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“That’s it? I can’t … help?”
Hannox’s eyes stay soft but his words are cold as he checks the settings on the steel cuffs that bind my fingers. “I don’t know what deal you’ve struck with Cormac, but when we need your help, we’ll ask for it. We have a full-blown revolution happening in the Eastern Sector. I’m not about to parade the queen of the rebels in and trust her to help us out.”
“What if I escape?” I ask him, a burning resentment bubbling through me. But I immediately regret my question. Hannox will certainly report it back to Cormac.
“I would love to see you try to escape with those on,” Hannox says, gesturing to the gages, “but if by some miracle you do”—he turns my wrist and traces the control panel—“I’ll blow your hands off. A Creweler isn’t much use without her hands.”
“No, she isn’t,” I say. I withdraw my hands and turn away from him so he can’t see my face.
Hannox leans in to my ear. “And don’t forget we have your sister.”
I don’t respond. I keep my focus on the activity around me, trying to discern what they plan to do once we get to Arras. We’re moving across the Interface faster than I’ve ever seen before and in doing so we catch and rip at its strands, damaging many of them in the process. To my right a man is barking coordinates, his head tipped to the side, communicating via complant to someone far away. Men ascend the ship’s overhead envelope, scaling its rungs with tethers and ropes hooked over their shoulders.
“Hold on tight!” The command comes from Cormac as he whistles past me. I follow him, desperate for more information about what’s going on.
“Why?” I ask.
“Because we’re about to brake,” he calls over his shoulder.
“My hands are kinda engaged at the moment,” I remind him. This stops him and he turns to stare at me, cursing under his breath. Before I can react, he flings his arm around my waist and pulls me to him as his left hand grabs a nearby railing.
“Your hands are engaged in more ways than one,” he says as the aeroship brakes hard across the Interface, throwing me backward. But Cormac’s grip stays tight around my waist, holding me to him. He presses me close to his chest. The ship makes a sharp scratching noise as we are forced to a stop, and all around us, several men lose their balance and crash into the deck of the ship. My eyes fly up to the men who were scaling the envelope a moment ago and I find them there, clinging to the steel ribs of the aeroship. As soon as the ship comes to a full stop, they spring into action, scrambling higher, until they can touch the Interface.
“What are they doing?” I ask, extricating myself from Cormac’s too-eager embrace.
“No girls are working the looms in the Eastern Coventry, meaning we’ll have to enter Arras in an undesignated space,” Cormac explains.
“Why not have another Coventry do the work?” I ask.
Cormac rounds on me. “This event must be contained. The less people find out about it, the better.”
“But how will we get into Arras through the Interface?”
“The men will create a passage,” he says.
“A loophole?” I’d seen a loophole before, on an Agenda trip. The temporary tunnel allowed refugees from Arras to escape to Earth, but on that occasion the loophole had been created within Arras.
“Is that what your rebel friends call it?” he asks, beginning to walk the length of the deck. I follow as he checks the crew’s progress. “Loophole—how poetic.”
I clench my teeth to keep myself from saying something I’ll regret. I won’t get anywhere by reminding him of my ties to the Kairos Agenda, the growing rebellion intent on separating the worlds.
“How can they do it?” I ask him, not letting myself be baited. “I thought loopholes, er, passages had to be created within Arras. Doesn’t the Interface prevent us from tunneling through it?”
Cormac doesn’t answer me. Instead he paces the deck, waiting for the loophole process to complete.
“I can’t create my own loophole,” I remind him, certain he thinks I’ll use the information to escape.
“I’ve seen you rip through a world to get away from me.”
“That was different,” I say. I know that the only reason my escape from the Western Coventry worked was because we were already close to the surface of Earth there.
“Perhaps you’re right. You wouldn’t survive throwing yourself through an average passage, and I’ve made certain there won’t be a similar incident in the future,” he says.
“We have a deal, Cormac,” I remind him. “I’m not running off.”
His eyes swivel to regard me for a moment before he relents. “They’ll use a machine to create a temporary slub in the Interface between Arras and Earth and force a passage through. The Guild has the only technology to do so.”
I know this can’t be true, because the Agenda has access to loophole technology. Cormac removes the gages from my hands, but I barely notice. Before I can decide whether or not to point this out to him, Cormac speaks again. “The Guild monitors all activity passing through the Interface.”
