They only call it sabotage when someone from below succeeds.

  — Mather Solis

  The wire slipped—again. My fingers were shaking too hard to guide it through the pinhole edge of the alarm box. It caught on the pitted, rust-stained edge, and one of the tiny strands splintered sideways, choking the rest.

  “Fuck,” I breathed, pulling it out and twisting the wire back together again.

  “Come on, Iolite,” Bank hissed at my shoulder. I could feel him hovering behind me, his breath warm against my back. The others were also huddled close, watching and waiting.

  “I’m working on it,” I ground out. Irritated warmth spread over my skin like a flush, starting in my hands before slipping up my arms and along the backs of my shoulders. The wire in my hand grew warm but not hot enough to fuse together. I twisted it tight with a hair more force than needed.

  I lined the wire back up again and sucked in a breath, threading carefully, trying to keep it steady.

  “Six minutes,” Hester hissed, and my hand slipped, the wire jamming against the metal plate.

  “Goddamn it,” I snapped. “Just give me a fucking minute.”

  Jan laid his hand on my shoulder, and I could feel the warmth of his thick palm through the fabric of my shirt.

  “You’ve got this, Io,” he said, his voice low like gravel in my ear. “Just breathe.”

  I closed my eyes. I could feel my hands shaking, and I squeezed them into fists, breathing through my nose.

  “Five minutes,” Hester informed the group.

  I was screwing this up. They were all depending on me, and I was screwing it up. The insidious warmth slipped up my spine, coiled around my skull, and filled my head with heat. But the heat brought clarity—and for the first time in what felt like a century, the static in my head finally went quiet.

  I opened my eyes and breathed out. I twisted the wire in short, sharp motions and poked it into the hole— no hesitation this time. It didn’t catch and slid cleanly through. The tension inside me broke, and I grinned. I threaded the wire until it hit the mechanism inside.

  The red light on the box turned off, and the green one next to it lit up.

  Jan’s hand squeezed my shoulder. “Good.” He turned to the others, but Bank was already moving, squeezing between me and the pair of doors. He slid his picks into the lock, and I held my breath, listening to the sound of the clicking metal.

  “Three minutes,” Hester whispered. I glanced back at her, but she wasn’t looking at us. Her head swiveled left and right, scanning the rooftop patio.

  The lock gave way with an audible click, and Bank carefully pushed down the handle and eased the left door open. I slipped inside first, keeping low to the ground and pressing my back against the floral wallpaper of the hallway inside.

  Bank eased the door shut behind us, bracing one hand against the second to silently re-lock it.

  Jan was crouched across the hallway from me, back against the wall, eyes trained on the glass panes on the upper half of the doors. Hester, already at the end of the short hallway, peered around the corner.

  “Clear,” she whispered.

  We scurried down the hall like mice, slipping around a corner just as a gruff male voice reached my ears.

  “-said the flagship is on schedule.”

  “Has Dox posted the rotation schedule yet?”

  A laugh, mocking, ironic. “Course not. Too busy with that chit from Under Secretary’s office. I walked in on them the other day, going at it right in the upstairs bath. I thought for sure he was gonna dock me the day, but he was too busy huffing and puffing to notice I was even there.”

  The voices got louder as they approached, and then, two thick-shouldered men passed in front of the door, dressed in the Empire’s thick verdant greens.

  “He better be careful. Bastian is gonna find out, and there will be hell to pay.”

  The first man laughed. “I wanna be there to see that.”

  Their voices faded as they passed, never once looking inside. After a moment, Jan jerked his head to the right.

  “Let’s move,” he whispered. “Bank, you’re in front. Hester, follow me.” His clear eyes flicked to me. “Io, stay behind us.”

  We threaded through the hall like ghosts—quick, quiet, and deliberate. I kept my eyes on Hester’s back, concentrating on the curling tips of her brown braid and trying not to think about the sweat slicking down my back or the way my own violet hair itched under the borrowed groundsman’s cap.

  Despite the early hour, the air in the hallway was thin and warm, the heat of summer soaking through the copper roof just one story above and making the dusty hall uncomfortably warm. It wasn’t what I expected. Jan had said Imperial Palace, and I’d immediately thought of polished floors and cool marble. This felt old. Disused. Boxes were piled next to the walls, things meant for storage but never fully put away.

  Bank reached the first turn and raised two fingers in a silent signal. Ahead: a narrow servants’ stairwell, half-hidden behind a folding partition that blended into the molding. He pressed his shoulder to the wall, fingers slipping into the seam. A soft click, and the panel creaked open on a hinge no one had oiled in years.

  The stairwell was barely wider than a barrel, steep and dusty, lit only by the light streaming through a tiny porthole window, its thin light wholly inadequate.

  We crested the stairs into stale warmth and copper stillness. Something beat mechanically, a steady rhythm that resounded in my eardrums like the burst of firecrackers on Old Saints Day.

  The landing opened into a low corridor barely lit by the two windows that punctuated each end. Doors lined the hall, most closed, but a few were open and dark. Warmth that had nothing to do with me and everything to do with the summer heat outside pressed down on us, and a bead of sweat formed on my upper lip. I wiped it away on my shoulder, the rough fabric of my borrowed uniform coarse against my lips.

  “Are you sure this is the right place?” Bank asked, pitching his voice to be heard above the rhythmic drone.

  “Positive,” Jan said. “The orders said North Wing, top floor, last door on the right.”

  I glanced down the narrow hallway, my eye finding the aforementioned door. Closed.

  We moved quickly and quietly, but we didn’t need to be. From what we’d gathered, the servants avoided this section of the North Wing, and when Jan opened the door, it was easy to see why. Not only was the room an oven— it was loud.

  The moment he pushed the door inward, a wave of sound washed over us—thick, damp, and mechanical. It smelled like copper pipes and mildew, like wet stone in the sun. The room was smaller than I expected but stacked high with steam regulators, filtration towers, and hissing coils wound like snake guts around vent ducts. Everything moved, everything roared, and somewhere beneath all that metal, a fan buzzed like it was dying, a mechanical whine that set the hairs on my hairs standing upright. Hester clapped her hands over her ears.

  “What the hell is that?” She had to shout to be heard.

  “Condesor,” Jan shouted back as he knelt in front of a large access panel. He pulled his tools out of the pack he carried and got to work on the rivets holding the panel in place.

  Hester took up position at the door, peering into the hallway we’d just come down.

  When he had pried it off, I knelt beside him and pulled Nume from the front pocket of my uniform. Part mouse, part I don’t know what, Nume was my little gremlin- my answer to getting into places I couldn’t reach. He was a work in progress but had proved himself to be useful enough on jobs, as long as they weren’t too complicated. He couldn’t handle long instruction strings yet.

  Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  “The device?” Jan asked.

  I dug into another pocket and pulled out the little listening device I’d cobbled together the night before. It was still warm from where it’d been pressed against my ribs.

  “It’s ugly, but it’ll get the job done,” I said.

  “You programmed the route?” Jan asked me.

  I nodded. I’d spent the better part of last night drumming the path Nume would have to take into his little mechanical brain. It was the longest thing he’d ever had to remember, and, secretly, I was a little worried it was too much for him. I held Nume up to my face, cradling his rounded belly with one hand and brushing my thumb across the ridge of his spine. He shivered, gears ticking once in recognition.

  “Remember, down the chute, left at the bend,” I said. “Stop when you see the blue glow. Place it near the vent. Don’t knock it loose. Then come back.”

  Nume blinked.

  I turned him over and slid open the seam in his bellyplate. I slipped the device inside. It was small—barely the size of a button—but I’d etched anchors into the base and set it to wind on pressure. He’d just need to press it flush and back away.

  “Ready?” I asked.

  He buzzed once, legs twitching.

  I eased him into the duct.

  He hesitated at the lip, body half-poised in the heat-draft. Then, without a sound, he scurried forward and vanished into the dark.

  “Now what?” Bank asked.

  Jan glanced at him. “Now we wait.”

  Bank set his shoulder back against the wall, a scowl set into the lines of his dirty face. “Man, I hate waiting.”

  No one spoke after that. The weight of the room pressed in around us, humid and metallic, the fan’s rattle setting my teeth on edge.

  Jan crouched beside the open duct, one hand resting on the lip, waiting like a priest at a shrine. Hester kept glancing down the hall, mouth tight. Bank paced three slow steps and back, chewing his bottom lip.

  Me? I stared at the dark.

  Every second Nume didn’t come back, I thought about all the ways he might be lost. Trapped. Jammed. Caught under a pipe. Or worse—malfunctioning again. That whine in the duct might’ve been him. I wouldn’t know until it was too late.

  Then—a loud click.

  Jan jerked back as the vent cover shifted. A twitching limb emerged.

  Nume scurried out, dust streaked across his plating, one leg dragging slightly like something had twisted in the descent. I scooped him up without thinking, holding him against my chest. He buzzed once, faint but satisfied. When I opened his belly, the listening device was gone.

  “We’re good,” I said.

  Jan nodded. “Then let’s book it.”

  We moved fast.

  Ears ringing, we flew back down the stairs, past the wallpaper and crookedly stacked boxes, retracing every step with the silent urgency of people who’ve almost made it. Hester led the way this time, boots barely a whisper over the floorboards. Jan brought up the rear, one hand on the small of my back, urging me faster, like he wasn’t taking any chances now that the job was done.

  The rooftop garden greeted us in a haze of dawn-pink light, and the humidity hit me like a slap in the face. I could hear the city down below us starting to wake up, metal wheels loud on the cobblestone streets, paperboys calling out the morning news. We were far enough away that I could only hear the cadence of their voices, not the individual words.

  We streaked through the garden, cutting between the hedges and trellised walkways. All around us, the garden was still, and the early light made the puddles from the morning’s watering shine like oil slicks.

  Bank edged around the corner first, ducking low behind a planter. “Clear.”

  We moved.

  No words. No sounds but breath and footfall.

  I kept one hand on Nume, tucked inside my uniform now, his limbs drawn in tight like a wound spring. I could feel the faint thrum of heat in his core—maybe residual energy, maybe nerves. Maybe mine.

  We were halfway down the path when across the garden, the glass-paned door of a small conservatory swung open. A young man in steward’s gray stepped out, an empty tea tray balanced in one hand, his face set and drawn.

  He froze.

  Jan froze.

  Everyone froze, and hot fear ran down my spine, searing and sharp.

  “What—” the steward started, but Jan was already moving. He shoved me forward.

  “Run.”

  Bank bolted left. Hester vanished right.

  Jan grabbed my wrist and yanked me forward. I had the impression of men rising from chairs inside the conservatory, turning to see what the commotion was about. Jan ducked behind a potted hedge as the steward shouted behind us, voice cracking: “Guards! There’s someone on the roof!”

  A bell rang. Faint but unmistakable.

  “Damn it,” Jan hissed. “Come on. South stairwell.”

  We ran.

  The sound of boots pounded behind us as we slipped through the puddles and mist toward the south wall of the tower. A door slammed behind us. Voices shouted.

  “Hey! Stop!”

  “Palace security!”

  We rounded a copper trellis at the garden’s edge just as a second group of guards—outfitted in deep emerald and gold—emerged from the eastern lift, weapons drawn.

  Jan threw us east, dragging me with him as he sprinted past exotic potted plants and gleaming copper orbs. Bank and Hester were long gone. It was just Jan and me. My borrowed boots, too big on my feet, made running awkward, and my lungs burned in the thick morning air.

  We burst through a line of fluffy flowering bushes in white and green and found ourselves facing the line of the low wall that surrounded the garden.

  Jan looked over his shoulder, and I followed his line of sight. Three guards ran toward us, swords drawn and faces set.

  “Fuck,” I breathed.

  “Go,” he said, voice low, eyes locked on mine. “I’ll draw them.”

  I shook my head. “No, I don’t know where—”

  But he was already moving—darting right, yelling something that pulled the three of them with him. A flash of silver at his belt, a smoke charge clinking down near their feet. A puff. A shout. Chaos.

  I stood, frozen, for half a heartbeat, then a shout rang out from my left.

  A sharp sound, like a bark, rang out, and then something wizzed past my face.

  Fuck, they were shooting at me.

  The heat inside me surged—flushed down my spine, burst in my palms, and bloomed in my chest like a second heartbeat. I didn’t think. Didn’t plan. My legs moved before my brain caught up.

  I ran for the wall, the copper guardrail glinting in the sun.

  I tripped in the too-big boots and pitched forward. In a last ditch effort to avoid faceplanting into the wall, I grabbed for the rail, feeling the hard metal scorch under the heat of my grip— and flung myself over it, knees and elbows skimming the smooth copper. I fell like a rock, arms pinwheeling, and slammed into the hard edge of a fire escape with a jolt that rattled my teeth.

  I just lay there for half a second, heart thundering, heat rising off me in waves like smoke off engine coils. I did a quick mental pat down. Nothing broken. Most everything ached, but I was alive.

  Shouts from above pushed me to my feet. I half-ran, half-fell down the narrow scaffolding, boots slipping, metal groaning beneath me.

  The fire escape only got me to the Midgarden. From there, it was a blur of near misses and desperate plunges down the side of the Imperial Palace.

  But eventually, I hit street level.

  I ducked into the nearest alley, found the nearest dumpster, and crouched behind it. I pressed the heels of my trembling hands into my eyes and breathed through my nose. Not my greatest idea. An Upper City alley was a far cry from the ones around the Ragbelt, but it was the height of summer, and trash was still trash.

  I had no idea where I was. No idea how to get home.

  Jan was the one who brought us here—got us on the pre-dawn tram that ferried day-shift maintenance workers, gardeners, and utilities crews from Middle City into the Upper. I didn’t even know what the plan was to get back.

  I sure as hell couldn’t take the tram now. It’d be full of stockboys and shopkeepers by this hour. I pressed my back against the wall, trying to shrink down behind the dumpster’s rusted edge.

  What the fuck was I going to do?

  Think, Iolite.

  I took stock. I had Nume, I was wearing a stolen uniform, and I had no clear exit strategy. My only option was to stay moving—find a back alley stairwell, sneak down to the supply tram tunnels, maybe bribe a sanitation runner, or hook into one of the waste chutes headed for the Ragbelt.

  Not a great plan, but it was something.

  I peeled myself off the wall and crept out from behind the dumpster, ducking low under a drainage pipe. The alley split at the end. Left meant back toward the open square, back toward the Palace.

  I turned right, ducking my head down and moving fast.

  The alley curved behind a florist’s terrace, then opened into a sharp U-turn stair—a rusted spiral that looked like it hadn’t been cleared since last winter. I was halfway down when I heard voices below. Guards? Workers?

  Didn’t matter. I couldn’t risk it. I turned back, boots skidding on the iron grating. Back to the terrace. I needed height. Needed a better view.

  I crept toward the edge of the florist’s platform, trying to think—trying to feel for heat, movement, anything, but the static in my head was back in full force. I turned a corner at a jog—right into a wall of green wool and brass buttons.

  For a second, we both froze. The enforcer blinked down at me, and I could see every line of his face. Mid-forties. Scar on his jaw. Clean-shaven. One hand on his sidearm, the other already lifting to grab my arm.

  My mouth opened. No words came out.

  “Hey!” he barked, already moving.

  I dove under his arm, rough wool scraping my cheek. My hat snagged on his coat and yanked free. Sweat-sticky hair came loose in a violet wave, unmistakable in the light. But it was too late. They already knew I didn’t belong.

  I was sprinting toward the Y when a second enforcer stepped into my path, baton drawn. I tried to pivot, but he caught me by the collar and slammed me into the wall—hard enough to knock the wind out of me.

  “Got her!” he shouted, and everything after that was noise. Rough hands. Cold cuffs. Nume buzzing against my ribs, quiet as a buried fuse.

  Next thing I know, I’m tossed into the back of a clampcart like cargo. I hit the floor hard enough to bruise. They slammed the door behind me and the cart lurched, its metal wheels bouncing over the uneven cobblestone road.

  I was alone in the cart. No Jan. No plan.

  Just me.

  And the heat still coiled under my skin, wild and humming, like it knew what came next.