An arm, a head, and the half-eaten torso that connected them. That’s all that was left of her.

But for Eolh, it was enough, because the android was alive.

The underside of her torso was completely shredded, and Eolh could not make sense of what spilled out of her: long, hairlike wires wrapped over spinning, spherical motors and delicate sheets of metal that were covered in jagged, raised structures and arcane, geometric symbols.

Eolh had pulled Laykis up from the water and onto the bank of the black lake. He was trying to clean the gunk out of her frame, but he worried that something in her core had broken, because she was only repeating one thing:

“This is not how it should be. This is not . . .”

“You’re all right,” Eolh cupped her cheek in his good hand.

“You should be with him.”

“I’m right here. You’re going to be fine.” He didn’t know if that was true. Some constructs were hardier than others, but this didn’t look good. Her left arm was completely gone, and the mask of her face—already scratched—was gouged with two, deep scars running from scalp to chin. If she’d had a mouth, they would’ve run right through her lips.

“Yes, I will be fine. And that is what’s wrong.” Her head jerked, and the remaining eye in her skull dimmed and flickered. “I should be dead.”

“Yeah, well, so should I.”

“It was written. The Book said . . . were they wrong? But they were so right about everything else.”

They? Eolh thought. Who are they?

Laykis’s neck squelched as she lifted her chin, fixing her eye on Eolh. “Where is he?”

Eolh’s face soured. He sat back on his talons, sinking into the muddy bank. Looking out on the bleak, calm darkness of the water. “I lost him. Again. He wanted nothing to do with me, and I don’t blame him.”

But Laykis’s eye was blazing now. “The Savior is awake? Is that why you came to find me? Did he speak to you? What did he say?”

Eolh’s shoulders sagged with the weight of new failures piled on top of old. He’d failed the fledgling. He’d failed the Queen and all her misplaced trust. They even got Horace, the old corvani boss.

“Listen,” he said. “I didn’t come to find you. Truth is, I came here to die. And maybe kill the beast that did this to you, but I couldn’t even do that.”

“The beast is dead.” Laykis lifted her right arm behind her back and snapped something into place. “And I was meant to die with it.”

“So you are fine?” Eolh’s gaze wandered down her mangled frame. Water was still dripping out of her torso.

“My core remains intact. I have survived worse. But I was meant to die.”

“I’m glad you didn’t,” Eolh started to say, but he choked on the rawness of his feelings. He had to swallow and wipe his eyes before he could get the words out.

Laykis cocked her head, her eye flickering as she did. “Thank you, Guardian.”

Her attention turned to her own body. She stared at her missing limbs and tooth-shredded chassis. Is that how I look? So broken. So dejected. Her single eye flickered as it took in all that she had lost.

Could a machine even mourn? He supposed it was possible. He supposed Laykis was no ordinary machine.

“It was written in the Book. My death. The end of my path was here. I don’t know what this means.”

“Maybe your book is wrong.”

Eolh got the impression that Laykis would’ve frowned if she had a mouth. Her eyes went dim for a long moment. Then her eyes began to glow once more. “Corvani. Can you carry me?”

“I can try. But where?”

“The path has changed, but the destination is ever the same. We must find the Savior.”

“Laykis, you don’t understand. I don’t know where he went, and the Cauldron is huge. He could be anywhere. I don’t even know if he’s still up there.”

Or if he’s still alive.

“It is you who still does not understand, Guardian. Many are the gifts of the Makers. More numerous and wondrous than you yet know.” She cocked her head, such a strange motion to see in a machine. So lifelike.

“Perhaps, this time, I will get to meet him.” And even though she had no mouth, Eolh thought he could hear a smile in her mechanical voice.

For the first time in a long time, Eolh felt like smiling back.

***

For a humanoid made of pure metal, she was lighter than she looked. Eolh meant to carry her on his back, but he was struggling to tie the knots with only one good hand.

Laykis put her hand on his hook. “Take off the hook.”

“What? Why?”

She held up her hand, those smooth, metal fingers glistening in the light of her eye. Eolh could not see how the joints of her fingers bent or if there were any joints at all. Yet her fingers moved as if they were made of flesh and bone.

“My hand will serve you better.”

Only a few weeks ago, he had been eyeballing her body for scrap, trying to weigh how much he could get for selling her. But now . . .

“Laykis,” he started to argue.

“Consider it a gift. Or, if you would prefer, you can see this as payment for getting me out of here alive.”

Her wrist clicked, and something inside came loose, so that her hand simply came free. She helped Eolh detach the hook from his own severed wrist, exposing the magnetic plate embedded in his flesh.

“Think it’ll work?” he asked, as she pressed the severed hand to the plate. It locked into place with a metallic clink, as if it knew exactly where to go. There was a flood of feeling, like the blood had been cut off from the hand for many hours but was starting to flow again.

Impossible. How could he feel with metal?

“Go on,” she said. “Try it.”

Eolh flexed his fingers, meaning only to bend them inward. Laykis’s hand snapped into a fist so quickly that it made an echoing clink!

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“Wow.”

It took him several tries to tie the knots. The first two, he squeezed his fingers too tight, and they severed the strips of cloth. After that, it was easier. He was surprised by how quickly he gained control of the new limb. It felt right. Almost too right.

Eolh finished tying Laykis to his back. The end result was awkward but serviceable, and they made their way up through the tunnels by listening to the slow heartbeat of the drums. When they found that wandering cart and the small tribe of Sajaahin, Eolh was worried they would paw at Laykis’s broken body. He was worried they might try to steal her from him.

Instead, they made a reverent circle around him. Bowing and whispering as Eolh passed.

Up in the city sewers, the stench of death had grown stronger. But at least now Eolh could recognize the way up into the basement of the leaning tower.

The old Doctor was spreading their spores. From the outside of the tower, it would seem as if the whole stone I had been painted a dry orange. Vines stuck out of every window and every crack in the mortar, and flowering polyps were releasing clouds of reproductive dust up into the black, smoke-colored sky.

When Eolh asked, “Why now?” the Doctor only replied, “I can smell . . . a change . . . Something moves the air . . .”

Eolh climbed up to one of the tower’s balconies and propped Laykis up in a chair. He gave back her eye so they could look out at the city together.

And see what had become of Lowtown.

Great black lines carved through the blocks, gouging even through the cobblestone streets. Miles of brick and wood buildings were burning or had already become black, shapeless hills. Stacks of smoke lifted to the sky, and errant flares of light shot into the sky as gas fixtures caught fire and exploded, sending more flames leaping across the streets and alleys.

The smoke over the Midcity was so thick it was hard to see which buildings, if any, still stood. The Midcity’s homes, workhouses, shops, and temples were better constructed than Lowtown’s, but fire was the great equalizer.

Further off, he could see soldiers swarming around the easternmost tower, hundreds of them in a black-and-blue sea of uniforms. Why?

Some last pocket of resistance?

And over there, a shadow slid over the edge of the Cauldron from the cliffs above the Queen’s palace. As silent as a cloud made of gleaming metal. Utility towers and service pipes and the forked tips of weapon emplacements patterned the underside of the hull.

A great, empty ring hollowed out the ship’s center, so that Eolh could see the blue sky on the other side. The vast bulk settled over the Midcity, floating just above the height of the towers. Its shadow left an empty hole of light over the gate.

“What is that thing?” Eolh asked.

“Old tech,” Laykis answered.

“What are we supposed to do against that?”

“There is only one who can help us.”

“And where is he? I tried to go to the Queen to ask for help. But she’s—” He clamped his beak shut and shook his head. “She’s the only one who might know where Poire is.”

“Poire?” Laykis said. “Is that his name? Poire.”

Eolh looked at her. “You didn’t know his name?”

“I did not have time to read the whole Book,” she said, as if that were a perfectly understandable answer.

What book?

“Poire,” she said again. Naming him. Rolling his name around with her mechanical voice. “The Savior Divine is called Poire.”

“How do we find him? Laykis?”

But Laykis’s eyes had gone black, her head fallen back against the wall.

“Laykis?”

Silent. Only the sound of the wind and the roar of far-off fires. She was so quiet, so still, and so dark that Eolh began to feel the panic rising in his gut.

“Hey.” He put the metal hand on her shoulder, shaking her gently. “Android?”

Her eyes switched back to life, blazing with a blue light. “He is coming.”

***

Upon a metal disc, wrapped in a glass cocoon, Poire rose from the depths of the planet and across the width of the caldera. With the Oracle’s help, it was only a matter of trial and error to find his way back up.

The Oracle showed him a map of the elevator’s path, showed him the jagged lines where the shafts caved in or the doors no longer responded.

All the while, Poire kept a close eye on his wrist. His implant was finally powered again and would stay that way as long as it could feed off his thermal and kinetic energies. Of course, the grid was down across the entire caldera. It probably had been for thousands of years.

Better than nothing.

Now, at least, he could talk to the world immediately around him. He could see the whole map of the elevator’s progress, and he could talk to his armor, though it still wouldn’t respond to his commands. Error. You do not have access.

But most importantly, the Oracle folded the script until it was compact enough to be stored in his wrist implant. This was the key to his plan.

“It’s crude code,” the Oracle said. “A brute-force algorithm. But it will work, as long as the cyrans haven’t upgraded the drones’ encryption software.”

“Somehow,” Poire said, “I really doubt they have.”

With a flick of his mind, he could inject the script into almost anything. A control node. A construct. Or even, say, a full fleet of mining drones, if he got close enough.

He hoped it would work. It was hard to trust the Oracle’s word, given that it had clearly lost its mind, but what choice did he have?

When the doors of the elevator opened, Poire felt a flush of relief.

I’ve been here. I know the way.

And this time, he wouldn’t have to wash himself off in sewer water. Just the thought of it turned his stomach.

Poire impulsed a command to his wrist, and an azure light illuminated the darkest part of his forearm. To anyone without ocular upgrades, the light would be almost invisible. But to him, it was a brilliant glow that lit his path through the wet stench and uneven stone.

When Poire opened the door to the basement of the tower, he found two large, black eyes staring at him.

They blinked at each other.

Eolh furrowed his brow feathers. Outraged.

“You gods-damned fool.”

And before Poire could say anything, the corvani unfurled his wings, one metal hand glinting in the gaslight, and threw an arm around Poire.

In the split moment before Eolh wrapped his arms around Poire, an alert chimed in Poire’s mind. It came from the armor, via his wrist.

Threat detected.

No, Poire impulsed as quickly as he could. He’s a friend.

Are you sure you want to override? Confirmed!

And then, Eolh was squeezing the breath out of him, and Poire’s wrist was buzzing again, warning him to increase his oxygen intake.

“Never leave my sight again, you stupid fledgling, or I will drag you to the highest tower and throw you from it myself. Hells, I’m glad to see you.”

The liquid armor, however, was not finished with Eolh. It melted into rivers that ran up Poire’s arms. Tendrils of metal snaked out of his cloak to test Eolh’s feathers, and when metal touched feather, the corvani recoiled with a surprised caw! “What is that?”

“I think it might be alive,” Poire said. “Can’t be sure without the grid because it won’t talk to me. But I don’t think the armor will hurt you.”

“Grid?” Eolh scrunched up his face in confusion. “What’s a grid? And how can armor be alive? No, never mind. Poire, they’re going to destroy the city. And the Queen—” Eolh’s face fell in a way that Poire did not understand. “You have to do something.”

“The imperials said she’s been trying to kill me. They’re calling her a traitor.”

He expected Eolh to lash out in anger. Instead, the corvani slumped back as if a fist had slammed into his gut and knocked the wind from his lungs.

“I’ll kill him,” Eolh hissed through his beak. “The Magistrate has her, Poire. I went up there, I tried, but I couldn’t do anything. I’m useless. You have to—”

Poire hugged the corvani wing, not sure if it was the right thing to do. But the corvani squeezed him back.

And then, he saw the light blazing in the hallway behind Eolh. Eolh glanced over his shoulder. “Come, there’s someone who wants to meet you.”

Eolh led him down the hall, where he could see a room filled with a burning, blue light.

A broken machine was propped up on the bed. No, something more alive than a machine. An android.

“Laykis, this is Poire.”

“Hello, Divine One,” she said, trying to bow her head. Failing. Laykis the android was mangled beyond function, but her core was clearly working. “I have been looking for you for so long. But I did not believe I would ever actually meet you.”

“You know who I am?”

“The Savior Divine.”

His throat was tight, and he had to fight to speak. “Am I what you thought I would be?”

Maybe it was because he was afraid of what she might say. That this ancient being would see him for what he truly was: just a child. No savior at all.

Did that matter now that he had made his choice?

Savior or not, he was going to try. So he changed his mind and held his chin high. Defying her to call him out.

Both of her eyes bloomed with light, with a blue so bright it burned white.

Her voice quavered with a kind of reverent emotion. “I walked through countless worlds and faced many trials, never knowing your name. I have wandered for thousands of years with the impossible hope that I might gaze upon your holy face. Oh, Maker, you are everything I prayed you would be.”

Poire swallowed to clear the thickness from his throat. His eyes were stinging, and he was afraid to wipe them lest all his tears pour out at once.

She couldn’t know it, but it was the nicest thing anyone had ever said to him.

There was so much to be done. He took a deep, steadying breath.

One step, Poire thought. And then another.

“Eolh,” he said slowly. “Laykis. I think I found a way to save the city. But I need help.”

He looked at the two of them: one ragged avian and half of an android.

“A lot of help.”

Eolh shrugged. Laykis watched him intently.

“And I think it might be dangerous. Really dangerous. And I have no idea if it will work—”

Eolh slammed his metal fist into the wooden wall. The wood splintered.

“Stop stalling and tell us your plan, Fledge. Whatever it is, we’re with you.”