A boy who carries a dagger on his hip. The sunlight catches it, reminds me of how she used to flip her weapon across the tops of her fingers.
We pass by one of the steam towers, and I swear I can actually hear her voice in my head.
You can kiss my ass, Zephyr James.
Stars, I miss her so much it hurts. It wasn’t supposed to end up this way. We were supposed to be together and free, and now the Leeches could be doing anything to her.
I clench my fists and shove her face from my mind. It doesn’t do anything but piss me off right now, because a part of me hates her for what she did. The other part loves her even more.
And sometimes, love really sucks.
“There,” Rhone says when we reach the edge of the Graveyard. It’s not much, an old hunk of metal sticking out of the trash pile like an arm, but it’s sharp. We could shape it into a weapon, something Rhone is good at. He can turn anything useless into something lethal.
And the Gravers like lethal things.
We take it, spend a while searching for a few more bits and pieces.
In a few hours’ time, Rhone has fastened a blade. He whirls it in his hand, slices the air with it.
“Not bad,” I say.
“Genius, actually,” Rhone corrects me. “Let’s go dig up some Gravers.”
They usually only come out at night. Unless you’re crazy enough to summon them, and Dex is the perfect sort of crazy.
We’re in the middle of the Graveyard, by one of the steam towers. Dex stands in front of me and Rhone, holding the new blade high over her head.
“Gravers! Come out, come out, wherever you are,” Dex says, in a singsongy voice. It makes me shiver, feel like there are bugs crawling under my skin.
“I don’t like this,” I whisper. “What if they just . . . kill us?”
“They know things,” Rhone tells me. His fists are clenched, and he looks side to side, staring into the alleys of trash. “We’re running out of time. We need to do something drastic.”
“Attacking the Leech Compound wasn’t drastic enough?” I say.
“Just shut your mouth and keep your eyes open, Zero.”
While we wait, there’s a buzzing overhead. A black orb comes into view, floating overhead, like a bird without wings.
“Cam!” Dex shouts.
We all dive for cover, bury ourselves in the trash, cover ourselves with whatever we can find. I play dead, a body lying facedown, my hand over my Ward Mark on my neck, a bold, black X.
I can hear the whirr of the Cam as it spins in place, recording. The Leeches started sending them out only hours after we attacked their Headquarters.
They’re looking for Lark. For the Resistance. For me.
They won’t find any of us.
Finally, the Cam disappears, soars away into the outer parts of the Graveyard. We come out of hiding, regroup together in a cluster. I rub dirt from my eyes, and when I turn to look at Dex and Rhone, something catches my attention.
It’s a man only a few feet away.
He wasn’t there before.
His body is covered in the armor of the Gravers. Pieces of trash, woven together to make a breastplate. His long dark hair is laced through with coins and beads, like tokens.
“You called,” the Graver says.
Behind him, two other Gravers emerge from the trash, holding spears made of old metal pipes. They could have been there all along, perfectly disguised, and we never would have noticed them. The Gravers have become one with the trash, wasted parts of the world that they’ve found use for all over again.
“We want to make a trade,” Rhone says. He motions for Dex to hold up the blade. She lifts it high. The sunlight glints off of it, gleams like fire. It’s a good blade. Surely the Gravers will want it. “The blade for information. We’re searching for someone.”
The Graver man laughs, but it comes out more like a wheeze. He is probably in his fifties, but his arms are strong. I bet he could put up a solid fight. “We know who you seek,” he says. “The songbird woman. Lark.”
“You know?” I ask.
Dex giggles. “The Gravers hear everything and watch everything. Sometimes, they talk to me at night.”
Rhone puts a protective hand on her shoulder, then addresses the Graver leader. “Do you know where Lark Woodson is hiding?”
“We can offer more than just a blade,” I say. “We can offer food. Stolen Leech items, when we come across them.”
The Graver points to my good ear, where the Leech earpiece sits. He points to Rhone, too, who has the other part of the pair. “The machines,” he says. “We want them.”
I look at Rhone, raise an eyebrow. He nods. We remove our earpieces and throw them across the gap. They roll to a stop in front of the Graver leader’s feet. His two companions rush forward, scoop them up.
“The blade, too,” the Graver says.
Rhone tosses it.
We wait.
A cloud covers the sun for a second, and in the shadows, the Gravers look even more haunting. I clench my fists, hope for answers.
“We don’t know where Lark hides,” the Graver says.
“What the hell? Then give us our stuff!” Dex takes a step forward, but Rhone pulls her back.
The Graver laughs again, that same horrible wheeze. “You should join us, little one. You would do well to learn patience from the Gravers.” He stares at Dex for too long, before looking back at Rhone and me. “We don’t know where Lark Woodson is. But we have something else, someone else, that might be of interest to you.”
He clicks his teeth, lifts a hand.
The Gravers behind him disappear into the tunnel between two trash mountains. Minutes pass. Finally, they reappear, but this time they aren’t alone. They’re dragging a body between them, one that fights weakly to get away.
“You will find good use for this one,” the Graver leader says. “She thinks she can steal from the Gravers. She is wrong.”
The Gravers hauling the body come closer, until I can see it’s a woman, bound in chains.
Her hair is dark, matted to her head, and when they throw her to the ground, she lets out a horrible whimper that sounds like an animal on the verge of death. The woman’s limbs are too thin, way too weak for fighting. What use could someone like her be to us?
“Who is she?” Rhone asks. “Why would we want her?”
The Gravers laugh, all of them together, and it sounds like the hissing of the cockroaches that scurry among the trash.
“Her face,” the leader says. “Look at her face, and you’ll know.” He clicks his teeth again, and one of his men stoops to one knee. Grabs the prisoner by the chin and forces her to look up.
At first, all I see is the scar. It takes up half of her entire face, the skin to the left of her nose puckering so bad that it makes her look like she came right out of a nightmare. Her left eyes is missing, and part of her hair, closer to that side, has burned away, leaving wrinkled, reddened skin in its place.
“What’s your name?” Rhone asks.
The woman opens her mouth, and when she speaks, her voice is so familiar that it shocks me down to my core.
“Sparrow,” she says. Her one eye meets mine, and I gasp.
It’s gray.
Gray like a storm cloud, gray like an angry sea.
Gray like Meadow’s, and Lark’s, and everyone else in their family. An unmistakable color.
“My name is Sparrow,” the woman says again. She grimaces when she speaks the next words, spits them out like they’re full of poison. “Lark Woodson is my sister.”