Bonds of Brass (The Bloodright Trilogy #1) - Emily Skrutskie Page 0,51

“Follow me.” Wen mounts the ladder and slides to the bottom, her palms shrieking against the metal. “Thirty seconds!” she shouts from the bottom.

“Until what?” I call after her, but she disappears into the skipship’s cargo hold. I toss the pliers aside. The saw’s buzz grows louder behind me, and I don’t need telling twice. I drop down the ladder into the cavernous hold. It’s lit only by the soft orange glow of emergency lights. Wen’s shadow flickers against them as she beckons me over.

“In here.” She grabs me by the collar before I can move and stuffs me into a mercifully cool, terrifyingly enclosed space. “Ten seconds.” Before I can ask again, she tucks herself into the darkness with me and pulls a panel shut behind us.

I let out a shaky breath, wrinkling my nose against the scent of two sweaty bodies. “Are we supposed to wait for them to find us? Because that’s a horrible, horrible plan. They know we’re in the ship. They—”

My next words are blasted away by a world-shattering boom. A wave of heat flash-cooks the compartment. Wen’s knocked back against me like a bag of bones, and somehow I already know her well enough to know she’s grinning through this. I feel like I’m slipping back into my own body as the ringing in my ears crests a peak and starts to dissipate, leaving me curled into my knees.

Wen grabs my collar again, kicking the panel open, and I blink against the harsh cut of sunlight streaming in. Smoke clots the air, and my lungs burn with every breath. Wen mouths something and hauls me forward. We tumble down the ship’s cargo ramp—suddenly open in the wake of the explosion—and out into the dirt of the lot.

It’s chaos. Shoppers and dealers scatter. The people in black rush to help their comrades caught in the blast from the cockpit. The skipship’s upper deck is a bombed-out husk, belching ugly black smoke into the sky. The ringing in my ears elides into screaming.

Next to me, Wen’s already scrambling on hands and knees to her folding chair and the colorful umbrella she was shading herself with barely minutes ago. Her fingers close around the umbrella’s hilt, she pops to her feet, and I flinch when she presses down the button, expecting some new horror to burst forth.

Instead Wen snaps the umbrella open, ducks beneath it, and pulls me into its shade. “Arm on my shoulders,” she shouts in my ear. “Move fast, but not too fast.” Her own arm slips around my waist, and she pulls me into the jumbled mess of people fleeing the scene.

I hazard a glance back at the skipship, trying to clock the mobsters, but Wen dips the umbrella, blocking my view. “Don’t let them see your face,” she says. “Always assume you’ve gotten away with it until the second someone says otherwise. Elsewise you’re looking suspicious.” Belatedly I realize that she’s talking at a normal volume again, which must mean my hearing is restoring itself.

“You…You…”

“Rigged the cargo door to pop when the explosives did, stashed us in the empty engine mounts, and blew up most of Dago Korsa’s ship?”

“Yeah, that. Where the hell did you get that kind of ordnance?”

Wen shrugs. “Engine money.”

I gape, and she laughs merrily. I don’t know whether to be impressed or terrified, but I’m leaning toward the latter. Sure, it worked. It created enough chaos to slip away, even if it nearly cooked us and blew out our hearing. But then there’s the fact that she had the explosives in place before the Cutters showed up. And the fact that she honestly thought she’d get away with selling me an engineless ship.

And the fact that I was so taken in by the prospect of a cheap skipship that I climbed into the cockpit and got stuck in this situation.

I’ve got enough problems with one liar in my life. No way am I getting stuck with another. Before Wen can tighten her grip, I knock her arm off my waist and duck out from beneath the umbrella.

“Ettian, no!” she yelps, but I’m already out of reach. “You—they’re gonna