“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.”

If this is true, the Guild knows about every refugee who flees to Earth, something the Agenda is unaware of. But it does explain how easily Valery and Deniel had infiltrated Kincaid’s estate while working as Cormac’s spies. Kincaid might have been the most powerful man on Earth, controlling the vital solar trafficking trade, but he had a weakness for living toys. He collected refugees from Arras for his macabre theater productions. Both Valery and Deniel had sought asylum with Kincaid under false pretenses. Deniel had used his alteration abilities to find a place on the estate, but Valery, my former aesthetician, had become Kincaid’s lover. Deniel had died before he could fulfill Cormac’s orders, unwound by Kincaid’s men, but Valery fooled us long enough to inflict serious damage. It was due to her that I was here now.

When the loophole is complete, we’re separated into groups as an officer barks warnings. Given the circumstances, we have little time to get inside Arras before the loophole begins to collapse.

“Passage will be based on priority clearance,” the officer shouts. “It is our mission to get these priority personnel safely to the surface. If someone tells you to run, run! Remember, the tunnel lacks a permanent rivet to ensure stability. That means you move fast and you move smart.