward the rustling bush. His dark gaze remained fixed entirely on her. For once, he wasn't wearing his formal plate; he wore a high-collared tunic of boiled leather, his broad shoulders framed by the dull gleam of two vent-sheaths at his hips. "I was tracking you," Vorath said bluntly. "Prying brute." "A guardian's prerogative." He reached beneath his cloak. Tazien instinctively stepped back, her hand darting to her boot for a dagger she no longer had. Vorath paused, his expression sagging into something raw and heavy. He withdrew a long, slender scabbard wrapped in pale shark-hide, banded with burnished brass fittings that matched the crest of her aristocratic house. "I had the foundry forge this before evening roll call," he said quietly, holding it out across his open palms like an offering. "The balance is adjusted for someone of your build. The core is charged with Seventh-Tier ember-glass. It will cut through wraith-hide as though it were wet paper." Tazien glared down at the weapon. Her old life screamed at her to spit on it. This was the man whose signature had signed her death warrant in the Deep Sinks; the man who had stood atop the crater’s gallows while she choked on sulfur chains. "I don't need your charity," she ground out. "It isn't charity." Vorath took half a step forward, his boot sole scraping the metal. His throat worked as he swallowed, the harsh lines around his mouth trembling with an emotion so painfully naked it stopped the cruel insult on her tongue. "The note in your cloak... it wasn't meant for you. The Coil wants me dead. The Wraiths are coming for my neck, little sister. And because I stood between you and that beast this afternoon, because I claimed you before the drafting council... their eyes are on you now." His voice dropped to a rough whisper. "I drag death behind me everywhere I walk. I thought... if I held the line here, I could give you a future. Instead, I gave them a target." Tazien stared at him, momentarily stunned. There was no cold arrogance in the man. Under the harsh orange glare of the fumaroles, his broad face was lined with an exhaustion so profound it made him look twenty years older. He wasn't her monstrous executioner right now. He was just a hollowed-out soldier terrified that another person he cared about was going to bleed in the dark. A knot formed beneath her ribs. "You're an idiot," she muttered, though the venom lacked its usual bite. Before Vorath could respond, a frantic clatter of iron echo-piping tore through the garden from forty paces off. "Nysella! By the Seven Spires, look at the manifold!" Pellin’s shrill, panicked voice cut through the steam. Tazien shoved past Vorath, her skirts rustling violently as she sprinted toward the rear terrace where Pellin was crouched behind a bank of humming pressure valves. "I told you to stay put, you pompous twit!" she barked. "Look at it! Just look at it!" Pellin was practically hyperventilating, his lace collar soaked in sweat. He pointed a trembling, ink-stained finger into the maintenance trench between the root beds. Tazien looked, bile rising in her throat. The main bypass valves—oversized brass wheels meant to regulate the crater's molten vent-caps—had been severed cleanly with plasma saws. In their place, dozens of black iron siphon-tubes had been drilled directly into the primary thermal vein. But they weren't channeling heat. They were venting concentrated, refined spirit-ether into the soil, creating a vast, glowing lattice of inverted runes across the entire garden floor. "They aren't feeding the plants," Pellin stammered, grabbing Tazien's arm with both hands, past the point of caring about propriety. "The pressure is dropping in the lower wards. They're chilling the stone. Tazien—they're carving a breach! The Wraiths aren't sneaking in through cracked pipes. They're turning the entire Sunken Garden into a front door!" "The breach-seal," Tazien muttered, dropping to her knees. Her brawler's practical mind calculated the angles. "If we twist the emergency release on the bypass valve, the volcanic steam will flood the trench and burn out the rune array. Pellin, grab the iron rod from that crate!" Pellin scrambled to his feet, lunging toward an overturned tool chest. He froze. A sharp hiss of compressed steam cut through the chamber as four figures in dark prefect coats materialized out of the phosphorescent fog, their vent-carbines raised and locked onto Pellin's chest. Behind them, along the higher catwalks, three more snipers racked the bolts of their heavy vent-rifles. From the deep shadows near the terrace archway, slow, rhythmic applause broke the stillness. Professor Corvus stepped into the ambient glow of the sabotaged pipes. The obsidian serpent ring on his finger caught the sickly orange light, pulsing in rhythm with the severed vents. His mouth curved into a thin, utterly merciless smile. "What a shame," Corvus's cold voice echoed off the iron walls, "that the Warden's new sister wandered into a restricted zone."

A Blade in the Sunken Gardens