I listened to Iris pour out everything she knew, had seen, or had heard. The worst was about the food: The kitchen wasn’t filled with body parts just as macabre decoration. Apparently, nothing broke a person down like knowing they were eating Former Cellmate Stew.

I was very glad my sandwich yesterday had appeared to be ham. At least, I hoped it was ham.

Putting that thought firmly to the side, I kept one ear tuned to Iris while I started sorting through the information she’d given me.

The key is gonna be this basement, I thought. It was understandable why they’d put their cells down here: The basement was gross, relatively out of the way; the short ceilings made installing cells easy, and it left the (much nicer) rest of the house for the guards and doctors. But the basement was also, apparently, a rabbit warren of weird little rooms; staircases leading to various floors installed for numerous generations of servants, staff, and fire regs; many with exits to the outside world.

We were in a room with no exit, but apparently it was one of the only ones thus lacking. Iris had noticed that a lot of the other exits had been bricked in, but that didn’t mean they were closed off to someone whose power was still intact… someone like me.

Hopefully, I reminded myself, still cautious.

“So when are the others coming?” Iris whispered, jerking my train of thought up short.

“Pardon?”

“You said we’re getting out. When are the others coming?”

I pursed my lips, trying to figure out what to do. I desperately wanted to tell Iris that this was all a clever ruse cooked up by Team Halfling—that Operation Debut du Shenanigans was in full effect. But I also knew I couldn’t… I couldn’t risk alerting any listening ears to our plans or to their own imminent demise.

So instead of bolstering my friend’s crushed confidence, I made an embarrassed face, hating myself the whole time.

“Well, um, I don’t really know when they’re coming. I’m sure they will come… but we have to bust out as soon as possible.”

Iris looked at me, and my heart nearly broke when I saw her face fall.

“You mean the others aren’t, like, right outside? Just waiting for you to signal?”

“Um… no. Not really. I sort of… ran away. And was captured,” I lied.

Huge tears once again rolled down Iris’s face. “Jane! No! They’re going to kill you! First they’re going to torture you, then they’re going to kill you. We’re never going to escape…”

At that moment I really, really wanted to spill the beans—to tell her that wasn’t going to happen. That I still had my power, that I was chipped, and that we had, maybe, an ally on the inside that was going to help us. But I didn’t trust our environment and, if I was honest, I still didn’t even trust Iris… I’d been reminding myself that she thought I was some sort of plant put there just to torture her.

But the same goes for her.

So instead of comforting her with the truth, I comforted her with the sort of nonsense our captors would want to hear, just in case they were listening, or Iris wasn’t really Iris, or she was so broken she would spy for them. I told her Anyan would find me, that Anyan would come for us… At that she looked up sharply.

“Not Ryu?”

“Well, yeah. He’ll come, too. Ryu will be with Anyan.”

“But you said Anyan would rescue you. Not Ryu. What happened between you two?”

I paused, unable to believe that now, despite everything, she really did want to gossip like we were sitting at the Pig Sty.

Okay, I acknowledged. She really is Iris.

“Um…” I responded. “It’s… complicated?”

Iris smiled then, and my heart nearly broke. It was a tiny, fractured, hesitant smile, and it lasted maybe a millisecond. But it was a smile. And it was truly Iris’s.

Despite everything, she smiled, I thought, marveling at the resilience of these abused women, even as tears welled up in my eyes. But I blinked them back fiercely. Iris didn’t need more grief; she needed to get out of here.

“Yeah, well, you know me… it’s always complicated…”

Iris was about to reply when we had a visitor. As Avery rushed in, she scuttled backward into a corner of her cell and huddled there. He ignored her.

“Your friends have been spotted. They’re close; really close. No one saw them coming, I don’t know how they got here so quickly. This is our chance.”

I nodded, standing. “I have an idea,” I told him as he opened my cell and walked briskly back to the main door.

“Good. So do I. Let’s go…”

I stopped at the door to my cell, realizing that he intended to free only me.

“I’m not leaving without Iris.”

The doctor’s yellow eyes flicked at my friend, huddled in the corner of her cell.

“Not an option. She’s a liability.”

That’s when I just about snapped. I still kept a cap on my magic, just in case, but my voice was so barbed I’m surprised it didn’t cut the good doctor.

“She is not a liability. She is my friend. And a person. And you might be able to treat people like the sadistic fuck you are, but I am not leaving Iris behind!”

The goblin looked at me, then looked at Iris. Finally, he visibly gritted his teeth and headed toward her cell.

“Fine. She comes with. But do not judge me; you have no idea what I’ve been through. I never wanted any of this.” I stared at him mutinously, not believing he was making excuses for his actions.

“You are a part of this. Nothing you do now will ever wipe that stain away.” Realistically, I probably shouldn’t have been condemning the only thing standing between us and freedom, but I was not about to hear how he was a victim.

He stared down at me, his eyes blinking furiously. “You know nothing, halfling. Nothing about my family, about me, or about our politics. I prepare the serum. That is all. I’ve never touched these women otherwise. I made myself too valuable to kill by learning the one thing nobody else knew, and then I disobeyed every direct order except administering those shots.”

“The shots that made your captives vulnerable to everything else that happened to them.”

He flinched. I’d struck home.

“You are right, halfling. And I will have to live with myself. But I also have saved whom I could. Like your friend here… It was my idea to keep her alive, in case you were captured. I came up with putting a fake file on her in all of our remaining labs, just in case. I argued that would hurt you, but nothing would break you like torturing her in front of you.”

I blinked, unable to process. “So I’m supposed to thank you for coming up with a plot that involved torturing my friend in front of me.”

He nodded vehemently. “I thought you’d never be captured! Between that investigator and Anyan Barghest, you were so well protected. I saved her life, dammit.”

I looked between the “doctor” and my friend, her battered, abused figure huddled in the corner of her cell.

“Sorry, but I wouldn’t wait around for a thank-you note. Look what they’ve done to her!”

He frowned. “But she’s alive.”

“That she is. And I intend to keep her that way. So get her out of there. I’m thinking, between the two of us, we can open one of the exits they’ve bricked up down here. It’s on you to take us to one that’s in a relatively unguarded part of the house.”

He blinked at me. I was being very no-nonsense, and even I was impressed by Sergeant Jane.

“Let her out, and let’s go,” I concluded. He nodded and opened Iris’s cell. It took me a bit to coax her out, but she was finally standing next to me, avoiding looking at our captor-turned-liberator.

“We’ll act like I’m taking you upstairs. For treatment,” he amended, his voice guilty. I nodded at his plan. I’d been about to suggest it myself.

“Yes. Oh, and I’d like to add that if you betray us, or try to hurt Iris, I will make sure that my very last act on this earth is to castrate you. Come hell or high water, I will separate you from your man-business. I don’t care how, or if you kill me. If it means me, dead, holding your junk, I’ll take your junk. Got that?”

He nodded, and I could swear I saw his Adam’s apple bob under his scaley green skin.

I just made a man gulp with fear, I realized proudly, not stopping to analyze the fact that I was completely serious about the castration thing.

Knowing Iris depended on me meant just one thing…

Jane True means business.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

I’m taking them upstairs,” the goblin said to the guard posted a few feet away from the white room where we’d been held. I made myself look as small and scared as possible, which wasn’t difficult. Despite all my bravado, I was small and scared. Iris, meanwhile, was equally convincing, clinging to me as she was.

After a few seconds, the guard responded with a nod and let us through. We walked to near the end of the block of stinking cells I’d come through on my way in, but instead of leaving through the stairs up to the kitchen, the goblin turned us left and we walked down a narrow walkway between two cells. At the end of the walkway sat another guard, who appeared to be dozing on the stool he’d set near a wall he could lean against. He waved us through the doorway he was ostensibly protecting, barely bothering to open his eyes.