There was no exhilaration in jumping from roof to roof this time. No sense of freedom. His heart pounded harder than it usually did. Perhaps because he knew they were being followed. Perhaps because the amarinth was spent. Perhaps because Sandis was slow and achingly pale. That bizarre half summoning of hers had saved their lives, but it had obviously taken a toll on her, and Rone couldn’t do anything about it.
He could at least see her dressed. The first clothesline he found, he confiscated a dress and threw it to her. She put it on without complaint, looking more thankful for the chance to rest than the fashion upgrade.
They dropped back down to the city near the smoke ring. Factories were not the easiest buildings to jump around on, especially if they had smoke towers or steam vents. Except the cotton ones. Cotton factories were nice, long boxes with barely a slant to their roofs.
Unfortunately, they also operated all hours of the day. Sandis and Rone wouldn’t get far into a cotton factory’s packed looms before someone threw them out or called the police. With his mother already imprisoned and his father an unfeeling bastard, Rone didn’t have anyone to save him if he had a mishap with local authorities.
That ball of guilt rolled in his gut again as he pushed Sandis across an intersection. His mother. She was still there, rotting away. Because of him.
I’m coming, I promise. Rone glanced over his shoulder, searching for pursuers. He knew they were there. He sensed them like the beetles beneath an overturned cobblestone. His bad shoulder throbbed all the way to his neck from all the looking and lifting and fleeing for his life he’d been doing. It usually didn’t get this bad in the summer.
Sandis’s breaths were heavy, her voice raspy and dry. “Over here,” she said as they approached the firearms factory. The late hour meant few people walked the streets. Near Helderschmidt’s, there was only a beggar and two kids with their heads pressed together, reading a grubby book of some sort.
Rone didn’t know if Sandis planned to pick the lock—the large man standing guard made that unlikely—find a key hidden under a mat, or access some sort of secret tunnel. As far as Rone knew, none of the sewer entrances that went into the building were large enough to fit a person.
Sandis wrapped around the building to the narrow four-foot-wide alley separating it from its counterpart. A network of pipes ran up the brick. Sandis squeezed past several feet of them before reaching a water meter. She hoisted herself on top of it, arms shaking, and began to climb.
“Sandis?” Rone whispered after her. She didn’t answer, so he followed. Twice, the climb became precarious—he had to reach across an expanse of no pipe to grab a broken brick or window ledge to pull himself up. Sandis’s foot slipped at one point, but she found purchase. They made their way up to a dirty glass window. Sandis pressed against the pane, straining, and it creaked open.
Her sigh of relief was loud and sweet. She climbed in. Rone followed after her and found himself in some sort of smelly rest facility.
“Anon broke the latch in here years ago and was too scared to tell anybody.” She eased the pane shut. “Security is heaviest downstairs.”
She ran to a water pump in the corner. Rone almost stopped her, telling her the noise might attract someone, but her thirst was written across her skin, so he helped her instead.
She drank more than should fit into a person’s stomach, then took over the pumping so Rone could drink, too. The water was stale and metallic. He didn’t care.
Something clunked nearby.
Sandis froze. “We should move,” she whispered. “Not too far . . . but we should go.”
Rone agreed with a nod and let Sandis lead the way. The halls were lit just enough for a security guard to pass through. She checked the path, then hurried down the hall to a stairwell. Waited. Rone thought he heard footsteps above them. Sandis must have heard them, too, because she forwent the stairs and continued down the hall, testing one door—locked—and then a set of two—open.
They stepped onto scaffolding that surrounded scads of expensive-looking machinery. Large machinery. On the ground beneath them, assembly stations stretched between the various machines.
Sandis grabbed the precarious railing at the edge of the scaffolding, and for a moment, Rone thought she was going to jump. But she merely peered into the darkness beneath them, searching. A few heartbeats later, she stumbled back, spinning around until her eyes landed on his waist.
She rushed toward him and grabbed the belt cinched over his trousers.
“I’m not necessarily complaining—” He grinned. Yeah, they were running for their lives, still, but he couldn’t help it. “—but this isn’t exactly how I thought this would play out.”
Thoroughly ignoring Rone’s half-honest joke, she undid the buckle and yanked the belt out of his trouser loops fast enough to hurt. Then she rushed to the door, crouched, and knotted the leather between the handles.
Speeding for the stairs, Sandis waved for Rone to follow her. He should have nabbed her a darker dress. The light color of the linen she wore shone like a beacon against the shadows, but at least it made her easy to follow in this unknown territory.
They slunk down to the main floor. Tiptoed around the assembly lines and workstations. Sandis reached for a table and pulled it toward her. The legs screeched against the floor, and they both froze, worried the sound had carried. Rone allowed himself two breaths before grabbing the table opposite her and hefting it up, testing its weight. “We’ll have to pick it up,” he whispered. “Where do you want it?”
She gestured with her head to a corner behind a large, bulbous machine, similar to a furnace. It sat near the dark wall at the back of the room, a ways below a high window. A good place to hole up, though not the most comfortable to sleep.
Rone lifted the table up until two of its legs were off the ground. Sandis got her shoulder under her side of the table and did the same. As quietly as they could, they moved it to the spot she’d chosen, gingerly setting it on its side, forming a short wall in the shadows. Sandis leapt over the thing and went to retrieve another table, which Rone helped her move beside the first.
Grabbing his arm, Sandis said, “There’s a shallow bin over there, against the far wall.” She pointed. “It holds half-assembled rifles. Bring me some.”
Rone glanced in that direction, a question forming on his tongue, but the sound of footsteps overhead made him swallow it. Nodding, he jumped the tables and hurried toward the bin, careful not to knock anything over. His heart started to pulse in the thick artery of his neck. He had to cross the entire floor, but he got there without incident. Inside were a handful of rifles, though it looked like someone had sawed them in half. Stocks, bolts, levers. He grabbed two, one in each hand, and hurried back.
A thump, again from above, but farther . . . what, north? Like a body dropping. A security guard? Had they been found already? Maybe they’d been watched the whole time, and the scout had simply waited for reinforcements to strike.
Rone jumped the tables again, and for an alarming second, he didn’t see Sandis. She emerged from the narrow pass near the wall, her skirt folded against her waist. She knelt and let its contents spill—a bunch of metal that Rone slowly recognized as various firearm pieces. The assembled bits of a firing mechanism, minus the trigger guard. A barrel and chamber. A magazine.
She grabbed one of the half rifles from his hand and began assembling it like it was a children’s puzzle. Her hands moved like birds, piece after piece snapping expertly into place.
“This is why you kept asking about guns,” he whispered.
She nodded. “I worked here for a long time. Including at the end of the line.”
“End of the line?”