Only the most savvy explorers could find the dug-out way-station in the red rocks desert between Tempest Arena and Telemetry City. One had to study the way each baobab bush leaned, and recognize the faint imprint of what might be a nussian footprint in the loose dust in the leeward shadows of rocks.

Ruuktdmaroochdt found the disguised trapdoor after three days of hiking in harsh conditions. She traveled only at night, with her pebbly golden skin rubbed with dark clay. She had hiked through a haboob, with razor-sharp dust whipping into her large mouth and nostrils, almost enough to make her suffocate. But the violent sandstorm was both a curse and a blessing. It meant her tracks were covered. The Torth could not see her, if they were searching.

The first thing she did, upon climbing down into the hidden dugout shelter, was to gorge on water from a keg. Nussians could last for days without water, but she needed copious amounts after her ordeal.

There was enough light streaming through the open air vents in the ceiling to cast the supply shelves in dusty beams of sunlight. Ruuktdmaroochdt ate half of the nonperishable travel wafers on one shelf. It was difficult for a nussian to starve for an entire day and night, let alone for three of them.

She also flicked the signal beam. Her alert would light up on military monitors in the nearby friendly city and its outposts. That would let military officials know that the way-station needed tending. Someone would be sent to pick her up under cover of night.

While she waited for nightfall, she reviewed the materials she had smuggled in a pouch affixed to her armpit. That was a place on a nussian body that people rarely saw.

There were a dozen data cubes the size of pebbles. Each one contained a recorded message from an undercover agent. She had also smuggled out a map of the Torth-held city, tightly folded, drawn by a slave with an eidetic memory. She had written the labels on the map herself, since she knew the art of writing. Most slaves did not.

And there was her most prized possession: A tiny camera, designed to appear as a cartilage growth at the base of one of her shoulder spikes. She wore it while pretending to serve Torth. Her holographic recordings would show exactly where the most dangerous Torth lived in Telemetry City, as well as the city’s busiest thoroughfares and weakest points.

Satisfied that her smuggled goods were safe and unscathed, she repackaged them, and settled into a nussian crouch for a nap.

Daylight was still streaming through the vents when the whoosh of an arriving hovercart woke her from a doze. The crunch of footsteps above was disappointingly light.

“Hello?” The cheerful voice had a foreign accent. It must be one of those albino aliens that looked vaguely akin to Torth.

Ruuktdmaroochdt snorted in response. She would have preferred to be picked up by a fellow nussian.

It wasn’t that she disrespected smaller species. Some of her kinsfolk drew a disturbing sense of superiority from their natural size, but she liked govki and ummins just fine. She just found small folks to be … well … easy to bump into. They got underfoot. They never thought to make room in crowded places, so she was always forced to slow down because of them.

If she was perfectly honest with herself, their delicateness made them seem a bit too akin to Torth. Frail size was just a tad unnatural for sapient beings.

“I’m coming down,” the shani called.

Ruuktdmaroochdt backed up to make room. She thought she recognized the voice. “Shassa?”

“How’d you know my name?” The little shani hopped to the floor and turned, folding back her floppy hat with a grin.

“I have a good memory,” Ruuktdmaroochdt said truthfully.

Most people in Tempest Arena had met Shassa, or had at least heard about her reputation. Albinos tended to be insular. Those who weren’t stood out. One ugly rumor even said that Shassa … well. Ruuktdmaroochdt doubted that a shani and a nussian would ever explore each other sexually, no matter how adventurous they were. That rumor was almost certainly false.

“Whew! It’s boiling hot out here.” Shassa walked to the kegs and poured water into her canteen. She murmured a strange little prayer over it—something about the Lady of Sorrow watching over her loved ones in the land of the dead—then gulped it down. “Hey. So, what’s your name?”

“Ruuktdmaroochdt.”

Shassa made a face. “Can I call you Ruuktd?” Apparently, she found a majestically multi-syllabic name to be annoying. “There are restock supplies in the hovercart. Would you mind bringing them down?”

“It is dangerous to work in daylight,” Ruuktdmaroochdt pointed out. What had possessed her ride to show up in the middle of the day?

“Oh. Sorry.” Shassa looked guilty. “Truth to tell, I wanted an excuse to get off penitent duty. They’re being especially creepy today.” She shrugged. “I heard someone needed a lift, and I thought, ‘hey! I’ve never been to the way-station before.’” She clasped her hands behind her back, bashful. “I hope I didn’t overstep? Were you expecting someone else?”

“It is fine.” Ruuktdmaroochdt let out a forgiving exhalation. “We might as well get moving.” Daylight work was risky, but she would be grateful to get home in time to share a home-cooked stew with her neighbors. “I will help you restock the station.”

She did not complain about being asked to fetch and carry. A nussian could unload a hovercart faster and more efficiently than a shani, after all. She only wished that shani and other small species would stop making assumptions. Why did they never seek a nussian’s help for, say, mathematical calculations? Or writing lessons? There was an implicit assumption in the questions that never got asked.

They made small talk while they worked. Shassa was interested in hearing about how city slaves reacted to the legend of Kessa the Wise. She wanted every detail of what it was like, to smuggle things between the land of the free and the land of the enslaved.

After a while, Ruuktdmaroochdt changed the topic. “You said the penitents are behaving in a creepy manner. What do you mean?”

“Oh.” Shassa shoved boxes of paper goods onto a low shelf. “You know how they do things in sync?” She shrugged. “They’re doing that a lot. And now they’re talking in sync.”

“Talking?” Ruuktdmaroochdt swapped an empty water keg for a full one. “I thought they rarely talked?”

“They usually don’t!” Shassa agreed with fervency. “But today? So creepy. They were hissing mean things at me and the other guards on duty. Like, ‘y o u a r e d o o m e d,’ and “w e w i l l w i n.’ Ugh.” The albino shuddered. “I hate them so much. I was supposed to guard them until sunset, but I begged a friend to swap his duty for mine.” Shassa perked up, adding supplies to the first aid kit. “He gave me a lesson on how to drive! It was really great.”

Ruuktdmaroochdt remembered that shani avoided technology. It went against their religion or something.

A dangerous pick-up should not have gone to someone inexperienced. Anyone competent would have waited until sunset to set out.

Shassa looked surprised to see Ruuktdmaroochdt climbing out of the dug-out. “Oh, I guess we’re leaving now?”

“The hovercart is visible in daylight,” Ruuktdmaroochdt reminded her. “We are not safe until we cross the border into our own territory.”

Shassa murmured a quick prayer to someone whom she referred to as the Maiden of Candlelight. Then she scrambled up the ladder, which consisted of divots chipped into the rock face. She hurried to join Ruuktdmaroochdt aboard the hovercart.

“Can I drive?” Shassa offered. “I know how.”

But Ruuktdmaroochdt was already working the controls.

They sped across coppery sand and rounded rocks. It was a relief to use technology without the terrifying possibility that a mind reader might glide past and pick up some illegal stray thought.

The most difficult part of being a smuggler was—by far—faking ignorance. In the Torth city, Ruuktdmaroochdt could not allow anyone to even suspect that she could read glyphs, or that she understood data tablets, or that she had learned how the Torth communicated long-distance, or how freedom worked, in practice. She dared not even allow fellow nussians to figure out who she really was, lest their minds be probed. She had to pretend to be a slave.

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But that was the thrill. That was the challenge.

Ruuktdmaroochdt had done it four times, and she would do it again. In her own way, she knew, she was a war hero.

She didn’t even care about the respect it earned her at home. She cared about spreading the message of freedom and preparing slaves for liberation. She cared about the lives she changed.

After all, Ariock Dovanack was a distant demigod. He dwelled in some foreign paradise—a world without Torth. People had seen the Son of Storms from a distance, hurling lightning bolts or floating in midair, but no one ever feasted with him, or with Kessa the Wise, or with Weptolyso the Brave, or with any other legends. No one even knew if Jonathan Stead existed, for sure. A lot of people suspected that he and the Son of Storms were the same deity.

If this war was truly going to be won, Ruuktdmaroochdt figured that it would be won by people, not demigods. It would be won by people like herself.

It would not be due to shani war heroes, either. Those albino magicians wore purple mantles of power, but how many actually went into combat? They sent drooling zombies into war zones instead of themselves. Sure, the zombies attacked Torth like rage-fueled battlebeasts, but the shani seemed to have no interest in sticking around after a conquest. They spoke of being transferred to other worlds. Nuss was not their home.

There were rumors that all the liberated people would be evacuated to some faraway paradise, but Ruuktdmaroochdt had trouble believing that. Why liberate so many cities on Nuss only to give up and leave?

Well, she would continue to fight even if the heroes abandoned them. So would many other liberated slaves. They would not let Torth snap collars around their necks, or shackles around their arms, ever again. They understood: it was freedom or death.

“Do you have any family, Ruuktd?” Shassa asked.

“I was a slave.” Her origin should be obvious, judging by her scars and the way she talked. There were actually families of nussians who had been born free, but those rare individuals spoke like Shassa, with the Alashani accent. They were far less tough than ordinary nussians.

“Oh.” Shassa flounced against the railing. “Well, I’m just sick of my family. My parents act all proud that my brother is a war hero. Like he’s the only person who matters, in our family. We never see him! He might as well be a stranger. Meanwhile, as far as they’re concerned, I’m basically a garbage-eater who just vomited onto their rug. They....”

She nattered on, while Ruuktdmaroochdt used the dashboard holographic display to scan their route.

The overlays were customized with paradise letters instead of Torth glyphs. That way, Torth might have trouble using this technology, whereas any free person who had learned to read could page through menus and make their desired selections.

According to rumors, the radar system was invented by a very smart renegade Torth—the same one who generated all of the zombified minions. Ruuktdmaroochdt had trouble believing that such a renegade Torth existed. Yet she was aware that the radar system was clever, and it was, indeed, a step above what the Torth had. It scanned to the horizons and beyond, and it digitized any fast-moving vehicles onto a wireframe map.

She studied the radar map every few seconds. Its emptiness encouraged her. Meanwhile, she also kept an eye out for tall rocks and fissures in the ground, just in case they might need a fast spot in which to hide. One could never be too careful in Torth territory.

“Weird.” Shassa stared at her wristwatch com with suspicion. “No one is answering my calls.”

Coms could die in extreme heat. “Is it possible you left it somewhere hot?” Ruuktdmaroochdt asked.

“No, it’s working.” Shassa held up her com to prove it. “But no one is answering.” She tapped the tiny menu. “I’ve tried calling six people.”

Ruuktdmaroochdt held up one large hand to quiet the shani. Motionless shapes dotted the horizon.

She checked the radar. It was clear.

Indeed, the distant shapes were too evenly spaced, and too top heavy, to be transports. Ruuktdmaroochdt steered wide. But even though she went far afield, the motionless things stood on the horizon. There must be thousands of them.

“Shassa, can you see what those things are?”

The shani squinted. “I don’t know. Um, mushrooms?”

Ruuktdmaroochdt snorted. Alashani folks called every plant a mushroom, even if it was a tree or a flower. Anyhow, there were no forests in the desert.

“Let me see your com,” Ruuktdmaroochdt said.

It turned out that Shassa was right. The com seemed to be working fine. Yet every call they made, whether to a department or to a friend, went unanswered.

Ruuktdmaroochdt felt her spikes pop out. Something felt wrong.

“You okay?” Shassa asked.

“Hush,” she whispered back.

Wretched cries of despair came on the wind.

She saw the wrongness even as she heard it. Shassa saw it, too.

Tortured bodies on crossbeams littered the landscape with such gluttonous abandon, they truly seemed to be a forest that stretched to the horizon and beyond. The smell of blood and sweat-soaked misery carried on the breeze.

Nussians hung in chains from iron loops that looked hammered into their forearms. “Help,” one croaked. Others moaned, their bodies hanging unnaturally, their shoulders dislocated.

Ruuktdmaroochdt had seen torture before. As a former gladiator, she had caused more brutality than most people ever witnessed. She had seen some of the worst depravities that Torth were capable of.

Even so.

This was the most grisly display she had ever seen. Many thousands of people were dying, strung up on crossbeams. It might be the population of her entire city.

“Save us.”

“Where is the Son of Storms?”

“Please.”

Govki hung by their upper pairs of arms. Even ummins had awful stakes hammered through their arms, linking them to chains so they could hang in torment.

Shassa squeaked in horror. “Gechel?”

An albino hung from one of the crossbeams, blood streaking his arms from the iron spikes. He wore a purple mantle.

A war hero.

Those types of shani were supernaturally fast and agile, and they could hurl specially reinforced spears that pierced Torth armor. Just one warrior could single-handedly defeat a troop of military Torth. But Gechel was defeated.

We are in trouble, Ruuktdmaroochdt thought.

“He is alive!” Shassa’s hand flew to her mouth.

“Hush,” Ruuktdmaroochdt whispered. Torth might still be in the vicinity. Gechel could not have been left out in the desert sun for long, because his skin was only a bit pink instead of red.

“These people are alive!” Shassa cried, far too loud. “We must rescue them!”

“Quiet.” Ruuktdmaroochdt widened the radar scan. Nothing. But radar could only pick up vehicles, not people.

Motion in the desert caught her eye. All of her spikes popped out as she mentally prepared for something awful.

It was just a tumbleweed. It bounced between the crossbeams.

“I need your strength!” Shassa whispered fiercely. “Let’s rescue Gechel.”

“Put on your blaster glove,” Ruuktdmaroochdt whispered. She herself lacked a weapon.

“I don’t see any Torth,” Shassa whispered sullenly, pulling on her glove.

“They could be hidden.” Ruuktdmaroochdt retraced the path of the tumbleweed with her gaze. Tumbleweeds tended to gather in arroyos. Sure enough, she spotted a distant depression—an arroyo. A place to hide. Good.

She steered in that direction.

“We need to rescue Gechel!” Shassa’s luminous eyes were wide. “Where are you going? Turn around!”

Ruuktdmaroochdt gave Shassa a look. She poured all of her warnings and personal experiences into that look.

Shassa failed to see it. She climbed onto the hovercart railing, entirely focused on her own emotional pain.

Pain was bait.

Any slave knew that truth. Ruuktdmaroochdt had seen many good people die in an attempt to protect or rescue someone else. That was how most slaves died. Even farm slaves, who had a modicum of freedom, knew what happened during reaping time, when Torth came to collect their strongest and most promising children. Sometimes older siblings got in the way. Or parents.

Attempted interventions never ended well. One did not defy the Torth.

Ruuktdmaroochdt refused to feel the full brunt of the despair and horror that the Torth wanted her to feel. Every crossbeam was high up, its dangling victim out of reach, so she refused to look up. She ignored their moans and their pleas for help.

She did, however, activate her tiny camera. She made sure it was affixed in its customary place on her shoulder, camouflaged, and she tilted it for a view of the victims. She started recording.

“Argh!” Shassa glared as if Ruuktdmaroochdt were some kind of insanely selfish Torth loyalist. “Protect your own hide, if that’s all you care about. I’m not abandoning my brother!”

Shassa leaped off the vehicle and landed on the rocky ground. Soon she was running back towards the crossbeam that held her kinsman.

Her admonishment lingered.

Ruuktdmaroochdt steered towards the embankment, seeking safety and a way to flee this death trap. But where could she go? Her home city had clearly been attacked. Her neighbors were dying from torture right in front of her eyes.

What if Shassa was right? What if Ruuktdmaroochdt was just a slave, obeying instincts that led to slavery instead of freedom?

Ruuktdmaroochdt nudged the hovercart into the arroyo. It landed on dirt with a soft whump. Instead of following the zigzag fissure, Ruuktdmaroochdt crouched and lifted her eyestalks just enough so that she could peer over the embankment. She was hidden by rocks.

In the distance, Shassa circled the base of the crossbeam, frustrated. It was clear that she had no idea how to act as a savior.

Perhaps she would figure out that she could use her canteen strap as a climbing aid? Shani seemed made for climbing. Some of them climbed sheer cliffs just for sport. With that strap, she might shimmy up—

Shassa yipped and flew backwards through the air.

Ruuktdmaroochdt covered her mouth to prevent her own cry of dismay. She instinctively knew to be silent.

A group of Torth stood beyond the rise of a hill.

Their armor marked them as Red Ranks, dusty from a hike. But that armor was a lie. At least one of them had Yeresunsa powers.

Ruuktdmaroochdt glanced helplessly down at her naked fist. If only she had a blaster cannon.

The Torth used their powers to erect another huge crossbeam, and they hoisted Shassa up there. The shani kicked and writhed, but she was helpless against their powers. Her screams of agony wrenched at Ruuktdmaroochdt.

She crouched down, feeling like a coward.

She didn’t know how many Rosy Ranks might be patrolling this area. For all she knew, more Torth might be hidden in this very arroyo. And if one Torth saw her hovercart, the rest would know.

They would hoist Ruuktdmaroochdt onto a crossbeam as easily as they handled the little albino.

She could wait and hope for the Torth to leave without spotting her. Then she could act like a hero in a story, and rush around, freeing Shassa and other victims. That was the sort of foolhardy bravery that Alashani praised.

But smugglers knew the difference between story heroes and real heroes.

One did not defy the Torth by dancing in front of them. That was a path to death. The best way—the only way—to beat them was to stay low, and to look for opportunities. A smuggler recognized opportunities that most slaves would overlook.

Like her camera.

If Ruuktdmaroochdt could get back to the way-station, there was a superluminal signal booster there. She could transmit her camera footage to friendly cities. Some of those cities had military fleets with pilots who used to be slaves.

Her footage might even reach someone who could save the entire tortured population of Tempest Arena before they died.