It was very quiet here.

Crier realized that she could hear the river so clearly because there was no birdsong. It was dusk. There should have been birdsong, sparrows and swallows and little black noonbirds singing to the coming night.

Her skin was prickling again.

But she’d left Rosi far behind. She hadn’t been followed. She would have seen another rider coming over the hills.

Still, Crier tightened her grip on the reins. She and Della reached the bottom of the slope, where the trees thinned and then gave way to the banks of a river, more white trees on the other side. The slow-moving water sparkled in the last rays of sunlight.

“We’ll cross the river,” Crier whispered to Della, nudging her forward. The river was very shallow, the sand and stones at the bottom visible all the way across. They’d cross over and find a place to camp for the night. Crier had no choice. Della had to rest after such a brutal ride.

Della hesitated at the edge of the river, but Crier soothed her, murmuring in her ear, and she stepped into the water.

They were exactly halfway across when the first Automa emerged from the trees.

Crier saw it on the opposite bank, right ahead of her. A fraction of a second later Della went stock-still beneath her.

The Automa looked like Rosi, if Rosi had already died.

It had the same black veins. The same skeletal frame. But it was naked and its skin was sagging off its bones, peeling open in some places to expose the shiny, metallic muscles below. The nerves like golden hairs. The veins like black worms. Its eyes, sunken deep into the sockets, were pure black. As if the pupil had swallowed everything else. Its ink-stained mouth was hanging open, jaw dangling loosely, dislocated.

Crier couldn’t think.

Her mind had gone completely blank.

All she could do was stare at the Automa—was it an Automa, still?—as it picked its way out of the trees and down the riverbank. The thing that had been an Automa once, like her.

Its black eyes were fixed on Crier’s face.

A noise came from behind her, a fall of pebbles into water, and despite herself Crier turned to look. She immediately wished she hadn’t. There was another black-veined Automa on the bank she and Della had just left. It was looking at her too, opening and closing its mouth, like it was trying to say something or—or like it was chewing.

Oh gods.

Crier had no weapon. Even if she did, they were coming at her from both sides of the river. She was trapped in the center, the perfect prey, frozen with terror. She tried to think. Tried to come up with an escape plan. But her brain wasn’t working. All she could think of was—maybe if she and Della ran downstream, following the river—but Della would be slower moving through water, and what if it got suddenly deeper later on?

The Automa in front of her reached the edge of the water. It was barely twenty paces away now. Like Rosi, its movements were jerky, awkward, like it didn’t have full control over its body. Crier tried to think. She was supposed to be brilliant, Designed with inhuman intelligence, why couldn’t she think? The Automa took another step into the water, mouth opening even wider. Too wide, like a snake unhinging its jaw. But then Crier heard a sharp crack, and the Automa twitched hard. It went stiff all over, a puppet with its strings pulled tight, and staggered sideways, letting out a low, rasping noise, wordless and awful. Its body twisted as it fell, and Crier understood why.