Balanced on the Blades Edge #2 Deathmaker by Lindsay Buroker Page B

hinges and the wall. But now, with light coming in the window, she squinted to read the label’s small print. And grinned again. Brown Goo Number Three.
    Cas sat up in the hammock, swaying softly and carefully removed the glass cap. She didn’t know if the stuff would burn skin, but she didn’t want to chance it. Remembering how little it had taken to blow out that wall, she tipped the vial ever so slightly, touching the mouth to the chain securing her to the wall. Unfortunately, the goo was dense enough that gravity didn’t do anything to it. She tipped the vial farther. Nothing happened. Tolemek had used a brush, hadn’t he? She hadn’t thought to pat around for one of those during her nocturnal pillaging.
    She eyed the woven strands of the hammock. He had used a special brush, probably something designed to withstand the goo. Well, she could only use what was close to her, which wasn’t much. She capped the vial long enough to pick apart a piece of the hammock, a task that involved liberal use of her teeth. She wondered what her father would think of his sniper-trained daughter, chewing apart hammocks to win her freedom. Enh, what did it matter? He hadn’t talked to her in years.
    Leaning back, Cas plucked a piece of twine from her teeth and dipped it into the goo. It started smoking immediately.
    “Uh oh.”
    She dabbed it against the chain, smearing it all around near the point where it met with her shackle. The rope didn’t burst into flame, but it did disintegrate even as she used it as a brush. She let go before the goo, or anything the goo had touched, could reach her fingers. She hoped it wouldn’t burn a hole through the floor—now wouldn’t that be interesting to explain to the downstairs neighbor? Fortunately, the chain was smoking now too. She held her breath, watching smoke rise and crinkling her nose at the burning hair smell that came with it. Or maybe that was burning hammock.
    Cas only managed about twenty seconds of patience before tugging at the chain. It snapped as if it were made of the weakest thread instead of solid iron.
    “Nice,” she purred, climbing out of the hammock.
    The rope she had dropped had disintegrated, but the goo seemed to have used itself up in the effort, for the floor itself wasn’t smoking. Good. She had much to do before anyone noticed she had freed herself.
    Curious about the diffused light coming through the porthole, Cas padded over to look outside. A dense fog hugged the sky. She pressed her cheek to the hull, peering in both directions. To the right, there was nothing except the bulbous outline of the envelope high overhead, but to the left... she sucked in a breath.
    “What is that ?”
    Nothing less than a small city stretched away beneath the fog. A floating city, she realized, seeing the way the end dropped away, like the runway atop the butte back home.
    “The Roaming Curse’s headquarters.” It had to be. She had heard rumors of a floating station out here above the ocean, but as far as she knew, nobody had ever found it, at least nobody who wasn’t supposed to find it. “Fascinating.” She would have to find a logbook to get the coordinates to take back home. As soon as she figured out how to get back home.
    She walked around Tolemek’s cabin, doing a lot of looking but not much touching. He hadn’t warned her about anything, but he had been assuming she would spend the day chained to the pipe. Last night, when she had felt her way into that case in the dark, she had been worried about booby traps, and that fear hadn’t disappeared entirely. She would prefer a nice pistol, bow, or even a blowgun to his strange concoctions. But she did have a use in mind for the brown goo. She had already stuck the cap on the vial and slipped it back into her underwear. Not the ideal place to store something so caustic, but her prison garb lacked pockets. A Cofah oversight, no doubt.
    “Ah ha,” she murmured after lifting the lid to the clothing trunk. In