Ember sat with her chin resting on her backpack, looking out of a window over the city. It was not quite dawn yet, but it wasn't long off, and the quiet night had already given way to the bustle of people filing into the streets for a long day of work. More than once, she saw an officer among them, stopping people as if interrogating them, but none turned their attention to her hiding place.

After breaking away from the rest of the party, Orthus had led her back to where he had stashed their bags, the upper story of a courthouse on the west side of the city. It had taken them hours to cross the city, a somber trip in which neither spoke often, but at last they had arrived intact. Afterwards, Orthus volunteered for the first watch, and Ember had gotten a fitful three hours of sleep in which she saw blood and bullets painted on the inside of her eyelids. Now, the octopus was curled up against the wall using his cloak as a blanket, looking smaller than in waking hours.

The attic was more pleasant than many other places she'd spent the night (it was drafty, but not cold, and the clutter was almost comforting), yet Ember's mood was foul as her brain tied itself in knots trying to figure out what had given the party away. Clearly, the conversation Lilith had heard had been fabricated, which meant either the Holy Order had staged conversations across the city in the hopes to entrap her, or, perhaps more disturbingly, that they had somehow known when and where she would be listening. But regardless, the party had already been discovered by then, and that was an even more difficult puzzle. Maybe the guard at the city entrance had seen through their disguises, something had tipped off the Holy Order when they checked the widow's empty house, or perhaps they had been recognized in Wicksby even earlier. The outcome was the same: Matthias was embarrassingly far ahead of them, and their spy was probably long dead.

As the sun's first rays spilled into the attic, Ember tried to figure out the archbishop's next move—will he seal the gates and lock down the city? Or will he want to keep this whole incident under wraps?—but because she didn't understand how he had caught them in the first place, answering those questions was like trying to catch water with her hands.

Seeking comfort, she pulled her fang knife from its sheath, tracing the now-familiar patterns. In the end, she thought, I couldn't even make use of my weapon. None of us could. Her fingertips found the invisible letters—GW, for Gloria Whitlock—and she wondered what her mother would have done.

She would have fought, of course. Ember's eyes settled on the discarded sheath, with its symbol of a serpent wrapped around a roughly-hewn amber. She used the tip of the knife to work the stone free, revealing the secret compartment beneath that the shopkeeper had shown her so many months before; the compartment custom-made to store venom.

It's just a precaution, she told herself as she worked the cap on her left fang free, wincing as the blade scraped the tooth. It was too risky, too identifiable, to use her venom. But just in case, she pressed the newly freed tip of the fang into the compartment and focused on clenching the muscles that controlled her venom glands. She was unused to the sensation, and a headache was already forming by the time that she judged that enough yellowish-white liquid had pooled at the bottom.

Exhausted, she recapped the compartment and leaned back on her elbows, letting out a sigh. Her eyes brushed over Orthus's still-sleeping figure, the taste of the venom in her mouth accompanied by equally bitter guilt. She was grateful to him, of course—she did not know what she would have done had she been alone—but having seen the commander's expression, she was sure that they would be punished for their defection (if they managed to return to Mendel at all), and it felt wrong that Orthus should face the consequences on her behalf, no matter how willing he might be.

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As if feeling her gaze, Orthus stirred, blinking sleep from his eyes. "You're thinking too loudly," he said, sitting up with his cloak draped over his shoulders like a cape. He looked as tired as she felt: dark shadows lined the underside of his eyes, and the exposed skin on his forearms looked a shade paler than usual.

Ember rearranged her expression into something neutral, suitably hiding the pain in her head. "I'm afraid," she said, spreading her arms in a gesture of hopelessness. "We've already left the party, but what if my father isn't at the camp at all? What if he's alive, but we can't find a way back?"

"If we did nothing, he'd die without you seeing him again," the octopus answered matter-of-factly. "Is that better?"

"Of course not," she sighed, blowing a stand of hair off of her face.

"Then stop feeling sorry for yourself."

She couldn't help but smile at his bluntness. "All right. Tell me again about the ironworks factory."

***

Ember crouched on a rooftop in the grey darkness of the witching hour. Below her, Ciradyl's industrial complex was spread out like a city of giants, dominated by long, multistory brick buildings that glowed with orange light, their smokestacks continuously pumping out smog. On the periphery, cylindrical hot-blast stoves formed a line in front of a massive blast furnace, all covered in steel scaffolding. There were shadows of other buildings beyond, but it was impossible to discern their purpose in the dense, particulate air. There was no vegetation, and the entire complex was bordered at the back by the city walls, giving it a prison-like effect. As she watched, the mouth of the furnace spat a stream of fiery sparks into the sky like a great and terrible dragon.

"Over there," Orthus whispered, pointing past the stoves and furnace to a low building. "The worker's quarters."

Ember nodded, her stomach doing an unpleasant little flip. "Let's go."

She scrambled off of the roof and onto the building's siding, helping Orthus down after her. They were slowed a little by the packs on their backs—a risk they had decided to take in case a hasty escape was needed—but the moment their feet touched solid ground, they were off, the sound of their footsteps muffled by the all-consuming smog.

On the ground, the complex had the makings of a nameless, faceless nightmare. Structures loomed eerie and still in the hazy darkness, and it was all Ember could do to keep her bearings. At the very least, they were well hidden by empty crates and industrial refuse; when a patrolman passed by them, his baton tap, tap, tapping on the cobblestones, they tucked behind one such pile and he walked past without pausing.

To avoid the streetlights and the more-populated center of the complex, Ember and Orthus took a circuitous route. When they emerged from an alleyway, Ember came face to face with a fenceline, the great city wall just beyond, and realized they had reached the western city limit. The fence was heavily fortified, with barbed wire at the top and sheet metal that blocked most of the visibility.

Morbidly curious, Ember pressed her face to a small gap between the sheets, looking out into the yard. On one side was a large brick building with a hinged garage door, and running out from underneath was a track like the ones she had seen during the journey to the city. The yard itself was filled with more crates of materials, and metal was everywhere: bars, plates, wheels, and forgings whose function was beyond her comprehension.

But inevitably, Ember's eyes were drawn to the machine on the track, and she inhaled sharply. It was an otherworldly creature, segmented like a centipede, its pieces separated and in various stages of construction. All were black as night and armored with sheets of steel. She squinted and saw holes in the upper third of each car, just large enough for a gunman to aim and shoot.

"Orthus," she emphasized, and with a disapproving glare the octopus walked back to look through the opening.

"Shit," he breathed, his knuckles turning white on the fence wire.

"That answers that, then," Ember muttered. "There's no way that thing has any purpose except for war."

"Come on," Orthus said, snapping out of it. He grabbed her by the wrist to pull her away, but Ember saw the way his eyes lingered, and how his Adam's apple bobbed as he swallowed. She knew him well enough to know that they were both thinking the same thing:

Can Mendel really fight that monster?

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