Chapter 20 · Rust and Relic - Chapter 20: Fire Nobody Sees

"You're not touching that rig."

Liv grabbed my wrist before I got within two feet of Vald's beacon array. The thing hummed in the dark, all copper coil and bone inlay, throwing off heat I could feel from here.

"I have to," I said. "Or we're walking blind into his kill zone."

"You rewire that and every priest north of the stone line sees the flare."

"They're already hunting us."

"Not like this." She didn't let go. Her fingers were cold, tight enough to cut off blood. "You light that beacon wrong and they'll know exactly where we are. Every clan. Every hunter. You want to burn the north for one blind minute?"

I pulled free and turned back to the rig. The aurora overhead pulsed green and white, throwing shadows across the burnt ground. We were standing in the ruins of a signal fort Vald's priests had torched two weeks ago. The walls were gone. The bodies were still here.

"One minute's all I need," I said.

"And what about the next sixty? The ones after that?"

"I'll handle it."

"You'll handle it." Liv stepped between me and the array. "You and your engineer brain.