“CRIER,” Ayla screamed, voice raw with fear. “CRIER, WAKE UP!”

“You’re dead meat,” the bandit growled, and lunged.

Ayla threw herself backward, swinging the burning branch. It was enough to keep him out of arm’s reach, but it was quickly burning up, now more smoke than flame. “CRIER,” she tried again, but an instant later the bandit knocked the branch out of her hand. He grabbed her wrist, yanking her in. His breath smelled of wine; his skin of horsehide and old, sour sweat.

A noise at Ayla’s back, a metallic wrenching.

“You’re dead,” the bandit said again, twisting his grip. The other two were straightening up, wiping their streaming eyes. “Only question is, you wanna die quick or slow?”

“Neither,” said Ayla.

“Slow,” said one of the other two. “Make it hurt. But don’t ruin her, Han. Who knows, maybe she could fetch us some coin. Sell her hair for wigs, her bones for dogs. Her eyes for—”

But he never finished. A thick metal chain struck him across the face. He doubled over.

Crier.

Ayla dared to look back. Crier was listing to one side, favoring her right leg. She was holding her chains like twin whips. Her eyes flicked between Ayla and the bandits, lingering on the bandit with Ayla’s wrist in his grip. Her features darkened with an expression Ayla had never seen on her face before. Mouth twisting, golden eyes narrowed.

“Leave now,” she rasped.

Three drunk men, burly though they were, were no match for her. Crier was artless but furious, weakened but Automa-quick. She darted forward in the span of a blink and lashed out with the chains, this time catching the skeleton bandit across the forehead. He staggered, lurching into one of the others.

Ayla used the moment of distraction to sink her teeth into her captor’s arm. He cursed, rearing back, and she wriggled out of his grip. Grabbed Crier’s sleeve. “Run!”

Crier tossed the chains aside and they ran. Back into the black woods, the cover of darkness, they ran until Crier gasped out, “Can’t hear them anymore.”

Wrist bruised, a nasty stitch in her side throbbing with every breath, Ayla slowed to a stop. She let go of Crier’s sleeve . . . and Crier dropped like a stone into a well, knees hitting the forest floor. “Crier!” Ayla hissed, crouching down beside her. “Please, you have to—”

“Ayla,” Crier breathed.

Ayla nodded, helpless. A thousand different responses on her tongue, none of them right.

“Ayla,” Crier repeated. “Did you know you’re a wanted fugitive?”

Then her eyes rolled back in her head, and she passed out.

How long did it take for an Automa body to heal itself?

Dawn came, the sky shifting from black to deepest blue to the soft color of salt lavender and pale pink. As the sun rose over the treetops, the surface of the river sparkled gold and then white, and Crier slept.

And curled up under the dangling tree roots, knees drawn to her chest, Ayla watched her. Crier’s dark hair was fanned out around her head like a crown of seaweed. There was riverbed clay smeared on her jaw, pale against her skin. Flecks of dirt like freckles on her arms. Dried blood on her cheekbones, her temples, fingerprint-shaped, like she’d touched her wounds and then her face. Clothes stained with muck and blood. Big blooming patches of dried, purplish-brown blood. If she’d been human, she would not have survived whatever drew that much blood. Ayla thought about that for a long time.