Avery wanted to tell him to make the glabren lower their weapons, but he knew the underworld czar would refuse. It was Virine’s only hold on Avery.

“Have half of them lower their weapons to the floor, then step back,” Avery said.

Virine obeyed. “Anything else?”

The smell of smoke was growing thicker.

“Show us the way out of here,” Avery said.

“Certainly. I’ll get my glabren—”

“No. You.”

Virine lifted his lips, and Avery saw that the fang that he had earlier suspected of secreting venom was secreting it. Virine said nothing.

Screams sounded nearby, and cursing. Running feet pounded down the hall outside. Flames crackled somewhere.

“Now!” Avery said.

Virine stepped down from his living throne even as it unknitted and the glabren composing it disentangled. Avery took the opportunity to pluck up the god-killing knife and jam it into his waistband.

“Release the glabren,” Coleel said. “Get them to safety.”

Virine didn’t protest. Most of the glabren flowed out of the room, and Avery could only hope Virine cared enough about them to ensure they survived. The woman that had come to deliver the news had put a hand to the pistol at her hip but hadn’t drawn it. When Avery gestured with his gun toward the door, she nodded and left.

Three of the glabren remained, two males and a female. Their guns remained on Avery and the others.

“Send them away,” he told Virine.

“Then what insurance do I have against you shooting me?”

Avery was forced to concede the point. Layanna crossed to the bronze door they’d entered by and slid it open. Two glabren stood guard there, but at Avery’s word Virine dismissed them. Smoke was already curling up from downstairs and staining the ceiling. Coleel prodded Virine in the back with his rifle, and the gangster stumbled forward and out of the room, followed by his glabren, who kept their weapons on Coleel for the moment.

Avery grabbed up as many assault rifles as he could, then had Layanna help him. She looked reluctant but seemed to realize it was necessary for whatever reason. Only then did the two join Coleel and Virine in the hallway. “I don’t know where the stairs are,” the merchant said. “I blacked out earlier.”

“I, as well,” said Layanna.

“Well?” Coleel demanded of Virine.

“This way,” the gangster said and led the way down the halls, at last coming to the set of stairs they had been captured at earlier. He started to head up them, but Avery made him wait while he went forward himself. He opened the door and stepped out into the night. Fresh air teased his nose, but also the scent of smoke. Sirens wailed in the distance. Weird, mutated trees erupted from the rooftop around him, and strange animals scuttled away. One of the three moons hung above, fat and full.

“It’s safe,” he called back, and the others emerged after him.

“Now can I go?” Virine said.

Avery hesitated.

“Don’t,” Layanna said. “He’ll have his creatures on us as soon as you’re no longer pointing a gun at him.”

Avery knew she was right. “You’re staying with us,” he told the gangster.

Virine seethed quietly.

Coleel was surveying the rooftop. “Where’s the fire escape? I don’t see one.”

Virine grunted. “You think I’d allow someone to sneak onto my roof? I had it removed long ago.”

Coleel punched him in the face. Virine sagged to the side but didn’t fall.

“Been wanting to do that for a long time,” Coleel told Avery and Layanna.

Virine wiped his chin. “I hope that made you feel better. It won’t help any of us off this roof. Why did we go up during a fire? Idiots!”

Layanna turned to Avery. “You seemed to have some plan earlier.”

He nodded. “The trees. We cut one down and use it as a bridge to cross to the roof of another building, and so on. Doing that we could get clear of the Maze and outside the area the Octs are looking for us in.”

“Great plan, genius,” Virine said, “only I don’t see that any of you has an axe. Face it. We’re fucked.”

Avery indicated the weapons he and Layanna carried. “We don’t need axes. We have bullets. But we’d better hurry.”

“The flames are rising,” Coleel agreed.

“It’s not just that,” Layanna said, and her expression had darkened.

“What do you mean?”

“Aren’t you curious how the fires started?” said Avery, who had realized it, too. “On both sides? Someone set them.”

“The priests of the Restoration,” Layanna said. “It had to be. They either wanted to smoke us out …”

“… or empty the building so that they could come in looking for us.”

In the silence that followed, all four looked to the empty doorway. Then, very slowly, as if afraid to go too fast, Coleel closed the door and shot its lock, perhaps jamming it. The report echoed loudly in Avery’s ears. When Coleel spun about, he looked grim.

“Then let’s get to it, then, shall we?”

They moved to the edge of the roof. Below, a single fire truck was trying to make its way through the press of people pouring from the building. Flames licked up the walls, the smoke making Avery cough. He could feel the heat of the fire, which had reached a second-story window twenty feet below; the flames danced up toward him trailing sparks. Trees burned along the face of the structure, and animals scampered upward.

“That one truck’s not going to be able to do any good,” Coleel said.

While they had been distracted, Virine’s glabren had tightened their fingers around the triggers of their guns and taken renewed aim at Avery and Coleel.

“Don’t!” Avery snapped at Virine. He dumped his load of weapons and aimed his pistol at Virine’s head.

Coleel, evidently realizing that his laxness had almost gotten them killed, resumed training his rifle at Virine. He aimed at the gangster’s crotch.

“The priests must be combing the club by now,” Layanna said. “They won’t be long.”