Like all the best plans, this one was simple.

The only thing that worried Eolh was Poire’s part. He kept talking about something called a “script.”

“You mean scripture?” Eolh had asked. “Like, the holy words of the priests?”

“No,” Laykis answered. “A script is a tool, a way to interface with old tech.”

Eolh shrugged. “So it is religious.”

They were both confident, Laykis and the fledge. And not in that half-crazed, delusional kind of certainty. This felt different. True.

Horace’s old haunt was too crowded. The air was thick with the smell of ale and anxious chirping, and a cloud of tobacco smoke filled the room with a dingy haze. Dozens of Lowtown denizens were perched on chairs or crouched on the floor or standing at the back of the room, all squeezed together.

The last gangs of Lowtown were gathered, not to fight or deal, but to listen.

Poire held a construct in both hands, a two-legged chikroid whose glass eyes were smudged with dirt and rust. There were dozens of chikroids on the table behind him, each in a different state of disrepair. But even these stared at Poire, tracking his every step. Worshipful.

“Each construct holds the script,” Poire said. “The script is proximity activated, which means when you get close to the drones—”

“He means the Fangs,” Horace interjected. “When you get close to the Fangs.”

“Right,” Poire said and cleared his throat. “Right. When you bring one of these constructs close to the Fangs, it will transmit the script directly into them.”

Eolh still couldn’t believe how many had shown up.

Once they’d sprung Horace, it had taken the old boss a single night to round up all these people. So many of them refused to leave the burned-out remains of their city. And not all of them were from Lowtown. Midcity folk were here too, side by side with thieves and gang hands.

That alone made it different from last time.

“So.” Poire looked nervously around the room. He kept fiddling with the construct, the rust staining the paler brown of his palms orange. “When you get close to the Fangs, as long as you’re holding one of these, all you have to do is say the commands.”

“The word is ‘Unlock,’” Horace said. “And then you say ‘New user.’ Remember that. Do not forget it.”

“That will give you admin permissions,” Poire said, “and it will erase the last user’s access so no one but you can open the doors or access the controls.”

According to Poire, the Fangs were meant to fly themselves. He said that a single person could control a whole fleet of them, thousands at once. But Eolh wasn’t sure about that.

Either way, the drones had lost their autonomy a long time ago. The cyrans seemed to have installed their own controls inside the drones’ hulls. Which meant anyone could fly a Fang.

“And how are we supposed to do that?” a green-feathered avian said from the back. He was tall and young, and his crest feathers were formed into a kind of mohawk. “Fly the Fangs, that is?”

Horace was waiting for this question. He held up a booklet bound together by old twine. The pages were yellowed and torn but mostly intact. “Stole this a while back. The controls are new tech, but I doubt the bluescales changed much in the last nineteen years.”

He passed it to the first avian sitting cross-legged on the floor. “Look at it, memorize it. The controls seem simple enough, but you won’t get a second chance to learn. First flight, get it right. Just like the first time you left the nest. Well, today, we’re all fledglings. We’ll all learn how to fly together.”

The gathered rebels muttered their agreement and nodded their heads. Something about the way Horace talked to them always seemed to get through. To pull them together.

“If you get caught,” Eolh said, “do not let the imperials get ahold of your construct. Destroy it if you have to. All it takes is a simple slice at the neck wiring.” He gestured to the chikroid Poire was holding. On the table, the other chikroids beeped or quivered and shook back and forth on their metal feet.

“Any questions?” Horace asked.

Hands shot up. Before he could point at one, someone shouted, “What’s a script?”

Another voice said, “How do we know it’ll work?”

They were directed at Poire, but it was Horace who answered.

“Magic from the old gods.” The boss waved his feathered hand. “Don’t have to know how it works, just know that it does.”

It has to, Eolh thought. Otherwise, all of this will come apart.

There were more questions. Details to be covered. Teams to be assigned. They fielded them back and forth for what felt like hours. All the while, Horace kept taking the watch from his pocket and glancing at it.

Finally, he called it.

“Dawn is coming. This is it. This is what we’ve been waiting for. You know the mission; you know your targets. If it shoots at you, you shoot back. And if it looks like a cyran, well. You know what to do.”

He raised his feathered fist into the air. “Fight fire with fire!”

“Burn the Empire!” the whole room roared back, and shouts and cheers and eager squawks shook the ceiling.

Eolh leaned back against the wall, silent, a hundred thoughts swirling through his mind. These would-be fighters and rebels looked so young to him. Some of them were children, almost. Barely out of the nest.

He couldn’t help but think of the old gang. Perth and Sowilo had been standing right here, in this very room, all those years ago. And Jouri, where Horace was now.

Horace leaned in toward Eolh and shouted over the noise, “Don’t be so grim. It’s bad for morale.”

“Were we ever this young? This hopeful?”

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“I think we might’ve been younger.” Horace clapped him on the shoulder. “Time has a way, doesn’t it?”

“I just don’t understand. Where did you find them all?”

“Some of us never gave up. You think I liked running with all my Lowtown thugs? Pitiful bastards. Murderers and wastrels. Been waiting for this chance, Eolh. Me and all these fine young avians and whatnot, we’ve been waiting for someone like you to come up with something like this.” He thumped Eolh on the back, hard, and let out that raucous, cawing laugh of his.

Eolh shook his head. Still thinking.

“What would Jouri say if she saw us now?”

Horace looked him dead in the eye. “She’d say, ‘What took you so gods-damned long?’”

This time, when Horace laughed, Eolh allowed himself a small smirk. It felt good, but . . .

We haven’t done anything yet.

Groups of three and four headed out, carrying constructs between them. By the end of the hour, the whole room was silent and empty. If they pulled this off—if they hijacked all the Fangs and directed their lances at that huge ship in the sky—maybe the Cauldron would still stand tomorrow.

And if they won? What of the Queen?

Some failures can’t be fixed, Eolh thought. But that didn’t stop the echo of her screams crashing through his thoughts.

After the last crew left, Horace grabbed Eolh’s hand and shook.

“Good luck, Listener.”

“Good luck, old boss,” Eolh said.

“It’s good to have you back,” Horace answered. “The real you.”

Eolh said nothing at that, because it was wrong. He wasn’t back. He wasn’t really here at all.

His thoughts were high up and far away. Caught in the depths of the Hanging Palace. Being tortured to death.

But Horace was already gone, and it was just him and the human. Eolh cocked his head at Poire, beckoning him to follow. “Let’s get back to the tower before they start.”

“Eolh.”

“Come on.” Eolh grabbed the last construct by its domed skull. “Let’s get back to the android.”

But Poire didn’t move.

“Eolh,” he said. “We have to help her.”

Eolh closed his eyes, breathing in slowly. Gods, even the mention of her was like a knife in his stomach.

And there would never be a better opportunity. Once the others got into the Fangs—if they got in—the chaos that followed would be a perfect cover for Eolh to slip into the palace unnoticed. Gods, he could do it. If it was just him. If he didn’t have to think about the fledge . . .

All those cyrans be damned. He would really do it.

“I can’t.” Eolh shook his head, his shoulders sagging. “I promised her I would keep you safe. Besides, I don’t even know if she’s still—” He shook his head, unable to finish the thought. The screams. “The only life that matters right now is yours.”

“No,” Poire said firmly. “That can’t be true.”

The human held up a slender arm as brown as the limb of a kapok tree. The liquid metal dripped up his wrist, rivulets of silver exploring his smooth, featherless skin.

“Do you know what this is?”

“You called it armor.”

“And more than that. Eolh, I promise you, I will be fine. I can make my way back to the tower.”

“Poire—”

“No!” he shouted, making the metal under his clothes spike out, tearing a few cuts into his clothes. “I know you want to help her. I know it. And I should’ve listened to you, Eolh. You were right about my home. My people. About everything. But please, this once, I need you to listen to me. If you don’t go after her, then I’m going to walk out this door and turn myself in.”

He stuck out his chin, defiance written across his face.

Eolh clicked his beak shut. His throat was suddenly too thick, and he had to swallow before he could speak. “Well, that doesn’t give me much choice, does it?”

“Nope.”

“Poire.”

“What?”

“Thank you.”

“You better come back. Both of you.”

“I will.” Eolh held up his mechanical hand, flexing the fingers that were already starting to feel like his. “I have to. Haven’t paid off the last of my debt.”

***

As he flew, Eolh’s black feathers were all but invisible against the ceiling of smog rising in the early morning light. Lowtown was a red glow, and even parts of the Midcity were smoldering.

But up in the Highcity, other than the cyran patrols, it was as if nothing had changed. Peaceful, serene, and lush as ever. He thought he could see flames in one of the noble estates, but it was just a bonfire.

A bonfire? Are they celebrating?

Are those cyrans with them?

Eolh felt a twitch, a flicker of rage.

Briefly, he fantasized about grabbing one of the burning embers from the Midcity and dropping it on the roof of the noble’s estate. He let his anger slide. For now.

Eolh did not bother landing on the roof of the palace. This time, he shot straight for the Queen’s balcony, throwing out his arms and catching the wind in his wings. His talons scraped on the smooth stones, and he stopped before hitting the curtains. He peeked inside.

A white-feathered avian was sitting on the corner of the Queen’s huge bed. The wingmaiden.

The first thing he noticed about her was how much worse she looked. Her feathers were molting in great patches, and there was a dried cut on her forehead where she hadn’t bothered to wipe away the blood. Her dress was torn at the hems and in other places too. It turned his stomach to think of what they’d done to her. Why the hells is she still here, then?

She was staring at the wall. Not moving. Her head perfectly still, her eyes huge and black in the dark.

Eolh pulled the curtain aside, inviting what little morning light there was into the room. He made a low, quiet caw at her.

She didn’t respond, so he did it again. She blinked. And turned her head slowly as if just realizing where she was sitting.

“Oh,” she said. “Oh.” But there was so much emotion in that single word that it seemed to shake her whole body. She withered and collapsed into her own hands, sobbing.

This time, Eolh ran to her.

He knelt on the floor in front of her, looking up into her face still hidden by her feathers. Not sure if he should pull her hands away.

“Is the Queen alive?” he asked.

The wingmaiden spread her feathered fingers just enough to look at him.

“There’s too many of them. Too many cyrans.”

“I don’t care.”

She wiped her eyes and looked at him, for real this time. “Come with me.”

Her talons clicked as she brought him over to a small alcove behind the bed. A veil of fabric hid a nook in the stone, and when she pulled it back, Eolh saw there was a shrine hidden in the stone. Hand-sized statues of the eight, surrounded by candles, and four, small glowing orbs that Eolh had never seen before.

The wingmaiden reached behind the shrine, fumbling and catching on something under a stone. She pulled, and part of the wall slid out, revealing a kind of wooden rack.

A secret armory.

There were half-full jars of black powder sitting on the floor, but they didn’t smell like gunpowder. A few dark leathers, no frills nor unnecessary fabric at all, hung on a hook.

And there was the Queen’s carbine, hanging on a rack of its own.

“Take it,” the wingmaiden said. “And take these as well.” She handed him a pair of goggles. They looked nothing like the redenites’ masks.

“Old tech?” Eolh asked.

“I don’t know how they work, but maybe they’ll work for you. She’s in the King’s old parlor. The Magistrate thought it would make her remember”—and here, the wingmaiden’s voice turned to acid—“to remember who she’s supposed to serve.”

Eolh touched her on the shoulder. Trying to comfort her. Not knowing the words. But it seemed enough for her.

She lifted the carbine from the rack and pushed it into his hands. It felt like it was singing at his touch, and when his mechanical finger fell over the trigger, the carbine talked to him with a feminine voice that sounded more like a construct than a xeno.

“Battery: sixty-seven percent. All systems armed.”

Three lights, holograms, appeared above the carbine, hovering in naked space. How the hells?

Each light was a separate icon: a thin line, a narrow triangle, and an open arc.

“What are they?” Eolh asked, though he knew not who he was asking.

But the voice did answer.

“Long-range and armor-piercing,” it said. The thin line began to glow brighter than the others.

“Mid-range, good for multiple targets.” And the thin triangle glowed.

“Close quarters.” Last, the arc came alight.

“Close quarters,” Eolh said, unsure of how this worked. The three lights disappeared, and he blinked his eyes a few times to clear his vision.

“Confirmed.”

And the goggles? How the hells do these work?

Eolh was still struggling with the flexible straps when a sound screamed up from the city.

“A Fang!” the wingmaiden hissed.

It rose through the ceiling of black smoke over the Midcity, screaming in the air as it climbed. The twin prongs at its front crackled, and a beam of light shot up into the sky as if testing its firepower.

Eolh relaxed. “It worked. It’s one of ours.”

Thank the gods, he thought.

No—thank you, Poire.

“Listen,” he said, turning back to the wingmaiden. “We’re taking back the city. You should get out of here.”

She lifted her beak and met his gaze with the fire of her own. “Not until every last one of them is dead. Go.”