Page 29 (1/2)

Book One

They took away her beautiful clothes, dressed her in an old gray save her wooden shoes

Chapter One

THE SCREW THROUGH CINDER’S ANKLE HAD RUSTED, THE engraved cross led circle Her knuckles ached froled to loosen the screw one gritting twist after another By the tih for her to wrench free with her prosthetic steel hand, the hairline threads had been stripped clean

Tossing the screwdriver onto the table, Cinder gripped her heel and yanked the foot froertips and she jerked away, leaving the foot to dangle frole of red and yelloires

She sluroan A sense of release hovered at the end of those wires—freedo loathed the too-small foot for four years, she swore to never put the piece of junk back on again She just hoped Iko would be back soon with its replacement

Cinder was the only full-service n, her booth hinted at her trade only by the shelves of stock android parts that crowded the walls It was squeezed into a shady cove between a used netscreen dealer and a silk y srease that cauised by the aroma of honey buns from the bakery across the square Cinder knew they really just didn’t like being next to her

A stained tablecloth divided Cinder from browsers as they shuffled past The square was filled with shoppers and hawkers, children and noise The bellows ofto talk the coins The hued accounts The netscreens that covered every building and filled the air with the chatter of advertiseossip

Cinder’s auditory interface dulled the noise into a static thruered above the rest that she couldn’t drown out A ring of children were standing just outside her booth, trilling—“Ashes, ashes, we all fall down!”—and then laughing hysterically as they collapsed to the pavement

A sed at Cinder’s lips Not soabout pestilence and death that had regained popularity in the past decade The song itself lares fro children fell over in their paths The inconvenience of having to swarrumbles from the shoppers, and Cinder adored the children for it

“Sunto! Sunto!”

Cinder’s a through the crowd in her flour-coated apron “Sunto, come here! I told you not to play so close to—”

Sacha rabbed her son by the ar his feet as Sacha ordered him to stay closer to their booth Cinder wrinkled her nose at the baker’s retreating back The rehter with them

“It’s not like wires are contagious,” Cinder muttered to her empty booth

With a spine-popping stretch, she pulled her dirty fingers through her hair, corabbed her blackened work gloves She covered her steel hand first, and though her right palan to sweat immediately inside the thickthe plating of her left hand She stretched her fingers wide, working out the cramp that had for the screwdriver, and squinted again into the city square She spotted plenty of stocky white androids in the din, but none of them Iko

Sighing, Cinder bent over the toolbox beneath the worktable After digging through the jued with the fuse puller that had been long buried at the bottom One by one, she disconnected the wires that still linked her foot and ankle, each spurting a tiny spark She couldn’t feel theloves, but her retina display helpfully infor connection to the limb

With a yank of the last wire, her foot clattered to the concrete

The difference was instant For once in her life, she felt…weightless

Sheit up like a shrine a over her ankle again and cleaning the gri

THUD

Cinder jerked, her head s the underside of the table She shoved back fro first on a lifeless android that sat squat on her worktable and then on the man behind it She waspast his ears and lips that every girl in the country had admired a thousand times

Her scowl vanished

His own surprise was short-lived, y “I’m sorry,” he said “I didn’t realize anyone was back there”

Cinder barely heard hiathering speed, her retina display scanned his features, so fa hiray hooded sweatshirt was like none of the fine clothes he usually made appearances in, but still, it took only 26 seconds for Cinder’s scanner to e to the net database Another second and the display informed her of what she already knew; details scribbled across the bottoreen text

PRINCE KAITO, CROWN PRINCE OF THE EASTERN COMMONWEALTH

ID 0082719057

BORN 7 APR 108 TE

FF 88,987 MEDIA HITS, REVERSE CHRON

POSTED 14 AUG 126 TE:

A PRESS MEETING IS TO BE HOSTED BY CROWN PRINCE KAI ON 15 AUG TO DISCUSS THE ONGOING LETUMOSIS RESEARCH AND POSSIBLE LEADS FOR AN ANTIDOTE—

Cinder launched up froot about herherself with both hands on the table, she ht