Braph, Orinia, and Orin entered Taither an hour or so past midday, beneath a powerful spring sun masked by a layer of cloud. The streets were quiet. Not surprising given that it was around ten days since first the arrival of his automatons. Braph estimated that the affected Kara would have shown signs of weakness within a day of being injected. By now, the first would be dying. He had pondered that his family may arrive to mass panic, but subdued worry was just as feasible. Quaver’s best were dying and, while they may be able to tie the deaths to the arrival of Braph’s machines, they would have no idea what was happening or what they could do about it. Each minute, Braph sensed his own importance grow as the Karan race became incrementally rarer.

  Despite the first grumble from his stomach, Braph led his family down the streets that would take them to Llewella’s memorial garden. His hunger for the pulsating Ajnai would always trump a mere human need to eat.

  Someone screamed perhaps a street away. Another yell. A door slammed. Another scream. Running feet, fast, catching up. A whirring whine.

  The Karan rushed past, blubbering.

  The flying automaton stopped its chase as it drew level with Braph and matched pace with him. Braph waved a dismissive hand at it and brought up his shield, camouflaging his Karanness. The automaton shot off after the fleeing Karan again.

  “Was that one of yours?” Orinia asked. “What do they get out of Kara?”

  “I helped dad build some of them.” Orin skipped to catch up with the adults and beamed at this mother.

  “Indeed you did, son.” A sense of pride washed through Braph and he considered that he might be a good father, having created many an opportunity to bond with his son over the years.

  “These ones don’t suck. They inject.” Orin’s eyes sparkled with the opportunity to tell his mother how clever he was.

  “Aenuk blood? Or Immortal?” Orinia scowled. Confusion rather than anger.

  Braph laughed. She was right. He wouldn’t be so benevolent. Although … “A gift to the world.” He smirked. “The end of Karan violence. The end of war between Quaver and Turhmos.”

  “You are Karan.”

  “A non-violent one.”

  Orinia considered that a moment. Certainly she had never seen him in a fight. She hadn’t attended the battle with Aris, as heavily pregnant as she had been at the time.

  Braph continued. “And a magician, of course. A man about to change the course of our world.” He smiled at her and was surprised to find himself hungry for her praise. “For the better. For our son.”

  She clasped his hand and leaned in for a kiss even as screaming filled the air around them. Braph’s automatons had returned to Quaver.

  Llew entered the kitchen numb. Anya scooped her into a hug while Jonas eased himself into a seat at the table. Elka continued to potter at the kitchen bench.

  “I’m so sorry, Llew.” Anya’s heartfelt effort to comfort landed empty. Of course there was nothing more she could say. Anya hadn’t met Merrid and Ard, could never understand what the world had lost. And she’d had little to do with Hisham. Still, Llew appreciated the effort.

  Released, Llew picked up the water jug, but it was empty. She was about to head for the well with it, when running footsteps sounded outside. What now?

  Alvaro swung the door wide, Rowan puffing behind him.

  “We’ve got a problem.” Alvaro said. “Come. There’s a— thing you have to see.”

  “A thing?”

  Alvaro shook his head. “Just come.”

  Llew queried Rowan, but all he would offer was tightly pressed lips and a shake of the head.

  Llew gave Jonas a grimace and he waved her on. He was sore and tired after the walk back, anyway.

  The first thing Llew noticed when she stepped outside was Karlani almost naked by the well, and becoming more so, peeling the leg of her trousers over her heel, her large, unbound breasts in full view. Ard had spoken of the well being a draw to the farm. If anyone happened by now, it wouldn’t be thirst pulling them in. Not for water, anyway.

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  Rowan made a choking sound.

  Water dripped from Karlani’s hair. Trousers thrown clear, she rubbed at her forearm then reached for the bucket and doused her entire body, dropped the bucket, and scrubbed her palms around her ribs, shoulders, chest. Llew wasn’t sure from their distance, but it looked like Karlani may have been crying. She looked sharply at Alvaro.

  “Not that.” Alvaro scowled at Rowan, then beckoned Llew. “Come.” He led them back to the farm cemetery.

  Alvaro pointed at the ground by what remained of the dirt pile they’d been shoveling over Merrid, Ard’s, and Hisham’s corpses.

  Llew stepped closer. Thin, curved pieces of glass lay amongst the sparse, dry grass and dirt. If fitted together, they might have made a sphere.

  “It came straight for Karlani, like she was what it was looking for,” Alvaro said.

  “It—?” Llew turned to him.

  Rowan bent down and fished something up off the ground. He held up a fine piece of metal. “I’ve never seen such delicate work.”

  Llew felt sick and her body tingled with the desire to put as much distance between herself and the metal … leg – for that was all she could think of it as – as possible. “Braph,” she pushed the name out. “Braph made that.” It could be no one else.

  Llew’s skin crawled with visceral memories of the metallic critters crawling over her as she was tied down in Braph’s lair, piercing her skin, drinking her blood. She wanted to run, vomit. She most definitely did not want to stay anywhere near these finds. But no one else knew what they were looking at. She pressed fingernails into palms. The real sensation forced down those based on memory, helping to keep her panic in check.

  Rowan collected another prize from nearby, another leg, this one jointed and still attached to a couple of tiny cogs.

  Llew took another step back.

  “It flew around her—” Alvaro started.

  “Flew?!” Llew looked everywhere, up, down, spinning around. There would be others. Was it really there for Karlani? Or could Braph have sent it for Llew’s blood? He had her mother, and his son. Could his appetite be so insatiable? Her panic rose, but where could she hide from flying machines?

  “The – I don’t know, bauble? – held some sort of jelly.” Alvaro pulled his knife and crouched to scoop up a sample from the ground. A viscous liquid partially stuck to the blade while excess sloughed back to the dirt. “Karlani swatted it, but the bauble broke, and she got some on her arm. She’s afraid it could be what Jonas has.”

  Llew supposed the critters could inject just as well as suck. Alvaro was saying they could fly now. Llew’s whole body shook. She could think of little worse.

  “It targeted Karlani?”

  “Hm hmm.” Alvaro nodded.

  “Yeah. It didn’t show any interest in us,” Rowan confirmed.

  “It might not have been after Karlani specifically … It flew?” Llew was still struggling with that idea. The crawling bloodsuckers had been bad enough. Her skin tingled and her leg muscles itched to move her somewhere, anywhere, away. But there was no away if those things could fly. “Maybe it was trained to hunt Kara.”

  “Do you think this could be what Jonas has?” Alvaro lifted the knife slightly.

  “I don’t know. It was on the tip of a crossbow bolt; it might be sticky like that.”

  “But Braph is Karan,” Rowan stated. “Why would he send these things out to inject Kara with something that would weaken them?”

  “Braph’s also a magician. He can probably just tell them to leave him be.” Llew sneered, her hatred of the man almost eclipsing her fear of the flying metal creatures.

  “Bastard,” Alvaro said at the same time Rowan murmured, “Genius.”

  Rowan looked up, perhaps sensing Llew’s horror. “Sorry. I know how you feel about him.”

  No. Llew didn’t think he would ever understand.

  “But,” Rowan continued, “the man is a genius.”

  “And he uses that genius to hurt people. If that’s not his intention, at the very least he doesn’t try to avoid it. But this …” Llew waved her hand at the sticky gel Alvaro still balanced on his knife. “That’s got to be intentional. He must be sending them out to target Kara. It’ll devastate the Quaven army. The entire nation.”

  “What does it do to non-Kara?” Alvaro asked. He stepped back, straightening his arm to distance his core from the gel.

  Llew shrugged. “I don’t know. I’m sorry.”

  Rowan, too, took a step back from the knife, and took a second look at the pieces of metal in his palm. There were too many ’ifs’. And if non-Kara could be infected, and if contact were enough, Rowan was already in trouble.