I crawled up the steep sandy slope, the pain in my gut forgotten. The whine of rotor blades was definitely coming closer.

  The tuft of grass I was pulling on suddenly loosened, sending me cascading down for a meter or two before I managed to dig my feet into the sand. Crudmucking world. I wanted to run, to flail my way upward like the Syndic transport had done only a day before. The sand wouldn't hold for it. Instead, I crawled like a cold-slow lizard, gently putting pressure on my hands and feet. A void-loving long time later, which probably was no more than a dozen seconds, I managed to poke my eyes above the rim of the gorge, my camouflage cloak turning my head into just another tuft of dry grass.

  I hoped.

  Two black, planetary quadcopters headed toward us, their four rotating propellers cutting air and shoving it downward for thrust. Munging way to fly. Cheap, though, and effective enough. Each quadcopter carried two men in black uniforms in an enclosed canopy, and a light rotary cannon beneath their feet. I gave them the evil eye. It didn't do crud.

  I thought to hide, then remembered the Knife's warning about the defense grid.

  "Void," I said. The Syndics would know I was there.

  If I could have studied the detector, I could have tried to create a shadow ward that worked for it. But there were hundreds of ways to track a man, from the metal he carried to the chemicals in the air he exhaled. Not knowing what to target, my wards would be ineffective.

  But maybe they would think it a false alarm.

  The Knife climbed up the gorge wall to join me. I gave him the evil eye, too. It had the same effect on him as on the Syndics, meaning none at all.

  The quadcopters separated, heading for opposite ends of the gorge. Once they got there, they'd be able to fire down the length, and hiding from one would mean exposing yourself to fire from the other. Not that hiding would help. If they had thermographic scopes, we'd stand out like flares on an asteroid.

  I loosened the strap holding my magerifle to my back, and raised it parallel to the ground, keeping it beneath the edge of the gorge wall.

  The rifle felt good in my hands, as if it belonged there, a long, solid, not too heavy weight. My thumb sought the patterns of the protective wards etched into the outside of the stock. They called to me, the force churning in them close to the surface.

  Some people thought magerifles sentient. I could understand them. Use one, and you created a bond with it, its wards reflecting your mind and will. It drew you, that bond. It wanted to be used.

  It was like a drug, a heavy, heady belonging, a feeling of everything being right, of every force in the universe aligning to serve you.

  "Are you going to shoot that?" the Knife said, conversational like. The right-hand quadcopter had almost made it level with the gorge.

  "Right," I said. I conjured a thread of force, warm with the planet and the life surrounding me, and shoved it into the rifle. No need to aim. It was already pointed in the general direction of the quadcopter.

  Magerifles don't have triggers. You fire them on will alone.

  It fired, an ice-cold yank sucking in my threads, pulling them tight and ripping them outward and forward.

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  The quadcopter ceased to exist. One moment, it was a flying, whining, black machine of death. The next, it was a cloud of polymer and titanium shrapnel, tearing itself to pieces, the two men inside chunks of flesh and blood.

  The Knife swore. I turned the magerifle around, aiming at the second quadcopter. Its pilot tried to bank, turning sharply away, but I cut the machine, and him, with sixteen precise, simultaneous strokes, a controlled razor ward.

  The quadcopter flew apart. I slid down the wall of the gorge, landing in a heap of sand and ripped-away grass at the bottom. Something exploded in the desert above me.

  I had a bad headache. I knew, because black and grey spots danced before my eyes, but I couldn't feel it. Everything was pleasantly numb, sharply focused, infinitely distant and touching close at once. As a child, I'd survived a blood poisoning and associated high fever that had caused me to hallucinate. The aftermath of a rifle ward had that feeling.

  I wanted to fire again.

  Stupid. Stupid, stupid, stupid. I tried dropping the rifle, failed.

  "Crudmunching voidmucker," I hissed, focusing on my left hand, the one that held the center of the rifle, forcing it to open, open...

  The rifle slid from my hands, landed in the sand. My migraine hit me with the force of a crashing corvette and my stomach churned, forcing me to bend and hock up a mouthful of bile.

  "Here, take this," the Knife said, holding out an open bottle of water. I gave him the evil eye, with such intensity that he drew back slightly.

  Then he held out the bottle again.

  "No charge," he said.

  "You knew they would come," I said, not taking the water. To the void with him. I could drink my own crudmucking water.

  "Yes," the Knife said.

  "You don't even have a rifle," I said, the words tearing out of me like a rocket from a missile pack. "You would have gotten us killed."

  "I could have killed you before," he reminded me. It didn't make me happier.

  "Crudmucker," I said. "Keep your munging food. I'm going to find another guide."

  I bent, grabbing the strap to my rifle, and a powerful dizzy spell made me tilt. The Knife steadied me.

  "Get your hand off me," I hissed, using my magerifle as a crutch. The voided thing should have some sort of practical use.

  I still wanted to fire it, to feel the flow of magic, the promise of power. Warm wetness crawled across my upper lip, and I tasted copper.

  Nosebleed. Great. I stumbled away up the gorge.

  "I had to know," the Knife said behind me.

  "Go void yourself," I called back without turning.

  He grabbed me by the shoulder, and I yanked myself forward.

  Crudmucker kicked me behind the knee.

  My legs folded, my boots kicking me in the behind as I landed on the cold sand. Not comfortable in the least. The Knife's wrinkled, tanned face stared down at me. Too far away to punch.

  "I had to know," he said again. "Every so often, someone comes. Promises a way off the planet, or into servitude. Usually when there are few sneaks and many diggers. Stirs things up, gets people excited. Then there's a big hunt, and a lot of people die."

  I tried to shrug, only managed to get sand down my neck.

  "Listen," the Knife said, his voice intense. "I've been here fourteen years. Started out as a sneak. Found some people who'd have me. I've seen most of them die. Good people, bad people, hungry people, everyone dies. I'm not going to let them die pointlessly."

  "Meaning?" I said, some of my anger fading.

  "You have a magerifle," he said. "A promise of escape. It screams Syndicate baitman."

  "So why didn't you kill me?" I said. "Your crudmucking knife cut through my wards."

  "Around them," the Knife said. "But it's not important. What's important is that I didn't kill you. Because somewhere, there has to be a way off this planet. You might be it."

  "So you sicked a pair of gunships on me," I said.

  "Syndicate baitmen are affiliates or associates," the Knife said. "Pilots are always full members. An associate kills a full member..." He trailed off, not finishing the sentence. I knew what he meant. Syndics were big on rank, and even bigger on punishment.

  "I had to know," the Knife said.

  "Now you know," I said.

  "Now I know," he confirmed. "Still want to get to City?"

  I thought about it, lying in the cold sand, staring at the dun, cloudy sky, my migraine flashing spots before my eyes. I thought of Hao, of Ade, Darrow, Widen, the female digger with the can, watering her vines down in the Gash. All the other hundreds or thousands of nameless people whose only error had been falling into Syndicate hands. Compared to that, what was a stabbing between friends?

  "Yeah," I said. "Yeah, I still do."

  He held out his water bottle, and I took it.