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could pick the sarcasm out of his assurance. They were within a twentieth of a percent of their target length for the pass. The auger kept running, but the noise cut down sharply as Cadmus pulled the world-ripped back the way it came. The auger scraped the edges of the hole it had cut, but was otherwise spinning idly.
    Madlin clutched at her elbow as she watched the numbers reverse, counting back toward the zero mark where they’d begun the tunnel. She tried to hold up the sketched plans for the lunar hideaway, but sharp pains in her arm kept her from bending it properly. Sharp imaginary pains, she knew, but they were troubling her no less for it.
    “She hurt badly?”
    Madlin gritted her teeth. “Still has all the parts she had this morning.” She could feel the eyes on her, though Madlin and Cadmus were alone in the world-ripper room. Guards had been posted to keep work on the lunar expansion under wraps. Its actual location was to be a secret shared only by the two of them. The actual eyes were on Rynn. Curious, gawking eyes, too scared of doing wrong to do anything of use for her. They were all just waiting for Jamile or Sosha to show up and do the work for them.

    Rynn stumbled into her room in a daze and slammed the door behind her. She’d ordered her way free of Sosha’s ministrations as soon as she’d wrung out an admission that she was in no more immediate danger. The loss of blood had made her lightheaded along with the blow to the head itself. She had a welt where the side of her forehead had struck, and a bandage wrapped tightly around her face, packing her nose with gauze to set the break. Her left arm was splinted and swollen; Sosha said she’d have to wait for the swelling to subside but was fairly certain it was broken. Numerous scrapes and friction burns stung from antiseptics. Bloody Eziel, even her chest hurt from the impact of the rusted crashball.
    It seemed the only part of her that came through unscathed were her legs. Armored in the tinker’s legs, she hadn’t gotten so much as a scratch or bruise on them. So all in all, a successful field test followed by an unforeseen disaster attributable to user error, not design.
    “Bet you wish you knew a shielding spell about now, huh?” Dan asked.
    Rynn flinched and snapped her head to see what Dan was doing in her quarters. Mistake. Rynn squeezed her eyes shut against the dizziness and waves of pain from moving her head too fast.
    “Wud you want?” she demanded, her voice muddy by the bandage over her nose.
    “Some trick with those legs. I saw the whole thing from up here.”
    “How long you been up here?”
    “I watched that little festival in the plaza,” Dan said with a shudder. “Nice cult you’ve got there. Not my style, worshiping dead gods.”
    “Wud you know ‘bout gods?” Rynn was too weary to throw Dan out or yell for guards—what little good those might do—so she sat herself down on the bed and hoped to get the conversation over with.
    “I probably believe in Eziel more than you do,” said Dan, “but the gods are long gone. I mean, thousands of winters gone. Whatever gets you rebels off your arses and fighting again though, right? But that’s not why I’m here. I want to know when you’re sending me back to Tellurak.”
    “You sure you dun wanna fight for us here?” Rynn asked. “You’re good at it.”
    “I’m more of a war god  than Eziel is these days, but that’s not the point. The food here is dog shit, most of your people don’t speak a civilized language, and this airship was interesting for about a day and a half. This isn’t a warship or even a vessel anymore. It’s a backwater garrison stationed in the middle of nowhere.”
    “I thought you liked the idea of having airships.” Rynn tried to pinch the bridge of her nose to alleviate her headache, but the bandage was too much in the way.
    “Yeah, sure. Real ones though, not this spit-pasted monstrosity. So when can you get me back to Tellurak? I