The Captain of the Guard called back to the Mayor and told him that the tunnel was empty, and that the wheels of the railcar were so caked with bird pieces that they could not be made to turn again. The only way back into Northside would be to walk there.

The Mayor climbed out the broken window. Vass went with him. She carried the single lantern she had spoken to.

By that lantern light, Rownie saw Graba.

Graba perched on her talons, on the railcar’s roof. She climbed down with one long step, followed by another. She loomed over them with her legs extended, until it seemed that the space of the tunnel was made out of Graba and only existed to suit her purposes.

The Captain of the Guard raised his sword. Graba spoke to him in a low chant. “Your workings are broken. Your sight, it is broken. Your vision is filled with the sight of its breaking.” She said this as though it were already true, and it became true as she said it. Springs sprung and gears shattered in the glass workings of his eyes. He cried out, stumbling, and dropped the sword.

He also dropped his grip on Rownie’s arm. Rownie crept slowly back toward the wreckage of the railcar.

“There, there,” said Graba, as though comforting the Captain. She reached with one talon and knocked him against the tunnel wall. He slid down, his hands covering his broken eyes.

Graba turned to Vass and the Mayor. She looked at Vass as though deciding whether or not she might be edible. “Hello, granddaughter,” she said. “Hello, little rival.”

Vass stood very straight. “Hello, Graba,” she said. Her voice sounded cracked and fragile, but it also sounded brave. “I’m not your grandchild. None of us ever were.”

“But you are,” said Graba. She reached for Vass with one hand to tuck a lock of hair away from her face and behind one ear. The hair fell forward again. “What else could you be? I took you in, all of you, when you had no one else. I made you a home when your elders had drowned or starved or run off without you, abandoning all of you. Who else might you belong to, now, if not your Graba?”

Vass held up her chin. “Thank you for that. But I’m still not your grandchild.”

Graba gave her a long, considering look, and crossed both arms in front of her. “I’m thinking that you may be right in this,” she said, her voice full of wonder and hurt. “You may not be mine any longer. Go on to Northside, then. Make the Mayor keep his promises, and make him suffer if he doesn’t give you that house of your own. You’ve made this choice, so make it a sticky one. No good will come of it if you go wavering—not from him, and not at all from me.”