made a face. “People get weird about things like that.”
“I know,” Maisie assured her. “Is anyone else in your family deaf? Or just your brother?”
“Just my brother.” Fay glanced up at the canopy of trees. “What about you?”
“My mother and father were born like this, too. It’s why they supported the Splinters.”
Fay frowned. “How’s that?”
Maisie hesitated before admitting, “My parents were part of them. The Harcos,” she clarified. “Sky warriors.”
“No shit?”
“No shit.”
Fay gave her a once-over before bluntly remarking, “You’re really small to be one of them.”
She wrinkled her nose. “I know! It’s the worst!”
“Your dad was deaf, too? So, he wasn’t one of their soldiers then?”
Maisie shook her head. “They,” she pointed toward the sky, “don’t allow people like me to serve. We’re Defects. It's forbidden to mate with or have children with Defects. It weakens their gene pool.”
“Fucking bigoted pricks,” she signed angrily.
“It’s their culture,” Maisie replied. “It’s their philosophy and their history.”
“Doesn’t make it right,” Fay argued. “It’s gross and wrong to breed people like farm animals.”
“It is.” Maisie scratched between Clove’s ears again and earned a playful lick on the back of her hand. “My dad owned a mining camp out in the Chavez Ingot Belt. That’s where I was born,” she added. “On CIB-2.”
“That’s a long way from here,” Fay remarked. “You must have travelled a lot.”
“I did. My dad died in an accidental explosion when I was four so I don’t really remember him much. Mom remarried a year later. Randy was one of my dad’s friends. After that, we moved every few months. Wherever their cause took us.”
“Hard to make friends that way.” Fay glanced up again, as if searching for something. “Hard to put down roots or—”
The dogs stopped suddenly. Their ears perked, and both of them looked up toward the forest canopy the same way Fay had. Unable to hear what they detected, Maisie watched Fay and the dogs. Without dropping her gaze, Fay put two fingers against her palm and slid them quickly up toward the sky. Spaceship.
Panicked, Maisie searched through the trees for sight of a ship. Fay grabbed her hand and tugged hard, pulling her toward the low, dense brush nearby. Both dogs followed and slid under the bushes to hide. Maisie and Fay copied their example, digging in under the thorny branches and rotting leaves for cover. Clove shuffled closer to Maisie and put his chin on her arm as if to remind her that she wasn’t alone and had friends here to help defend her.
A few feet away, Fay flicked her fingers to gain Maisie’s attention. Silently, she asked if Maisie had a weapon. She gestured to her backpack and mimicked firing a pistol with her hand.
“Ammo?” Fay asked.
“One magazine loaded. One extra.”
“Then only shoot at what you can hit.”
Maisie nodded and tried to slow down her breathing and heartbeat. Shaky hands wouldn’t help her hit anything, and Fay was correct to remind her to conserve her ammo. She wasn’t the best shot, but she wasn’t bad at a close distance. She eyed Fay and wondered how good she was with that rifle. Considering the easy way Fay moved through the forest, Maisie figured she had a good handle on it.
Fay suddenly shifted her gaze, rolling over on her side to stare behind them. Maisie could feel Clove growling against her arm, the low vibrations rumbling across her skin. She glanced back to see if someone was coming, but the bright burst of light in the distant sky told her all she needed to know.
“Explosions,” Fay said. “Behind us. Sounds like it’s coming from the down low. Maybe the prison camp.”
“Old munitions?”
Fay shook her head. “Gunfire. Missiles.”
“A battle?”
“Yes.”
“Splinters?”
“And sky warriors,” Fay agreed. “I have a feeling they’re fighting over you.”
Maisie shrunk down and grimaced. “Maybe.”
“Can they track you?”
She shook her head, but added, “I don’t think so.”
“Do you have something they want?”
Maisie nodded reluctantly. “It’s why I’m trying to get to the Harcos embassy.”
“Fuck me,” Fay said, not bothering to sign. She turned her attention to the sky above them and then seemed to follow a sound back up the mountain to the rocky area where she had found Maisie. Catching Maisie’s eye, she asked, “Do you know any of them? The sky warriors?”
“One,” she said, thinking of Terror.
“Would he come for you?”
She didn’t hesitate. With a nod, she confirmed, “Yes, he would.”
She wasn’t sure how she knew it, but she believed it all the way down to the depths of her soul. Just as she