Iron Heart

by Nina Varela

  A girl at the window seat, bent over a book. Silhouetted against an early winter sunset, light spilling in around her, the sky on fire, consuming itself, blue burning away to reveal the softest pink. A girl looking up as if summoned. A jolt of fear in Ayla’s belly: Did I say her name aloud?

  No, that was a memory. This was now. A country away.

  “Think of it like this,” said Lady Dear, tapping one long finger on the piece of parchment where she’d written out the Zullan alphabet. “This is the language of storytelling. In Zullan, you write letters, you read books, you record thoughts and memories and messages. Ideas. Dreams, if you have them. You’re human—you dream. This is the language of the heart. And this . . .” She indicated one of the long strings of alchemic symbols. “This is the language of science. Of the mind. The language you use to work real magick. These symbols hold a different kind of power, girl. Put them in the right sequence, and you can breathe life into stone.”

  Heartstone.

  The eight-point star on Ayla’s necklace. The pendant that, when activated with a drop of blood, had sent Crier and Ayla tumbling into the memories of someone long dead. Siena. Ayla had watched her own grandmother, impossibly young, laughing in the arms of the boy who would later become Ayla’s grandfather Leo.

  “I’d argue the storytelling language can breathe life into stone too,” said Ayla, and then winced. That was something Crier would say. Crier and her faerie stories.

  “Clever,” said Lady Dear. “Now write out the first fifteen symbols. Fire through gold.”

  Ayla wanted to groan. What was Queen Junn playing at, really? Aloud, she asked, “Who puts the Makers’ language in a letter?”

  “Have you heard of the language of flowers, girl?”

  “No. What’s that?”

  “The idea that certain types of flowers carry specific meanings,” said Lady Dear. “Red poppies for pleasure; lilies for beauty and purity; camellias for longing. Marigolds for jealousy. White roses for secrecy. Oleander for caution. Combine different types of flowers, and you can construct entire messages. So it goes with the language of the Makers.” She leaned back, the stardust on her collarbone catching the lamplight. “And that’s why we have eyes and ears on the inside, girl.”

  Oh—

  A memory welled up inside Ayla.

  You can be our eyes and ears on the inside, love. Stationed right at the heart of the spider’s nest, imagine that. Rowan, eyes lit up, smiling, proud of Ayla. Stars and skies, birdy.

  Another memory: Rowan, pierced through with a sword. Rowan, crumpling to the ground. Rowan, dying painfully in the middle of a mob; Ayla, trapped inside a carriage, unable even to retrieve her body. Unable to mourn.

  She didn’t realize she was crying until a teardrop hit the back of her hand.

  A silk handkerchief was pressed into her hands.

  Ayla looked up. Lady Dear was watching her, expressionless. Ayla took the handkerchief and wiped her face.

  The tears ended as quickly as they’d come, but Ayla was left feeling shaky and hollow, as if she’d cried for hours. She stared at her lap, miserable, familiar thoughts circling in her head like vultures: She had been there when Rowan died. Maybe she could’ve done something. Maybe she could’ve forced Crier to let her out of the carriage, to push her way through the crowd of humans and Automae, to kneel over Rowan’s body and kiss her forehead. Neither she nor Rowan believed in the old gods, but Ayla thought if she’d gotten the chance to send Rowan off properly, she would have murmured: From light you were born and to light you shall return. Go now into the stars. They’ve been waiting for you.

  Ayla bit her lip hard, cutting off those thoughts at the quick. She didn’t want to start crying all over again.

  “You are newbuilt,” said Lady Dear, as if just now realizing it. “Newborn. You’re a child.”

  Ayla bristled. “I am not. I’m sixteen. Crying doesn’t make me a child.”

  “Being young does. Why do you cry, child? What have you lost?”

  “You wouldn’t understand.” Ayla wanted to be angry, but she was too tired. She was just too tired. “What do you know about pain,” she said. “What could you possibly know about grief.”

  “I have lost people,” said Lady Dear.

  I have a heart like you, Ayla.

  I feel things too.

  “You don’t feel things like us,” Ayla said, not sure who she was speaking to: Lady Dear or the echo of Crier in her head. Either way, she sounded unconvincing even to her own ears.

  “We feel things differently,” Lady Dear agreed. Her voice was even. “But no less deeply, I would say.”

  Ayla snorted. “You would say.”

  “When I was newbuilt,” said Lady Dear, “and still lived in the Midwifery with the other newbuilt children, settling into my body, I became close with another girl. Her name was Delphi. Our beds were beside each other in the sleeping room.”

  “Why are you telling me this?” Ayla mumbled.

  Lady Dear ignored her. “We spoke to each other the most,” she continued. “Those were strange weeks. Adjusting to your own newly formed mind. Adjusting to your body. Learning how to use it. Learning about our world. Delphi and I studied together. We were . . . friends, I think.” She paused. “It is difficult to use human words to describe inhuman relationships. But I think we were friends. I think I loved her. When it was decided that she would be terminated, I felt . . .”

  “Wait,” said Ayla, straightening up. “Who decided? What was wrong with her?”

  “Her pillars were unstable,” said Lady Dear. “It happens. The Makers are very skilled, but creating life is a tricky business. Alchemy is not a tool, you see. It is a force, and nobody, not even my Kind, can control it. Work with it, yes. Shape it, yes. Kindle it within a proper vessel, yes. But never control it. Mistakes happen. Mistakes are Made.” She held Ayla’s gaze. “Delphi’s pillars were unstable. It was decided that she would be terminated and remade.”

  “Then—what happened?” Ayla asked.

  Lady Dear cocked her head, a movement reminiscent of the pheasants in Queen Junn’s aviary. “What do you mean, what happened? She was terminated. She was remade, I assume, though by then I’d long since left the Midwifery. Even if I’d been there to meet her, the new Delphi wouldn’t have been the same as the friend I lost. None of her memories would have remained.”

  Ayla found herself staring out the window of the bedchamber, reluctant to look at Lady Dear’s face. Her window offered a view of the city below; seated as she was in the center of the room, she couldn’t see the rooftops from this angle, but she could see the occasional circling seagull. The afternoon sky was the pale blue of sun-bleached fabric.

  “Fifty-six years have passed since then. Yet I still think of Delphi every day. My Kind remembers everything, you see. I can recite a thousand different books word for word, no matter how long ago I read them; the details never fade. I wish they did.”

  “Does it . . . get easier?” Ayla whispered.

  “Yes. In many ways, yes. I’ve heard it compared to missing a limb. The wound heals over. You adjust to this new way of moving through the world. But it always aches, and not just physically, and you never forget what was lost.” Her voice was distant, and Ayla wondered if she was sifting through flawlessly preserved memories, if some part of her was in the past.

  It was too much. Ayla didn’t want to empathize with this Automa noblewoman. She didn’t want to empathize with any of them, because if she did—if she did—

  “Lessons are over for today,” said Lady Dear, surprising her. “They will resume the day after tomorrow. At dawn.”

  “Why not tomorrow?” asked Ayla.

  Lady Dear looked at her. At this angle, her eyes caught the sunlight, flashing catlike gold.

  “Did no one tell you?” she said. “Tomorrow is the feast.”

  As far as Ayla could tell, the feast was meant to honor the Varnian elite who had traveled to Thalen for the Maker’s Festival. It was a celebrat
ion and a farewell, and would be attended exclusively by the rich and influential. That morning, the three handmaidens Maris, Renne, and Kiv didn’t barge into Ayla’s room at the crack of dawn. Someone had left a silver platter of breakfast outside her door, but all the palace servants had been working throughout the night making sure everything was ready for the feast, and the work would continue through the day. Ayla sat in the middle of her cloudlike bed, eating breakfast just because she could, and felt very strange about not joining them. She remembered her first day as Crier’s handmaiden: she hadn’t even seen Crier for most of the day, she’d just been scurrying around polishing floors and running errands for the kitchen boys as a stream of guests arrived at the palace. Ayla remembered being assigned the impossible task of polishing the entire dance floor by hand; she remembered pushing up her sleeves and getting to it, the lye soap burning her hands. She remembered looking up to see Nessa standing over her, baby Lily strapped to Nessa’s front.

  Within a month, the child was motherless.

  Ayla spent the morning lounging around, which was something she’d never done before. She even went back to sleep for an hour or so: a wild luxury. It was almost ten by the time she heard a knock at the door, the three handmaidens scurrying inside the moment she bid them enter.

  “It’s time to get you ready for the feast,” Renne announced. “And thank the gods. If I have to polish one more spoon I’ll scream myself hoarse.”

  “Wait. What?” said Ayla. “I’m not attending it, am I?”

  “You’re a guest of the queen,” said Maris.

  “Gods smite me down,” said Ayla.

  She lingered in the bath they drew for her, soaking until the water began to grow cold. Maris washed and oiled her hair, twisting it into a knot at the nape of her neck. Then Ayla was herded over to the mirror, where Maris and Renne set about choosing an outfit for her, and Kiv produced a small box of—makeup? Tiny pots of black eyeliner and rouge, deep red pigment for the lips, shimmery gold dust that resembled what Lady Dear wore on her collarbone and temples.

  Ayla was expecting to hate it, but a few minutes later, when Kiv moved aside so Ayla could see her reflection, she found . . . she didn’t. The black liner made her eyes look more intense, and the sheen of rouge and gold dust across her cheekbones was . . . pretty. Kiv hadn’t painted Ayla’s lips with red or purple, as was the trend; she’d just rubbed in a bit of tinted beeswax, the subtlest red. She’d pressed tiny flakes of gold leaf to Ayla’s temples, which winked in the light whenever Ayla turned her head.

  Ayla had never really given much thought to her own appearance. She’d been a servant since she was eleven; her priorities revolved around keeping Benjy and herself alive, keeping her head down, fanning the flame of anger in her belly, and plotting her revenge on Sovereign Hesod. There were no mirrors in the servants’ quarters. Before she became Crier’s handmaiden, she hadn’t seen her own reflection in who knows how long. She knew what her face looked like, but it was like knowing what her hand looked like. It was there, it was a part of her body, end of story.

  But now, gazing at herself—her features, heightened—she felt . . . something. The girl in the mirror looked like a girl in a tapestry or painting. Like the girls in illustrations of faerie stories. Like a princess or a noblewoman, sure, but also like a witch, or a trickster spirit, a creature that lured unwitting men to their deaths. Ayla felt—maybe the right word was powerful.

  “Thank you,” she said to Kiv. Wrenching her eyes away from the mirror was difficult; she didn’t want to stop looking at herself. “You did a good job.”

  Kiv grinned.

  Maris and Renne helped Ayla into her outfit: gold silk trousers and a matching doublet embroidered with the symbols of the Makers. The only piece of jewelry she wore was the bracelet Queen Junn had gifted her, the blue jewel glittering at her wrist.

  “I feel like a traveling performer,” Ayla said, inspecting herself in the mirror. “The ones who cartwheel through the streets and walk on stilts.” She huffed. “Maybe, instead of attending this feast, I could tie the bedsheets into a rope and you three could lower me out the window? It’s only a few stories to the ground. I bet I could make it.”

  “Oh, hush, you,” said Maris, cackling. “It’s just courtiers and merchant types, dull as anything. You’ll be fine. Besides, it’s too late to escape—the feast’s already begun.”

  Like the Maker’s Festival two days before, the Queen’s Feast was held in an open-air courtyard, though this one was smaller and tucked away within the labyrinthine sprawl of the palace, inaccessible to the public. There were two sunken pools, each with a sculpture in the center: two naked women carved from obsidian stone facing each other from opposite sides of the courtyard. One was an Automa, eyes painted gold, arms spread as if in welcome. The other was human, hands curled around the handle of a black stone ax.

  There were white rose petals strewn across the flagstones again, strings of paper lanterns casting a warm glow. Along one edge of the courtyard, a massive banquet table was already laden with platters of food. Dusk had deepened to night by the time Ayla entered the courtyard, the moon a silver coin, and about half the guests—mostly Automa, but Ayla saw a few humans among them—were seated, feasting. The other half were mingling in the open courtyard, some swaying to the music of a single harpist, some just talking. Ayla didn’t see Queen Junn anywhere, but then, the queen had a flair for the dramatic; she would probably wait until exactly the right moment to make her entrance. Benjy was also conspicuously absent. Had he not been invited?

  Ayla was glad for the dark, for the soft yellow light of the lanterns overhead and the candles lining the banquet table. She didn’t want anyone looking at her too closely. The lanternlight, softening and obscuring, was a kindness.

  Her stomach growled. And Ayla remembered: tonight, she could eat.

  She filled a plate and began to pick at it slowly. If she’d thought her daily breakfasts were rich, they were nothing compared to this. Here, at the banquet table, she had to pace herself, taking small delicate bites. But if she’d been alone . . . she would have filled her plate three times over, eaten until it felt like she’d never eat again. Ayla had spent years never knowing where the next meal would come from; so many times she’d eaten nothing but stale bread or half-rotted fish for days on end. Now she was sitting at a queen’s banquet eating white, flaky fish, meat that practically fell off the bone, sweet bread with butter and honey, some sort of stewed gourd that looked odd but tasted incredible.

  “You are Rabunian?” came a voice from beside her.

  It took a second for Ayla to realize the Automa was addressing her.

  She turned. “No,” she said, thinking quickly. Any of these guests might be well-connected enough to have heard about her, the runaway servant, the would-be assassin. “I am the daughter of . . . Lord Thom, of the iron mines.”

  The Automa cocked their head. They were older than Ayla, though it was impossible to tell how much older. Their skin was a rich, deep brown, their hair a lighter gold-shot brown, as was common in Varn. “You look Rabunian,” they said.

  Ayla just shrugged.

  “What is your name, human?” the Automa asked.

  “Clara.” Her mother’s name on her tongue felt at once familiar and foreign. A word in a dead language. “And you?”

  “Wender.” They leaned forward. Their fine pearl-studded shirt was sleeveless, and the candlelight caught on the corded muscles in their bare arms. “Would you like to dance?”

  Ayla hesitated.

  “I have no interest in courting you,” Wender clarified, looking amused. “I simply wish to avoid potential conversation with . . . everyone. If you will not dance with me, I might simply find a place to hide away until the night ends.”

  Despite herself, Ayla bit back a smile. “All right, then,” she said, getting to her feet. “I’ve never heard a better reason to dance.”

  Wender led her away from the banquet table and into the middle of the courtyard, w
here other dancing couples turned slowly to the music of the harp. A gentle song, like a fall of light rain. Ayla glanced up, and sure enough: she could see a few glittering Made butterflies high above the crowd, floating like sparks in the night air. When she looked down again, a shimmer of light, low to the flagstones, caught her eye. She squinted, unsure what she was looking at. Some sort of . . . moving mirror?

  Then the crowd parted, or rather the crowd was parted, because the moving mirror was not a moving mirror at all but a peacock. One Made entirely out of colored glass. It strutted through the crowd on spindly glass legs, a massive train of green glass tailfeathers dragging behind it with a horrible scraping noise. Glass on stone. Its body and neck were lapis lazuli blue, its beady little eyes like chips of obsidian. Its beak was pure gold.

  Stars and skies, Ayla thought, only just barely managing not to gape at it. She’d never seen a Made object like this. Only ever trinkets, and her locket, nothing bigger than her palm. Well, until the Made butterflies. The sovereign had never been one for displays like this. But here . . .

  “Clara?” said Wender.

  “Sorry,” she murmured, and turned away from the peacock, which continued its slow strut through the crowd. She let Wender put their hands on her waist, her own hands on their strong shoulders. Their Made skin was warm beneath her touch.

  “The only reason to attend these things is the gossip,” Wender mused, eyes on the crowd. They led Ayla in slow, lazy circles, not quite a waltz, mostly just an organized shifting. “But everyone’s been discussing the Rabunian scandal for days, and tonight is no different.”

  “The Rabunian scandal?” They had to mean the assassination attempt.

  “Scandals, I should say. The sovereign’s court must be in chaos. Things were bad enough before this whole mess with Lady Crier’s wedding. Or . . . lack thereof.”