The door to Arella’s office opened itself as Jason approached and he walked right in. Sitting behind her desk, she made a gesture and the door closed behind him. He stood in front of the desk, looking around.

“You’ve changed the artwork.”

“I’m surprised you showed your face,” she said. “I suppose I shouldn’t have expected any bounds on your arrogance.”

“That’s probably fair. I should thank you, though, for the object lesson in the pitfalls of being arrogant. Your mistake was the same every time; you never consider how your actions hurt other people. The thief you tried to hand over to Lamprey. The iron-rankers you made look buffoonish at their inability to catch her. Your own officials being squeezed between you and the Duke. That was already hurting you, but the expedition? There’s plenty of blame to go around but we both know that you’re in line for a hearty serving. You alienated your allies and made deals with your enemies.”

Arella looked at him with open disgust.

“You really never tire of hearing your own voice, do you?”

“I do like to monologue, don’t I? Next thing you know, I’ll be building a weather machine in a mountain fortress carved into the shape of my own head.”

“You also like to babble nonsense. What are you here for, Asano?”

“Are you still going to revoke my membership?”

“You know I’m not.”

“All those eyes on you make petty revenge a little harder, don’t they?”

“If that’s all you want, then get out.”

“There is one thing,” Jason said. “There needs to be a new sentence-dispensation hearing for the thief. I need to know you won’t try and sabotage it again.”

She gave him an angry glare.

“You know full-well that I can’t interfere. Not if I want to still be in this office a month from now.”

“You say that, but the last time I was in here was to ask for the same thing. You said it would go smoothly but I bet you had a messenger on their way to Lamprey before I was out of the building. I’m here for assurances.”

“You think you can make demands?”

“I tried cooperation. And yes; I think I can make demands.”

“I could crush you into paste without getting out of this chair.”

“Could you, though? You’re a smart woman, director. Not as smart as you think, but enough to know the consequences of that. You’ve disillusioned your allies while I keep making friends. I told you that your mistake was not caring who your games hurt. Kill me and you won’t just lose this office; you’ll die in it.”

She reached out an arm in a clutching motion, her silver-rank reflexes too fast for Jason to react. His aura was ground down to nothing, then an invisible force picked him up, lifting him into the air as it squeezed him from every direction. The crushing force wracked his whole body with pain.

“You’re so sure of yourself,” she said. She was still reclined in her chair, hand held out toward him.

“Yes,” he croaked, looking back with defiance. She squeezed all the harder until his muscles felt like pulp, his bones on the verge of breaking. His head was ready to pop like a pimple.

She floated up, out of her seat and over her desk until they were face to face. Hers held a sneer, while his was turning purple.

“Power trumps everything,” she told him. “It doesn’t matter how clever you are or how well you can manipulate the rules. Schemes and laws are nothing in the face of complete and absolute power.”

“Do it then,” he choked out. “Are you powerful enough to handle the consequences?”

She opened her clenched hand and he dropped to floor, immediately collapsing. She floated down land gently on the floor, looking down on him as he gasped and spluttered.

“Get out of my office,” she told him.

Jason pushed himself achingly into a sitting position, then stood up with a groan, looking her straight in the eye.

“I told you,” he said. “I came for assurances.”

She let out a disbelieving laugh.

“You’re bold for someone hiding behind the strength of others.”

“You do what you can with what you have,” Jason said. “Something I imagine you know very well.”

She sneered.

“You said assurances. What kind of assurances do you want?”

“You misunderstand,” Jason said. “When I said I’m here for assurances, it was to give them, not receive.”

“What are you talking about?”

“If you don’t keep your hand off the scale for the sentence-dispensation, then that inquiry coming up will be hearing from me.”

“The secret is already out, Asano. People know my family history.”

“Not that,” Jason said. “I mean the fact that an Adventure Society director undertook no small effort to prevent the completion of a contract she herself posted. You’ll be lucky to keep your membership after that, let alone your position.”

“You have no proof.”

“You were sloppy. Too reliant on no one guessing what you were up to. You think the inquiry won’t find anything, once they know to look? Even if you start cleaning up the moment I walk out of here, how many bodies will you have to drop? Are you sure you can get them all? I don’t think you can. There are too many threads and chasing them all down would just make more.”

Her hand twitched up, then down again. He gave her a predatory smile.

“Killing me only hurts you,” he said. “You know that, and you have much bigger problems than me. Danielle Geller isn’t back, yet, but you’ll know about it when she is. I told you your mistake was not considering the collateral damage of your plotting. She once thought quite highly of you but she lost family out there.”

Arella’s face scrunched up in reluctance and unreleased fury.

“What assurance do I have that you won’t burn me with the inquiry anyway?” she asked, biting off her words.

“The last time I came in here asking you to uphold the rules, I trusted you and got burned for my trouble. This time, you have to trust me.”

She forced out a nod.

“I’ll direct the advocate to defend the tenets of the service agreement with the city,” she said, biting her words off unhappily.

“All I wanted to hear,” he said and immediately turned for the door.

“Asano,” she called out and he stopped to look back.

“You really would have stood between Lamprey and this girl, wouldn’t you?” she asked.

“Is that why you sold me out? You didn’t think I had the resolve?”

The anger seemed to wash out of her, shoulders slumping and face suddenly haggard, in spite of its silver rank perfection.

“Call it a lesson learned. Things won’t be going well for me in the near future, but I will climb back up.”

“I don’t doubt it,” Jason said.

“I also won’t forget the iron-ranker that walked into my office to put his foot on my neck when I was down.”

Belinda watched with concern as Sophie paced back and forth on the terrace. Her friend rarely showed her anxiety, which meant she was running close to the edge.

“If they’re really willing to send us far from here,” Sophie said, “I think we do that, then get far from where they sent us. Put them and this whole city behind us.”

She sped up her pacing, running her hands through her hair. Normally she tied it back in a pony tail, but today it was loose and wild.

“That’s assuming we can trust going through some portal they set up,” she continued, “which we absolutely can’t. Maybe the best option really is leaving and making our own way from here.”

Belinda got up from her chair, placing herself in Sophie’s path, who stopped, looking up as if surprised she was there at all. Belinda took her in a hug, Sophie’s arms slipping around her in turn, gripping her like a security blanket.

“You know we can’t walk out of here as fugitives,” Belinda said softly. “Even if we got out of the Adventure Society grounds, which we wouldn’t, there was a reason we turned to Ventress for protection. If we go out into the city, things are worse for us now than they were then.”

Belinda let go of Sophie and went through the invisible wall into their suite.

“I’m having a drink,” she said. “So are you.”

The sprawling main area of the guest suite was one open space, but had areas divided up for lounging, dining, a kitchen and a bar. Belinda snagged a couple of glasses and a bottle, bringing them back outside. They say down and Sophie took the first shot without tasting it, before sipped at the second.

“You realise this bottle cost more than most of the things we’ve ever stolen,” Belinda said.

“I thought we’d half-emptied this bottle. Did you get it from the cooler cabinet?”

“I got it from the bar. You know there’s a floor cabinet and two wall cabinets with drinks in addition to the bar?” Belinda asked. “How am I meant to remember where any given bottle came from?”

“You know there’s a wine room,” Sophie said.

“No, where is it?”

“You know the floaty things that lifts you to the upper floor?”

“Yeah.”

“If you hit that gold patch next to it on the wall twice, it goes down instead.”

“This place is crazy.”

Sophie looked at the glass in her hand, then at the cloud palace around them.

“Everything about this whole experience is crazy,” she said.

“It’ll be hard to give up,” Belinda said. “If that’s the way we decide to go.”

Sophie frowned.

“You think we should go along with Asano’s plan.”

“You know I’ll follow you, whatever you decide,” Belinda said.

“You get just as much say as I do,” Sophie insisted.

“Great,” Belinda said, standing up. “I’ll go find Asano and we can get you some essences.”

“Hold on,” Sophie said, half-standing in her seat. Belinda flashed her a grin and sat back down.

“What happened to I get as much say as you?” Belinda asked.

“As much,” Sophie said as she gave Belinda a flat look. “Not more.”

“You know I was only half-joking,” Belinda said. “Even if we get so far from here we don’t have to deal with Silva or Ventress or Lamprey, do you really want to go from this back to stealing?”

“We’re good at stealing.”

“What if we’re good at something else? What if we didn’t have to live by the whims of some sadistic crime lord? You know that wherever we went, there will always be a Clarissa Ventress or Cole Silva. If we turn down this chance, that will be our lives. Forever.”

“We could do something else,” Sophie said. “Something legal.”

“Like what? Open a shop?”

“We could be locksmiths,” Sophie said. “That’s assuming even the offer to send us away is real. We’ve been stuck in this box, only hearing what they want us to hear. They could be using us for anything.”

“Why would they bother?” Belinda asked. “Look at where we are. Look at who they are. Look at what we’re drinking! What could we possibly offer Bahadir that he can’t just take? At what point does this much effort in service to some elaborate ruse become less plausible than they just want to help us? I think we’ve crossed that line. What they’re offering may seem outlandish to us, but clearly that isn’t the case for them. They’re adventurers, making adventurer money.”

Sophie took a deep breath as she considered what Belinda had to say.

“My instincts are still screaming at me to run,” she said. “The better things seem, the worse it will be when the floor falls out from under us. Nothing can hurt you as badly as hope.”

Belinda looked at her friend from under raised eyebrows.

“Really, Soph? Nothing can hurt you like hope. Is that how you want to live your life?”

“When were out lives ever different? We both had dead parents and massive debts when we were still children.”

“That’s exactly why I think we should take a risk,” Belinda said. “We were already risking everything on these crazy jobs, and for what? The chance to go somewhere else and have different crappy lives? I don’t want to go back to stealing for whatever murderous lunatic is in charge of wherever we end up.”

She gestured at the sky palace around them.

“I want more of this. This is worth risking everything for.”

Sophie looked at her friend for a long time. She took the bottle, poured herself a large drink and gulped it down.

“Alright,” she said finally.

“Alright?”

“Yeah.”

A huge grin broke out on Belinda’s face.

“Sophie Wexler, adventurer.”

“Don’t get carried away.”

“Your going to be an adventurer!”

“This could all still go horribly wrong.”

“That means I’m going to be an adventurer too, sooner or later.”

“You’ll have to earn how to fight,” Sophie said. Despite her best efforts, a smile was creeping its way onto her face.

“I know how to fight,” Belinda said.

“Kicking a guy in the beans and then running for it is not fighting.”

“It got me this far.”