Their case was evidently intended to be a great show of legislative power, as their judge was none other than a nine of hearts. Then again, in such a caste-ridden society, maybe an eight would be the lowest given the permission to judge a seven of hearts. Which, evidently Hard Minded had done good work, because she was treated as one of that status. Though nobody had been able to understand her from the moment Ruler was clubbed unconscious, thrusting her papers in the face of the nearest club had gotten her looser manacles and a cell which was at least clean-ish. Unfortunately, this had been far enough from Ruler that he couldn’t make psionic contact and help her be understood. So she had set about her plans—but that was getting ahead of herself. Or behind. She wasn’t sure. In any event, before the critical point, they had been marched into a courtroom, set for tribunal before a judge in priestly vestments. Wonderful. Infernalists were known for their just and forgiving nature. Daisy quietly thanked the Lord that sarcasm wasn’t a sin.

  She had, however, been marched in alongside Ruler—and incidentally Hot Irons—his robes dirtier than they’d been when she’d met him, and so she had the unique opportunity of observing the mockery of justice which passed for the Marz judicial system. The only positive statement she could make about it was that injustice was evidently swift. In less than three sandglasses, they had been pronounced guilty. The club who had made a psychic assault upon them testified as to the substance of their sermons, one or two terrified and bruised aces of hearts affirmed that they had been incited to riot with the promise of free flowing water. The final piece of “evidence,” waved angrily by the priest-judge, was one of the tablets Daisy had printed. It actually took longer for the priest to sermonize regarding the caste system than to pronounce their sentence.

  “Though she was dealt the seven of hearts, a prestigious position indeed, look what she has done with the mercy of the One God! She neglects to learn the tongue of the people of the Kingdom of Hell, preferring the tongue of the itinerant ‘Liders. She has distributed her water rations among the undeserving, and grasped for more power! The power of the donjons is great, of the Ranks of the Damned they are the least hated of the Lord’s children, and yet she thought she could overcome them by virtue of an unruly mob! Fortunately, she made the grave error of enlisting base elements, aces and deuces all, and knowing their place they reported her heretical actions to the priesthood of the Kingdom of Hell.

  “The sentence for such heresy is simple. For claiming to be able to conjure water, for inciting rebellion, for defying the caste system, and for throwing away everything she was granted by the One God’s Grace, Bachelor Daisy—” when they found her cards, they evidently took Bachelor for a surname. In her nastier moments she wondered how such a backwards culture could read more than their own tongue. “—will be jailed until her cohorts in crime, Hot Irons and the nameless Ruler, expire of dehydration. Then, bound, the three of them will be thrown into the lake of fire east of Oracle City, where she will burn to death with the stench of her roasting fellow heretics.” The priest-judge banged his gavel.

  Just as well she had set about her plans. She was a water sorcerer, specializing in the spiritual aspects of the element. But with the Age of Steel, advances had been made based on the lunar calendar. The four classical elements each had a second-order element. How shadow and light fit in, Daisy made a mental note to ask Ruler about. But water’s second-order element, acid, was nearly as versatile as her native water sorcery. While it could not show the light of the soul, it produced a number of alchemical compounds out of others. For instance, something in the spent vapors of exhaled breath could be converted into a substance bearing a great resemblance to gunpowder. So, hands cupped, she exhaled, and converted the spent vitality of her breath into black powder which she packed into the lock of her cell.

  What she would do when she had escaped occupied a large portion of her conscious mind as she set about using excrement to stick powder to the wall, that she might have a fuse rather than blowing off her own hand. She needed her staff to be effective in combat, and it would be a fight getting out of the jailhouse. Like everything in Oracle City, it was built on a grand scale, and housed a likely uncountable number of clubs. So she had first to gain access to the armory… she sighed. She could likely wield a truncheon, if only she could get one off a club guard. Wielding two would be better.

  It only took a day, at most. She admittedly didn’t have the best grasp of time in her cell, focusing as she was on her sorcery. Ruler and Irons would be alive still. She snapped her fingers, and lit the long trail of black powder. It caught on the first try, and ran up the door of her cell, exploding the lock with a painful bang. Daisy, however, wasn’t leaving just yet. She laid against the far wall of her cell, doing her best to look unconscious. She heard shouting, and while she didn’t understand it, it was the result she desired. She felt something hard prod her, and grabbed for it, but evidently the club was more sensible than that. She jerked on the truncheon, but it moved with the guard’s hand, and she broke Daisy’s grip on her truncheon with a skilled twist.

  What happened next was surprising even to Daisy. There was a second bang, and more shouting. The club standing over her ignored it, but the shouting went on and there were several more concussive bangs. Peering around the club in her cell, she saw clubs running, not in an orderly march, but in the posture of Hell-bent—she nearly chuckled—fleeing. Then she saw someone she had not expected at all; it was Ruler and Irons. He held his revolver, somehow, and shouted a command to the guard that she drop the truncheon and lay on the floor. She slowly turned to face him and growled, “I knew it had to be a trick revolver. But no, captain can’t fire it and says to leave it with the poor sap, maybe he’ll club his own brains out.” Ruler repeated his command, and the guard lay on the ground.

  Daisy relieved her of her truncheon and said, “You have a remarkable sense of timing.”

  Ruler shook his head. “Y-you don’t carry powder, but you have a rifle. I-I-I figured the moment you blew out of your cell would be the moment to shoot the lock off m-m-m-my own cell.”

  “How many guards are dead?”

  Ruler looked proud. “None. Th-they’re not accustomed to prisoners having guns, and the rounds normally loaded in m-my revolver are blanks. They just ran when I-I-I leveled and fired.”

  “You carry a trick revolver that isn’t even loaded?!”

  “I-I know. But the shockwave is enough to blow a lock. Isn’t it brilliant? Now come on, I-I-I have two rounds and we need to get to the armory.”

  “You know where it is?”

  The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  “Getting clubbed in the head doesn’t keep y-you out as long as people think it does. The door is different.” Ruler took her hand, and pulled her along. Irons grinned and showed her the evidently-universal thumbs up.

  “Do you two need water?”

  “We need out of here more than we need water, I think,” Irons said.

  They came to a door which was, in fact, different than the others, even if they couldn’t read the signs. It was also guarded by two fours of clubs, which meant revolvers unless they could surprise them. Which they couldn’t, seeing as the alert had gone out. Ruler fired his revolver in their general direction, getting them to duck, and then Daisy went for a double-tap to their heads with her borrowed truncheon. They both went down, but it took repeated application of the truncheon to keep them down; Daisy was used to the mass of her staff doing the work for her.

  Ruler used his last round—Daisy had been counting—to blow out the lock on the armory, and Daisy was reunited with her beloved dragon staff. Not that she loved it in any lethal capacity, but the rifle-cum-cross-staff had been a gift upon attaining Bachelor geometer status. It was still loaded, and Daisy shot the lock off a chest in the middle of the room and scooped as many copper coins as she could carry into her vest pockets. Ruler was in the doorway, relieving the guards of their ammunition, and Irons came into the room with Daisy and picked out a small springblade after a cursory search. She hadn’t known they were proficient with such a thing, but each day on Marz she learned something new.

  “You’re going to actually use that ammunition?” Daisy asked Ruler.

  “Stranger things have happened.”

  In the process of breaking out of the jail—not a prison, for they were all slated to die within a few days—Ruler did in fact use his pilfered ammunition, but only into the ground or ceiling. Evidently he had taken to heart her wrath lessons not requiring the taking of human life. Once they were on the ground level, Daisy asked Irons to take them to the northbound train station. Following the ace of hearts, Daisy and Ruler hurtled down the streets of the city toward the rail station. With luck, they had sown enough chaos to evade capture until a train was leaving.

  Luck was with them. They didn’t even buy tickets, just grabbed onto the railings of the last car as it was pulling out of Oracle City. Their next stop would be Honeystone, and then West Helland. There was no ship to Tanith, or they’d have taken it. They knocked on the passenger car, and explained that while they had no tickets, they’d left in something of a hurry and had plenty of coin. Hopelessly overcharged but not much caring, they bought passage aboard the train. In one of the passenger compartments, cooled much like the buildings of Helland, Daisy watched out the window as lightning beacons went by, taking note when they fired that it might be the point at which they had a hostile welcome in Honeystone.

  In Honeystone, the train stopped, and loud voices declared that there would be a search made of the compartments for dangerous felons. Daisy broke the glass of the train compartment window, using the butt of her staff, and the three of them clambered out, up the side of the next train bound south, and out the far side of the station.

  Honeystone continued the trend of each city of Marz being something Daisy was utterly unprepared for. A vast silver sea lined the northern half of the coastal city. She wasn’t sure what the sea was made of, but it was not water. Further, the docks appeared to be stone, but extended far out into the sea. But the most dumbfounding thing of all were the shipworks. In what was becoming a stream of luck Daisy couldn’t help but attribute to the One God preserving His prophet, living stone was carved in the shape of a ship in several massive quarries. Large blocks of stone were being hauled away, for use in the other cities of Helland, but with a crack the silver liquid of the northern sea was allowed to fill one of the basins in which a ship had been carved, and the stone boat—a stone boat! Of all the oddities of this planet!—detached, evidently buoyant in whatever liquid made up the sea.

  As a first order of business, they all bought clothes in the local style of tunic, trousers, and vest. They booked passage aboard a ship to West Helland, claiming to be a family looking to vacation. Daisy still had her papers, and if her name on them raised eyebrows, they were apparently still valid. They were, plausibly, a family. While Daisy was fair and redheaded, Ruler was olive-skinned and had brown hair like Irons, and all three of them were lanky. As the city became distant on the horizon, Daisy whooped and kissed Ruler on the cheek. He blushed, and she remembered his words as they had been arrested.

  “Did you mean what you said, or were those rather like last words? When we were being arrested?” Daisy asked him.

  Ruler flushed from his neck to his ears to his nose. “I-I meant them. D-D-Daisy, you are an incredible woman. And y-you share m-m-my love of—” Daisy felt the crack of a psionic slap and looked around in alarm. “No, no, that’s my gutfish. A family heirloom of sorts. Reminding m-me that I’m worthwhile. Also the firing mechanism nobody can ever figure out for m-my gun.” Ruler cleared his throat. “Daisy, I-I love you. And given that death seems to be hounding us, Ieey’m not going to delay telling you that any longer. You don’t have to love m-m-me too, but I wanted you to know my feelings.”

  Daisy stood there, slightly unsteady, and put a hand on the railing of the ship. A stone ship, some distant corner of her mind marveled. She’d kissed him out of genuine affection, but did she love him? She put a hand to her temple, and took a centering breath. Ruler stood there, and while there was yearning on his face, it was clear he was making a concerted effort to remain neutral while she sorted through the thoughts in her head.

  Finally, she said, “I do not love you too, Ruler. I just haven’t considered the possibility in the first place, so to declare love would be reactionary and shallow. But I don’t not love you. I will think on what you said. And I do bear you great affection, the kiss wasn’t a show piece.”

  Ruler nodded. Irons chimed in with, “Come on now! We could all be dead tomorrow, you may as well find joy where you can! You want to kiss him, kiss him!”

  Trying to put away thoughts of their young adult companion, Daisy draped her arms over Ruler’s shoulders. “Well, Ruler? Are you up for some maybe-platonic kisses?”

  “I-I-I don’t promise any great talent for the pastime, but I-I wouldn’t mind. M-my heart can be patient. Does it go against any of the tenets of your faith?”

  Daisy raised an eyebrow. “To kiss? Maybe if I had taken holy orders. But I’m not bucking for the Gatekeeper’s job, I just want him to let me through those golden gates.”

  “That means kiss!” Irons exclaimed. Daisy and Ruler laughed, and then they kissed. At first it was tentative, touching noses and tilting both their heads the same way and then the other. Finally past figuring that out, they pressed their lips together. Ruler’s beard was slightly ticklish, but not scratchy, and Daisy’s water sorcery meant they were both well-groomed and recently-bathed.

  He was warm, relative to her, and his lips were themselves soft. He didn’t presume with his tongue, for which Daisy was grateful. She preferred her kisses shallow, from her limited experience. She laughed. Ruler drew back, concern written on his face. “No, no, not you. Just you apologized for a lack of experience, when I’ve kissed all of three people. I’ve kissed a number of cheeks, but not… not like that.”

  Now Daisy colored, and Ruler smiled warmly. “Then w-we can both practice.” Then his breath was hot over her mouth, and they tried again. He was warm, he smelled like flax and fresh sweat, and Daisy wondered to herself if it might be love after all.