“We’ll go,” said Hook.

“What?”

He cracked a smile. “We’ll go with you, Ayla. Like you said, if there’s any chance at all of beating the Scyre at his own sick game . . .” His expression darkened for a moment, smile fading like the sun behind a cloud. “I’m sure you saw the extra pony back at camp.”

Crier’s stomach twisted. “I . . . I did wonder what happened to the rider.”

“The Scyre’s taken countless souls from us,” said Hook, fire in his eyes. “Erren was one of thousands. They were captured; we’ve been searching for them ever since. For them—to find them, to save them—I’d risk walking into a trap. I’d risk just about anything.”

“I know what you mean,” said Crier.

Over the next two days, as the nine of them rode west toward Lake Thea, Crier found herself unable to stop watching the humans.

They were fascinating. It was so obvious, now, how her father’s Traditionalism was just a pale imitation of human culture. Traditionalism was the corpse; this was the living body, bright-eyed and warm. Crier had never before observed how humans acted when there weren’t any Automae around, and the difference in behavior was astounding. The humans were loud. They laughed loudly, spoke loudly, sang as they rode. They joked easily, touched easily, grinned easily, even though Crier knew they had lived through terrible things, knew they feared the Shades, knew they had already lost one, if not more, of their own. She didn’t understand most of their jokes, but once or twice the joke was universal, and she—laughed. The first time it happened, it startled her. This helpless burst of noise. She could not remember the last time she’d laughed. It wasn’t something Automae did.

She didn’t know most of their songs, and for the first day remained silent and just listened. But the next day, as they made their way through flatlands that swelled slowly into hills, Bree pulled her horse up close to Crier’s and poked her on the arm.

“C’mon, Ayla,” she said, wiggling her eyebrows. “Everybody knows this one.”

Crier did know it, actually. It was a shanty, a traveler’s song; she’d once taught herself to play it on the harp. She still remembered the words. Of course. She remembered everything.

Under her breath, she sang along with the next line. “When the wind blows in from the cold white north, when the sunlight fades away . . .”

Bree grinned, settling back into her saddle. She dropped the reins and clapped along, singing loudly. “When the ocean dries and strands me, child, when the blue sky fades to gray—”

“HO-HEY!” Hook whooped from up front.

“When the black crow cries its very last, when the noonbirds lose their song—”

“HO-HEY!”

“When the heavens fall and the hells rise up and the demons rise along—”

“HO-HEY!”

“I’ll stick ’em in the eye and make ’em cry and say, ‘You can’t keep me from home!’”

By the end of it, Crier was singing almost as loudly as the others. And she didn’t know the next song, but she did know the one after that, and the one after that, and sang along. It was becoming easier to play the part of a human. She didn’t have to concentrate so hard on moving, breathing, speaking in the right voice. She ate as much human food as she could stomach and consumed small amounts of heartstone in the dead of night, and she rode with them under a sky like an overturned bowl, and she sang and laughed and wondered if she looked any different, because it felt impossible that her exterior wasn’t changing too.