“Grady’s hurt!”
I petted her fins back with a shaky hand. “It’s okay, Sush, I’m fine.”
Warcry scowled at me. “What the bleedin’ piss have you been doing, grav?”
“Getting my butt kicked by a girl.” I leaned my head against the rickety wood door to my room and fumbled with the key.
I expected Warcry to come back with a dig about how it wouldn’t have taken a very big girl or how I was bad enough at fighting and cultivating that he wasn’t surprised, but he didn’t take the easy shot.
“What girl? Where’ve ya been?”
Finally, I got the key in the lock. The door swung open, and I stumbled inside. Sushi and Warcry followed me in. I gave them the rundown of what had happened while I washed the blood off my face.
Warcry glared out the window into the darkness. “So that means the Emperor had you gank the wrong man. Sounds like Valthorpe was the traitor all along.”
“I don’t know.” I hung the bloody washrag on the bucket handle. “You didn’t see him with her. He might’ve just been trying to impress a hot girl by making himself sound like a big shot.”
“Yeah, might’ve done.” Warcry scratched the red-brown stubble on his jaw. “She wouldn’t need him to tell her anything if she’s a Mental Spirit. Could just read it out of his brain while he’s talking himself up, can’t she?”
I nodded, then immediately regretted it as new ice-pick pain shot through my skull. The Dragon tattoo had healed whatever physical damage the six-armed woman had done, but the psionic damage hadn’t faded yet.
I squeezed my temples. “There’s also the fact that we haven’t been attacked since that first night on the trail. Maybe Galston really was the traitor.”
“Or Valthorpe’s been holding off ’til we clear the temple and get the artifact for him,” Warcry said. “Oughta go in there and sit on our hands every day, see how long it takes ’fore he calls the Technols in and gives up the game.”
“We can’t. If he’s a Technol spy, then he might know about Kest by now. He can out her and Rali—he might’ve already done it. If he knows, then that dancer knows, and she could’ve already told the Jianjiao. Maybe that was what the Bailiff’s little comment was about.”
I started to pull up my messages on the Winchester to warn Kest, but Warcry shot across the room and grabbed my arm.
“Reel it in, grav. Unless the Emperor or Sanya talked, we’re the only ones who know about the twins. If you go off your head now and run your mouth, then everybody with access to your HUD will know. Sounded like the OSS knew about the artifact, didn’t it? Might be they’re on Sarca for the same reason as us and the Technols—to get it for themselves. The Bailiff was probably just running his fat gob ’coz he knew dragging your girl into it would get to you.”
Trying to work all this out with a splitting headache was getting me nowhere. I dropped onto the bed. Under my shirt, the casket necklace bumped against my chest.
“That dancer, she said to use my casket necklace.” I pulled the chain out and stared at the little black coffin dangling there. “She said it would help with the aftereffects of her attack.”
“Or help take you out so she don’t have to.”
“I don’t think so. When the apparatus accepted me, the little voice inside it said it was a Crucible Casket. It’s supposed to intensify my kishotenketsu and speed up my advancement somehow.”
“Is it, yeah?” Warcry sneered. “The voices from Spirit apparatuses you’ve trusted so far have all been honest.”
I thumbed the silver corners of the black wood coffin. Suddenly I wished more than ever that Kest and Rali were there. Rali would say it was obviously this one thing from the old sword legends, and Kest would say that it couldn’t possibly be because those were just stories. I wouldn’t be any closer to knowing what it was, but at least they’d be there.
And while I was wishing, why not just wish for some extra-strength Ibuprofen to suddenly appear?
“I’m doing it,” I told Warcry. “If the casket tries to take over my body or something... Well, stop it.”
“Sure thing, grav. It only took me and the big man almost dying to save you last time.”
Crucible is not nearly as powerful as Hungry Ghost, the ancient khan whispered, almost like he was insulted at being compared to the necklace.
“Hungry Ghost says he believes in you,” I told Warcry.
“Tell that shunty piece of—”
With a thumbnail, I pried the tiny coffin lid open.
Everything went black. Pressure—thousands of times stronger than the Shogun’s trick—compressed me from every side, like tons of dirt had just been shoveled on top of me and all around. I reached out, but my arms bumped against solid wood. It was in front, behind, and on both sides. Panic and claustrophobia all hit me at once. I was trapped. I couldn’t move. I could hardly breathe. Suddenly I got why everybody back in Victorian days was so scared to be buried alive.
“Grady?” Sushi sounded like she was yelling through a megaphone right next to my face. “Warcry lost Grady!”
“Nah, he’s in there.” Warcry’s voice was even louder. Three world-shaking booms blasted through the confined space, rattling my teeth. “Can ya hear us, grav?”
“Yes,” I wheezed. “For the love of God, stop tapping the necklace.”
Warcry didn’t hear me. “Trust me, fishstick, I’ve used gravity wells like this.” His voice shifted like he was yelling at a deaf old person. It battered against my skeleton. “Oi, grav, if you’ve got the room, do your taiji!”
I couldn’t get the breath to tell him I didn’t have any room to move.
Chains clanked, and the coffin shifted around me, pitching me forward onto my forearms and buckling
