Evening arrives, along with Atrax and a contingent of his people. Foresightfully, he's brought food, including several whole roast roaches still in their exoskeletons, which the ex-prisoners gleefully tear apart with their bare hands. The gift goes a long way to dissolving the automatic distrust between Dextrals and Sinisters. The commandant's private stockpile of liquor is soon discovered as well, and pretty soon an impromptu party is under way in the courtyard.

  Inside, I'm doing another check on Mercy -- her limbs are becoming more limb-like and less like bags of goo -- when Agni comes in with something under her arm. The object is swaddled in heavy blankets, and she gives a conspiratorial glance around the storeroom before closing the door behind her.

  "I need to show you something," she says. "When it's unwrapped, don't make a sound."

  Mercy and I nod solemnly. Agni unwinds the blanket to reveal the golden cage she took from the commandant's office. This is the first chance I've had to get a close look at it, and I lean forward to peer through the bars.

  There's a beetle inside. More accurately, there's a beetle.

  This is more unsettling than it sounds. The beetle is relatively ordinary looking, about eight inches long with big mandibles and iridescent wing-cases. It has been cut in half the long way, right down the middle from head to hindquarters. The interior bits of the beetle not normally exposed to daylight are on full display, all the tubes and cavities and fine structure that one normally doesn't think much about when crushing the thing into goo under your heel. Impossibly, none of it seems to spill out; even more impossibly, the beetle stands in a normal posture on only three legs, with nothing on the other side of its body holding it up.

  It looks, actually, as though its other half is instead of merely absent. It makes me want to poke a pencil through the bars and see if I can touch it. I look at Agni, wanting to ask what the hell is going on, and remember that I'm supposed to be quiet just in time. As I clamp my jaw shut, the beetle flickers its wing case and makes a sound that is

  like the click of a door latch and several approaching footsteps. I find myself automatically glancing over my shoulder.

  Agni holds a finger to her lips and re-wraps the blanket. Once the cage is enclosed, she takes it to the back of the storeroom and sticks it inside a box for good measure.

  "Murder?" Mercy says curiously.

  "Yeah," I agree. "What that?"

  "I'm pretty sure it's a transect," Agni says. "Or half of one. You heard the footsteps?"

  I nod.

  "The bug is somehow half

  and half back in the City," she says. "And it can echo sounds that it hears. So any noise we make on this side gets repeated to whoever's listening over there, and vice versa."

  "That's … astonishing."

  It sounds like Igz'auf Rakan's department, actually. That mad old man was always interested in exotic uses of fleshcrafting. I feel a sudden pang of homesickness for my slow, drunken evenings with the doddering inventor, the one person at court who wasn't constantly trying to gain status over the broken bodies of everyone else. Time in his company had always been a welcome break.

  "That's one word for it," Agni says. "We have to keep it tightly wrapped up or else someone could be listening in. And the commandant was talking to it when we found him."

  The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

  "Which means the City knows what happened here." I'd been worried above that.

  "Some of it, anyway," Agni says. "And now they know nobody's saying anything, which is its own message. They'll be coming."

  "Yeah." There'd been no chance our little stunt would escape the Navy's attention indefinitely, but it would have been nice to have more time.

  "You need to get out there and talk to them," Agni says quietly. "Margie and Arborough are arguing, Jena's people are furious, and there's three dozen guards locked in the barracks. Someone needs to take charge."

  "And you think that's ?"

  "You led the revolt, didn't you? You gave a speech and everything."

  The realization settles on me like a leaden cloud. "I did, didn't I?"

  Agni gives me an encouraging pat on the shoulder. "It was a pretty good speech. Just do it again."

  She goes to work stuffing spare uniforms into a crate to make a better sound-dampening case for the transect. I wonder briefly if we shouldn't just stomp on the weird creature and save ourselves the trouble. (What would happen to the other half if we did?) But they're supposed to be rare and precious, and I suppose it might come in handy.

  After once again convincing Mercy to stay put, I head out through the bunkroom. The main doors are off the gun deck, but from the engine room I hear conversation and loud metallic sounds. I edge closer, curious and perhaps a bit too eager to put off dealing with the problems outside.

  "There's , mistress!" Sprocket says excitedly. "All over the sky! There must be dozens of them!"

  "Yes, yes, very impressive," Racnaea says, her voice muffled. "Three-quarter head, I suppose."

  "For a minute the sky was so big I felt like I was going to fall ." Sprocket, visible through the doorway, hugs herself. "It was scary but also amazing --"

  Steam hisses angrily. "Sprocket!"

  "Yes, mistress! Sorry, mistress!"

  She hurries further into the engine room, where Racnaea's legs are visible sticking out from a panel she's removed from the wall. Sprocket squirms in next to her with a bit of metal in hand, then wriggles out again. She hops up and beams when she catches sight of me.

  "Mistress! Kal is here!"

  "Hmph." The steam cuts off and Racnaea slides out, her goggles on and glowing with buglight. "This is a little bit completely a disaster! Who has been for this engine, I suppose?"

  "Cannibals and cultists, mostly," I tell her. "Raz did his best, but he didn't have a lot of time."

  Raz is sitting in the doorway at the other end of the room, apparently content to brood in silence.

  "Cultists! Cannibals! It shouldn't be even a little bit allowed." Racnaea sits up and shakes her head. "It'll take me all night to get it into shape, I suppose."

  "There's food and drink outside, mistress," Sprocket says. "Maybe we should --"

  "Sprocket!"

  The girl goes rigid. "Yes, mistress!"

  "Go back to the workshop and gather up the plating kit!" Racnaea pushes her goggles up and examines Sprocket's gaunt features with a sigh. "You may stop for food on the way, I suppose."

  ", mistress. Thank you, mistress."

  "Worthless girl," Racnaea mutters, as Sprocket scurries off. The queen of the mine turns back to me. "And I will need more spare parts, I suppose. I'm preparing a list."

  "That may be … difficult." I cough. "If you can get the engine reassembled by tomorrow --"

  "Of course! But I won't be even a little bit completely finished. A complete refit would be best, I suppose, but does Racnaea ever get what she wants? No she does not, least of all from lazy Sprocket." She shakes her head, then looks back at me. "Well? What are you waiting for?"

  "I'll, um, work on that," I say. "Does this mean you're planning on coming with us?"

  Honestly I'm only at the very beginning of my plans for what to do next, and I have no idea what means. Me and Raz, I suppose, since he's asked to follow me. Atrax will probably let us take the cutter, but keeping it running would be a challenge --

  "Hmph. The engine will not get the help it needs otherwise!" She looks away for a moment. "And what you said in the tunnels was right, I suppose. I have a little bit of responsibility to Sprocket, however foolish she is. Our place in the mine is gone, and I must find her another."

  "It might be dangerous."

  "The smartest person in the world should strive for more than safety!" She pokes me in the chest. "You reminded me of that, hmm?"

  "Right. Well, good. I'll be glad to have you." I give a cautious smile. "I'll just go and … figure things out, then?"

  "Do." She pulls her goggles back down, and prods me again to emphasize each word. "And find. My. Spare. Parts."