I didn’t break my glare from Fayden.
“So where’s this glass?” Fayden asked after a moment of uncomfortable silence. He’d kept my gaze. Neither of us could look away.
“We’re not selling it.”
Fayden cocked an eyebrow. “If you knew about that kind of glass, you could sell it and move away from Father.”
“It’s for my trap,” Stef reminded him. “We’re catching—and killing—trolls.”
My brother grew quiet, his features softer. He broke our stare to look at Stef. “Will it work? The trap?”
“Maybe if I get the glass.” Stef motioned down the road. “Can we go?”
Fayden faced me again, his expression a mask of curiosity. “You don’t want the glass for yourself?”
Why couldn’t he understand that I thought stopping trolls from hurting more families was more important than my personal wealth?
Because Fayden was like Father: hard, practical, and he didn’t let sentimentality get in his way.
“We’re not selling it,” I said again, and turned on my heel. If he followed, then he followed.
“So what’s your name?” Stef asked as they started along behind me.
“Fayden.”
“Great. Fay.”
“No. It’s Fayden.”
Amusement colored Stef’s tone. “I suppose we could call you Den.”
“Is Dossam letting you call him Sam?”
“He will.”
“That seems unlikely.” But Fayden chuckled and they began chatting about junk they found on the side of the road. Stef was more than eager to talk about old pieces of technology, water systems, and how people could communicate across the world without delay. “Everything was instantaneous.”
Stef whistled. “Sounds incredible. Maybe one day, we’ll be able to have that back.”
Speaking of unlikely things.
We’d all be dead before that kind of technology came back to the world. There was no time to work on that sort of thing; we were too busy just trying to survive.
“There are enormous piles of mysteries,” Fayden said. “Scavengers keep it in pits around the city, because most of it doesn’t work anymore, and never will again. I’d be happy to show it to you, though.”
“You know what all of it was used for?”
“Some.” Fayden’s tone was all casual superiority. He’d been scavenging for three years now, hearing stories from those who’d been doing it longer. “There are handheld devices with cracked screens, round bulbs that used to emit light, and stoves that cooked using only a metal coil to heat pans.”
The best things didn’t need electricity to power them, though. Musical instruments, tiny boxes that played music when the knob was twisted, and books.
I let their discussion become white noise as we rounded a corner, and instead stretched my hearing to catch the edges of other voices around the city: scavengers working, animals skittering through trash, and buildings creaking in the wind. Soon, maybe they’d just fall into the ground and be swallowed up.
Low growling ahead made me pause. I held up a hand, and the other two fell silent behind me.
Another growl came from across the road, behind a wrecked vehicle, its windows smashed out long ago. Then a third growl.
“Dogs,” Fayden breathed. “There’s a pack of feral dogs around here.”
Three lanky beasts slinked out from behind rusted signs fallen to the earth and from behind that vehicle. They were all big dogs, with patchy black fur that had matted around their legs and scruffs. Ribs stuck out like shelves, and ears had been nipped. One of them limped.
“They’re hungry,” Fayden said. “And there aren’t as many as before.”
They were starving and desperate. They’d never have approached three humans otherwise.
I glanced at Stef, who shook his head. “Don’t look at me. I don’t deal with wild animals. Unless you want to trap one.” He took three long steps backward. “I’ll just be over here if you need me to drag your corpses off the road.”
“I’ve never met anyone so brave,” I muttered, and stayed put.
“It won’t come to corpse-dragging.” Fayden moved forward, making one dog bare a set of broken, yellowed teeth. My brother pulled out his sling and snatched up a fragment of shattered pavement. “These guys are supper. Ours, or someone else’s.”
My stomach turned over, and I stopped just short of touching my brother’s arm. “Don’t kill them.”
“They’re going to die anyway.” He loaded the sling and gave it a few turns as he stepped closer to the dogs. The one with broken teeth prowled forward, deepening its growl.
“But we don’t have to kill them. There’s nothing on them anyway. You couldn’t sell their bodies.” My heart pounded as I watched the other two dogs shift behind their leader. Dust coated their fur, and they were all so painfully skinny. I couldn’t help but feel sorry for them. “Just scare them away and let’s go.”
“They’d bite you if they had the chance.” Fayden’s eyes flashed toward me. “They’d tear open your throat and eat you.”