A crashing, keening cry came from the woods. She felt a blast of air nearby. She clung to the tree and prayed the assassin was too injured to concentrate properly.

Hungry walking trees burst into the sea of wriggling grubs like a sentient tide. Their limbs moaned and creaked. A lashing tendril whipped the tree she hid up on, narrowly missing her face.

The assassin screamed. The air felt heavy. Ghrasia heard bursting trunks. Shattered branches.

The air pressure normalized.

The massive tide of walking trees continued to pour into the homestead, greedily snapping up the grubs with sappy tendrils and dropping them into the toxic bladders that hung from their crowns.

Ghrasia let out a single agonized sob.

She lay there all through the night while the walking trees fed. A few hours before dawn, the walking trees moved on. Ghrasia waited until there was enough light to see by and then gazed down into the wrecked clearing. She saw dozens of trampled grubs and the remains of a bloody, smashed body.

Ghrasia made her way back down the vine. She approached the body hesitantly, until she saw that its entire torso had been mashed in by the feet of the trees. It made her bolder. She stood beside the assassin’s pulverized body. Then she went over to the house and picked up a rock. She wanted to mash his face in. His yellow eyes, shot through with blood now, stared blankly out at the tree she had spent the night in.

She lowered the rock. If she mutilated him now, was she any better than him?

Ghrasia looked back up at the house. The topmost house had burned down to its foundation in the night. The bonsa tree it clung to had fared much better. It was scorched and the nearest leaves had turned black, but the fire had burned itself out after that.

She made the painful walk back up into the second house, the one with the cages. She opened the door and held her breath.

The sparrows were still alive.

Ahkio was speaking with Talisa, clan leader of Clan Raona, in her private quarters when Caisa burst in.

“Ghrasia Madah to see you, Kai.”

“Where has she been?” Ahkio said. He half expected to hear Clan Leader Talisa had shuttered her up in some gaol for two days while she completed her tax-free trading. Ahkio had never seen a clan openly thwart so many national prohibitions.

“You see,” Talisa said, “she’s quite fine. Ghrasia Madah can handle herself quite–”

Ahkio didn’t wait for her to finish. He followed Caisa outside, pulling on his coat as he went. He saw Ghrasia limping into the town square alone. He came up short. She was covered in soot and blood, and there was some kind of… creature following a hundred yards behind her. It almost looked human.

“Ghrasia?” Ahkio said.