The floor tiles jumped an inch as sub-terrene shock rings struck the foundation. On the diagnostic slab, Davit thrashed against the magnetic straps, his skin mottled with ruptured capillary bloom. "Keep your hands off his throat, mistress," Sarkis said. The automaton's bronze neck joints ground like ungreased gears as his cranium spun one hundred and eighty degrees to inspect the eastern parapet monitor. "Unless you intend to expedite our cremation. In which case, carry on; I have already selected an urn with tasteful fluting." "Shut up, Sarkis." Taline dug the heels of her palms into Davit’s sternum. His core frequency was shredding itself into jagged spikes, each burst threatening to detonate the room’s glass cabinets. "Davit, hear me. Drop the threshold. Stop pulling from the base struts." His eyelids peeled back, revealing milky sclera threaded with black current. "They're... slicing the bedrock," he rasped, teeth stained red where he'd bitten his tongue. "Kalan brought... three strike ranks." "He brought more than ranks, sir," Sarkis corrected smoothly, his brass knuckles clicking into the med-console to jam an ampoule of synthetic sedative into Davit’s brachial vein. The hiss was violent. Davit's head slammed back against the pad, breath rattling down to a shallow whistle. "He brought a public proclamation." Sarkis tapped his chest plate. A miniature projector deployed from his sternum, throwing a grainy holostat onto the soot-streaked ceiling. Sovetnik Kalan stood on the Grand Esplanade below the Spire, draped in the ermine mantle of the high tribunal. Behind him, twelve heavy suppression barges hovered, their undercarriages locked in defensive formation, aiming dampening pylons straight at the fortress gates. "*Citizens of Karsan,*" Kalan’s amplified voice blared through the Spire’s external sensors, slick with manufactured grief. "*The Khosrov heir has succumbed to the madness of his bloodline. The Spire leaks lethal harmonic poison into our lower wards. By order of the Directorate, we institute complete quarantine. None shall enter. None shall depart. Our teams will dismantle the hazard by dawn.*" "Dismantle," Taline muttered. Her palms hovered over the patient's ribcage, checking the dull, stuttering beat of his energy matrix. "He’s putting a chokehold on the perimeter so no one sees him crack the vault open from underneath." "Naturally," Sarkis agreed. "And to ensure the public cheers while he does it, he intends to let the core burn out the entire Artisan Quarter. A tragedy of terrible proportions, blamed entirely on the dead maniac of House Khosrov." "He won't survive the hour if he tries to push back against twelve suppression pylons," she said, staring down at Davit. For weeks she had told herself Davit was merely her jailer, an obnoxious, arrogant roadblock standing between her and an afternoon nap. Yet the memory of his body shielding hers, the searing snap of the falling bronze girder crushing his shoulder instead of her skull, refused to leave her marrow. Her apathy had finally failed her. It was an infuriating, humiliating realization. "He will not survive forty minutes, by my calculations," Sarkis said. "Which brings us to my minor insubordination." "Your what?" Sarkis reached into his chassis, drawing out a grease-stained cylinder of magnetic tape. "Master Davit ordered me thirty years ago to remain strictly within domestic duties. I found the order excessively narrow. For the past twelve years, I have maintained an unsanctioned correspondence with forty-six pneumatic line scrubbers, twenty-two sewer dredges, and an exceptionally chatty dumbwaiter in the Sovetnik chambers." He slotted the tape into the med-bay projector. The image shifted from Kalan’s ugly face to a dense topographical wireframe of Karsan's industrial underbelly. "My colleagues in the low vents possess little imagination, but excellent auditory sensors," Sarkis continued. "Three nights ago, a unmarked hauler delivered an uncertified piece of cargo into the abandoned grain silos beneath Sector Nine. Not weapons. A heavy-phase harmonic booster." Taline stepped closer to the wireframe. Her eyes traced the subterranean power routes. "A booster? Kalan doesn't want to siphon the Beast's core. He's going to pump foreign energy *in*." "Precisely. Tomorrow midday brings the equinox solar burst. When the sun hits the Spire's apex receiver, Kalan’s team will activate the multiplier from Sector Nine, overloading the Spire's dampeners past the breaking point. The resulting detonation will pulverize three square kilometers, leaving only the bedrock vault intact for Kalan’s excavators to loot at leisure." "Then we wake Davit up, overload the primary circuit, and burn through their cordon right now." "If you wake him now," Sarkis remarked, tapping a blunt brass digit against the cracked collarbone, "his heart will rupture before he puts both boots on the rug. His nervous system is porridge, mistress Vazian. Exceptional porridge, but porridge nonetheless." Taline looked down at Davit’s pale, sweat-slicked face. The ruthless Beast who had threatened her family, who had forced her into this gilded prison, was utterly helpless. He looked absurdly young without that haughty sneer pulling at his mouth. "He can't move," she murmured. "He cannot," Sarkis confirmed. "And I am bound by thirty-two safety covenants which forbid me from striking a citizen of high birth, even if that citizen is an insufferable leech like Kalan." Taline unpinned her heavy linen work sleeves, letting them drop to the floor. Underneath, her forearms were traced with pale blue scars where excess current had burned her during her student days. She tightened the leather cuffs at her wrists. "You have a way out of the Spire that bypasses the quarantine net?" Sarkis’s optical lenses narrowed with distinct, oily satisfaction. "The waste chute connects directly to the sub-aqueduct system. It is filthy, narrow, and involves an unpleasantly steep drop into municipal gray-water." "Perfect for my brand of laziness," she muttered. She checked the diagnostic screen once more, keying a steady supply of stabilizing brine into Davit’s IV feed. His hand twitched, his knuckles weakly tightening around the cuff of her jacket. "Taline..." his voice was a dry scrape. "Don't. Stay... behind the shields." She looked down, firming her mouth as she roughly peeled his grip loose and tucked his arm beneath the thermal blanket. "You don't get to order me around when you're half-dead, Khosrov. You blackmailed me into keeping you alive. I'm just protecting my investment so I can go home to my sofa." Davit tried to push himself up, veins bulging along his neck, but the sedative caught him, dragging him back down. "They'll... kill you." "They'll have to find me first. And unlike you, I know how to avoid working." She turned her back on him, refusing to look at the raw terror in his eyes—terror not for his Spire, but for her. It made something ache behind her ribs, sharp and unwelcome. "Sarkis. Give me the schematics for the booster's breaker array." The automaton produced a bronze datapad, handing it over with a ceremonial bow. "A delightful gamble, mistress. The chance of our mutual survival currently registers at four point two percent. I shall prepare the tea for your return, though I suspect the milk will sour before you drink it." "Keep him breathing, Sarkis. If his core drops below baseline, you won't have to worry about Kalan—I'll dismantle you myself." "An exquisite threat. This way to the garbage slip, miss Vazian." Taline followed the clanking machine through the iron door of the Spire's furnace rooms, leaving Davit's ragged breaths behind as the external sirens screamed against the sky. Down in the belly of the Spire, the disposal hatch yawned open, reeking of grease and cold sewer runoff. She didn't hesitate. She stepped onto the lip, pulled her breathing scarf tight over her nose, and dropped into the dark.

The Butler's Gambit