We walk left, and I'm surprised how quiet Orion actually is. I don't hear him at all, and I know that he's right behind me. I actually stop once we reach the corner that could take us to Salt, and turn to him.

   "How are you doing that?" I ask in a whisper.

    Orion blinks at me. "Doing what?"

     "That quiet thing you do." I gesture to him vaguely, waving my gloved hand around. "I can't hear you at all." 

  He nods like I've just caught up to something the rest of a class knew weeks ago. "That's why they call it hunter's feet. So that no animal, can hear said hunter coming. I'm good at what I do."

   I make a face that says I'm not too pleased with him showing off. He whacks me in the arm for it, and I laugh.

    Then we both stop.

  Because we hear screaming.

  It's faint. Like it's coming through metal walls through an opening the size of a pound. I pinpoint where it's coming from by turning my head, and looking up. The high ceilings of the main hallways stop once we turn into Salt's hallway, and instead change into a square sheet of metal.

   I look to the door opposite Salt's, and walk to it. Orion follows.

    Pressing my ear to the door, I don't hear the screaming anymore. But whimpering, yes. And...crying? If it's a robot, I didn't know robots could cry.

 I glance to Orion to make him back away from Salt's door and come to the one I'm at, and when he's opposite me, I mouth a count down.

   On three, I slam the handle of the door, pushing the wood to swing open. I run in, but it's dark. Lit only by a candle light that's attached to the wall. The draft from the door extinguishes it, plunging us into darkness.

   My eyes don't adjust quickly, and I gesture for Orion to come in and close the door so there isn't so much for them to process. After a moment of apparent darkness, they fit to realize gaps of sunlight streaming in.

    Not through any window or shutters, but through--grates? I look up.

  A grate makes up the ceiling for us, and the floor that they're suspended above for the person in the cage directly over our heads.

   I look through the grate with a quint, and far, far up, I see that the day is streaming through only two small gaps in the stone tower. They're high up, and at this level, I can't see my hand if I hold it far enough away from my face.

    Orion has the idea before I do, and I barely see him and his bow walk to the where the candle had sat. Something like a match strikes against the side of a matchbox, and the little flame of the candle is enough.

    Above us, hanging from a cage that connects to the very highest point of the tower high above, is a robot. Half of the skin on their face is hanging off, and they hold it in place with a red-drenched metal hand.

     What looks like green hair only barely remains in long and dirty strands, and the robot is using it to cover what fallen away parts of their face that their hand can't hide. When they look at me, I see the facial features of a woman.

  "Hello?" Orion says, and though he sounds calming, I see that his hand is hovering above his quiver, ready to take an arrow.

    The reply is short, and comes in another language.

  I glance at Orion. He furrows his eyebrows in confusion.

     "It's Arabic." He tells me. "Why is she speaking in Arabic?"

  He says something to her in their language, and they converse. After a moment, after Orion asks a question, the woman's answer leads her to start breaking down and crying. She starts to mumble to herself in Arabic, and Orion turns to me.

   "Okay, so, Arabic isn't her first language, but she doesn't speak English either. She's originally German, but she heard me talk in Arabic when guards walked her past our room, and thought that must be the language of this entire place." Orion catches himself rambling.

   "From what I can gather, she was making deals with the castle's cook out the back, for poison. That's what she deal in, but some guards saw the exchange, murdered the cook right there on the spot, cut her face in half, and dragged her near-unconscious self up to this cage."

    I make a face. "Wow. Does she know to whom the poison was meant to be given?"

  Orion turns back up to the woman, and asks her in Arabic. The reply is scattered with sobs.

    "The Queen." Orion answers my question. "The poison was meant for the Queen."

      We both raise our eyebrows at the information.

   "Well, things just got interesting." I say. "How about we ask around? If we know--"

     Orion sighs at me. He catches what I'm saying before I even finish saying it. "Oh, no. Don't make me. Aaran, no. No. Stop it." I start to pull his arm. "Aaran. Aaran!"

     Before we exit, I hear him say something in Arabic to the robot in the cage. I hope it's not a promise that we'll get her out. Because I don't know how to do that.

  I drag Orion across the hall, and I knock on Salt's door with my free hand. 

    "Please don't ask him if he wants to build a snowman." Orion says suddenly, and it's a reference I don't understand.

 Salt opens the door like it's an action he hasn't done in years. When he sees me, pulling a guy with a bow and a quiver on his shoulders behind me, he slumps. He glares at me.

    "This better be good. A character was just about to be killed." He says, and steps back to let us in. I hope he's talking about one of his many books. "And it'll be one of you two if you're here to--"

   "Rumor has it, Queen-dear isn't much liked." Orion suddenly says, and pulls himself away from my grip. He kicks the door closed so that it slams.

   Salt glances at me as he sits back in a chair beside a huge pile of books. "For the record, you're better at opening sentences." He says to me, and leans an arm on the rest of the chair to hold his head up. I notice that he's already started to read the same book again, and he's not look at us.

    "You do know that you're next door to one the cages, right?" I ask him, and point through the wall. "There is, literally, somebody right through there, with skin on her face ripped off, her hand nearly totally ripped apart,  whimpering, sobbing because she's so terrified."

   "Of course, because I wouldn't know what that's like." Salt says.

  Oh. Right. I look at his forehead, his hand, and remember how he flinched when the Queen just threatened the cages on him. I suddenly feel a crashing wave of guilt pour on to me.

   I try and change the subject. "Anyway, she told us--"

    "That she was selling poison to the chef, they got caught, chef died, they stuffed her in a cage for a week for attempted assassination." Salt closes his book like he's fed up with being interrupted. "I'm aware. I'm next door to her, what are the chances I hear her screaming before you two?"

   Orion pulls a face. "But she was speaking in Arabic. How did you get anything out of her?"

     "I was made in Germany." Salt explains, and goes to his left wrist. Before I can ask what he's doing, he uses a scalpel to cut through the skin. He peels it back, shoving the glint of metal towards us. I catch the words made in Germany on the gears. "By default, I speak German."

   Orion is pulling a face at his wrist. He looks concerned. "Ew." Is all he says, or manages to say. 

     Salt raises briefly to reach into his back pocket, and his hand comes back with a rubber band. He fastens it around the wrist that's split, and it holds the skin together. He snaps it to see how well it'll hold.

  "I don't have veins." Salt says, and picks up his book again. "I'll have to do a hell of a lot more than drag a scalpel across my wrist for me to die."

    I didn't even know robots could die. Maybe they've just evolved so much that there's a lot everybody doesn't know about them.

   "It's still gross." Orion replies, and Salt makes a face like he doesn't care.

      "Anyway," I announce to get their attention, "the feast tonight was canceled, wasn't it? Could it have been because they didn't want to risk ol' Queenie being assassinated?"

   Salt makes a meaningful glance towards my gun, and Orion's bow. He glances back at me. "That might be it, yes."

 I ignore his snark. "What else has been going on? This place seems more interesting than anybody is letting on."

    "What makes you think I'll tell you?" Salt asks. "You already lied to me once, I wouldn't put it past you to lie again about wanting to kill the Queen."

  So, he's still pissed about that. Great.

     Salt gestures to Orion. "Did you know? You're the only robot among them, and they've been lying to you all this time. Did you know that?"

   Orion hesitates.

   "Are you kidding me!? He's not a robot, either? Oh, great!" Salt throws the book he was reading at us. It hits me in the arm. "I can't tell how much I regret sail towards that island and bringing you all back. I had to convince Burne to sail over! If I was looking out only for myself, I should have let you drown!"

     "You wouldn't have gotten the chance, dear." Orion says, and I'm aware of him pulling an arrow from his quiver beside me.

   "Oh, of course not," Salt sneers. "Because obviously no robot can overpower a human."

   He's done it again. I start to realize that Salt can make people scared and flinch with just words. It's a skill I've never seen anybody else have, and even though the hairs on the back of my neck are standing up, I can't help but marvel at it.

   Orion leans in to me. "We should go." He whispers. I nod.

   "Yeah, thanks for the company." Salt says when Orion opens the door. "But once everyday with a few nice people that don't carry weapons is more my forte."

    In the door, I turn back. "Oh, you know that word Eli said? Asshole? Well, you've just become the definition of it."

    I try not to think on how sad his face looked as I close the door behind me.

  So, what I find out? I run through a list in my head as Orion and I walk back through the hallway. Nobody likes the Queen as much as they let on they do. Assassination is a regular thing here, going by Salt's reaction, and it's not surprising that a feast is canceled because of the risk. 

  And I know that people are scared out of their hard drives of her.

    This place is very interesting--

  My thoughts stops when Orion's arm comes in front of me, blocking me from walking. His hand goes to my shoulder, and he pushes me down to a crouch with him. I don't understand what's happening until I hear Barron shouting. 

   Orion and I both stand up, and run when we see three guards running towards the doors of our room. They arrive before us, and push open both of the doors quickly.

    Terra is having another seizure.

 It must have just started, because he hasn't got anything to cushion his head as he hits is against the marble floor. Barron starts to pull off his coat, but a guard grabs him from behind.

    They lock his arms. 

    "What the hell are you doing!?" He shouts at them, and I notice that he glances towards the chair he'd left his blades on. I can see he's mentally kicking himself. "Don't you know what that is? That's a seizure! Humans get them! You need to let me--No, stop it!"

   The other two guards start to drag Terra out. They treat him like an unruly inmate of a prison, and not like they're risking his life. When he doesn't stop, a guard takes a baton from his belt.

    "If you don't stop this right now, boy, I'll know you're just trying to create a distraction so that your little human friends can kill the Queen." The guards voice sounds like he hasn't done anything by shout his entire life.

  Of course, Terra can't stop. He's unconscious, he doesn't know what's happening.

   I start towards him to try and help, but as soon as I crouch, something like a bat of fire slams against the back of my head. I tumble, crashing on to the cold hard marble.

    I'm close enough to hear a guard say, "fuck this", and pull a gun from behind his back.

    I'm close enough for the gun shot to ring in my ears.

    I'm close enough to be lying in Terra's blood, and staring into his cold dead eyes.

 There's a stunned silence.

 I pul myself up, kicking away from the dead body. I run into Orion, and I see he's still crouched. He puts a hand over my mouth when I think I'm going to start screaming. 

   Barron isn't fighting against the guard holding him. He isn't screaming. He doesn't even look like he's breathing.

   When the guard lets go of him, he falls to the ground. Sitting back on his legs, it doesn't look like he has the capacity to do anything else.

   He's staring at Terra's body like he's trying to comprehend how the hell this happened.

  "Terra?" His voice is tiny and weak.

   Even Orion's cat has the sense to sit quietly in the corner and not make a sound.

    The guards leave, and I catch sight of their smug smirks before they close the doors. The hallway is empty, and it's just me, Orion, and a dead body.

   Orion and I stand up, and use the door of the double that's furthest away from the corpse. We walk in, and the door closes behind us again.

   Barron catches sight of the blood covering me, and his hand goes to run through his hair. He swears. Over and over again; as he stands up, and he goes to his blades on the chair, as he stores them in his back. 

 He walks straight past Orion and I like we're not even there. He goes to open the door, and step in front of him.

    He stops.

   "Don't." I say. I realize it's probably not best coming from the only one who's covered in his brother's blood too late. "Don't go out there, Barron."

   Suddenly, he draws a blade close to my neck. "Move." He orders. I start to feel the metal cut into me, and I step back because I like having my head.

   He kicks open the doors. He doesn't walk over the body, but around it. And turns right, blades in hand.

    The door swings shut slowly, and I turn to the rest of them. "He's going to kill everybody." I say.

   "Wouldn't you?" Eli asks, and he's standing. He's re-adjusting his throwing knives. "Guard just shot your brother because something that they didn't understand arose. Wouldn't you want to murder everybody?"

   Orion takes an arrow from his quiver, and loads it into the knock. "I'm game for kicking some ass. I've seen enough friends murdered, I want to see how blood looks smeared all over a robots face."

   I hesitate when they both look at me.

    If we go in, weapons at the ready and kill as many robots as we can now, I won't be able to get back up to the city. They won't give me anything to fly with if they're all dead.

   But Terra didn't deserve to die.

   "Fine." I say, and take my gun from my shoulder. I check that the silencer is secure. "But if we're going to overthrow the castle, there are some things I want to do first."

 * * *

   "This really isn't a time for sex in the dark, guys." Eli provides as we walk into the room with the cage.

   I slap him to shut him up.

   The candle is still lit, and it takes a moment for my eyes to adjust again. Eli squints until his adjust, and I notice that he's only trying to joke to put all of our mind's off the dead body we had to walk around in the hallway.

   Orion speaks Arabic to the robot in the cage. They converse for a moment, and then the robot starts to sound excited. I guess he told her we're here to break her out.

   Orion cat, Mellow, is being well behaved. It isn't making much sound, and hangs around Orion's ankles, rubbing its fluffy tail against him. It's been following us, but it doesn't make a sound when it walks, so I haven't glared at it yet. It's actually kind of nice to have an animal around.

    "Oh, great." Eli says. "So we're here to break out an Egyptian robot when, right now, Barron is probably killing everybody he sees."

   "She's German, dear. She just speaks Arabic." Orion looks up the tower, and I see him position three fingers on the string of his bow. He says something to the robot that makes he step into the opposite corner of the rusty cage.

    He pulls the arrow back, locking his anchor and aiming. He closes his left eye for accuracy, which is a move I hadn't noticed he needed to do before. Maybe it's because of the low light, and there's nothing much else to focus on.

   Orion releases the arrow.

   I hear it chink. A moment later, the cage falls to the grate overhead. It makes it groan slightly, but Orion doesn't move. He whistled for his arrow back, and catches it in mid-air. He places it back into the knock.

    The robot says something in Arabic suddenly, and Orion replies with a question. The robot points through the grate towards Eli. She's pointing at the arrow head in his belt from when it was charred at the city, and he looks down.

   Orion puts his hand out. "It's my arrow anyway." He says.

   Eli makes a face when he hands it over.

  Orion passes it towards the robot, and she tests its stability. She stands with a metallic creak in her joints, reaching towards the top of the cage. She uses the arrow head as a knife to slot through a square in the cage.

    I see that she's trying to reach a lock, and I squint to try and catch sight of the mechanism. But she blocks my view. After a moment, the woman mutters something like a swear. It must be pretty heavy, because Orion raises his brows at it.

     Placing the arrow back into his quiver, Orion steps back towards Eli and I.

   The woman says something else in what sound like German, and I guess it's something close to eureka! when the top of the cage flies open from her push.

    She climbs towards the opening, scaling the cage from the inside and outside. She lands in a crouch on the crate above us. Her face is sagging, but I try not to appear to horrified when she's smiling.

    As much as she can, anyway.

  It must hurt, because she stands up straight and puts a hand to her face. Even that hurts, and she winces.

    She drops the arrow head from her hand, and it falls right into Eli's hands.

   She asks something in Arabic, looking around.

   Orion answers, and points to the corners of the grate above us. Rusted. Everything is old and rusted. Probably from rain that pours down, after years, metal starts to become weak. Maybe they thought that nobody would manage to get out onto this level, and didn't really care.

    It takes just one jump from the robot to make the entire thing collapse. 

     She calls out from surprise on her way down with the grate and cage, and I can't help but feel the need to laugh when the dust clear and she just pops right back up to a stand like bread from a toaster.

    She stares at me like she knows I want to laugh, and says something in Arabic.

   I bet it's insulting.

  Orion just proves that by what he says back, and his voice is stern. The woman makes an apologetic face.

    * * *

  In the hallway, the robot starts thanking us. Her face is even more gruesome in the light, and I have to force a pleasant smile when she turns to thank me.

    Orion says something to her with a gesture towards the hallway, and I guess he's telling her to run far away.

   She does, and I lose sight of the robot as she