The trip back was a nightmare of cold, hunger, and hurt. Midway through, we raided one of the bait piles after I checked the positions of the two hunters' blinds that the Knife indicated. Neither held any warmth of life when I flailed around with a thread of force.

  The pile was some fifty or sixty unmarked, metal cans, two crates of water bottles, some thin clothes and other odds and ends. I wanted to take it all, but the Knife refused.

  "They'll know something is wrong if death piles start disappearing like that," he said, and I had to agree. We made out with five cans each, some water, the clothes and a cheap multi-tool that I would have left.

  "Tools are rare," the Knife said. "So is cloth, and rope. Those, we always take."

  Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

  "So why don't the Syndics drop them more often?" I said. "It would draw people to their turf."

  "Why give more than you need?" the Knife said. "People are drawn anyhow."

  I would have spat or cursed but I didn't have the energy. My thoughts were circling back to mashed potatoes slathered in diacetyl. I kept tasting the buttery flavor, so real in my mind that my mouth watered and I swallowed grains of sand together with the saliva. If I ever got away from Remba, I'd boil a pot of mash so large that I could drown in it, and share it with everyone I knew.

  When I got away. When we got away. Crudmunging world was turning me selfish and stupid. I was there to get Riina's Kylians out, get all the hunted people out. Only then would I leave. After blowing up City and the port and everything else the Syndicates had built.

  If I could find the Kylians. I only had a month to do it before the hauler was repaired and went skyward without us.

  I needn't have worried. When we got back, the Kylians were crawling all over the Gash. So was everyone else, it seemed.