The sewer air was cool and wet, and it smelled like it always did only worse.

Corpses dammed the drainage pipes. Most of them had feathers or fur. The imperials’ work on the surface had been productive, and all kinds of scurrying and scrabbling and slithering vermin were feasting down here.

One body was so covered in crabs, jerking and dancing and ripping, Eolh thought the man was still alive.

Where had it all gone wrong?

Not with the human.

No, this had started long before that, back with the old resistance. Nineteen years ago, when the Empire opened the gate for the first time, bearing its gunpowder arms and its old tech warships, the good King’s militia crumpled and fled.

But not Jouri’s crew. The first and only resistance from Gaiam against the Empire.

Eolh had been proud to join. Filled with purpose. With hope. For the first time in his life, Eolh, a lowcaste corvani and common thief, had done the right thing. He and Dorun and Ingeri and all the other Lowtown featherhands, working together on something that mattered. Eolh had schemed with them, had planned the downfall of the conquerors. He ran with them, helped them gather the kindling that would light a revolution.

Until everything went up in flames.

And at the moment they needed him most, only then did Eolh find out how weak and worthless he truly was.

You gods-damned coward.

Well, he was here now. And if he was going to die like a sewer rat, he might as well find a way to make his death mean something. To pay off one last debt.

He walked through the tunnels, for how long he could not say, following the sound of the drums. They were faint against the distant explosions and rumblings from the city above, but he could guess their direction.

Eolh held the android’s eye before him, lighting up the walls and tunnels, the mud and slime and drippings from the ceiling. Every step was another chance for him to put his talons in some new, unpleasant surprise. This deep, he thought he could not get any filthier, but the sewers always found ways to surprise him.

Mud up to his waist, feathers stuck together in greasy, black clumps: this was how Eolh came to the Sajaahin camp. And this was why they screeched at him. They formed a loose wall, trembling and stabbing their spears at him, all their metal and beads clinking fearfully. Guarding their hovering sleighs weighed down with forgotten junk.

He emerged from the shadows with both arms up, a gesture of peace. Showing them his empty hand and his metal hook. The glowlights made it look like a hooked blade.

“Trade,” he said over their slobbering voices. And only that. “Trade.”

The Sajaahin seemed uncertain, but their leader, who wore scrap metal like a Lowtown boss wears his jewels, barked and gestured enthusiastically at Eolh. Explaining something to the others. Gods know what.

The Sajaahin faltered. They lowered their spears, cautious at first, as if they did not quite believe what they were seeing. And then, with eager abandon, they rushed at him, pawing at his clothes and touching his hook and scraping away the filth on his feathers and clothes, searching for something worth trading for. They grasped at him, probing with their hands as much as their voices, trying to figure out what he wanted and what he had to offer.

“I’m looking for a beast that lives down here.”

One of the Sajaahin uttered and coughed a string of syllables up at him. It sounded like a question. It could have meant anything. Do they even understand each other?

Eolh knelt down, and using the dim light of their glow orbs, he began to draw in the floor muck.

First, a huge, malformed head. The mouth was as tall as the tunnels it lurked in. And those razor-thin teeth, made to trap prey in a cage of bone.

One of the Sajaahin hissed. It shook its hood and its bony hands as if to ward off Eolh’s crudely drawn image.

So Eolh sketched a blade being driven into the beast’s skull. He pointed at the blade. And then he pointed at himself.

“Understand? I want to kill it.” Eolh’s hands drifted down to his belt, to pull his knife and show them how he would do it. Only he had lost his knife.

Hells, he thought. Can’t even die the right way.

“I need a blade,” Eolh said. “I can trade.”

This time, the word trade sparked a celebration among the Sajaahin. They rushed off to their cart, babbling excitedly among themselves. They returned, two of them wrestling to carry a long, steel dagger whose guard was forged into two black wings. Surprisingly ornate for sewer trash. Even on the surface, it must’ve fetched quite a price.

Eolh patted his pockets. All his dried meat was gone. And his picks, and his files, and both of his timepieces. But . . .

He still had the eye. Her eye.

But if he traded that, how would he see in the dark?

Torches. Glowlights. They might even give you the whole floating cart for something like this . . .

He couldn’t bear the thought of parting with her eye. Absolutely not. Hated himself more for even thinking of such a thing.

Instead, Eolh unlaced the sleeve of his hook.

The Sajaahin leader’s beads jingled as he touched Eolh’s arm.

“N-n—” It struggled, its voice muffled by that deep, gray hood. It gasped out a single word: “N-n-no.”

And then the leader held out the blade. Urging Eolh to take it.

“For nothing? For nothing at all?”

It coughed three syllables, jabbing its finger at Eolh. “Al-ah-tawk.”

It was from the Old Faith, Eolh knew that much. The Guardian. That’s what it meant.

That’s what she called me too. A pang, something sharper than guilt, stabbed through Eolh’s heart. It was all he could do to stay on his feet.

Once more, the leader pushed the blade toward him. When Eolh took it, the leader bowed so low that the beads and wires and metal necklaces touched the damp floor.

Eolh gritted his beak, swallowing down the feeling of wrongness that was starting to overwhelm him, and bowed back. They gave him, too, a simple piece of leather covered in lines and scratches that denoted the tunnels he should take.

And as his talons scraped through the muck, they watched him go, all of them standing oddly still.

As if this were some great holy moment in their small, unseen lives.

Even with the map, Eolh could not say where he was. Each time he thought he was on the right path, the tunnel would curve where it shouldn’t, or a new hole would open into another path.

Even with Laykis’s eye on the brightest setting, the darkness was suffocating. Drips of water echoed, and so did the scurrying of small creatures. Something moaned in the deep distance, long and mournful. When Eolh paused and listened, it cut short, only to start again on his other side.

Eolh was too worn out to care. If something was out there, and if it found him before he could find it, then fine. He only came down here to take one last good pound of flesh.

He tripped. Fell. And did not hit the ground when he should have. Eolh caught himself on the edge of a hole in the floor and hauled himself out. And when he turned around to illuminate it, a jolt of recognition ran through him.

She stood right there, holding the fledgling human in her arms.

The hole was wider now. Eolh kicked a rock down, listening as it clattered against the sides, echoing forever. Never coming to rest. Just fading further and further away.

And here was the tunnel where that thing had found them. Carrying the corpse of a Sajaahin like bait. How many others had it lured in, just like that? How many had it torn to shreds?

Maybe after this, it’ll use my body the same way.

And here was the ramp that went down into that black lake. He felt the slick algae, or whatever this was, growing all the way up.

His talons slipped. Eolh’s tail feathers smashed on the ramp, and he started to slide. Eolh threw out his hook, catching it on a stone and yanking himself to a stop. His talons were inches from the still, black surface of the water covered in ash-colored algae.

Hard stones bit into his back, and his shoulder sang with pain. He almost pulled it out of its socket. Eolh sat up, groaning.

A splash. Somewhere out in the water.

Eolh inhaled sharply and held his breath. He turned off Laykis’s eye and waited in the pitch black. Listening.

Nothing stirred. Not even the slow, steady drip of water. Only the sound of his pulse beating in his ears.

Eolh turned the eye back on.

The lake was still. All the algae, undisturbed. Along the walls of this subterranean place, the muck and growth had been scraped away by something huge and heavy.

And over there . . . How did I not see that before?

A crude wooden pier stretched out across the water, extending from the far side of the ramp. Each piece of wood was a different cut, a different tree, a different state of rot. Most of the planks were missing, and parts of the pier sagged into the water.

Eolh went to it and tested the first step. Sturdy enough. So was the second. He went as far as he could go, shining his light ahead and behind. Searching for any sign of the beast.

And then he looked below. Into those black waters that were not black at all. With the eye on its brightest setting, he could see deep below the surface. Millions of specks floated in the water, some of them moving. And a whole forest of plants. They were all the same, tall and thin, their spindly stalks rising up from the depths, with razor-thin leaves that twisted and wrapped around each other. But he could not see the bottom.

Deep enough for something large to live down there, he thought.

Eolh came to the end of the pier. He could go back and try to find another way. That would make the most sense. Or he could fly over the water. But he needed both hands to fly, and he didn’t trust his talons to hold the eye without dropping it.

Eolh thumbed off the eye and tucked into one of his pouches. He took a deep breath and closed his own eyes, letting his ears do all the work. Letting his feathers feel the cool touch of the dark. He tensed his legs, and—

CRACK!

The board under his feet split in half and sent him crashing into the lake. A shock of ice water sapped him of his strength. Before he could take flight, he was sinking. Flapping his wings and still sinking. He slashed his hook through the water, trying to catch the pier.

Something slimy touched his talon. Eolh screamed through his closed beak, sending up a storm of bubbles. He kicked, but the slime only wrapped around his leg. The plants’ thin leaves were covered in barbs as long as his finger, and they sank into his feathers. The more he struggled, the more they caught at him, tangling him. He slashed at them with his hook, cutting their stalks in half, only to find himself wrapped in more leaves and barbs. He was sinking, and more of the plants reached up to meet him. Waiting for him to fall, for his breath to run out.

This is how you die?

Pathetic.

His lungs burned. He couldn’t hold it any longer, though his body tried. Eolh opened his beak, gasping for air. But all he got was water. And when he choked and coughed up the water, more poured inside him. Filling him and emptying him.

All you had to do was hunt down that beast, and you couldn’t even do that.

His lungs were crushing in on themselves. But he wouldn’t fight. Not anymore.

Worthless to the very end.

Two black wings fluttered at the edge of his vision. Unfurling. Wrapping over him in a gentle, smothering embrace.

At last.

And there was the light at the end of it all.

Cold and white. And staring up at him.

At long last.

The light blinked.

Just like an eye from the android herself.

But he was still holding her eye, wasn’t he? No, it had fallen out of his pocket, and now it was looking at him.

But I turned it off.

It didn’t matter. The light was warm. It made him feel, for the first time in a long time, that he was not alone. And he was glad, because Eolh did not want to die alone.

A glint of motion. Two hands, made of metal, reached up from the bottom of the lake. Not possible. They grabbed the plants wrapped around Eolh and tore them apart as easily as if the plants were made of sand.

The hands grabbed Eolh and shoved him up. Without thinking, Eolh kicked and broke the surface. He gasped and grabbed the side of the pier before vomiting the lake’s own water back into itself.

Up here, everything was dark, except for the single glowing light at the bottom of the lake. Glinting against a shape made of metal.

It could be no one else. Laykis.