Their escape through the furnace level was more fraught than anticipated. “There they are!” Luna heard the woman who had guided them to the Library level yell. She must have had some idea of revenge in her heart all along. Luna wondered if it made a difference that Vich-Clac wasn’t actually there with them.
It didn’t matter now, of course, that the gold-uniformed Magistrates were on their tail. Before they turned and ran, Luna noticed that the pursuers were brandishing pistols in their left hands. They looked like early-model revolvers. She had seen one in a museum once, that she’d been robbing. Killed by a museum piece… didn’t bear thinking about. At least nobody seemed to have hit on automatic weapons yet around here.
“Split!” yelled Vil-Odek, and ran off at a right angle to the others, who stayed together. Bullets ripped through the air, pinged off boiler equipment, crashed into stone and sent up clouds of debris.
Asta was flagging. Glancing around, Luna grabbed her and pulled her into a nook between two machines, in darkness. They held their breath as one as the Magistrates chased past them.
“Odek…” Asta said. “Will he be okay?” She sounded close to tears from the terror and strain after what felt like an age of sedentary research – and she had never been a woman of action before their surprise stay on this planet.
“He’ll be fine,” whispered Luna, “and so will we. Come on,” she pulled Asta out of the nook and between the machinery towards the exit.
Behind them was a horrible crashing sound. Luna turned. In the nook, where they had been standing a moment ago, a huge brazier of burning coals had upturned from above and dumped its cargo.
“What was that?” said Asta in a small voice. Luna pulled her away in grim silence. The pursuers seemed to have let up now, though Vil-Odek was nowhere to be seen. The stairs were, remarkably, unguarded except by one poor soul who was standing at the top of the flight down from the furnace level.
As he clattered his way to the bottom, Asta looked at her lover. She was a harder, meaner beast than she had been when they had landed. The razor edge that had always been under her tongue when she spoke now gleamed frighteningly. Somehow, Asta knew that things had changed inside Luna, whether she recognised them or not. The gold flecks of circuitry in her eyes now gave them an inhuman yellowish tone.
The guard hit bottom with a crunch and Luna pulled Asta down alongside her, taking the stairs two at a time all the way to the bottom.

Shten had watched the Magistrates enter the building from his vantage point behind a stall opposite, where his heavy cloak made him blend into the filthy stone of the wall.
“Alms for the poor,” he muttered, sticking out a hand as Luna and Asta emerged, breathing hard.
“Just get us out of here,” said Luna.
“Alright,” Shten said, his sideways grin shining out of his hood. “Worth a go. Where’s Odek?”
“On his way,” said Luna. “No time to wait for him.” She wanted nothing so much as to be out of this forsaken city, off this planet, as soon as possible. She strode for the manhole that had led them up into this kind of underworld.
After a second, she turned. “Come on!” she urged, beckoning Asta. Then the door burst open and Vil-Odek burst out, followed by a volley of gunfire.
“Run!” he yelled as people walking by scattered, their hands pressed to their ears.
The run back to the manhole was etched into Luna’s memory and it wasn’t long before she turned the corner, leading the others behind her –
– to find it being investigated by two torch-bearing Magistrates, their gold uniform glinting in the flickering light. They looked up as she rounded the corner.
“Keep running!” said Luna and carried right on past the alleyway. She glanced over her shoulder. Asta was flagging behind. She had spent the last however-many-months avoiding action.
There was a cart here, with a large snuffling animal harnessed to it. It – the cart, not the animal – was full of round vegetable things that squeaked when Luna threw them out onto the muddy street. She helped Asta into the cart, ducked her down into the pile, and ushered Odek onboard.
Luna leapt onto the driver’s platform and, after a brief fumble to find something resembling reins, contented herself with giving the beast a mighty kick on the rear. It gave a shrill whine of protest, but the desired effect was imparted, as the animal began to carry them away from the Magistrates behind at an incredible speed.

After they blasted through an open checkpoint in the city wall, the vast, towering monument beginning to shrink behind them, Luna finally allowed herself a smile. She turned around to Asta, and they both laughed. Luna turned to Odek, as if to say “Do you know how to drive this thing?” The big man only shrugged.
“They’re following us,” he added matter-of-factly.
“Of course they’re-” said Luna, and then the gravity of what he had said dawned on her. “They’re WHAT?”
As if in answer, the thud of bullets impacting the dirt around them kicked up a cloud of dust that made Luna cough. “Do we have anything we can shoot back?” she managed to hack out when the Magistrates stopped to reload. “What about those vegetable things?”
Odek hefted one in his mighty hand and then tossed it. It sailed through the air and burst on the ground some way in front of the pursuing Magistrates.
“Good start,” Luna said. She turned her attention to the animal in front of her, which seemed to be enjoying the open road too much to slow down. “Hey, whoa! Slow down you dumb animal!” she shouted as Odek hurled another of the turnip-like sprouts, catching one of the Magistrates square in the chest and knocking him off the cart. He rolled, stopped, and lay there, groaning and regretting his choices, Luna hoped.
“Looks like we’re along for the ride,” she said, turning back to Asta. “Asta, reload our friend here. And don’t stop throwing!”

One more Magistrate fell, then another. At last they were down to their last of the turnip things. Only one of the Magistrates was behind them now, riding on the animal he had since unhitched from the cart. Odek winced as he watched the man bounce.
“Put him out of his misery, big man,” said Luna. Asta tossed him a turnip, and he wound his hand back like a trebuchet and launched. The vegetable turned over in the air and struck splashily on the top of the Magistrate’s head, impaling itself on the bullet-shaped point of his helmed head. He wavered, and then after a pause so long that Luna began to try and think of something to pray to, he fell, his gun clutched in his hand, and rolled on the dirt road.
Luna whooped victoriously – but it was cut short by the KRAK of one last shot, fired as a last act before he passed out by the felled man. There seemed to be a fatal second to react before the impact. Luna ducked. Vil-Odek dodged. Asta rolled to the side.
The bullet punched through the wooden back of the cart and whizzed into the air where Luna had been. She glanced back and punched the air.
“How d’you like THAT?” she crowed. Then something caught her eye – a flash of red.
On its way skyward, the bullet had carved a deep gash up the side of Asta’s leg.
“Not a lot,” said Asta. “If I’m being honest.” The wound was quickly bandaged using Luna’s (more with thanks to Asta’s guidance) limited medical knowledge, but what they could do was limited heavily by the fact that they were still rattling along on a speeding getaway cart drawn by a maddened animal. Luna knew enough to recognise that it was long enough and deep enough to be a serious infection hazard, but the fact that Asta was still alive after about fifteen minutes had gone by meant it at least hadn’t hit the artery. The animal, which Luna was astonished by the stamina of, was finally beginning to slow down.
“Odek. We need to get her to our ship. We have healing technology there. How soon can we get there by your estimate?”
“In woods I could do it in a day. I’d say across the plains… three, maybe four.”
Luna sighed. “Without food and water?”
“Let me take care of that. ‘As the higher power watches over me, let me watch over you.’”
“Do you really have that whole book memorised?” Luna said. Odek shook his head.
“Only the important parts.”
“It seems like a nice book. The important parts do, anyway.”
The animal had slowed down enough that they would almost be faster walking, so, lifting Asta (who was awake, but pale and not very talkative) between them, they climbed off, mutually tripped over a loose rock, and rolled in the sand like tumbleweeds.