The women jerked back, giving a quick and furtive shake of her head. “Can’t have that in here. Not without being scrubbed. Could be carrying anything.”
“It’s dead,” Oren replied shortly. He rapped the metal sphere against one of the wooden tent supports to show it had no response. “You want it or not?”
The woman’s eyes flicked back toward me. I shook my head. “We’ve got nothing else.”
She leaned out, looking this way and that, as if she could somehow see through the throng of people whether there was anyone watching us. Then she snatched the pigeon from Oren’s fingers and retreated into the back of her booth, beginning to dismantle the machine with surprising deftness. More raw materials for jewelry, I guessed.
We hurried off before she could change her mind. As soon as I could gather my wits, I blurted, “Where’d that come from?”
“The prison.” Oren’s words were still clipped, as if spoken with great effort.
“I know that, I mean—how’d you know how to get rid of her?”
“Dominance.” Oren was watching the crowd, eyes darting around, seeking the path of least resistance. “She just wanted to know she’d won, gotten the better of us. Animals do it all the time. A dominant wolf will let a lesser male eat from his kill when he’s done, if the inferior animal shows the proper submissiveness. She didn’t care about letting us go or not, she just wanted to win.”
I stared at him as he moved aside for a cart laden with some kind of textile. My mind raced with questions—what’s a wolf?—but I had no breath to ask. He led the way to the edge of the market, where we dodged behind a stall that had been closed down and abandoned.
The to and fro of the shoppers and vendors continued, but Oren had managed to find the one out-of-the-way pocket in the entire place. I leaned against the rusting wall at my back and tried to catch my breath.
Nix crawled back out of my collar. “I see you have discovered the same information I did.”
“No pixies.”
“No pixies,” Nix agreed. “More kinds of machines than exist in the Institute, but it seems pixies are illegal.”
“Well, that won’t be a problem for you.” My eyes were on Oren, who was crouched behind the counter of the stall, searching underneath it for anything the previous tenant might have left. “You can just change shape to look like some other machine.”
“Perhaps.” The doubt in the machine’s voice dragged my attention away from Oren. “But the number and variety of machines here suggests a facility and ease with technology above average, beyond even most architects. Anyone with that level of familiarity with machines will recognize me for what I am no matter the form I wear.”
I bit my lip. “When we gave her the pigeon, the woman mentioned ‘scrubbing.’ And it didn’t sound like a simple polish. You’ll have to stay hidden as much as you can.”
Nix clicked its wings irritably but said nothing. I chose to take it as agreement.
“What’re you looking for?”
Oren let the curtain fall where he was searching the under-counter storage of the stall. “Something to eat.” He shrugged and straightened, narrowed eyes fixed on the crowd bustling back and forth.
As if reminded of how meager its last meal had been, my stomach gave a desperate lurch. I ignored it. I’d been hungrier than this before. Tansy and I had eaten well before we’d been caught off guard by the shadow people in the city above. I could go a little while longer before I’d really start to falter.
But what about Oren? Aside from the cheese in the tunnel an hour or two ago, when was the last time he ate? He wouldn’t even know himself. I tried not to think about what his last meal as a shadow might have been.
At least that dulled my appetite a bit.
“We need to go to Central Processing.” My voice sounded more certain than I was, enough to get Oren’s attention, and Nix’s too. The pixie’s mechanisms slowed, quieting so it could listen to me.
“We’ll need to have our stories straight, though,” I continued. “Clearly we can’t say we’re Travelers bringing pixies for trade. And if we say anything else, they’ll want to see our goods. Which we don’t have.”
“You could acquire goods.”
“With what?” Oren broke in, turning away from the crowd to pace restlessly. “We’ve got nothing to trade.”
“That stall owner will be busy for some time dismantling that other machine. I don’t think she’s paying much attention to her wares.”
I stared at the pixie. “You want us to steal? How could we possibly get enough to look like traders in our own right without getting caught?”
“That one is nimble,” Nix said, the glowing blue eyes swiveling toward Oren. Its voice was calm as ever, despite my agitation. “You are clever. And I can make a reasonable distraction.”
In the blink of an eye, Nix changed from its bee form into its speedy dragonfly shape, and from there into something like a bird, eyes flashing all the while.
Oren was watching Nix as it changed back into its default pixie form, his gaze thoughtful. Considering. For perhaps the first time ever, he and the machine seemed to be in agreement.
“What? No.” I shook my head, jaw clenching. “It’s far too risky. We’ll be caught. And as soon as they look at us, they’re going to figure out we’re the prisoners who escaped.”
“This is why cities make you weak,” Oren cut in, crouching down next to me and sifting through a handful of the dust and pebbles littering the floor. “Out there, you see an opportunity, you take it. They eat, or you do.”
“You gave me food once upon a time,” I pointed out.
His expression darkened, but he didn’t look up at me. “And you’re saying that wasn’t a mistake?”
I just stood there for a moment, mouth still open. I was so floored that I didn’t notice how the shadows around us changed until Oren lifted his head—and, focusing on something past my shoulder, tensed.
“Told you, told you.” It was the woman from the jewelry stall, her thin lips stretched in a broad, smug smile. “Smugglers. Unregistered. Maybe even Renewables, you don’t know. And they got a pixie.”
Flanking her were two people wearing the uniform of the Eagles: dark grey pants and shirts under vests made of a dark, smoldering red-orange fabric. Their bearing as government enforcers was unmistakable. The taller of the two could’ve very well been Caesar himself, standing there in the moment he betrayed me to the Institute.
“Thank you, ma’am,” said the shorter one, handing the woman something that flashed briefly in the light.
The taller one, the one who reminded me eerily of my oldest brother, reached out for me. Oren snarled, causing the officer to release my shoulder and turn, hand creeping toward something holstered at his waist.
“You, come with us immediately. And bring that monstrosity.”
For a wild moment of panic, I thought he knew Oren’s secret. But then I followed the cop’s gaze and realized that his narrowed eyes were resting on Nix. The pixie. The contraband.
CHAPTER 10
Oren caught my eye, and I shook my head sharply. Fighting wasn’t going to get us out of this. His jaw clenched as he looked away, jerking his shoulder out of the grip of the taller uniformed officer. He moved forward, though, as the uniformed man directed. The crowd parted in front of the officers like a stream around a boulder. People ran to avoid even brushing their sleeves against theirs. I shivered.