Shrike

But Fever couldn’t; she could only crouch there, staring, while Wavey cast her sword aside and raised the pistol again. There was one last shot in it, and she waited until the Stalker was almost
upon her and then fired it in his face. The ricochet shrieked, rebounding from his face-plate in a spurt of sparks. She turned to run, but the Stalker was already swinging his sword, and he cut
her in half and kicked aside the tumbling pieces of her and came on, all splashed and steaming with her blood.

“Mother!” shouted Fever. “Mummy . . . ?”

She had never called Wavey either of those things, and now it  was too late, because there was no way in the world that Wavey could be anything but dead. Yet still she crouched there, still she stared, and still she could not run.

The Stalker stopped in front of her. She heard machinery inside him whirr as he raised that sword again. She looked up. The red blade hung over her, but did not fall. There was a notch in its edge where it had severed Wavey’s spine. She moved her eyes from the sword to the Stalker’s face; to its witch-light eyes. Wavey’s shot had set its visor smoldering. The blistered paint was flaking off in little burning curls. She could not read the name that had once been written on its brow.

“Grike?” she said.

She could not be sure. It might have been any Stalker standing there, but she felt certain it was Grike, and for some reason of his own he did not kill her but just waited like a red statue, until the men who had been hanging back to watch grew restless and started yelling for him to strike. In Fever’s numb brain echoed Wavey’s voice, nagging her to run.

Scrivener's Moon, pg 120, Chapter 14: A sword at sunset.