by Nina Varela
Where else? The unpopulated jungles of Tarreen? Somewhere far across the ocean?
No. Kinok’s next move was to find Ayla. If Crier left, there would be nothing and no one to stop him. Wherever Ayla was, Kinok would find her.
Crier couldn’t let that happen.
She’d had this fight with herself a hundred times over the past two weeks, and she always came to the same conclusion: She would marry Kinok. She would remain at his side. It was the only way to stop him. To protect Ayla. Part of Crier knew it was pathetic, humiliating, to care so much about Ayla’s safety after what Ayla had tried to do. The darkness, the knife. Certainly Crier’s father would lose all remaining respect for her if he found out how she felt. But it was how she felt. She couldn’t change it, and if it came down to her dignity or Ayla’s life, well. That wasn’t even a choice.
“Malwin,” Crier said, “I need a favor from you.”
“Anything, my lady.”
“Find the scullery maid called Faye,” said Crier. “She’s usually stationed in the laundry rooms. Bring her to me. If she resists, tell her—tell her it’s about sun apples.”
Malwin hesitated. “My lady, there’s only a few minutes before you’re meant to be in the grand ballroom. . . .”
“So I will appreciate your haste,” Crier said.
Once alone, Crier sank onto her bed. Faye. All summer, Kinok had forced the scullery maid to work for him in secret. She’d been overseeing shipments of what she thought were the sovereign’s prized sun apples but was actually a dangerous substance called Nightshade. After she’d learned the truth, she tried to back out. To punish her, Kinok had killed her sister. Luna.
Faye had never been the same. Carved into a new person by grief, she seemed to occupy this world only half the time. The other half, she was lost in her own mind, somewhere far away, unreachable.
Crier almost put her head in her hands—such a human gesture—but then remembered her makeup. Instead she sat there, back straight, and stared across the room at her tapestry of Kiera, the first Automa. The first of their Kind, created by the greatest of the human alchemists, Maker Thomas Wren. But that wasn’t true, was it? Crier knew now that Wren had stolen the blueprints for Kiera from a mysterious woman called H. He hadn’t Designed anything; he’d just taken credit for H’s work.
There was a stitched-up scar in one corner of the tapestry from where a guard had torn it from the wall that night, after Ayla fled. But Kiera was intact. Saffron-yellow dress, red mouth, rich brown skin. Eyes of golden thread, catching the morning sunlight. Crier gazed into those eyes, unblinking, as the minutes dragged on.
A knock on the door. “Enter,” said Crier, and Malwin slipped inside, followed by a stumbling, sunken-eyed Faye. Malwin was clutching Faye’s wrist; maybe she’d put up a fight.
“Thank you, Malwin,” said Crier, standing up. “You may wait for me outside.”
“My lady—”
“Outside.”
Reluctant, eyes darting between Crier and Faye, Malwin dropped Faye’s wrist and left the room for a second time, closing the door quietly behind her. There were guards stationed outside Crier’s bedroom door—ever since the attack, she’d been forbidden from going anywhere without at least four guards in tow. It was a nightmare; the presence of guards completely ruined the sanctity of the library and the music room, but Crier figured that was probably the only thing that would prevent Malwin from pressing her ear to the door, attempting to eavesdrop.
“Best get on with it, lady,” said Faye. “Pulled me away in the middle of a shift, you did. Old Nessa’s sure to be angry.” She smiled. “Oh, but that’s not right, it’s not Nessa anymore, is it. Nessa’s dead in the ground. Everyone’s dead in the ground. Am I next? Why’d you call me here, lady?”
“So I could give you this,” said Crier, picking up one of the books on the bedside table and flipping through it until she found what she was looking for: a small envelope sealed with wax. She held it out to Faye, but Faye didn’t move.
“What is that?” she asked, eyeing the envelope. “What will you have me do?”
Crier swallowed. “Please. You’re the only person I know who might be able to find her.”
Her.
“She’s gone, lady,” Faye said. “Nobody knows where she went, not me, not anyone. She could be halfway across the ocean by now. She could be dead.”
She’s not dead, Crier thought, and then, absurdly: I would have felt it. “Just—please,” she rasped, taking a step closer to Faye. “Please. If you hear anything, anything . . . I know you know people in the—Resistance. Please. Please just try. Please, Faye. You’re the only hope I’ve got.”
Faye took the envelope from Crier, tucked it into the pocket of her red servants’ uniform. “Don’t expect much, but I’ll do my best.”
“Thank you,” Crier breathed. She wrapped both arms around herself, unmoored. This was it, then. This was her goodbye, and there was a good chance it would never even come close to reaching Ayla, this unmarked envelope in the hands of a half-mad scullery maid. Inside it, a dried seaflower and a single sentence:
You were right about the law of falling.
Ayla couldn’t read. She would have to get someone else to tell her what the letter said. That is, if it found her at all. If she didn’t throw it away, rip it up, burn it. But what else did Crier have? What else could she do?
You were right about the law of falling. You were right. She’d written and rewritten that sentence a thousand times, curled up on the window seat from nightfall till the early hours of the morning. Trying to find the right words. You were right. You were right. Crier remembered everything about that first day, the day she’d made Ayla her new handmaiden. She’d taken Ayla to the gardens, the air perfumed with salt lavender and seaflowers, the taste of the sea on the back of Crier’s tongue, the sound of waves crashing beyond the last row of flowers, beyond the cliffs. In the gardens, Crier had looked at Ayla and, gods, she’d had no idea, no idea. At the time, she’d been half intrigued, half embarrassed Ayla had seen her cry. All she knew was she wanted to get closer. To read Ayla like a good book. And Ayla, frowning, eyes distant, had said: Even way out there past the sky, so far away that we can’t even imagine it, things work the same. Everything’s just bodies in orbit, like here. Pushing and pulling.
Ayla, Crier thought, you pulled me in.
“My lady,” said Faye. “Will you do something for me in return?”
Crier shook off her thoughts like snow. She raised her eyebrows at the scullery maid, taken off guard by such a bold request. “What . . . kind of something?”
“Stop the Scyre.”
“What— Keep your voice down!” Crier hissed. “You can’t just say things like that, anyone could be listening in, are you—?” She cut herself off before she said mad.
“Apologies, lady.” Faye leaned in, lowering her voice. “You need to stop him. I know what he’s planning. He likes to brag, you see. To those in his control. He underestimates us. He doesn’t think we have anyone to tell.” She was almost smiling. “That’s how I know.”
“Know what?”
“He’s going to destroy the Iron Heart.”
Faye’s eyes were clear and bright like Crier had never seen them before. Her shoulders were straight, her hands curled into fists at her sides. It was like glimpsing a ghost, the girl Faye used to be, before her sister was murdered for Faye’s crimes. Before grief left her stranded somewhere far away inside her head.
“Destroy it?” said Crier, an emotion like cold water rising inside her. The Iron Heart. “I know he’s searching for an alternative to heartstone, but—destroy the Heart? That doesn’t make any sense, he relies on it like the rest of us, he . . .” He wants to hurt humans, not Automae.
But even as she protested, the pieces fell into place.
Kinok was the leader of the Anti-Reliance Movement. On the surface, the movement aimed to further separate the two Kinds by building a new capital city just for Automae. The truth w
as much darker, bloodier. Kinok wanted three things: First, he wanted to raze all the old human cities to the ground and build new Automa cities in the ashes. Humans be damned. Second, he wanted to Make a new breed of Automa, with no human pillars at all. And third, he wanted to find an alternative to heartstone, thus ending his Kind’s reliance on the Iron Heart. He’d been conducting experiments, trying to synthesize a new gemstone on his own, but so far his attempts had been disastrous: he’d only succeeded in creating Nightshade, a black mineral dust that seemed to work at first, but in fact slowly poisoned whoever consumed it. And not only was it poisonous, it was highly addictive. Kinok had been using it to control his followers—including Crier’s friend Rosi.
But that wasn’t practical in the long run. So Kinok had been searching for a blue gemstone called Tourmaline, the same stone Ayla’s grandmother Siena had used to power her Automa prototype, Yora. He seemed to think Tourmaline was infinitely powerful—so much so that it could power an Automa body forever. Right now, Automa bodies aged—slower than humans, but they did age; their physical vessels did eventually weaken, wither, give out. They could die and be killed. Judging by the notes Crier had seen in his room, Kinok dreamed of a world in which neither of those things were true.
If Kinok found Yora’s heart, which was made of Tourmaline, which carried the secret to its power . . . if he destroyed the source of heartstone so the Automae had no choice but to beg him for Tourmaline . . .
“The moment the Scyre finds what he’s looking for, it’s over for your Kind and mine,” said Faye. “Absolute power. Absolute cruelty. If I’m your only hope, my lady, then you are mine.”
Anti-Reliance, Crier thought, numb.
So this was what it meant.
Faye brandished a letter. For a second Crier thought it was the letter for Ayla, but the paper was worn and yellowed with age, like it could crumble into dust at the slightest touch. “Lady, there’s more.”
“What is this?” Crier asked. Her own voice was dead and hollow to her ears. She unfolded the letter with shaking hands, trying to focus on anything other than the word reliance, reliance, reliance.
“From the Scyre’s study. But not—not from the Scyre. It’s very old. It’s . . . It looked important. So I took it. I thought you’d want to see. I thought you’d want to know.”
Crier stared at the letter, willing herself to focus. It was addressed to “T” from “H.” But she didn’t have time to comprehend what she was reading. There was a knock on the door to her bedchamber and Malwin’s voice came, tentative: “My lady?”
Hastily, Crier shoved the letter beneath one of the pillows on her bed. It would have to wait. For now, Crier had bigger things to worry about. She had to talk to her father.
T,
I beg you do not do this.
Do you remember the day we met? Beneath the god’s golden eye. You at the window, a dark shape against the coming dawn. Winter dawn. Sky the color of snow blossoms. I knew your face. Your name. You didn’t know mine.
I gave you everything. My life’s work, knowledge, mad dreams, bed. And you can’t even give me time?
You know I can perfect it. This blue heart.
Do you know I always thought of my own heart as blue? Not like the sky. Like the bottom of the ocean. Blue like that, but not empty. Not cold. Blue like the heart of a candle flame. When you touched me I burned red. Back then, I thought it was a good thing. Burning.
How to create a life?
Is that it? Fire? Blood? A giant’s womb?
We shared a dream once. A bed, once; no longer; not after this; I will keep my heart blue. This “shortcut,” you know it’s wrong; that’s why you kept it from me. Do you think I don’t know you? I loved you, didn’t I? I bled for you, didn’t I? And now this.
Name one goddamn thing more precious than a life.
—LETTER FROM “H——” TO MAKER THOMAS WREN, E. 900 Y. 10
3
The first morning in Queen Junn’s palace was, in a word, overwhelming. It didn’t help that she’d barely slept at all—the bed she’d been given was so soft it seemed to swallow her body, and she kept waking from nightmares about quicksand and drowning. Each time she woke up, she had to remember all over again where she was and why she was alone, neither surrounded by other sleeping servants nor curled up next to Benjy in the hold of a cargo ship. Her only solace was that Benjy was probably safer than she was, out in the streets of Thalen.
At dawn, she woke for good when a trio of human handmaidens swept into her room. She scrambled upright, startled, but they didn’t even glance at her. One flung open the curtains, flooding the room with pale blue light; one, arms piled with dresses, started laying them out at the foot of the bed; the last yanked back a silk privacy screen that had been obscuring a corner of the room, revealing a sunken bath and a big copper water tank with a spigot shaped like a peacock.
“What’s . . . happening . . . ?” said Ayla, already dreading the answer.
Over the next hour, she was bathed within an inch of her life. Her hair was washed three times, her finger- and toenails trimmed, her face and body scrubbed with a soapy cloth until she thought her skin might peel off, the bathwater turning gray with what looked like five years of grime. When the water finally began to grow cold, the handmaidens pulled her out and rubbed her down with an oil that left her skin soft and gleaming, smelling faintly of almonds. Ayla hated how much she didn’t hate it. Then, after she’d been thoroughly dried, she was shoved into white cotton undergarments that felt weightless, so soft and light, nothing like the rough, itchy undergarments she’d always worn. After that, she was herded over to a mirror while the handmaidens held up dress after dress against her body, squinting, scrutinizing, somehow arriving at the decision that Ayla would look best in deep blue. Ayla opened her mouth to protest—she’d never liked wearing dresses—but a sharp look from one of the handmaidens, a tall girl with pale skin, shut her up. She allowed herself to be dressed, her hair oiled and combed, even though the comb kept snagging on her curls and it hurt like hell. When she examined her reflection, it felt like looking at Storme: someone whose face distantly resembled her own but was not the same. Glowing skin, fine clothes, hair sleek and shiny as a sealskin. Ayla couldn’t help but think of her time as a handmaiden, doing all this for—
Crier.
Drawing a bath, drizzling various sweet-smelling oils into the water, washing Crier’s hair, running soapy hands through it. Helping her out of the claw-footed tub, eyes averted, handing her a towel. Brushing her hair, breathing in the scent of roses, lavender, cloves. Turning away as Crier slipped into her undergarments. Helping her into the latest ridiculously complicated dress.
“All right,” said the pale handmaiden, appraising Ayla with her hands on her hips. “I think you’re presentable.” It was the first time any of them had addressed Ayla directly.
“Glad to hear it,” said Ayla.
The handmaiden ignored her tone. “You have been summoned to the aviary for an audience with the queen. You are to join her as soon as you’ve finished breakfast.”
“Breakfast?”
As if on cue, the bedroom door opened again and a kitchen boy entered carrying a massive platter covered with a white cloth. He set it down on the small table beside the bed and scurried back out, closing the door behind him.
“Breakfast,” said the pale handmaiden, nodding at the platter.
Slowly, cautiously, Ayla crossed to the platter and lifted the white cloth. Steam rose up, warming her cheeks, along with the mouthwatering smell of—stars and skies, everything. An entire loaf of dark brown bread. A plate of salted fish, a plate of sausage. Little bowls of butter and jam, two types of jam. A big bowl of porridge, a tiny pitcher of cream, more little bowls of sugar and honey and red currants. It was like last night’s festival feast in miniature. It was enough to feed a family. It was—all for Ayla?
She turned to the handmaidens. All three of them were the same age as Ayla or maybe a couple years older. She c
ould easily be them. Two weeks ago, she had been them.
“Will you eat too?” she asked them.
“No, miss,” said the shortest one, dark brows furrowed. “That’s for you, courtesy of the queen.”
“But I can’t eat all this.”
None of them responded. They just looked at her.
“Please,” she said. “I’m a guest of the queen. She instructed you to do what I say, didn’t she? Eat with me.”
The three of them exchanged glances. “. . . Is that an order?” said the shortest one. She had a low, husky voice, naturally melodious, a voice made for singing.
“Not if you don’t want it to be,” said Ayla. “But if you’re hungry, then yes, it is an order. I can’t finish all this, I’ll be sick. Better to end up in your bellies than the royal pig troughs.”
The third handmaiden, who had not yet said a single word, hid a smile in her sleeve.
“Very well,” said the pale one. “If it’s an order.”
This time, all three handmaidens smiled.
Once every crumb was gone and the porridge bowl scraped clean, the shortest handmaiden, who introduced herself as Maris, led Ayla to the aviary. That was about when Ayla learned an aviary was a fancy name for a big room full of birds, which seemed like the worst thing you could possibly fill a room with. Still, it was beautiful: airy, circular, with a high domed ceiling made of glass, the morning-blue sky visible far above. A series of stepping-stones led to the center of the room, where there was a stone platform with two gilded, throne-like chairs. The rest of the floor was dark, wet soil. There were plants everywhere: small twisting trees around the perimeter of the room, sprays of orange and yellow flowers, leafy vines crawling up the walls, a thick briar of wild roses. Birds flitted through the air, some ordinary as sparrows and others strange and exotic, with bright green feathers. Fat little pheasants marched around pecking at the dirt; hummingbirds dipped their long beaks into the flowers. Birdsong echoed through the wide-open space, high trills and low, raspy calls, a cacophony of song and shrieking. There were butterflies, too, and Ayla was reminded of the Made butterfly that had landed on her head last night, alerting the festival guards to her presence.
