I move to the main chambers of the apartments. The rooms we're in today are bigger than the one I was in yesterday—probably because Aron's with me now. The ceiling is high and arched, with triangular glass windows near the top of the ceiling to let light in. Everything sparkles, and the furniture is artsy and delicate and utterly useless. I have no doubt that it'd all shatter into a million tiny pieces unusable for weaponry, or she wouldn't have left them. I still grab one of the chairs and try to break it against the wall anyhow, just because I'm stubborn like that.

Of course it doesn't break. I turn to Aron and gesture at the feather-light chair in my arms. "Can you break this? Maybe we can make weapons out of it."

He grunts and moves to my side. With one swing, Aron's able to shatter it against the wall, and then we're surrounded by nothing but tiny glass shards, none large enough to use as a knife. Figures. Tadekha's thought of pretty much everything, damn it.

"Shall I break anything else for your tantrum?" Aron inquires, and I resist the urge to shoot him the bird.

"Let me think," I tell him, pacing the room—and now avoiding the area with glass shards. I've got nothing but a boatload of towels and a bed and…I turn and stare out the window that Aron's been so fascinated with. Oh. In the movies, someone would make a rope ladder and climb their way out of captivity.

I race forward, pushing past Aron's big body to stare out the window. Immediately, I get dizzy at how high up we are. Jesus. "How high up do you think we are? One hundred feet? Two?"

"Feet?" He frowns at me. "You measure your feet?"

He really is a teeth-grittingly infuriating man. I snap my fingers in front of his face. "Focus, big guy. What's the unit of measurement in this crazy world? Feet? Meters? Leagues? Lengths? What?"

"How should I know? I am a god, not some fool tradesman."

I groan. "You really are impossible sometimes." I lean over the window and stare down at the ground below. It's more of the desolate waste of the Dirtlands, nothing but rock and dirt and more dirt. I notice that the Citadel is floating…no, drifting like a cloud. In the distance, there's a rocky outcropping that looks a little higher than the rest of the surroundings. All right, then. That's what we aim for, provided I'm not out of my ever-loving mind in thinking we might be able to reach this with a rope ladder. I look around the room, then push past Aron, racing toward the bathroom once more.

"What are you doing?" he demands.

I ignore him, grabbing one of the cakes of soap and returning to the window. I lean over, gazing below, and then carefully drop the soap, trying to count the seconds it takes for it to hit the ground below.

One.

Two.

Three.

Four.

Five.

Six.

The soap disappears into a puff of dirt far below.

Okay, six. So that's…what, sixty feet? Six hundred? I don't know enough about physics to make my experiment work. All I know is that we're up high and we need a way down, and this is it. I take a deep breath, wondering if this is going to kill us. Then I think about how Tadekha turned last night into an orgy. Yeah, fuck that bitch. I'm not staying here. I glance down again. Two hundred feet is a good estimate, I decide. Surely between all the towels and blankets I can make enough rope to cover that length. I slap the windowsill as if to put an exclamation point on my plan and turn away. "Time to get to work."

"What do you mean?" Aron follows behind me as I head to the bathroom and grab armfuls of fluffy towels, hauling them out to the bed. "What are you doing?"

"I'm making a rope ladder so we can climb down."

He snorts with derision.

"Oh, I'm sorry, did you have a better plan?" I haul the linens onto the bed and then go back for the second armload. I wish there were more, but my second armload is pretty paltry. That's all right, though. I'll make it work. I can rip the towels into strips. Same with the bed linens. It doesn't have to be the best-looking rope. It just has to be long enough and sturdy enough to hold my weight.

He crosses his arms and watches me as I sit down on the bed with piles and piles of towels. I grab the first one and begin to rip it in half. Or, I try to. Fabric doesn't tear as easily as I expect, and I struggle with it for a painfully humiliating moment before giving up and using my damn teeth. That works, and I'm able to rip it in half and then tie the two together. "This is your plan," he states, as if I've lost my mind. “A rope.”

"Yup."

"You do realize we are quite high up?"

"You said we weren't going to fight the guys in the hallway, right? Because they'd go after me to get to you? So yes, this is my plan. I'm not staying here for Orgy 2.0 and I'm sure not staying to see what other fun ideas she has for us. You said she's your enemy. That's enough for me. We need to get out of here, and this is the only way out. So yes, this is what I'm doing."

He grunts and crosses his arms, watching me as I work. "What do you know of this land?"

"So far? I know it sucks and everyone thinks I'm a tart and all the gods wandering around are assholes, including you. That's all I need to know." I take my frustrations out on the fabric in my hands. Man, it feels really freaking good to rip it into strips. I imagine it as Aron's unhelpful face.

Riiiiiiip. Oh yeah. That's the ticket.

"I know that Aventine is a city that worships me," he says, his voice cutting and blunt.

"I remember that part," I tell him. "I also remember the part where they tried to kill your ass."

"Nevertheless, they pray to me. And in their prayers, they ask for certain things. Lately, they have asked for glory as they mount their attack on the Citadel. It has stripped their lands and bankrupted their people, and so they are mounting an offense against it. They plan on destroying it and everyone inside. And they ask their god for glory as they do so."

I pause. “When is this happening?”

“Soon. Very soon.”

“Today soon?”

He shrugs.

Yeah, okay. Not helpful. I go back to making my rope.

I tear sheet after towel after sheet after towel. When my hands start to ache from tearing, I switch to knotting, and my rope grows by leaps and bounds. It's utterly quiet in the room except for the sound of me working, and my occasional glance over at Aron shows that he hasn't moved from his watchful spot at the window.

Yeah, I guess it'd be too much to ask for him to help his poor lil ol' anchor with, you know, the freaking escape plan.

That's all right, though. A girl wants to get out of here, she'll just do it herself, I reason. If he doesn't like it, he can just stay.

Then I remember that we're stuck together, and my jaw clenches. I'm not going to worry about Aron right now. I'm going to focus on getting out of here.

After a good hour or two of this, I'm starting to run low on strips, my rope covering the bed itself. At his spot at the window, Aron grunts. "They're here. Come and see."

I glance over at him. His mismatched eyes gleam with excitement as he leans out the window to get a better look at something. “See what?”

The smile on his face is brutal. "Aventine and its troops. And they've brought trebuchets."

Trebuchets? I don't know what those are, but a vague memory brings a mental image of catapults. Yeah, that isn't good. I scan the surrounding area. To me, it looks the same as it always does, nothing but dirt and hills and more dirt. It's brown on brown and ugly as sin. The clouds roll through the blue sky, and it looks like a beautiful day. I don't see anything, and I'm just about to say so when something in the distance gleams like metal. I squint, and sure enough, one of the clouds hangs lower than all the others. It's dust kicked up from horses, I realize…or land-hippos. He's right. Someone is coming.