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“No,” Cassia shakes her head. “Not like that. You know how sometimes one person's in charge officially, but somebody else really runs things?”

“Yes,” I say uneasily.

“Sweetie's like that.” She tucks a few escaped curls behind her ears. “He's the one you see if you need something done.”

“Wait, your uncle's a . . .” I scramble for the right word and finally hit on one I remember from one of Ava and Rushil's old movies. “A mobster?”

“He's not a mobster, he's the
shateigashira
.”

Vaat.
First the cat, then kidnapping, and now organized crime?
You can't be so quick to trust, Mi.
Ava said that after I told her about Kiran and the kissing bottle.
You have to be careful with yourself. You have to get to know the person.
I push her voice away. What did she know about it? I knew Vishva better than practically anyone, and she still stabbed me in the back for a night of dancing. Besides, we're already deep
in Ceres Station, with a DSRI pilot trussed up in the hold of our stolen ship. The time for second thoughts is long gone.

Darkness greets us at the bottom of the shaft. We step off the lift into what looks like one of Mumbai's man-high drainage tunnels. Phosphorus paint coats the rounded concrete walls, and a slush of mud and ice melt gathers at the bottom, dragging a dark line through the glow. Something chitters and scrabbles in the shadows ahead.

“Hello!” Cassia calls into the emptiness. An echo quavers back at her. “It's Cassia, Kaldero's daughter.”

Silence. Cassia wets her lips and tries again. “We need to see Sweetie.”

A heartbeat. Two. Then a pair of human shapes melt out of the shadow beyond the bend in the tunnel. They wear rags and black-painted body armor. Oddly shaped stunners hang at their sides. No, not stunners, guns. Real guns.

We're surrounded by rock.
I try to calm myself.
No risk of decompression.
But decompression isn't the only way a bullet can kill.

Cassia steps forward wordlessly and holds out her arms to let the guards pat her down. I follow suit, trying not to look at their guns or breathe in the sour sweat stink that clings to them. Behind them, a rat skitters through
the slush and freezes, staring at us. One of its eyes glows bright, electric red.

The guards lead us down the glowing drainage ways, past an air lock set into the stone, and through a barely lit corridor lined with humming refrigeration containers and crates. More rats watch us from behind the crates and from inside crevices built into the rock. I've never been afraid of rats—spiders are what turn my stomach to liquid—but I shudder anyway. There are too many of them, too many red eyes darting in and out of view.

At last we come to a metal door on rollers. One of the guards bangs on it.

His coms hiss to life. “What is it?”

“Visitors for Sweetie,” the guard answers, and I'm surprised by the tenor of the voice—high and feminine, almost sweet.

A few seconds of silence, and then, “He's not expecting anyone.”

Cassia grabs the guard's hand and leans close to the coms. “Tell him it's Cassia Kaldero.”

The guard jerks her hand away and reaches for her gun, but before she can drop Cassia to the floor, the door shrieks, and a crack of light splits the darkness as it begins to rumble open.

I blink and hold up a hand to shield my eyes. Rows of day lamps hang from the ceiling of the long room before us, illuminating walls red as a whale's gullet. The back wall is full of feeds—hundreds of them glowing infrared green. A small group of men and women stand examining an array of jet-black small arms spread out over a table. They tense as we enter, hands hovering over the weapons.

A muscular man with sallow skin and a close-cropped stubble of bleached hair steps away from the table. Black and green tattoos crawl up the back of his neck and cradle the base of his skull. His long-sleeved shirt must have been white once, but years of sweat and dust have dulled it to a watery gray. His eyes are quick and black, close set around a crooked nose that looks as if it's been broken more than once.

“Ah.” He smiles easily, revealing a mouth of teeth the dead brown of beetle carapaces, and holds out his arms. “Cassia. The littlest Kaldero. How are you, my dear?” His sleeves slip back to expose more ink on the back of his hands.

“Uncle.” Cassia allows him to draw her into a hug. The rest of the group around the table relaxes and goes back to examining the cache of weapons spread out before them.

“It's been too long.” Sweetie steps back and looks her up and down in a decidedly
un-
uncle-like fashion. “Much too long.”

Cassia stiffens but keeps the smile on her face. “It has.”

Sweetie swings his lazy gaze to me. “And who's this?” He frowns and shakes an admonishing finger at Cassia as he meanders back to a cluster of white leather couches below the wall of feeds. “I thought your father taught you better than to bring guests unannounced.”

“Miyole's good.” Cassia spares a glance for me as we trail after him. “And my father's hurt, or else he'd be here himself.”

Something flits across Sweetie's face—worry, maybe, or surprise—but just as quickly, it's gone, and his expression is smooth and heavy-lidded again. He drops down onto one of the couches and spreads his arms along its back. “You've run into some trouble then, little tinker?”

From afar, the furniture looked pristine, even strangely luxurious against the bare concrete floor, but up close, a thousand rips and cracks show in the stained leather. The feeds jerk and swing wildly—a floor-level view of the phosphorous tunnel, another from high above a refrigeration unit, some showing nothing but the ghostly gleam of animal eyes.
The rats,
I realize.

Cassia stands before her uncle, her back straight. “Some jackers caught us. Razed our ship, took Nethanel . . .”

Sweetie examines his nails. “That's a sad story.”

“Not if I get him back,” Cassia says.

Sweetie looks up at her, sharp, all his casual manner gone. “And you expect me to fix it? For old times' sake?”

“Not fix it,” Cassia says. “Help
me
fix it. Isn't twenty years of trading worth one favor?”

Sweetie rubs his chin. “What are you asking?”

“Lend me a ship. A junker, anything, so I can go after them.”

Sweetie cocks an eyebrow. “You know where they are, then?”

Cassia and I exchange a look. We know their signal, but we most definitely do not know where they are.

Sweetie sighs. “What ship was it?”

I pull out my crow and flip through to the
dakait
ship's signature. “The
Proioxis
,” I say, and hold it out to him.

Sweetie acts as if I haven't spoken. He only has eyes for Cassia. “Little tinker, that's a Söner
ship.”

She flinches, but barely.

“You know what that means.”

She nods.

Something cold slides down the inside of my chest.
I don't know what a Söner is, but if it's something that gives Sweetie pause, I don't think I want to find out. Mumbai has its share of Bad Men and Bad Women, Auntie Rajni among them. But Sweetie is a different genus altogether.

I try to catch Cassia's eye, but she won't look at me. My palms itch like mad.

Sweetie leans back on the couch. “Your father would kill me if he knew I let his youngest go after some Söner Neitibu all alone.”

“I'm not alone.” She finally looks at me. “I have Miyole.”

Sweetie glances at me. “Forgive me if I'm not full of confidence.”

“We're going after them either way. We have a shuttle we can retrofit—”

“A shuttle?” Sweetie straightens.

“Yes.” Cassia hurries on. “But it'll be much faster with your help.”

Sweetie rubs his chin in silence.

“Please, uncle,” Cassia says. “I know you hate them, too.”

A smile flashes across Sweetie's face. “The enemy of my enemy is my friend. Is that it, little tinker? But you
know I don't do charity work. What you're asking—it's a lot, even for your father's sake.”

“I know.”

“So what are you going to do for me in exchange?” He cocks his head, exposing a skull with elongated teeth, inked on the side of his neck.

“Anything,” Cassia says without hesitation.

Sweetie's smile spreads. “Right answer.”

Chapter 10

W
e follow Sweetie and his guards along a deeper set of tunnels cut straight through the asteroid's core. Somewhere above us, a distant growl penetrates the rock.

“The Söner?” I hiss at Cassia. “What's that?”

“A separatist group. ‘Native Sons,'” Cassia murmurs. “They run parts of Enceladus.”

I frown. “No, they don't. The Satellite Authority's in charge there.” I should know. Enceladus is the moon where the
Ranganathan
and all her sisters' bones were grown.

“I told you.” Cassia sounds tired. “There's what's official and what's really . . .” Sweetie turns to us, and she trails off.

“Here we are, then.” He spreads his arms wide.

Behind him, the tunnel opens into a pressurized hangar with raw rock walls. A collection of ships in various states
of disrepair sprawls over the floor; some sport pocked hulls and burn streaks; other are up on lifts, with coolant lines and wires dangling from their open bellies. Sweetie leads us to a blocky craft, twice the size of our shuttle and twenty times older, but more or less intact. Grime lies thick as silt on its front viewport.

“Hybrid. Twenty square meters of cargo hold and a sleeping berth big enough for twelve,” Sweetie says. “Commons and the galley are all one room, but it's plenty big.”

Cassia eyes it. “What's her name?”

“The
Mendicant
,” Sweetie says.

She nods. “We can work with that.”

“Good.” Sweetie lifts his chin at one of the guards, who disappears back the way we came. “We'll load you up, then.”

Sweetie activates the berth's loading ramp and waves forward a group of men rolling two-hundred-liter drums across the hangar floor. Part of the “anything” Cassia promised.

I pull Cassia aside. “‘We can work with that?' Are you out of your mind?”

She shrugs. “Sweetie says it's solid.”

“How do we know it even runs?” I shoot a look at our benefactor.

“If he says it runs, it runs,” Cassia says. “He wouldn't trust a faulty ship with his merchandise.”

“Oh, I'm glad he's so concerned about his
merchandise
.” I roll my eyes.

“You know what I mean,” Cassia says.

“I don't like it.” I shake my head and eye the drums. “Did you even ask what he's having us transport? Or where exactly we're taking it?”

“You'll find out in plenty of time,” Sweetie had told us, but that didn't exactly fill me with confidence.

“Does it matter?” Cassia crosses her arms. “What happened to all that stuff about trusting each other?”

I run a hand over my braid. “It's not that I don't trust you, it's only that I'm not too thrilled about doing business with crime lords.”

“He's not a crime lord, he's—”

“The
shateigashira
.” I realize I'm probably talking loud enough for Sweetie to hear and drop my voice to a whisper. “I know. I thought he would be a little more helpful since he's supposed to be your uncle and all.”

“If he wasn't my uncle, he would have had us shot on sight.”

“Ladies.”

I nearly jump out of my skin.

“There's only one more matter to discuss before we conclude our business here,” Sweetie says with a polite grin.

Cassia pales. “Yes?”

“I'm in need of some assurance you won't simply fly away with my little bird here.” He makes a fluttering motion with his hands. “Let's talk collateral.”

“Well . . . there's the shuttle,” Cassia says, sneaking a guilty look at me.

I press my lips into a line. Just because I agreed to this doesn't mean I have to be happy about it.

“Ah, yes,” Sweetie says.

“DSRI issue,” Cassia forges on. “Brand-new, except for the flight over.”

Sweetie raises an eyebrow, interested. “DSRI?” He looks at me as though seeing me for the first time, as if he's finally figured out the formula that explains my existence.

I lean in close to Cassia. “I can't believe you're going to trade a new DSRI shuttle for this piece of
tatti
,” I say under my breath. “There has to be something better he can give us.”

“It's not a trade, it's collateral,” she hisses back, shooting a nervous look at Sweetie.

“It's coercion.”

“I don't care what it is,” Cassia says. “We're taking it.”

“My dear,” Sweetie interrupts, reaching for my hand. “What is your name again?”

I swallow.
Vaat.
I should have kept my complaining mouth shut. “Miyole Guiteau.”

“Miyole.” He rolls the word around in his mouth. He smells like sour milk. “Let me explain. You stole a DSRI shuttle and brought it here, to my operation.”

I open my mouth to protest, but Sweetie waves me silent.

“Don't bother. You wouldn't have come to me if you weren't in some kind of trouble to begin with.” He folds my hand tightly inside his. “And now you've brought that trouble to me.”

Cassia looks stricken. “We didn't mean—”

“Of course you didn't.” Sweetie tightens his grip on my hand. “But a stolen DSRI shuttle is useless to me, new or not. Do you see? I don't need government types scratching too deep around here. If I sold it, it would only be for parts, so be glad I'm even willing to consider it collateral. Now thank me for my generous assistance, and we won't say another word about it.” Sweetie's smile stays in place as my finger bones crush together.

“Thank you,” I say hoarsely.

“Don't mention it.” Sweetie loosens his grip and pats my hand before letting go. He turns to Cassia and lifts the back of her hand to his lips. “My dear, a pleasure doing business with your family, as always.” Then he sweeps away, over to the men loading barrels onto our new junker.

Cassia puts a hand on my arm, and I jump.

“We've got to turn it over,” she says softly. There's an apology in her voice, but I pretend not to hear it.

“Right,” I say, and stalk off to the tunnel. If I walk fast enough, no one will see me shaking. We don't know what we're transporting or who we're taking it to, and our only backup option is out of play. In my head, this all went differently. It made sense. It was a calculated risk. But now the variables are multiplying in a way I never factored for, and I can't go back and rerun the experiment. This is it. This is my life, spiraling into a textbook example of chaos theory.

Cassia follows, one of Sweetie's masked guards trailing a few meters behind. No need to keep us under close surveillance now that Sweetie has us where he wants us.

She catches up to me. “I didn't have any other choice.” Her voice is smooth, coaxing, now that the deal is done. “This is the only way we can find Nethanel.”

I double my pace. She may be right, but I don't have to like it.

We pass the door to Sweetie's lair and the hall lined with refrigeration containers in silence. Red eyes follow us. Neither of us speaks until we're back in the lift.

“Miyole,” Cassia says, pleading.

I sigh. “I get it, okay? It's done.” I've known from the beginning Cassia would do anything to find her brother. I just underestimated what
anything
would be.

We ride the lift back up to the main hangar. The shuttle is unharmed, except for a patch on the door where someone has scratched the word
busu
into the shielding. The moment the shuttle hatch slides open, though, I know something is wrong. The lights are all on, clean and bright. I hold out my hand and send Cassia a worried look—
careful
. The dock's bustle and roar fades as we creep up the loading ramp. The gurney comes into view. Empty.

I catch a flash of movement in the corner of my eye and turn just in time to see Rubio swinging an oxygen tank full force at the back of Cassia's head.

“No!” I shout.

Cassia flinches and ducks, but not fast enough to avoid the blow. The tank glances the side of her forehead with an
ugly, thick
clank
. She crumples at the edge of the loading ramp, eyes rolled back in her head and a deep gash opened above her left eye.

Rubio down stares at her. She isn't moving. There is no breath in me, only my blood moving in slow motion. Rubio stumbles back, drops the blood-smeared tank, and looks at me. This can't be happening. Any second she's going to raise a hand to her head and pick herself up. But she doesn't. And she doesn't. The only thing moving is the blood pouring down her forehead and into her hair. Her eyes stare unseeing at the ceiling. Is she dead? She can't be. She can't be living one second and dead the next, right in front of me. That can't happen.

Rubio bolts. My heart kicks, and time comes rushing back.

“No!” I scream again. I leap over Cassia and race after him, down the ramp, into the teeming crowd. Rubio glances back and lunges into the tide of close-packed bodies, fighting against the current. I charge in, too, shoving and ducking.
She can't be dead. She can't be.

An ice sledge rumbles toward us, cutting Rubio's path short. He skids to a halt, looks left, then right, and dodges left. I cut across the crowd and dart after him, but he's faster. He's not stuck in a steaming-hot pressure suit.
He's going to get away.
All that blood . . .

“Stop!” I shoulder forward and point at his back. “Someone stop him!”

The woman closest to me glances up briefly and looks away, but otherwise the dock keeps up its chaotic rhythm. The rattle of the air scrubbers and the din of voices drown me out. If he gets away, he'll alert the DSRI. They'll lock me away as an accessory, and if Cassia's dead—
she can't be, she can't be, but there was so much blood, and her eyes
—no one will ever find Nethanel.

Think, Miyole.

I look up. One of the rat boys sits on the air duct above me, gnawing on what I hope is a chicken bone.

“Hey!” I call up. “You!”

He wipes grease from his face. “Whatcha want?”

“Help me stop him.” I point after Rubio.

He narrows his eyes. “What's in it for me?”

My mind races. What would this kid want? What can we afford to give up? “Food,” I say. “We've got food.”

“How much food?” he asks.

“You'll never find out if you don't stop him, will you?” I snap.

“A' right, a' right.” He tucks the bone in his pocket, hops up, and skitters off over the ductwork.

I follow as best I can on the ground, elbowing my way through the crowd. Above, the boy darts left on an intersecting duct and then leaps over the edge. A shout of surprise rises from the crowd as he drops. I put on a burst of speed. The boy has wrapped himself around Rubio's leg like a sloth. He bites his shin.

Rubio cries out and topples over, trying to shake the boy loose. But it's too late. I leap on top of him, knocking the air from his lungs and pinning him to the wet, filthy ground.
The blood, her eyes . .
. The rat boy scrambles out of the fray.

I swing a fist at Rubio's face. I've never hit anyone before. I've never needed to. My knuckles connect with his cheekbone and burst with pain, but I don't care.
So much blood, and her skull and her eyes. Lying there bleeding and she wasn't seeing anything.
Somewhere in the back of my mind is Soraya, warning me that violence never helps anything, and somewhere deeper is the sick, trembling feeling I get when I'm about to remember something. I push it all aside and swing again, vaguely aware of the crowd forming around us.

Rubio blocks my blow. He drives his knee into my side and flips me off him. My ribs flare with pain. I rake my fingernails down his cheek and across his neck.

“Putamadre!”
He clutches his face, and I deliver a swift kick to his testicles. Rubio cries out and doubles over.

I pick myself up and kick him again, in the stomach this time.
The blood, her eyes. She can't be, but I think maybe she is.
My arms might not be as strong as his, but years of walking and horseback riding in Mumbai have given me calves like steel.

“She's dead!” My face is wet, and my limbs shake with cold fire. Soraya is gone. Civilization and all the good it ever did me is gone. I'm alone on an outpost with the boy who murdered the one person in a thousand light years who wanted me, who needed me. “You killed her!”

“Let 'im have it, girl!” Someone in the crowd whoops, and answering calls ripple all around me.

I pause, panting, and look up. Traffic has come to a standstill, and a ring of people has formed around us. The rat boys perch on the ducts above, looks of animal glee on their faces. I brush the hair ripped loose from my braid out of my eyes. On the floor at my feet, Rubio moans.

What am I doing? I step back and unclench my fists, all the blood draining out of my chest. My heart beats like a timpani against my sternum. Rubio isn't fighting back
anymore. Am I really going to beat someone to death in front of a cheering crowd? I grab his arm and drag him to his feet.

“Come on,” I mutter. Civilization might be millions of kilometers away, but there's still some left in me.

A groan of disappointment rises from the crowd. The knot of people around us begins to disperse.

I twist Rubio's arm behind his back and march him to the shuttle. I need time to think without adrenaline poisoning my judgment. I need time to figure out what to do with him. But in the meantime, he's going to face what he's done. He's going to look at her, and if there's any decency in him, he's going to feel all the guilt of it.

No one pays us any mind, let alone tries to stop us, as I push him back the way we came.

“How could you?” I speak through my teeth. “You could have run. You could have gotten away. Why did you . . .” I trail off, the words stopped up in my throat. I should never have gotten angry with Cassia, never grudged her anything in the service of finding her brother.
Her eyes, the blood . . .