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doorstep. Rachel didn’t much care what would become of the crippled city. When she’d seen it last, it looked all but ready to collapse into the abyss beneath it.
    “Miss Hael!”
    The former assassin almost collided with Olirind Meer as he emerged from a side street. Sweating and disheveled, as though he had been running, he now stopped short, startled by her presence. “What are you doing here?” he inquired in tones which verged on panic. “It’s almost dark. Why aren’t you in your room?”
    “Keep your voice down, Olirind, please. I had to go out. There was something I needed to do.”
    The tavern proprietor glanced behind him, then back at her. “Quickly now,” he whispered. “You must come back with me at once. There are Spine everywhere.”
    With barely another look in his direction, Rachel strode on ahead of him. “You can’t be seen with me,” she reminded him. “I’ll speak to you later.”
    Leaving Meer standing bemused at the junction, she hurried back to the tavern.
    Dill was sitting on the edge of the bed, staring at his sword, when she entered the room. He hadn’t touched his bowl of chowder. “I feel better now,” he said. “I’m sorry I’ve been distant lately.”
    “We’re leaving,” she said.
    He accepted this without complaint. “Did you discover something while you were out?”
    “Only that Olirind Meer is a slimy, black-hearted wretch. I think he’s just betrayed us.” She opened the wardrobe and took out the satchel containing her leather armour and knives. “I met him out on the street,” she went on. “He was hurrying back from the direction of the Avulsior’s residence, and he did not look happy to see me.”
    “Maybe he happened to be in that part of town on his normal business. When he saw you, he just became worried that you’d be spotted.”
    “We’ve passed each other on these streets before, and he knows well enough to look the other way—nothing more than a passing glance between us. Otherwise he’d implicate himself if I was discovered.” She laid her leather vest and breeches on the bed, then opened the dresser drawer and began stuffing loose clothes into the empty satchel. “But this time he wasn’t concerned about being seen outside with me. He even offered to walk me back to the tavern. He was far more worried that I wasn’t here in our room, where he could—”
    She stopped speaking suddenly, listening, then rushed across to the door and turned the handle. The door remained firmly shut.
    “Shit,” she hissed. “Did someone come here while I was out? Dill, did you see anybody tamper with this, with the frame around this door?”
    “I…” He looked helpless. “I don’t know. I was sleeping.”
    “Get ready to fly. We’re leaving right now.”
    But just as Dill rose from the bed, the ceiling above his head collapsed in a shower of broken plaster. Something huge and metallic, like a spike, crashed down through the roof and embedded itself in the floorboards. Through the clouds of dust, Rachel spotted a trembling chain and a flexible tube leading back up through the hole above. Then she heard a low hiss and realized what was happening. “Poison gas,” she cried. “Don’t breathe.”
    Ferrets, Deepgate’s aeronauts had called them. Fired from warship grapple guns, the huge iron spears were capable of delivering toxic gases most effectively into sealed buildings. They’d used them on the Southern Clearances to pump lime gas into an underground network of Heshette tunnels, killing thousands without ever having to land one of their warships. Even now such a vessel would be hovering overhead, pumping invisible fumes into Dill and Rachel’s room. The gas leaked through holes in the shaft, while the barbs along its length could be detached and repositioned to determine more precisely how deeply it embedded itself into a building. The process to seal the door had been more subtle: a chemical solution painted on the inside of the frame