Lapis sloshed with Brander through the dark, drenched and empty streets, wrapped in her cloak and armed with the special gauntlets that Patch gave her. They were gold-washed black leather, whose prettiness concealed weapons. Throwing knives rested along the bottom and she could pop them into her palm by pressing a hidden button on the flat side of her hand. On the top a gold-coated metal plate sheathed two larger blades, each released by a flat lever on the side. She had specific chaser gauntlets that only held thin throwing knives, but that night, she felt safer wearing the better-constructed, deadlier ones.

Brander tugged his cloak’s hood down lower. He wore one of hers, though his primary motivation for borrowing it was to hide his face rather than as protection from the rain. She did not have appropriate attire for the Blue Council members, so they reluctantly sat out this mission. The rats and Dachs would keep them entertained.

Where had Ciaran met the barkeep? How long had they known one another? She did not think Ciaran had visited Jiy since she had moved there, and Dachs had been a staple presence that whole time. She worried at her puzzlement, but any answer lay with the two men.

Brander led her towards the nicest neighborhood in the Grey Streets, the Gardens. The wealthiest of the Grey Streets, and a few down-on-their-luck Orchards merchants, owned houses there. Her rats considered it a high-class area, which she privately laughed about; she knew what wealthy city neighborhoods looked and felt like, and the Gardens did not qualify. The homes were nice but not large mansions with pillars and gardens and fountains, the entrances protected behind tall bars of unwelcoming wrought iron. Instead of coats-of-arms draped over stone walls that trumpeted the lineage of the family, they had wooden plaques with the resident’s name burned into them dangling from short wooden poles. The streets were dirt, not cobbles, nor did they have a light at every corner and a scattering of lamps in between. They lacked well-maintained flower bushes that attempted to drown the nastier smells that came with city living.

They also did not have very bored guards standing near the entry gates to the estates, tasked with screaming at passers-by and demanding to know why a chaser walked their pristine ways.

She did not know their destination, but Brander headed straight to Brownleaf Street and five doors down on the left, as if he had visited previously. Their target was a double-story home with a brown brick base and dark brown half-timbers crisscrossing white walls on the upper story. The roof tiles were thin sheets of ceramic, an upgrade from the wood most of its neighbors sported. A large, night-shrouded log shed rested to the right side, with a walkway leading to it from the street. Only one lantern illuminated the exterior, and it sat above the front door, trying to cast its rays wide but failing to breach the rain past the awning. The interior blazed bright, leaking soft yellow around the curtains, but even that did not reach beyond the glass windows.

“Sherridan’s been watching Orinder for a while,” Brander told her in a voice barely above a whisper. “His name kept coming up in conjunction with the alchemist Hoyt hired.”

“The alchemist?” Lapis asked in disbelief.

“Not concerning the poisonings, but his weapon,” Brander said. “No one knew where he got it, or even what it looked like, so Sherridan got curious. None of the typical tech sellers knew anything about it, and they had decided the guy lied about the weapon to keep people from exacting revenge on him. Since the mere mention of tech frightens the common citizens, on the surface, it seemed like a decent strategy. Something scratched Sherridan wrong about it, though, and he nosed about the less reputable merchants. They were really reluctant to speak of it, but a couple said Orinder was the contact who found it for him.”

“I never would have guessed.” True, rumor stated that Orinder dealt with the underground, and Rin had even mentioned it during the confrontation without pushback, but being a tech merchant? The man had always seemed too soft and self-important to place himself in danger that way. If law enforcement officials found out about his dealings, he did not have enough goodwill or money to buy his way out of punishment. He would be executed, like so many idiots before him.

“It’s hush-hush because he has some sort of deal with Hoyt that Hoyt wants kept secret. If he has triggers, he’s probably the one who got the alchemist his weapon.”

Lapis snarled to herself. No wonder he confronted the rats. He thought himself untouchable because of Hoyt. “Well, the alchemist’s weapon was a dud.”

Brander glanced at her. “And how do you know that?”

“I turned in his stake.”

It took a moment for him to digest the news. “You caught Hoyt’s alchemist?”

“Yep. Through stupid luck. He went out-city to stay with one of Hoyt’s men, who happened to be my stake. They got into an argument, and the alchemist used his tech weapon on him. It didn’t work after that, and he couldn’t figure out how to fix it. I stayed hidden, he went to sleep, and I knocked him out with sleeping oil to the nose and mouth. I carted both of them to the nearest guardhouse and got a bag of silver for the effort.”

She impressed him. “So the threat of tech might not be such a threat?”

“It depends. The guttershank last night was a danger.”

The thief snarled. “What a waste,” he muttered. “So drugged up he couldn’t see straight. It’s odd, though. Someone like him having working tech, while the alchemist, someone who Hoyt likes and exploits, doesn’t.” He jerked his chin to the shed. “Come on.”

He led the way to the back of the house. While light blazed in the front’s rooms, the back’s only illumination came from a single fluttering candle on a second-story windowsill. Not even a lantern hung above the door to brighten the ample yard. Good. The lack of light, coupled with a rain-darkened night, would keep their movement hidden. Brander popped the back gate’s lock before Lapis even realized he picked it, and cautiously swung it open. He closed it behind her, and they padded to the storage shed—the obvious first place to look.

“For what I anticipate is a lot of hidden tech, his defenses are worthless,” he grumbled.

“Especially since the punishment for housing it is so harsh.”

“Maybe he thinks Hoyt’s reputation keeps him safe. Hoyt’s been making a power grab, and once-independent underground merchants are now under his wing. It’s made getting stuff for the rebellion a lot harder.”

“What about the Minq Syndicate?”

“They haven’t done anything—yet. They might just have a turf battle on their hands, by underestimating him. They think he’s a two-time bumpkin. He is, but that doesn’t mean he hasn’t been dabbling here and there in more dangerous smuggling ventures with anti-Minq backing.”

“Just what Jiy needs.”

“Yeah.”

They carefully crept about the shed. It had a window, high up and out of reach for both of them, and only one door at the front. Brander slipped his special gloves that had tiny spikes in the tips from his pouch, unfolded and put them on, then climbed the walls, surprisingly easy to do with help from the curve of the logs. He peered inside but jumped back down quick enough.

“Too dark,” he said. “The lack of light means there’s no one in there, though.”

“Good for us,” Lapis replied.

“I’ll get the lock and go in first.”

Watching him brush the lock, have it pop immediately, and then slip inside, Lapis admitted her jealousy. He was clean and efficient, on a job with no planning. She carefully outlined her stakes, did recon on them for days, formed plans based on her observations, and carried them out. It took her far longer to complete a stake than typical, though she thought she had fewer failures because of it. Still, to decide to invade a shed and just do it . . .

She scurried after him with no one the wiser. She silently thanked Mama Poison for taking a walk, since the streets remained conveniently empty due to her presence.

Crates filled the space, stacked to the ceiling, which made inspecting them difficult. Not only did the height cause problems, a rain-darkened night did not shine with enough ambient light to illuminate anything. A dull, musty odor hung in the air, absent the sense of heavy dust and neglect that should accompany it. Brander closed the door, and it took long moments before her sight adjusted. She noticed a square glow of light in the floor at the end of the walkway; a trapdoor. Since the shed sheltered the place where older habitations had cellar entrances, a large storage room likely sat below.

Brander set his ear against the door. Lapis waited, and he shook his head before digging his fingers into the edges of it and pulling up. She grabbed the other side after it peeked up and they lifted it, paused, heard nothing, and settled the door back against the wall.

Two lanterns nailed to beams held short candles, which dimly illuminated the room. Crates neatly lined the earthen walls, all without a merchant’s mark. None had collected dust, so Lapis assumed them recent acquisitions. Two desks sat in one corner, one with paperwork, the other clean. She shuffled through the pages while Brander inspected the boxes. They held records of transactions, but coded the merchandise. The monetary amounts made her eyes pop; metgals of product, which, she guessed, meant whatever Orinder sold, it was illegal weapons tech. Even medical supplies did not bring those kinds of numbers.

“Lapis,” Brander called softly, in an anxious voice.

He held open the top of a crate. Inside lay dozens of tarnished egg-shaped explosive devices, the kind designed to link to triggers. Lapis reached for one; Brander hissed, but she ignored him. She clicked the top, which did not look like a button but behaved as one, and it opened like a book. One side contained a metal sheet screwed into place over it, the other a series of colored wires that started in neat rows lining the curved side and ended in small metal squares that covered the bottom.

She smiled and pointed at the jumbled mess. “This is inert,” she told him. “It’s missing the arming wires.”

He stared at her intently, and she cleared her throat. “I picked up my first egg at three,” she told him. “It was an accident. My father had a fit from the earth to the sun and back. He took my siblings and I aside, gathered the neighbors’ kids, and showed us how to disarm them.” She laughed quietly. “You see, Dentherion generals have always thought their soldiers were stupid. They decided that for the common fighter to properly employ something like this, the tech had to be dumbed down and very simple.” She counted the squares, starting at the top, moving to the arming ones, and then pausing on the three that no longer had wires. “These three squares are the arming squares. The wires that go into them look like the others, but they contain a special metal. The special metal sparks the explosion when the trigger is activated. If they don’t have all the special wires in the correct places, they won’t explode. To make it simple to place them and then disarm them, the count of metal squares inside the eggs is exactly the same for each one. Down three, arm, over one to the right, down five, arm, over two to the left, and up four, arm. Simple, easy to remember.”

“They made them that easy to disarm.”

“Yeah. They wanted to recycle the unused ones, and once linked to a trigger, the only way to disarm an egg was to unplug the wires to reset them. There’s a device used to link the wires to a specific trigger, but apparently it didn’t unlink them.” She shrugged. “Like Caitria said, they stopped making these one hundred years ago because they didn’t work as expected. Truthfully, I always thought it was a stupid way to use tech. I’m betting so many didn’t explode because having all that extra wiring was confusing and people placed the wrong wires in the right places. I’m hardly an expert like Dentherion engineers, though, to know what’s best.”

She thought Brander found a bit too much amusement in her statement.

She swept her arm about. “While I suppose these could have survived the century, I doubt it. And it seems odd to have so many in Jilvayna when the empire used them in Ramira, Hestora and Tavyk.” She lifted an egg. “I’m betting these are modern fakes. Whether Orinder knows that or not, I couldn’t say.” She shook the object, but the weight on the closed side did not seem right, and nothing rattled about. “Usually the covered side is filled with metal bits with exploding powder. It doesn’t feel or sound like it has them.”

“If he’s selling duds to Hoyt, he’s going to regret that. If he’s selling duds to others with Hoyt’s blessing, I wonder who their buyer is. I know it’s not the Jiy rebels.”

“It’s someone who thinks all tech is viable and has money to burn. The ledgers list metgal payments.”

“So probably some bored noble.”

“That would be my guess. If Caitria’s right, and Gall’s not in favor with Dentheria like he once was and they’ve cut off his tech supply, some of his people might be getting a bit antsy. It would make sense for them to look elsewhere for devices.” She studied the crate and its contents. “You know, it wouldn’t matter if they are modern fakes. As long as they scare enough people, they’ll be effective. They don’t have to detonate.”

“Like what happened at the Eaves.”

“Yeah. The average Jilvaynan won’t have enough experience with tech to tell how dangerous something is. It wasn’t that long ago that Gall executed citizens by lobbing explosives at them or shooting them with Dentherion weapons. It was gruesome and terrifying, and that’s what everyone expects of it.”

She popped a few more eggs open, but only one had a wire in a single arming square. She decided it sat in the correct place by random chance. It did not matter; even if properly armed, the wires needed to be the special ones, because those linked to a trigger. She did not see a single linking device, which had a long handle with red buttons and a circular, dark green screen that displayed bright green numbers. Did Orinder realize his customers needed one?

The thief nosed about the back while she inspected the crates whose lids she could easily lift. Odd knicks and knacks filled some, while others contained round balls with obvious color layers, a few discs with a heavy bottom and blank faces held in place by a raised metal lip, several square and rectangular glass objects framed by a thin shiny black substance and containing tiny switches on the back. They struck her as tech, even if she could not identify them as such, but not weapons tech. She found nothing that resembled the weapons the alchemist or the guttershank possessed either, but that might simply mean she had not looked through the right boxes.

Brander returned, his hands stuffed in his pockets. “There’s a short tunnel that leads to a sewer grate,” he told her.

She stared, unamused. “You mean, he really has an escape route into the sewers?”

“The Gardens’ sewers aren’t near as contaminated as the Grey or Stone Streets. If it’s not raining, they’re safe enough.”

“It’s raining,” she reminded him.

“That’s probably how he got so many unmarked crates in here without the guard any wiser. There are several hidden grates around the Gardens, where the city tried to conceal such unseemly things behind walls and bushes. Use them during the right time of day, and no one would see your activities.”

They heard a soft bang from the door on the upper floor. Lapis whirled around but did not see a ready hiding place. Brander caught her hand and pulled her to the tunnel, far enough inside the light did not readily penetrate. Feeling exposed and frightened, she pushed the levers on the sides her gauntlets; the two long blades slid from their leather nest on the backs. Brander eyed them, then returned to his inspection. He had to have a weapon on him, but she would protect both of them if their luck changed. A thrown dagger, then a follow-up with the blades. Hopefully it was a guard they could bribe to look the other way as they escaped, and neither act would be necessary.

Hopefully.