Rosabella could only watch as Ilhicamina rendered the howling boy blind.

Rosabella had linked herself to these people. Only a monster would do this. Only a monster would stand by as it happened.

She was a monster.

Her twitching fingers longed to release Tvorh — poor Tvorh, sobbing and writhing as the heat in his eye sockets died down, leaving only a pair of charred, poisoned messes behind.

But Ilhicamina was not finished. “Do you see now, Meghan? What shall I target next — his spine? Will you leave him only blind, or a blind cripple? Or perhaps I should boil his heart instead. Do you prefer a dead child to a sightless paraplegic? Tell me, Meghan, by your—”

“Enough.” A feminine voice, filled with pain, emanated from the chordal unit in the corner of the ceiling and drowned out the screams. “Let my son go. I’ll do what you ask.”

All at once, the vines went limp, though Tvorh’s screaming continued as his ruined eyes wept pus. “I knew a mother would see reason.” Ilhicamina looked at Rosabella. “You will not leave this room until I return.”

And then he was gone, and Tvorh’s cries faded to whimpers. His eye sockets were black pits filled with charred, gangrenous flesh.

Rosabella rushed to Eztli, who slumped against the wall. “Come on,” Rosabella said, and the composed part of her mind was shocked by the pleading in her voice. “We have to leave.”

“You heard him. He’ll kill us if we do.” Eztli looked up at Rosabella through tear-filled lids. They crouched there, saying nothing, for a moment, and then Eztli threw her arms around Rosabella.

“Is this the way of Gens Nxtlu?” Rosabella whispered, but Eztli gave no reply.

After a time, the door slid open. “Still lazing on the floor,” Ilhicamina said. “Up. I’ve secured the Tool. She’s sedated, but I had her add me to the genelocks before we put her under. She’ll be no more trouble. Here.” As Eztli stood unsteadily, he held out his pistol to her. “Dispose of the boy.”

Rosabella steeled herself for a moment, calling on her weak SOPHIOS to absorb her tears and steady her voice. There was one kindness she could perform, one tiny act of defiance against Ilhicamina. “This is my duty as a member of Gens Nxtlu,” she said. “Please. Your sister is hurt. Allow me.”

“Then this is an excellent lesson for her. Let her follow my orders, and she’ll have no such trouble in the future.”

“This is just, Erus, but what is is. Rightly or not, she is hurt. And I have not yet proven my loyalty. Let me do this.”

Ilhicamina quirked a grin, then placed the gun into Rosabella’s hand. “He is yours.”

Rosabella lifted the pistol, sighting down the length of the barrel toward the mass of vegetation, where Tvorh’s burnt and blackened eye sockets still glowed like dying coals. “No,” Rosabella murmured, lowering the gun. “I can’t.”

“I gave you the weapon. You will.”

“No, my Dux. The floors here are far too beautiful for blood, and far too hallowed for a mere slave’s fluids in any case. Let me remove him from here and do the deed.”

Rosabella held her breath and waited for Ilhicamina’s response, which was long in coming. “Do you know,” the Dux said at last, “how it was that the men and the women of the Last Era appear to have entered and exited this place from the city above?

“Through the same entrance we used, my Dux.”

“In the Labyrinth? You cannot be serious. To come down through dark, claustrophobic tunnels? Impossible— doubly so because the Chasm was not part of Acerbia during the Last Era. Surely the Sodality must have taught you that.”

“Of course, my Dux. The earthquake in the early days of the Pandemic. Forgive my foolishness.”

“No matter. No, the underways here, I believe, were meant to link other Libraratories, factories, and Last Era installations together. That they are accessible so easily from belowground is a fluke of fate. But there is an elevator.”

“An elevator, My Erus?”

“A wide one, by the looks of it, near the central rendering pool. This was surely one means by which ingress was made. While the bitch had the place locked down, we didn’t dare try to force the door. But now…”

“You wish me to take it to the surface.”

Ilhicamina shrugged. “To wherever it goes. Dispose of the child there. Or perhaps, after all these years, it is nonfunctional. That, too, would be useful information.” Even over your crushed corpse, he failed to add.

Yet it offered a chance for Tvorh’s survival. Rosabella curtseyed. “As you command, my Dux.”

Luckily for Rosabella, the elevator— Ilhicamina had not been lying about its width; a cargo door twenty yards long slid downward to reveal a forgebone cargo platform of the same length— appeared to be in working order. The shaft overhead was filled with debris, rocks and boulders in a puzzle-like configuration, held in place only by friction, but when the elevator shuddered into motion, organic branches of crystal crept out from the golden walls and gently worked the boulders free.

Rosabella thought at first that all of the debris in the shaft would give way and crush her, but the branches formed a mesh above her head, and as the rocky detritus came free, the crystalline branches pulled it into the walls, which shifted to absorb the mass like a golden cell membrane.

Were it not for the horror still wrenching Rosabella’s heart, she would have been amazed by the organic self-cleaning nature of the shaft. As it was, she paid attention to the process only long enough to be sure that the elevator wouldn’t outpace the cleaning process and smash her upward into the crystal mesh and the boulders beyond it.

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As soon as they had trundled up far enough that the Nxtlu below were out of sight, Rosabella went to Tvorh, who had been dumped unceremoniously on the platform, and took him in her arms. He shivered and shuddered against her body, whispering inaudibly as the device continued its slow ascent.

She had nothing to say. How could she? She had stood by and watched his torture. That she could have done nothing to stop it was no excuse.

The last of the boulders cleared above them, and there remained only a block of strangely glinting stone, worked, obviously man-made, as large as the elevator itself.

They were not slowing down.

Rosabella gulped and clutched Tvorh close. If they were to slam into the stone, she could throw herself over his body and pray with her dying breaths that somehow he might survive.

But as they came closer, the stone groaned and split down the middle. Long-unused gears tugged its halves down and away into dark recesses as the elevator trundled in, then ground to a halt in the open space vacated by the stone. It was more than twice as tall as Rosabella herself.

A sliver of sunlight sliced across Rosabella’s vision. She turned her head to keep from being blinded as the elevator slid open, and then felt a stab of guilt.

Tvorh had no idea that they were in the sunlight. He’d never know it again.

“We stopped,” Tvorh croaked.

“Oh! Tvorh! Yes, yes. We stopped. We’re here. It’s—” But she could not find the word she wanted to use.

“Outside.”

“Yes!” And then, as if awakening from a stupor, she realized that they had little time. “Hurry! I have to return to them.”

“Don’t leave me.”

“Tvorh, I must. I’m sorry. Come. Come out of… this…” The words were all wrong. Rosabella’s mind shook as badly as her body. Her hands didn’t feel like they belonged to her as she half-pushed, half-dragged Tvorh out into the open, where the shattered remains of the Nethress Archives greeted her vision. The Welcome Frieze, standing alone before the building— this was the elevator’s upper node? It was true, then, what they said about the Frieze, that it was Last Era workmanship. It must have been, to survive the demolition of the Archives. And all along, its face hid an enormous entryway into a Last Era ruin.

Tvorh crawled forward, then collapsed on the shattered pavement. “I can’t,” he whispered.

Rosabella knelt next to him and stroked his face. “Oh, you brave, poor lad. You must.”

“I’m done. Mother…”

“You are not done, Tvorh,” Rosabella insisted.

“Please don’t leave me.”

“Tvorh. Tvorh, I’m so sorry. I—”

“They would— he. He would have killed you too.”

“Yes. He would have.”

“You’re fighting them,” Tvorh observed. “You’re lying to them. Trying to stop them.”

And what good has it done so far? Rosabella wanted to scream. She nodded, then remembered that he wouldn’t be able to tell. “Yes.”

Tvorh gulped and raised his sightless eyes to the sky. “It’s warm.”

“Yes! It’s sunny, Tvorh, so sunny, so beautiful. And you’re alive.”

“What can I do?” Tvorh’s voice broke. “There’s nowhere for me to go.”

Rosabella’s breath hitched. “I…” She glanced about. People were avoiding the rubble of the Archives. Tvorh wouldn’t be noticed. “Wait here. I will return as soon as I can —”

But what if someone else took the elevator back up and found Tvorh here? They would know she hadn’t killed him. Then both of their lives would be forfeit.

“This way, Tvorh.” She got an arm around his waist and spared precious minutes to help him crawl deeper into the broken rubble of the Archives, situating him in the cracked asphalt beneath a great boulder of jet and marble. “Here. Please. Oh, precious child, wait for me. As soon as I can, I will return. We’ll get you to the Sodality. We will send you to…”

“To my family.”

“Yes. Good boy. To your family.”

“You won’t leave me.”

“No. I’ll be back soon. Tvorh, oh, my dear, brave child, I am so sorry. I — I have to return, or they will suspect me.”

How could I leave him like that? Rosabella asked herself as the elevator trundled back down into the darkness.

She put such thoughts away from her mind and restored her outward mask for her return to the Libraratory. When the cargo door rumbled open, the Blooddrinker guards would see a poised, graceful, untroubled woman once again.

The guards— ten of them, and Eztli and Ilhicamina, apparently. Rosabella gave them the most beautiful curtsy she could muster. “It is done, my Erus.”

“Good. Come out. Join us. Walk with us.”

“Tell me, my Dux: do you always walk with a bodyguard in the Libraratory?” Rosabella asked as she stepped from the elevator and reached for Eztli’s hand.

Eztli pulled away.

“Never.” Ilhicamina grinned. “Though you do remind me of a matter I have been meaning to attend do.”

“I live to serve, my Dux.”

“I have no doubt you do. You are aware, I am sure, that you are a singularly lovely woman, Rosabella.”

“You do me too much honor, Erus.” Rosabella had to focus all of her effort on seeming untroubled.

“Hardly. Only the loveliest of bodies for my sister.”

“One shapely form deserves another, my Dux.”

“It simply surprises me that a bloodless woman of such beauty was not quickly taken in as breedingstock by one of the Gentes.”

“You know, my Dux, that I pledged to the Sodality instead.”

“Yes, indeed. But your SOPHIOS is weak, and I am surprised that the Sodality would spend so many resources in trying to make a Maga out of you, when there are so many better candidates.”

Rosabella almost missed a step. Only decades of training allowed her to maintain her composure. Oh, poor, brave, tortured Tvorh! “I do not answer for the Sodality’s choice of me, my Dux.”

“No. Of course not. You answer only for yourself.” Ilhicamina chuckled. “Forgive me. You simply remind me of someone.”

“Do I, my Erus?”

“You do. My uncle Tepiltzin.”

Rosabella had thought that she understood what it meant for her blood to run cold minutes before, in that horrible torture chamber. But she had been wrong. She had not understood.

Not until now.

“Of course,” Ilhicamina said, “I have not seen him since he was a young boy. My uncle was taken before his time. A boy in the flower of his youth, murdered in cold blood. He died in New Pullmas forty years ago.”

“I am sorry to hear that, my Lord.” Rosabella thanked the gods that her voice remained steady.

“I’m sure you are. Slaughtered by a scion of Gens Nethress — Dux Dorsin, to be exact — his harem freed during the cowardly nighttime raid that lost us the city. I suppose you simply remind me of him because of the memories I have of him with one of his favorites. She looked just like you. Red hair like the sunset, breasts like ripe melons—”

“Erus—”

“Or perhaps you remind me of him because the tests have returned, and you appear to be bearing the latent genetic signature of Tepiltzin’s boy child in your brain.” Ilhicamina chuckled again. “He always did like to play rough with his toys. Pregnancy was no obstacle.”

Rosabella choked.

“Did you even know you were bearing his child before he beat it out of you, Moira Ortus Scota?” Ilhicamina asked, the look on his face triumphant.

The mask broke. “Eztli!” Rosabella cried, not knowing why she did it, but the Era’s cold, stony gaze held no succor for her. Hands were on her arms, arms were around her body, and Rosabella did not know, could not know, where she was.

All she knew was Ilhicamina’s voice, deep, mocking. “Did you truly think such a transparent ploy would work on me? Did you truly think that I have believed a word you said? You have been a spy from the beginning, Moira, and only because I have allowed you to be.”

“Tvorh escaped,” Rosabella whispered to herself. In that, at least, she could take solace.

“You imagine that I expected for a single moment that you would kill him? A spy, and a stupid one at that. Why would I trouble myself with his death?” Though they were words of life, Ilhicamina spoke them as if the subject was not a boy, but an insect, unworthy of notice. “He was of no use to me any longer, and what threat could he possibly pose in his… condition? Hardly worth a bullet. Eztli, I told you that you deserved only the most beautiful of bodies. I present you with the body of this betrayer, to do with as you would.”

Eztli’s voice, hard and brittle, answered, “Take it to the detention chamber.”