I shook my head. “I couldn’t break through her defenses. She’s long gone. There’s no one back in camp, just tons of Miasma. She must’ve taken off the second she hit the edge of my range.”
“You can sense as far as camp?”
“If I concentrate. It’s passive, so it reaches farther than my attacks.”
Warcry looked at me like this was the first time he’d ever seen me. “How accurate is it?”
“Accurate enough to know Smoky and Unu are dead.”
“Treacherous slag,” Warcry snarled. “She was probably the double agent all along.”
“If anybody could feed the Emperor lines about how Galston sold everybody out, it’d be his right-hand Dream cultivator.” I headed for the doorway. “We’ve got to go after her.”
Warcry scowled down at the bodies. “Sacrifice ourselves for some rubbish bracelet? I don’t know about you, grav, but I ain’t that committed to this bollix gang. Not after all this rubbish.”
“Screw the bracelet, and screw the Dragons,” I said. “Sanya knows about Kest, and she killed Valthorpe and Smoky and Unu. I don’t care what happens to the stupid bracelet as long as she pays for what she did. Preferably before she turns in Kest and Rali to the Technols.”
Informant
WE RAN THE WHOLE WAY to Tikrong, boosting our speed with Ki-enhancements and clicking on our HUD lights so we wouldn’t lose the trail in the dark. I kept Dead Reckoning sweeping the area for Sanya, but never saw a sign of her life point. Either she’d taken off in a different direction, or Ketsus were way too fast for lower levels to catch up.
“Where to now, grav?” Warcry asked, scowling down at the city. The lights of Tikrong’s saloon district reflected off the grid of canals.
“The spaceport maybe?” Shuttles were coming and going, their green, red, and white flying lights flashing. “She wouldn’t go back to the Emperor. That’d be a death sentence now that she’s screwed him over. But maybe she went somewhere off-planet.”
He grunted. “If she did do, we’re bled.”
I glanced down at my HUD. I could message her, but even if that did persuade her to evil villain monologue her plans by text, it would also let her know that at least one of us was still alive. Without messaging her, she might think it was possible, especially if none of her death squad checked in to let her know the job was done, but she wouldn’t be sure unless she doubled back to the temple to look for our bodies.
Seeing me checking the cracked screen of my Winchester, Warcry made a more logical assumption than the one I’d been working on.
“Stumpy might know since they’re both involved with the Technols,” he said, “but ask her and you’re putting her and the big man’s head on the executioner’s block.”
“Okay, options,” I said, letting my HUD arm drop. “One, search the port to make sure she’s not on one of the shuttles or waiting for a ride.”
“That’d take all night, and she may already have left,” Warcry said.
“Message the Emperor.”
He offset his jaw, then shook his head. “Aside from breaching a protocol that’ll probably get us executed, Emperor’s two days away by shuttle, isn’t he? She could be anywhere by the time he gets around. Anyway, he’ll want us to sort it, because we’re the clowns who lost the bracelet in the first place.”
“Right.” I squeezed my eyes shut, trying to think. A faint pulse sounded in my skull, halfway between a color and a sensation. My eyes flew open. “The six-armed dancer working for the Jianjiao. She’s still Sentenced.”
“What about her?” Warcry asked.
I turned to head for the city. “She has tons of people come through her dance hall every night, not to mention the ones she passes in the marketplace and all over Tikrong. Some of those are bound to be Technols or Technol spies. Valthorpe was apparently feeding her all kinds of classified Dragon information—either on accident or on purpose—and he can’t have been the only one. She’ll know something. She has to.”
“Ain’t a lot to go on,” he said, but he followed me anyway. Not a lot was better than nothing.
The pull of Sentenced to Death brought us in through the city walls, past the spaceport. We kept an eye out, but didn’t see any flat shapes in surgical masks and suits waving at us from shuttle windows. Because it was so late already, I’d expected the targeting ability to pull me toward the dance hall, but it took us through the entertainment district, crossing shallow canals reflecting the gaudy lights without slowing down. Within a few minutes, we were in the shantytown on the east side of Tikrong.
The dancer’s shack mansion was pitch black inside. Its curtains wafted in and out of the windows and door like the little building was gasping for air.
Through the bedroom window, the Sentenced to Death crosshairs glowed. The six-armed dancer lay on the child’s sleeping mat in the fetal position, clutching her daughter’s rat thing to her chest and sobbing silently. The rat thing’s head had been cut off.
My stomach dropped out.
“I know you’re there,” she croaked. “If you set foot in my home, I’ll Obliterate you both.”
“What—”
“They killed my mother and took my daughter. Takiru claimed I betrayed the Jianjiao when I helped you.” She sniffled. “I did betray the Jianjiao when I helped you.”
Her words settled on my chest like a swimming pool full of bricks. The stupid bracelet and gang war had caused this, and I had helped.
Warcry cussed under his breath. “How long ago?”
“They came for them yesterday.” She let out a long breath. “I should’ve shut off your motor function and cut your throat when I had the chance.”
“Why didn’t you do that to the bleeders who came after ’em?” Warcry snapped.
Fabric rustled inside as the dancer turned over to face us.
“Will you kill me, Death cultivator?”
I ignored that. “Where’d they take your daughter?”
“They sold her to the Every Comfort
