Potestas Tower had a detention level. The elevator opened on the second floor onto a guard station behind plexus glass, prison bars, a locked gate and beyond that rows of holding cells that had probably never held anyone before. Funnily enough, there was no guard in the station. The locked gate was going to be a problem, though — but only if anyone saw how Cristo unlocked it.

He had magic and a gun from the boss in the inside pocket of his suit jacket on the right, and in the left pocket he had the gnomon, an ever so much more powerful weapon. Louis's gun was best used as a visual aid, a prop for distraction, and Potestas Tower's magic not at all; he put his hand in his suit jacket inside pocket to grasp the gnomon and the gate clicked open. The security system wouldn't be advanced enough to detect gnomon use.

He slipped inside and past small empty cages, turning a corner that bisected the grid of cells and emerged into an open office where three cells, larger than the tiny cages he passed on the way in, locked away three prisoners behind their bars. The only guard was Stephen Potestas, and Stephen was asleep already in the chair in front of the desk with his brogues up.

Cristo gave Stephen's chair a hard kick, more out of strategic necessity than frustration, he told himself. "Sleeping on the job? Really?"

The prisoners roused and started moving around at the same time Stephen did, as if reanimated from death.

Stephen stammered and had difficulty replying. Finally he said, "I had a late night."

"Have you gotten out of them who bankrolled the job?" Cristo asked.

"No?" said Stephen with a questioning inflection. "I wasn't told to interrogate the prisoners, only to watch them."

"So you only watched them," Cristo said.

"It's not like they can get out," said Stephen. Not unless someone wanted to break them out. The assassins' guns weighed down the desk in front of Stephen, but the weapons were disconnected from the magic router and wouldn't fire. Cristo picked one up and looked at it. It was heavy.

"Well, someone needs to get answers out of them. If you're not going to interrogate—"

Stephen jumped upright without getting out of his seat. "Not without the boss's approval," he said, suddenly the dutiful prison guard.

"Relax, he ordered me to question them. I saved his life, he trusts me. We need to figure out who paid these three to execute this all but suicide mission. I don't have time to wait for you to go find him and ask him—" a call on a communication link would have been instantaneous and wouldn't require Stephen to go anywhere, but he was too groggy from his nap to realize — "Unless you want to leave me alone with the prisoners. Here's a tip: don't leave the stranger alone with the prisoners. Stay and see what answers I get out of them."

Stephen didn't argue; he settled low in his seat again, defused.

In the middle cell, Lien Cassus stood waiting for her interview. She was ready for Cristo's questions, not because she was about to sing for her freedom, but because she was the leader and had their story best rehearsed.

Cristo ignored her and started with Sera Cassus. Vincent watched from the farthest cell. "I'm the first person you've talked to today who can actually have you released. Potestas owes me a favor."

Sera spat on the floor of the cell, maybe as if she didn't expect to have to live in there for long. "He won't let me out, he wants to keep me locked up for all of eternity. In a few hundred years maybe we'll die of boredom. He wants to watch how long I don't rot for."

"Not as bad as he wants to know who sent you," Cristo said, stating the obvious and pretending he didn't know who sent them. "Who hired you?"

"Maybe you can get me out, but you won't. And you won't get Lien too."

Cristo strafed a couple steps toward Vincent's cell to further prod at their not so united front. "What about you? Do you want to sleep in here another night, or are you ready for it all to be over?"

Vincent looked grim. "I slept okay, actually."

"So it's okay, then, that you got caught and no one's coming to break you out—"

"There is no one, just us. Acting of our own volition. Not a part of any big scheme, not on anyone's payroll," said Vincent.

Cristo's reply ignored everything he said and it was entirely for Lien Cassus, not her brother. "You weren't supposed to get caught, the assassination was supposed to be easy, how hard is it to help the old man finish dying when you're handed a gun and he invites you to his party? You're not expendable. Weren't you promised it would go off without a hitch? You were not expecting to see jail time. Eternal jail time, as Sera puts it. Yet here you are. So what do you owe to this guy that you're going to keep your mouth closed?"

Before Vincent could try to answer, Sera broke in with the continuation of what she had claimed, and what they had been telling interrogators all day. "We don't owe anyone anything. I acted on my own and brought in two more shooters, end of story. I'm the one hiring."

Cristo pivoted on his left foot to face her again. "You want me to ask why, but I'm not going to. I was hoping you wouldn't stall and waste time, don't you have places to be? You must have work piling up on your desk." So much was entrusted to her to bring about the movement by sunset.

Even telling the truth would not cause as much damage to the Cassus's prospect of reward as there would be if they didn't contribute to the takeover. She went on urgently with a pretend speech where she pretended to be the leader and pretended that it was her own idea to kill the boss, and it was clear from her desperation to speak that she wanted Cristo to interrogate her. She wanted to get out of this cell, fast, and she was willing to make a trade.

Cristo ignored her and finally moved on to Lien. "Enough confabulation," he said to her. "We need to speed this up. I already know who ordered you to murder the boss, apologies for the act. What I really need to know is who can take me to him. Because he doesn't deserve your continued loyalty."

That made Lien smile. "Great tactic, so knowingly vague. Seriously? Pretend you already know and wait for me to tell you everything?"

"Stephen, I need you to leave the room," said Cristo.

"What?" said Stephen. "What are you talking about, you just told me not to leave the prisoners alone with a stranger."

"I can't continue with you in the room, unfortunately," said Cristo. "I'll come get you when I'm finished."

Stephen stood up, now ready to stand up for himself, and started to speak. That was unfortunate. Cristo pulled Louis Reveur's gun out of his jacket and said, "Go to your father and tell him I said I'd kill you if you didn't leave me alone with the prisoners."

"I'm not—" Stephen started, but two words into his sentence he abandoned it and dashed out of the room. If he was smart he would take a link to his dad and be back in under a minute, but it might take him until he got stuck in the elevator to think of it, in which case he would be back in a little over a minute.

Cristo kept the pistol by his side for extra gravitas. "I know you were hired by Candra Satiri." He spared a look and a sentence for Vincent and Sera: "You can pass on that information to the interrogators without guilt, since I already know. Satiri's orders came from Justin Marius. To hire someone unconnected to his movement, so no one will be able to figure out why you did it until it's far too late. He's on the eve of taking over Constellation, but you three make it look like you have your own motives, perhaps a vendetta against the boss personally? I don't need you to confess, I just need you to know that I know. Do you know how I know?"

Lien shook her head. She looked thoughtful, but she was keeping up so far.

"They're going to wonder how I know too. Satiri, Marius, Nero ... their whole ... let's call it their campaign committee. They're going to wonder how I know, and I'm going to tell them that you told me. Unless you do exactly as I say." Lien shook her head again. She smirked and looked at him like he was a gnat that was bothering her, one she was going to squash the second he got on the same side of the bars as her.

This tactic was a start, but Cristo needed her to admit to something, anything. Just a small admission of defeat, a little act of cooperation that would break her loyalty and snip her puppet strings. And then Cristo could release the prisoner before Stephen Potestas got back.

"I know who's behind it and I know how, for the most part." Her face went blank. "Maybe you can answer the question that's been bothering all of us, though. Who connected you to the solar router? How did you get connected weapons into the party unnoticed?" Lien didn't answer. "I'm not even going to tell Potestas. I just need to know.

"I just need you to tell me. Was it Lady Nova Dasilva?" Lien Cassus had an impressive poker face, and Cristo felt a flutter of hope in his chest that might just be delusion that maybe Nova was in no way involved.

"Or maybe you can tell me what you're doing this for? What did they offer you? Immunity, surely, except in the case where you failed, which is why you're sitting in this cell and they haven't broken you out yet. But what else, money, or status? Did they threaten you?"

Lien cocked her head to the side, as if that last were an insult. Cristo said, "No, they wouldn't dare threaten you. They need you. Or so you think. If you weren't disposable they wouldn't have sent you, Lien, it would have been these two and some other piece of trash they're done with. Did they make you think you were important and this was some kind of victory mission? You'll tell your grandkids one day how you assassinated the boss. Is it like that?"

"Not exactly," said Lien. The willingness to speak was a good sign.

"Tell me what it's like, then, and I'll let you out. But you've only got until Stephen Potestas comes back. I threatened him to get you out, but I swear to you, I won't shoot him, and I won't unlock your cell until you've answered one of my questions. So let's go with the best of them all. Why?"

She ignored him and rolled her eyes. Before repeating the question, Cristo said, "You have maybe twenty seconds. Answer and I'll take you with me." One finger on the gnomon and a link appeared next to him, a mirror-like opening in the middle of the office to where he wanted to go next. "Why? For money? Did he blackmail you? Just say why and I'll take you with me out of here."

Her cold eyes fixated on the gate, through which a fountain she should have recognized — because it was only a block from the Soliara Constellation branch — was burbling and a pigeon was spraying water onto the sidewalk as if the hundred foot pool was his own personal birdbath. Since Cristo already knew everything, Lien had nothing to lose. She cooperated. "I'm not a paid hand and I'm not being blackmailed or threatened. I'm just a supporter. A straightforward devotee to the cause. The boss couldn't be convinced to change his mind, and we found a breach in his security — someone to connect us to the star router. Is that good enough?"

"What cause?" Cristo asked, and Lien hesitated. But Cristo only wanted to know what Sera thought the cause was, and there wasn't time for that now if she wasn't going to spit it out immediately. "Never mind, I'm going to let you out now. And then you're going to walk through the link ahead of me." He brandished the gun he would never fire. "No tricks, all right?" The gun also served as a distraction so that he could touch the gnomon in his coat again with his other hand and use that, not his connection to the boss's router, to tap into the star dial and force the lock mechanism on the cell door to open.

The cell door swung open and the link to downtown waited for Lien to step obediently into. Footsteps crashed down the hall toward them in the prison ward and Lien looked into Cristo's eyes with a look that said she wasn't going anywhere, just to have fun with him for a second, but with a cocky smile and the sound of a few more footfalls she stomped out of the cell and out of Potestas Tower. Cristo followed her out onto the plaza on Frons street and the portal closed behind both of them.

Cristo led the woman past the fountain and up the street, together slipping discreetly into the crowd.

Thank you for reading Stars Rise. Happy weekend!