Another Auxie was down at Kit’s feet, and he looked up in time to watch her confront the largest of the group, a barrel-chested man with a much-broken nose. He used his longer reach to his advantage, keeping her at bay for a moment with roundhouse swipes. Kit bulled forward, taking a hard jab to the cheek, and got inside his guard. She bent her knees and popped up, forehead slamming into the taller man’s chin, sending him reeling backward. Her kick caught him in the stomach while he was off-balance, doubling him over, and he toppled to the floor wheezing.
The last Auxie, a boy younger than Gyre, scrambled out of their way as they reached the base of the stairs. Gyre, still wobbly from the girl’s blow, sprinted up, glancing backward to make sure Kit followed. She was right behind him, blood streaming from her nose and dripping off her chin, a huge grin on her face. A mob of Auxies a dozen strong pounded after them. Gyre hurled his last cracker at the base of the stairs and watched them scatter.
“Sir,” a large man in a dark suit was saying, “you can’t be up here without an escort—”
Kit did another one of those high kicks, her foot scything through the air at head height, and sent the security goon crashing against the wall with a clatter. Gyre stared at her.
“Well?” she said. “Are we escaping or what?”
“Right.” He shook his head, trying to lose the image of her bloody-toothed grin.
The stairs led up to a long hallway lined with doors, with several crossing corridors leading off it. At the other end, a tight spiral stair led upward. Gyre pointed and Kit nodded, blood scattering. They took off down the corridor at a run, as the doors started to open and the footsteps of the Auxies drummed on the stairs behind them.
Men and women leaned out to see what was happening, then ducked back in alarm at the sight of the two disheveled figures sprinting toward them. The Auxies were shouting for help, and a few of the bystanders stepped out to try to block Gyre’s path. A pair of shirtless mustachioed men grabbed for him as he went past, but he avoided them with a quick twist and kept moving. From the other side of the hall, an enormous woman erupted from a doorway buck naked, which was startling enough to give Gyre pause. Fortunately Kit was faster, spinning to plant an elbow in the woman’s solar plexus that left her sprawled back inside her room. There was more shouting behind them.
The second set of stairs was steeper than the first, with a locked door at the top. Gyre hit it with his shoulder at full speed, and it gave way with a splintering crash, letting them out onto the roof. Gently sloped tiles stretched ahead for a dozen meters, then cut off abruptly as the building ended at the edge of the abyss. In the other direction, one of the third-story additions loomed, cutting off their escape.
Kit skipped fearlessly out across the tiles and turned on one heel. “Now what?”
Gyre drew his knife, and she raised an eyebrow. He understood her concern—the unspoken etiquette of Deepfire bar brawls said that, until there were weapons involved, the losers might expect a beating and broken bones but would probably escape with their lives. Once the blades came out, however, all bets were off.
Gyre wasn’t sure where alchemical explosives ranked on that scale. Not that it matters. I don’t plan to lose. He grinned at Kit and turned back to the door, jamming the knife through the iron handle and driving it as deep as he could into the doorframe. It wouldn’t hold for long, but they didn’t need long.
At the bottom of his pouch, a pair of long linen gloves was rolled up in a tight bundle. He extracted them, shook them out, and tossed one to Kit.
“Put that on,” he said. “I’ve only got the pair, so put your ungloved hand on top, and for Chosen’s sake don’t let it touch the line. It’ll take your fingers off, never mind your skin.”
Kit blinked. Her eyes, Gyre noted inanely, were the same bright blue as her hair. “Line?”
Gyre walked carefully along the tiles to the edge. From here he could see the near face of the cliff, separated from the island supporting the Smoking Wreckage by perhaps twenty meters of empty space. Jagged, splintery rock stretched down into the Pit, disappearing into the sullen red glow of the cloud below.
Aligning himself on the half-broken chimney he’d used as a landmark, Gyre slipped the glove onto his right hand and leaned over the edge. The soles of his feet tingled furiously, as though they expected the tiles to tip him over at any moment. He groped until his grasping fingers found what they were looking for: a cable, about as thick as his thumb, heavy and slick in his grip and so translucent that it was barely visible.
“Just grab hold and step off,” he said. “Grip tighter if you’re going too fast. If I’ve set this up right, we should be fine.” It had taken him most of the afternoon to arrange, climbing the outside of the Wreckage in a shadowy corner.
“Clever,” Kit said, another broad grin spreading across her bloody face. “Very clever.”
“Well.” Gyre felt more pleased at her smile than he probably should have. “I don’t like to go anywhere without an emergency exit. Always prepared.”
Footsteps sounded behind the door, and he heard angry voices.
“You want me to go first?” Gyre said. “If I plummet to my death, you can take your chances with them.”
“I’ll go first.” She pulled the glove tight. “I trust you.”
“Why?”
Kit laughed. “Call it a hunch.”
There was a crunch from the door. “Better move, then.”
She took the line from him with her gloved hand and stood poised on the edge of the roof, staring down into the glowing abyss. “Just step right off, huh?”
Gyre nodded. Kit heaved an exaggerated sigh.
“Story of my life,” she said, and stepped off the roof.
For a heart-stopping moment, she plunged straight down and disappeared from sight. Gyre started breathing again when she zipped into view, riding the line’s downward slope in a long parabola, sparks trailing from where the specially treated glove gripped the rope. It was only a few seconds before she reached the end and he lost sight of her against the darkened cliff.
The door gave way with a splintery crash. Gyre grabbed the wildly juddering line with his own glove, turned to give a mocking salute to the enraged Auxies, and hopped over the edge.
There was a moment of free fall, until he ran out of slack and the line jerked him upward, brutally hard. He felt it whirring past under his glove and concentrated on keeping his other hand firmly atop the protected one. The lights of the city approached, shockingly quickly, and he belatedly remembered to squeeze to shed some speed. He hit the crumbling edge of the cliff hard enough to knock the wind out of him, and clung to the edge with his ungloved hand.
“That,” Kit said from just above him, “was a rush. You could sell tickets.”
She extended her own hand, and he grabbed it. Muscles bunched in her shoulders as she hauled him up.
Figures were visible milling around on the roof of the Wreckage. Kit looked at them, eyes gleaming. “You think they’ll try to come after us?”
“If they do, they’ll probably lose a finger,” Gyre said. “But we can make sure.”
He dug a firestarter out of his pocket, flicked it open, and applied the tiny light to the end of the cable. It caught immediately, burning with a cool blue flame that zipped up the way they’d come, briefly outlining a curve of light through the red-tinted darkness. Then it fell away in pieces, still burning as it dropped into the Pit.