Vex stepped up to Kari. What had he said to Lu when she’d gotten that look in her eyes like she’d become a version of herself she hated?
“Send any prisoners you find out this way,” Kari shouted at the raiders in the yard. “I will escort them to the river.”
The raiders waiting in the escape boats would have fought the soldiers near the prison docks, but energy palpitated off Kari. She’d plow through any other defensors.
Vex put the Budwig Bean in his ear, his mouth cocked to the side as he looked at Nayeli and Edda. Nayeli was too focused on the looming walls of the prison, but Edda gave him a frown that said,Not now.No time for soft conversations or moments of pain.
He settled the Budwig Bean. Breathing grated in his ear, followed by“Fucking hell and God above—”A pause.“Don’t get righteous with me, Barnabas. I did not use the Pious God’s name to curse.”
“Hello to you, too, Nate,” Vex said.
Nate huffed.“Get someone else. I don’t want a damn rat in my head.”
Vex managed to restrain himself. “Oh, Natey, I was already in your head.”
“I swear to God—yes, Barnabas, I mean the actual Pious God, so it was not a curse—”
A thud, a pistol fired.
Vex put his hand to his ear at the same time Nayeli and the Emerdian raider did to theirs. The rest in the courtyard leaned forward.
Shuffling, more thuds and cracks and a bark of pain, then a squeal of hinges.
And Nate’s voice.“We’re in.”
Vex nodded at Kari.
“Three groups, go!” she shouted. “You—top levels. Nayeli—middle. Vex—”
But he was gone, surging with the current of raiders into the bleak stone halls of the prison. Edda followed him, as always, his murderous shadow.
Moonlight from behind and faint torches lit a circle of an atrium with three halls splitting off. Raiders struck lanterns to life, the cages bouncing against their hips.
Vex and Edda gave a nod of encouragement to Nayelibefore they took their respective paths. According to Nate, the lower levels branched off the rightmost hall, so Vex shot down it, followed by a dozen or so raiders, weapons ready.
The first hall was bare, no cells. Vex hit a corner, turned—dead end. He whipped back the other way, but a raider at the rear of his group shouted, “Dead end here!”
“Nate,” Vex said, cupping a hand over his Budwig Bean. The bell echoed, a persistentdong-dong-dongthat shook into Vex’s chest. “One hall into the lower level. Left turn, dead end.”
The wall in front of Vex jerked, releasing a cloud of dust into the damp air. A scent burst through—Vex sniffed, his mind spasming. The medicinal earthiness of dried plants and the spiced zest of Tuncian spices.
Why the hell was he smelling that here?
The raiders’ lanterns pitched in the sandy clouds, hungry fingers of light snaking around the stones as they rolled into a recess in the wall. A new hall appeared.
“Thanks, darling,” Vex said. “And—cells!”
The raiders cheered and shot around Vex, who yanked a lockpicking kit from his pocket and threw himself at the first cell. Edda set to work on the next cell, raiders up and down the hall doing the same. The smell was stronger—definitely Tuncian spices. And plants.
Unease matched the dried, dead stench on the air.
“Bell! Who is it?”
Vex finished with his lock and yanked the door open. The other raiders backed away from the cells, their faces varying mixes of furious and sick and blindsided. Argridians had been arresting raiders on Grace Loray.Raiders, people who looked suspicious or evil. But the people who shuffled out of the cells were not who anyone in Vex’s group had expected to find.
“Damn it! What the hell is going on? Who is it?”
“Families,” Vex said, his voice frail. “It’s... kids.”
