Lothar von Finsterherz felt the Azure Dragon twitch again.

  He didn’t see it. The movement arrived as pressure from within. The chains inside him pulled taut, like someone had struck them with a crowbar. His skull rang. The air in his lungs thickened, as if a weight had settled on his chest.

  The bunk beneath him stopped mattering. Everything was happening inward.

  The dragon yanked at its restraints with stubborn, jerking force. The chains groaned. Only the boy could hear that sound.

  Not today, Lothar told himself. Anything but today.

  He gathered his will the way Wilt Norcutt had taught him, except this wasn’t muscle or pain. This was fear. He took that fear and drove it into the chains, bracing them like a door held shut from the inside.

  The Azure Dragon roared.

  “You worm. You dare keep me bound. Free me.”

  The voice hit straight through his nerves. Finsterherz flinched, but he didn’t give ground.

  “So I can die. Never.”

  “You know,” the dragon said, and it wasn’t a threat, only certainty, “one day I will break out. It is inevitable.”

  The pressure surged again.

  “Yes,” Lothar breathed. “But not today. I’m not in a hurry.”

  He surprised himself with how steady his voice sounded.

  “You forced your way into my soul. Fine. Then you can sit there in chains.”

  The dragon seemed to laugh.

  “How dare you, filth.”

  Then something in Lothar snapped open. Not pain. Power.

  He didn’t understand how it happened. He only lifted his hands, and chains spilled from his palms. Not metal, not light. Something thick and heavy, like polluted force. They surged forward and wrapped the creature tighter than before.

  The dragon lunged. The chains held.

  Lothar felt the strength drain out of him until there was nothing left to give. Like running for a full day without stopping. His legs went soft, his heart hammered, and his head turned hollow.

  Darkness took him.

  When he came back, the first thing he understood was hunger.

  The second was that he’d been out for a long time.

  Finsterherz sat up with effort. Every joint ached. The cabin smelled of stale air and old metal. A small chronometer on the wall confirmed it.

  Four days.

  He staggered into the corridor, then into the galley. Empty. He opened every cabinet.

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  Ration packs. Tins. Hard bread. Even something sweet Goodman had been saving.

  Lothar ate with his hands and barely tasted anything. Swallowing, choking, swallowing again, like his body couldn’t believe the food would keep coming.

  When the hunger finally eased, the female inquisitor stood in the doorway.

  She watched him calmly, but her eyes were sharp.

  “You’re awake,” Wilt said.

  The boy wiped his mouth on his sleeve.

  “Yeah. Slept great.”

  She waited a beat.

  “You wiped out a month of supplies.”

  “A long sleep needs fuel.” He swallowed, throat still raw. “How long was I down.”

  “Four days.” Norcutt’s voice stayed flat. “I got called out. To a colony. Work.”

  “What kind of work.”

  “Money,” she said. “And information.”

  Goodman appeared behind her. He looked like he hadn’t slept in two days. The moment he heard the word money, something in him stirred awake.

  A few hours later they were already coming in to land.

  The planet below was empty and dead. No forests, no ocean, only rock and dust. Gray flats, long cracks, and quarry pits that looked like wounds. The colony sat apart like a stain. Domes, towers, hangars. In daylight, machines crawled through the mines. At night, floodlights burned until the horizon looked bruised.

  Gold and silver came out of those pits in quantities Lothar couldn’t picture. He had no idea where it all went.

  They were met at the gate.

  A handful of guards, quiet and neat. Cameras on the walls. Turrets that tracked without moving. And a man in his fifties wearing a good coat, like he belonged in a comfortable office instead of on the edge of a mine.

  “Stanford Minton,” he said, offering a hand to the female inquisitor. “Head of the Colony.”

  She didn’t take it. She gave a single nod.

  “Captain Goodman,” Stanford said, turning. Then his eyes slid to the young man beside him. “And you.”

  “Lothar,” Goodman said, more warning than introduction.

  Minton led them inside.

  The colony felt like an anthill. Narrow corridors. Metal doors. Placards. People in gray uniforms moving fast and looking away. No one here liked attention.

  The warden brought them into an office that was spacious and clean. Old photographs covered one wall. Men in identical uniforms, one after another, like a family tree made of wardens. On the desk lay papers and a cup of coffee gone cold.

  “So,” Norcutt said, “what do you want from the Inquisition.”

  “I know how you resolved the Nozer conflict,” Stanford said. “Stories about you travel, Lady Inquisitor.”

  “Get to it,” Wilt said.

  “A riot is brewing in the prison,” Minton said. “I need to know who started it.”

  “Why should I waste my time on that,” the female inquisitor asked.

  “Because of money,” Stanford said simply. “Even an inquisitor needs it. A badge doesn’t open every door. A large sum opens most.”

  Goodman turned his head as if he’d misheard, then stared at the desk again so his face wouldn’t betray him.

  “You can hire men in powered armor,” the female inquisitor said.

  “I have,” Minton said. “I don’t trust them either. They might be part of it.”

  She leaned forward.

  “How much.”

  Minton answered without blinking.

  “Three hundred million crowns in gold. And three hundred million in silver.”

  Goodman inhaled so hard his jaw actually slackened. He snapped it shut, but it was too late. Lothar saw it.

  “I’m not a mercenary,” Norcutt said.

  The Head of the Colony nodded as if he’d expected that.

  “That’s why I’ll add something else,” Stanford said. “The location of Adam Graf.”

  For a second the office went quiet. Even the ceiling fan sounded loud.

  Wilt went still. Not from joy. From anger, and something sharper under it.

  “Fine,” Norcutt said. “Deal.”

  “Then listen to the conditions,” Minton began.

  The female inquisitor stood.

  “The conditions are mine,” she said. “You give access. My people don’t get touched. Goodman stays out of the prison. The boy stays with me.”

  Minton’s question came without warmth.

  “That boy. What is he to you.”

  She answered without hesitation.

  “That boy is my tool. And my problem.”

  Something faint moved inside Lothar, like a chain stirring in the dark. As if the dragon, deeper down, had heard the name Graf.

  It didn’t like what it heard.

  Minton rose.

  “I’ll show you the colony,” he said. “Then the prison. You’ll see why I called you. People sit here for years. They have nothing left to lose. If they break, I won’t have a colony. I’ll have a pit.”

  Wilt headed for the door.

  “Then don’t drag your feet,” she said. “Time is working against us.”

  They stepped back into the corridor, and the boy understood something with sudden clarity.

  Finsterherz was in a place built on chains again.

  Only these were real. Iron.

  And iron broke easier than what he carried inside.