Ayla pushed through the heavy wooden doors of the library. As always, the silence felt physical: the heavy, musty quiet of this place, as if the books themselves swallowed all sound. And as always, she headed straight for the spiral staircase. Half the second floor was dedicated to rows of reading chairs and study tables, and that was where Ayla knew she’d find—

Crier.

The smile became impossible to bite back.

Crier was hunched over a table in the far back, dark head bent over a massive book. She didn’t look up as Ayla approached, and didn’t react at all when Ayla hopped onto the table, swinging her legs. In this position, the hems of Ayla’s loose cotton pants rode up, and you could see that one of her legs was human, and the other was Made.

That was how it went if an Automa struck you hard enough to shatter bone and a Midwife was your medic.

That night in the music room, once Crier had left and Ayla was alone with Midwife Jezen, she had been given a choice. “You have to decide,” Jezen had said, touch cool and light on Ayla’s shin. Ayla didn’t remember what happened after this, but she did remember this. “You have to decide. I can save you but you have to tell me yes.”

“What happens if I say no,” Ayla had mumbled, eyes closing. She’d already passed out once, and she could feel the water rising up again.

“You will die. The bone is shattered, it’s broken the skin, there is bone marrow in your bloodstream and it will clot in your veins and kill you. If I take you to the Midwives’ tent right now, right now, Ayla, I can save your life, but you might not like how I do it. You have to decide.”

“Save my damn life,” said Ayla, and passed out.

Jezen had.

So Ayla’s right leg was Made from the knee down.

The first version had been grisly, the result of panic and desperation—a simple apparatus to knit Ayla’s veins together so she didn’t bleed out on the table. But in the weeks after, as Ayla began very slowly to heal, Jezen had dedicated herself to improving the Design of Ayla’s leg. She had worked until it was as complex and seamless as an Automa’s leg, perfectly balanced to hold Ayla’s weight, perfectly connected to her body, as if she had been born like this. When the leg was newbuilt, Jezen had offered to complete the transformation: to cover everything up with freshly woven skin, so it truly would be indiscernible from the rest of Ayla’s body. Ayla had said no. Covering it up felt too much like hiding a battle scar, like pretending nothing had ever happened. She didn’t want to pretend. So her right leg was Made from the knee down, and it looked like what lived just beneath an Automa’s skin. It was a limb of Maker’s iron, gleaming and metallic, nearly unbreakable.