She was looking for another path, a way to climb around the flames, a window above them in the second story, anything, when Buskin’s flames died as if a giant had stomped on them, splattering liquid orange in every direction.

A figure tore past her. Kip.

He was drafting even as he ran. On top of the fire-smothering orange luxin, he threw down planks of green to give himself footing, and sprinted right across where the fires had been.

His momentum carried him past Teia, who was standing still. He flicked off the spectacles that he was wearing, holstered them in the pouch he wore, and drew out another pair as he ran. He threw a hand up into the air and shot yellow symbols into the sky that dissolved into light even as they arced upward—directions for Cruxer and Winsen about where Buskin was going.

Teia saw them running across a roof, each holding a bow, approaching an alley gap that was too far to jump. Cruxer sped up and leapt anyway—and made it. Winsen followed his lead, except he threw his hands and a gout of unfocused luxin out of them to give himself extra lift the way they’d practiced.

It would have worked if he hadn’t been holding the longbow in one hand. Instead, it impeded the luxin thrust and threw him off balance even as he was flying through the air. But Kip was running right under that gap, and he threw up a wide hand of green luxin that bobbed Winsen gently back up into the air. Instead of smashing into the side of the building, Winsen landed sideways just at the top of it. He rolled across the roof and smacked his head on the dome, but was unhurt.

They were almost to the great fish market near the docks when lightning struck again, blinding Teia. The boom of thunder literally threw her from her feet. She tumbled as she’d been taught, throwing one hand down hard so that her head didn’t take the impact.

She regained her senses in time to see that one of the Thousand Stars had been struck by lightning. They were supposed to be insulated with the copper lightning-catchers, but either it was gone or hadn’t worked. The entire stiltlike Star was leaning, shattering, stones raining down. Then the arch collapsed all at once, coming down in roar of stone and dust in the heavy rain.

The placement couldn’t have been worse—right in front of them, and between them and Buskin. As if the gods themselves had intervened to save him. On the other hand, the arch had hit the edge of the building on which Cruxer and Winsen stood. If Cruxer hadn’t stopped to help Winsen, he would have been crushed by the falling rock.

Teia stopped behind the rubble. She could climb over it, but every stone was shifting. Too much delay. Oh, hells. Kip!

Kip had been ahead of all of them.

Teia looked for him. He was nowhere in the fish market beyond the rubble.

Oh, no. No no no.

Her heart stopped. The air of the intersection was awash in a cloud of dust, only slowly being beaten down by the downpour. People were screaming, horses were whinnying in terror, but Teia had no mind for any of it. She drafted a paryl torch, the beams of its light cutting through the dust cloud. She charged forward, barely pausing long enough to pull a cloth in front of her face so she could breathe. The ground was littered with broken masonry, shattered mirror-glass, and there—dear Orholam, a body. Was it—

Teia grabbed the hand she could see and pulled. It came out, with half an arm. She held the arm in both hands, part horrified beyond words, part cold and analytical. This arm seemed skinnier than Kip’s. The skin was … covered in grime, colorless in her paryl vision. She went back to the visible spectrum, but it was too dusty. She couldn’t see anything. She turned the arm over, went back to paryl.

No drafter’s scars on the hands or wrists.

It wasn’t Kip. It was a star tower slave. What were they doing up there in a storm?

She tossed the arm aside. She didn’t care about some slave.

A part of her wrote down that thought in stone. It would come back to haunt her. But right now, she didn’t care. Kip. Dear Orholam, where’s Kip?

She picked her way over the rubble, looking in paryl through the dust.

The rubble ahead of her shifted and sank. Suddenly, she heard coughing. With quick, light steps, she crossed the rubble. There was Kip, upside down. He’d drafted an egg of luxin around himself as the arch fell all around him, but had quickly run out of air and let the egg collapse.

Teia grabbed his hand and pulled him up and out. He was besmirched, the heavy rain turning the dust coating his features into mud in instants.

For a split second, he’d looked so terrified coming out of that little space that Teia couldn’t reconcile the little-boy terror on his face with the kind of drafting she’d just seen out of him. He stared at her, frantic, frightened, chest heaving, coughing still.

She tried to hand him a cloth to breathe through, but he swept her up into a bear hug.

For one moment, she was utterly stunned. Then, in the next, a sudden thawing. She hadn’t been really touched in so long, she couldn’t even remember the last time. Kip’s pure, delighted-to-see-you, I-care-so-much-for-you touch? Oh, dear gods. There was something about the pure physicality of it: an acceptance beyond words, a joy that spoke only truth. But she was frozen, too surprised by the sudden emergence of Kip from death, by the flood of emotion. She didn’t hug back, even as the complete, total, abject need to hug back rose in her. She wanted to cling to someone—no, not to someone; it wasn’t just a need to connect, though it was that, too—to connect with Kip, her friend.

Her best friend. The one who saw her.

The tides rising in her were obliterating, scouring away the dross of every preconception and prejudice.

And Kip dropped the hug, suddenly awkward at her failure to hug back.

No! her mind cried, but her arms—her treacherous arms—didn’t rise.

“Sorry. Thanks,” Kip said quickly, as if to cover, as if to ignore, as if he didn’t feel rejected.

No, Orholam no, I didn’t mean it like that.

But Teia said nothing, didn’t move.

Kip turned. They were on the very edge of the rubble—they’d come through it, together. But they were too late. Kip pulled his blue spectacles on. They were miraculously unbroken, and he drafted quickly, again as if it were nothing. In a few moments, there were stairs from where they stood up to the edge of the building where Cruxer and Winsen still stood.

They joined the young men there. They hadn’t given up the hunt. They stood ready as hounds at the leash. Cruxer pointed. “There!”

Buskin was almost through the crowded, emptying fish market. People were running everywhere, still packing up their stalls, trying not to lose all of the day’s catch and sales. Winsen was standing with an arrow nocked, though he hadn’t drawn it—there was no shot yet, and holding a longbow drawn for any length of time was impossible.

Buskin reached the far side of the market. He turned and grinned fiercely at them. He put his fingers under his chin and flicked them forward in rude salute. Then he turned his back and walked away.

Winsen pulled the arrow back into the big longbow, using the thick muscles of his back to help with the massive draw-weight, even as people ran to and fro, obscuring Buskin. The shot was at least two hundred paces. A young mother tried to pull three children out of the street, but found herself with too few hands, juggling tools in one hand and recalcitrant kids in the other, at least one crying.

“Winsen,” Cruxer said sadly, “it’s too far. You can’t—”