Those crops had become more strained since Charon’s mass die-off; that planet had been a huge source of the Empire’s food. The farmers on Myndalia were trying to pick up some of the slack, but the planet didn’t have enough arable land. What resources they did have? They were sent to the floating palaces or other Tholosian planets. The inhabitants of the Snarl, many of whom worked in the fields, received the same food given to gerulae: gelatinous nutrition made from ground-up bugs, cheap oil, and cheaper grains.

From their hands, the Empire was fed. And the workers were starved of the very crops they helped grow.

Clo fucking hated this place.

Growing up, she’d never known how beautiful Myndalia could be. All she’d ever been there was a small cog in the machine of the Empire—like everyone else who lived in the Snarl. The Oracle couldn’t weave One’s tendrils into the slumrats; they were the last natural-born humans, created within the womb instead of engineered in birthing centers. One’s programming hadn’t taken well within the Snarl. Too many people were left comatose.

After losing too many farmers to programming experimentation, the Empire decided to control those in the Snarl through other means: addiction to drugs supplied by the Empire to keep them “docile to influence.” Meant the slumrats were constantly off their face. Clo’s mother protected her from those drugs. That was the only reason Clo had been able to run away.

Once the natural-borns had all died out, Clo figured the Empire would let the swamp take the Snarl back. It’d sink into the bog as if it had never existed at all, just another forgotten place in an insatiable, vast Empire. The farming would be left to the gerulae.

“Let me do most of the talking once we arrive,” Eris said as they got ready.

Clo lifted a shoulder. “Fine by me.”

Clo watched as Eris made sure everything on her uniform was perfectly in place. It all had to be. Guards were trained to notice the small, imperfect details that betrayed a Novan spy who wasn’t born into the role they were playing.

The threads on Eris’s cuffs were the brown and purple of a middle-ranked Publican. In contrast, Clo’s uniform was a dark gray, embroidered with a silver chain around her own cuffs to mark her as a mechanic.

Over both of their left breasts, right across the heart, were the crossed scythes of the Tholosian crest, the blades dipping down like harpies’ wings. Between them rose the black circle symbolizing that death claimed all in the end. Eris’s hand kept creeping to it, as if she wanted to rip it off. Clo longed to do the same.