Heart of Iron (Heart of Iron #1)(3)

Glitching—again.

“Goddess’s spark,” she muttered, earning a scathing look from the elderly ladies in front of them. She grabbed him by his coat sleeve. Tried to shake him—but it was like trying to budge a six-foot all-titanium boulder.

The Ironblood and Mokuba were departing now in opposite directions. If she didn’t go after that Ironblood now, she’d lose him.

Panic crawled up the back of her throat, tasting sharp. “Di, I’ll be right b—”

With a crack, the heavy shrine doors flung wide.

She ducked instinctively, turning back toward the entrance. A skysailer landed just outside. The gust from its wings roared into the shrine, blowing out the candles that lined the Goddess’s outstretched arms and the chandeliers overhead.

A patrol of six Messiers appeared in the doorway. They were sharp, metallic. Made of planes and slats she knew well, because they looked like D09. Like Metals.

Because once, they had been.

Now HIVE’d, the Messiers’ blue eyes blazed like virtue incarnate. They moved in unison, their blue-and-black uniforms pristine, shined boots making solid thumps on the masonry floor as they marched into the shrine.

Cursing, Ana took Di by the shoulder and with all her might shoved him onto the floor so the Messiers couldn’t see him, and covered him with her body. She and Di were wanted in at least twelve different districts across the Iron Kingdom, never mind Cerces. She was sure the entire mining planet had them on a watch list.

Goddess-spitting rotten luck, she thought, pressing her forehead against Di’s unmoving cheek. If the Ironblood bolted she’d never catch up to him.

“We pardon the intrusion,” the head Messier said, its Metal voice pleasant and melodic—how Di’s should have sounded if it hadn’t been damaged years ago.

Another Messier—she could tell from the brief pause—went on, “But we are looking for one—”

“Mokuba Jyen,” finished a third.

They completed one another’s sentences, since they were all part of the HIVE mind, and the effect was so eerie it made her shiver.

Why were Messiers after Mokuba? How in the blasted Dark had they tracked him down? Mokuba was the best at what he did—he never left a trail.

Are they after the coordinates, too? she thought, alarmed. How did they know he had them?

“Come on, Di,” she muttered, knowing he could hear her.

Hoping, at least. Hoping he could work through this glitch.

She didn’t want to think about what would happen if he couldn’t. She didn’t have time to worry whether this glitch was his last.

The Messiers passed her aisle, moving toward the towering statue at the front, and she slowly got onto her knees to peer over the pew in front of her. One of the abbesses—the only one not petrified by the Messiers’ entrance—shuffled up to greet them.

On the other side of the shrine, still inching toward the side exit, was the Ironblood with the coordinates chip she needed.

She waited another moment, hoping Di could fight through his glitch, as the abbess pointed to Mokuba, who shifted nervously in the corner of the shrine.

Think, Ana, she told herself, exhaling a calming breath, tuning out the whispers from the other worshippers—and especially the crones in front of her—trying to think of what to do. Maybe she could sneak after the Ironblood and—

But Mokuba will be arrested and sent to the mines on Cerces, her guilty heart reminded her. And she had heard enough about those mines from the crew on the Dossier to know Mokuba would die there.

Goddess blast her conscience.

She reached into her coat, hoping she’d brought at least one of Riggs’s flashbangs in her mad dash off the Dossier this morning. Her fingers wrapped around a small oval canister, and she brought it out, thumb slipping under the pin.

At least she had a little luck.

“Di, don’t move,” she told her glitching Metal.

The Messiers reached for the shiny Lancasters at their hips. “Mokuba Jyen. You are under arrest for—”

She flicked out the pin and jumped to her feet.

“Hey, spacetrash!” she shouted, and the Messiers turned in unison.

Giving it a good-luck kiss, she lobbed the flash grenade high into the air. It arced across the domed ceiling—and exploded in a dazzling blast of solar white. With a wail, the blast from the grenade blew out the candles, the smell of burned wicks sweeping through the shrine.





Robb


His mother always said he longed for trouble.

It was never a compliment. She said it while looking down the bridge of her nose, her mouth too refined to snarl, like the time he invited “special” entertainers to his brother’s coming-of-age party, only to find the house burgled the next morning and the topiary bushes crudely defiled. She said it when the headmaster at the most prestigious Ironblood private school, the Academy of Iron and Light—the Academy for short—busted him for running a perfectly reasonable gambling den underneath the school. And the time he challenged Viera Carnelian to a duel in only their knickers on the rooftop of the dorms . . .

Robb Valerio did long for trouble—

But this . . . was not the kind of trouble he liked.

The flashbang brought tears to his eyes. Disoriented, he caught himself on a stone pillar, blinking. Spots danced in his vision as candle smoke filled the shrine.