The human’s eyes were open but glazed over. His chin was wet with drool, and his head lolled against Laykis’s shoulder. Gazing back at Eolh. Gazing at nothing.

Maybe his mind is broken? Eolh crowed a chuckling laugh at the thought. Some god. Some savior. Come all this way, through all the ages, only to wake up dead.

“Why do you laugh?” the android asked. Her voice was muffled by the low, curving ceiling. “Is something funny?”

“No. Nothing.”

But it was funny, in a grim sort of way. Here he was, in the foulest, darkest sewer he had ever seen. Miles below the surface of the city. Lost. All because he thought he felt a glimmer of something about this android and her madness.

You’re the mad one, Eolh. You’re the one who keeps falling for hope.

Down here, where the stone arches marched into the darkness and every step was the same as the last, there was no escape from his thoughts.

How many hours had they been walking now? Or has it been days? Each step took them further away from the surface. Each step further from life.

Is that what you think you were doing? A voice—not his own—sloshed in his head. The same old questions, the same old poison runoff from the past. You ran safe, easy jobs, and only when the money ran out. To pay for your next drink and nothing else. Is that what you call “life?” You gods-damned coward.

A while back, they had stumbled on a pile of bodies piled against a rusted iron grate. Avian corpses and redenites and some other species, each with their hands bound and throats slit. The bodies were bloated, probably drifted down with the sludge, and now they swarmed with tiny black insects, and their eyes and tongues had been eaten out.

Other than that, it had been nothing but cold stones and long, dark tunnels. Water dripped, and shadowy things fled before them. Crawling, or writhing, or ducking into the slow-moving stream.

The water that trickled through the cracks in the walls made the stone walkway slick, and slimy mold grew in patches of crimson and black and milk-pale white. In one tunnel, the floors were covered with piles of shaggy, fur-like growth as tall as beach grass. Eolh made the mistake of stepping on it, and the whole room lurched, shooting out spores that fogged the air.

They hurried past that tunnel, trying not to think about it.

Laykis always went first, for her eyes lit the path ahead. Two dim lights rising and falling with each step. She could have increased the brightness of her eyes, but Eolh told her not to.

“We don’t want attention.”

“From who?”

“From what,” he corrected.

She seemed to understand. Unlike most constructs, Laykis didn’t need everything spelled out for her. Not for the first time, Eolh wondered who made her.

The cyrans didn’t have tinkers capable enough, or else they’d have an army of androids. The Historians?

Here, the stone floor had sunken away. Black water collected in the collapsed pockets of stone, and the two of them were careful to skirt the edges of the pools. There was no telling how deep that water went.

Laykis never complained. Even though she carried the human in both arms, even though he was all skin and bone, she never once showed any sign of frustration or exhaustion.

Eolh, on the other hand, was losing his patience. There was no sign of the Sajaahin. No moving city. Of course there’s nothing down here. Why did we listen to a pack of filthy scavengers?

Even the sewer sludge had dried up. In one tunnel, the ceiling had collapsed. Eolh was muttering to himself, cursing as he tried to climb over the rubble, when Laykis pulled on the back of his old vest, almost tearing the cotton.

“Look up,” she said.

The hole in the ceiling went so high up that not even Laykis’s eyes could penetrate its darkness.

Laykis held the human out to Eolh, saying, “Hold him.”

“What are you doing?”

She pushed the human into his arms, and Eolh gasped and sagged under the human’s weight—far heavier than any fledgling of his size should be.

Laykis tested the rubble with the armor plating of her foot, kicking at the loose stones. The floor started to shift as a sinkhole formed in the middle of the tunnel. Mud and ancient filth and fist-sized rocks slid down, pulling more of the floor with it.

Debris clattered and crashed down into the new abyss. The sounds only grew quieter and never seemed to reach the bottom.

The hole was wide enough to reach across the tunnel. Before Eolh could suggest that they turn back and search for another way down, the android pulled the limp form of the human out of his arms and turned toward the hole. For a mad second, he thought she was going to throw his body down the well.

Then she crouched, metal joints shrieking as she went low. And launched herself over the gap. The sandy loam slid under the stones, dropping more of the floor into the hole, but her feet held steady.

Eolh spread his arms out, his wing feathers almost touching the sides of the tunnel. He flapped his wings, feeling a brief gust of air as cold as mountain ice as he passed over the depths below. His talons caught the ragged edge of the gap, sliding on the crumbling grit.

“Good?” she asked.

“Fine. But what about him?” He nodded at the human, whose head lolled with the android’s every movement. “The nanite should have worked. Days ago.”

“Cold sleep is not natural,” Laykis said. “Even in optimal circumstances, it can take a long time for the brain to regain all its functions. I fear this one was under for a very long time.”

“You sure you can keep carrying him?”

“He is light enough. He does not tax my strength.”

All this time, Eolh had been eating the dried scraps he kept in a pouch and the honeytreats he had stolen while the Doctor wasn’t looking. But what keeps her going?

Sentry constructs and chikroids could wander the city for hours, but they always needed to charge. Heavy drudges and some drones could go longer, but only if they went slow. Even the prosthetics that the redenites so loved to use fed off the energy from their warm bodies.

“Android,” he said. “Don’t you need to rest?”

“Do you?”

Eolh sighed. Without the day-and-night cycles, his inner rhythm was thrown off. But he wouldn’t say no to sleep.

They found a spot at the far end of the gently sloping tunnel where two crumbling columns still supported an open archway. Who had built all this? The masonry was ancient, but somehow he doubted it was human-made. Some prehistoric people who had lived in the Cauldron long before the avians, maybe.

Eolh tucked himself into the corner and was about to fall asleep when he felt something soft and itchy pressed against him. Laykis was attempting to tuck the human against Eolh’s huddled form.

“What—”

“Warmth,” she answered. “I believe he needs warmth, and your body gives off more than mine.”

Eolh’s first instinct was to protest. How long since he had been this close to anyone? Then again, the human didn’t count. He was just a cold, unconscious body wrapped in a tattered linen sheet.

“Fine,” Eolh said, rearranging himself so that his side was pressed against the human’s. “But would you quit messing with him?”

She was kneeling and fussing with the ends of the blanket. Doing her best to clean the grime off the human’s slack face.

“Look at him.” She sat back on her heels.

Her eyes scanned down his forehead, where the scar was now a pale pink, half covered by the tight, short curls of his hair. Down the dark, shining skin of his closed eyelids. His lips were parted, and soft breaths lifted his chest, which was covered in an alien skintight fabric blacker than corvani feathers.

Her rapturous gaze never wavered from the human’s face. The flexible—almost organic—metal of her fingers bent as she stroked his cheek.

“He may look like an alien,” she said. “He may look like he comes from another world. But there is nothing in this life that compares to him. Nothing.”

“You sound worse than our priests.”

“Perhaps your priests know more than you think.”

“Yeah,” Eolh crowed derisively. “Like how to steal from fools both rich and poor.”

“There are no gods, Eolh, but the gods themselves.”

“You’re half right. There are no gods. Only thieves and fools.”

“Doubt not, oh Seer, when the truth has been given. Deny not, oh Listener, for even the lowest tide sunders the highest mountain. So it is written.”

Listener. The word caught his ear. He had never told Laykis what he was.

“What is that?” he asked.

“A passage from the Unfinished Book. Passed down by the gods themselves to the First Children.”

Nonsense, Eolh thought. But he had learned a long time ago that arguing with the faithful was a waste of effort. They didn’t listen to reason. Whatever this alien body next to him was, it definitely didn’t belong to a god. Or anything close to one.

So he pulled his cloak tighter around himself and nodded off. In a way, it was peaceful. Up in Lowtown, he had to be careful where he lay his head. Territory changed hands day to day, and not all the gangs were kind to roost squatters.

Something woke him. At first, he thought he had dreamed it.

He opened his eyes and listened. The android had the human curled in her lap, and she was stroking his hair, whispering to him. Not that the human was listening.

“Dim your lights,” Eolh whispered. “Now.”

She looked like she was about to argue when the floor rumbled. Her eyes went dark.

Down the tunnel, there was a scuffling sound. Laykis turned her head, flicking her eyes back on. Illuminating the tunnel in a dull, almost invisible red.

“Look. I see a Sajaahin,” Laykis asked.

Alone? Eolh thought. It was standing at the end of the tunnel.

No, not standing. It was floating. Pale, disfigured feet simply drifted over the sinkhole, robes quivering as it crept closer.

“Android. You have to run.”

The disheveled rags paused. Just out of reach. Eolh could see the Sajaahin’s hands turned black with rot.

Then, three milky-white orbs appeared in the dark.

The orbs blinked.

“RUN!”

Eolh threw himself down the dark tunnel, using his wings to push himself away from it. Laykis was right behind him, the clanging echoes of her feet crashing in his ears.

The walls began to vibrate. Whatever it was growled so low he could feel it in the pit of his stomach. He heard the wet clap of jaws behind them, followed by a gust of putrid-smelling wind. Eolh made the mistake of looking back. Three fangs, each one as long as his arm and sharp as needles.

The thing made another guttural sound behind them, and Eolh could hear its massive scales sliding against the stone walls.

They sprinted, heedless of their direction. Laykis splashed through the puddles, while Eolh flew over them. And then the floor fell into a sharp, stone ramp slick with algae and black polyps of fungus and running water. Eolh thrust his wings down, rolling in the air and pushing himself out of reach of those snapping jaws.

But Laykis could not fly.

When her feet hit the ramp, she slipped. She clutched the human to her chest as the metal of her heel scraped on stone, grating and sending sparks all the way down into a long, black lake. She could not stop. The android smashed into the still water, breaking apart the layer of white algae.

Construct and human disappeared below the black surface, leaving only ripples and a hole in the algae.

Eolh speared down toward the lake’s edge.

One metal hand burst out of the water and scrabbled at the slick edge of the stone ramp, fingers digging into the algae-covered bricks. She pulled herself halfway up, and with her other hand, she shoved the human out of the water. He was soaked, and his linen rags had fallen off him.

And his eyes were open. Glowing that white-blue glow.

“Take him!” she said, struggling to hold herself above the water. “Guard him!”

“Grab my hand—”

“It has to be you. On the Guardian’s wings, the Savior finds the city below. It has to be you.”

“What? Just grab my hand! I’ve got you—”

The beast was sitting at the top of the ramp. It inhaled their scent and let out another rumbling, pendulous growl that seemed to warp the air.

Her digital voice rippled with burning urgency. “Shut up and take him!”

Eolh had never heard a construct command anyone before.

He reached out and let Laykis push the human into his hands. Behind, Eolh could hear the wet, leathery slithering as the beast slid down the ramp, bony claws tearing at the stones.

Laykis’s eyes flashed, brilliant white, illuminating every rock and every slime-covered brick in this cavernous place. Eolh could see the fangs of the beast in full—glass-colored things as slender as spears, though he had no doubts they would rip through flesh and metal all the same.

Laykis cupped her newly freed hand to her eye socket. She plucked her eye out, still glowing brighter than any lantern, and handed it to Eolh.

“My debt. Use it to light your way. Go.”

He needed his arms to fly, so he picked up the eye with his beak. Then, Eolh sank his talons into the human’s cloak, trying not to dig too deeply. The human was fleshy and soft, and Eolh was afraid of piercing his skin. When he had him, Eolh flapped his winged arms and launched them over the black lake.

The beast hurtled down the ramp, all momentum and muscle. Laykis screamed a challenge at it, trying to hold its focus. A sound like a hundred horns emitted from her, loud and haunting. The beast collided with her, its mouth open and dripping, ready to swallow her whole.

Together, beast and machine crashed into that black water. Leaving a rippling hole in the pale algae.

And then, the water was still.

He had nowhere to fly but forward.

Later, Eolh’s mind would run through that moment again and again. He would think about all the ways the android might have escaped. But she had not been thinking of herself. Only of saving the human.

And me.

When they were running, she could have grabbed his tail feathers and thrown him back into the beast’s mouth. When they were falling down the ramp, she could have clung to his talons. She could have left him in the dark.

It’s what he would’ve done.

You gods-damned coward.

But Eolh was out of time. And out of breath. And the only thing he could think about right now was keeping them above the water.

The human was getting heavy. Every flap of Eolh’s wings brought them another inch closer to the water’s surface. The lake of algae seemed to go on forever, and the android’s eye could only pierce so much darkness.

It was all Eolh could do to keep flying. He did not dare to think. He refused to question: What if I can’t make it?

Eolh’s lungs were screaming for air. All he could do was throw his wings down, his body up, again and again, until—by the gods—he saw a platform rising out of the water.

He threw the human forward and then skidded on the smooth concrete after him. Pristine. Uncracked. Eolh collapsed on his back, his wings pressed against the cold stone as he gasped for breath, desperate to fill his lungs with air.

Something was wrong with the walls.

They’re glowing.

He blinked.

Why are they glowing?

When Eolh finally had the strength to sit up, he found himself eye to eye with the human, whose eyes shone bright, the same blue-white as the walls.

And when the human spoke, his voice was pure and effortless, as if this was what all voices were meant to sound like.

The human said, “What are you?”