Part of her wanted to press Ayla for more details about her stay in Thalen. Only a few months ago, anything to do with Queen Junn would have fascinated her. But now Junn’s name filled Crier with revulsion. She couldn’t forget the letter she’d received, her last correspondence with the Bone Eater. Don’t worry about the missing red hen. I took care of her.

Councilmember Reyka—the only member of the Red Council who had ever shown kindness to Crier, who had ever taken her seriously—was dead, and Junn had killed her. Even if she hadn’t raised the blade herself, she’d given the order. Why? Reyka was on their side. Reyka had been working against Kinok. Who killed their own ally?

How could you? she’d thought so many times, lying awake at night, brimming with a hot, prickling emotion she had finally identified as anger.

“You know what I feel like doing?” said Ayla, snapping Crier out of her thoughts.

The familiar gleam of the river was once again visible through the trees up ahead.

“What?” said Crier.

“Taking a bath.”

Ayla ran for the river without looking back. By the time Crier gathered herself enough to follow after, picking her way down the slippery bank, Ayla was already at the edge of the water. She was fully clothed but barefoot, wading in slowly. It was a warm day, but the water would be freezing. Mountain runoff. Crier made her way to a little shelter and sat down, pressing her spine to the curving dirt wall, keeping her eyes firmly on her own feet. Automae were not modest about nudity, but she knew it was often different for humans.

“It’s not too cold,” Ayla called, and Crier glanced up automatically before forcing her eyes back down. “You coming?”

“I . . . I don’t want to—intrude,” Crier said, raising her voice to be heard over the rushing water.

“It’s a river,” Ayla called back. “It doesn’t belong to anyone. Come on, don’t you want to clean off all the blood?”

“I . . . ,” Crier said weakly, but couldn’t think of an excuse that wasn’t I can’t see any part of you without wanting to see more, so instead she just closed her mouth and got to her feet. Ayla was waist-deep in the water now, her pants discarded on the pebbly shore. She was still wearing her shirt. Thank the gods. Crier toed out of her own shoes and waded into the water, focusing on the bite of cold, the shock to her system. She took slow, careful steps, the river bottom slick beneath her feet. Mud and clay and smooth, flat stones, tiny black oyster shells. Each footstep stirred up a cloud of silt in the clear water. She looked up. Ayla had reached the center of the river and was pulling her shirt off over her head. Her back was arched, muscles flexing in her shoulders, and—oh—the tops of her shoulders were dusted with freckles just like her nose. Her spine was a curve Crier wanted to—run her fingers along, fit her palm to; she wanted to press her hand to that soft sun-warm skin, wanted to trace the faint, pockmarked scars scattered across Ayla’s back like points on a map, the remnants of some human illness. Some pox. Where Crier was long and lean, Ayla was smaller, solid, compact, carved from bronze. An illustration from a faerie book, standing there in the sunlit water, tawny brown skin and dark tangled curls.