Iron Heart

by Nina Varela

  The way Crier looked at her. Then and now.

  Ayla opened her eyes—when had she closed them?—and found Crier gazing into the hearth fire, eyes flickering gold, hands curled in her lap. Without thinking, Ayla reached out. She took Crier’s hand and turned it over, palm up. Touching just to touch. A thousand excuses leaped into her mind—you’re warm and full and sleepy, you’re not thinking properly, you’re just glad to be alive, you just want to be close to someone—but Ayla knew damn well there was no excuse for this. For the things she wanted. The things she didn’t.

  I won’t pretend to understand how you could care for her, Benjy had said. But . . . I accept it.

  Well, I don’t, Ayla remembered thinking. I don’t accept it. I’ll never accept it.

  “The lines are so faint,” she murmured, tapping the center of Crier’s palm.

  Crier didn’t answer for a long moment. She seemed to be holding her breath. “Lines?” she said finally.

  “On your palm.” Ayla held up her own hand. “See, mine are deeper. More defined. The head line, the heart line, I forget the rest. Some people think the lines on your palm predict how your life will go. How long you’ll live. How happy you’ll be.”

  “I see.” Crier looked down at her palm, tilting her hand back and forth in the firelight, as if trying to reveal some hidden lines. “What does a nearly blank palm mean, then?” She smiled, but it didn’t reach her eyes. “A blank future? Only the faintest happiness?”

  “Nah,” said Ayla. “If I believed in that kind of thing—which I don’t, really—I’d say a blank palm is like a blank page. A whole book of blank pages. You’re a storyteller. I bet you could fill them with something.”

  “Ah, so I write the lines myself,” said Crier. “That’s not such a bad fate.”

  “Not bad at all.”

  “What does your palm say?”

  “You know,” Ayla said, lips quirking, “I’m not actually sure. I think this one”—she took one of Crier’s fingers and guided it to her own palm, tracing it over the topmost line, right below her calluses—“is the head line. Maybe. Mine’s kind of short.” She frowned. “A short head line. Does that mean I’m a fool?”

  Crier smiled, small but real, nose crinkling. “You know more than I do.”

  “My heart line’s short, too. Am I a heartless fool?”

  “To be fair, everything about you is short.”

  Ayla’s jaw dropped. “You take that back.”

  Crier shook her head. The smile had faded from her lips, but it glowed like candlelight in her eyes, gone dark again since she’d turned from the fire.

  “Not all of us can be beanpoles,” Ayla said, with a mock scowl. She went to pull her hand away, but Crier caught it. And just like that, Ayla’s breath hitched in her throat, and the words left her, and she could have sworn her entire being had narrowed to that small point of contact, the place where Crier’s fingers were curled loosely around her own. The wanting swelled inside her, blooming like peonies. In her ribs. Between her lungs. Beneath her sternum.

  Crier’s grin had faded. She was staring down at their joined hands, brow furrowed.

  “What?” Ayla whispered.

  “I want to . . .” Crier brushed her thumb almost absentmindedly across Ayla’s knuckles. She shook her head. “Tell me more about your lessons with Lady Dear,” Crier said in a rush. “Or your friend, the boy with the curly hair. Or your history. Your life. Those weeks in Thalen. The things you’ve done. The things you haven’t. Whatever you want to tell me, please tell me that.”

  “Why?”

  Crier took a breath. “I want to learn about you.”

  “I’m not a book,” said Ayla, ignoring her own traitorous heartbeat. How it quickened. “Palms aside. You can’t read me once and know everything.”

  “Then I will read you again and again,” said Crier. She seemed to catch something in Ayla’s expression, seemed to realize that wasn’t the right answer. “I know,” she said. It sounded like she was choosing each word very carefully. “I know you’re not a book. I know I can’t know everything. I know it is important to you that I do not. Or perhaps that no one does. But . . . if there is anything you want to give. One story. One solitary point on the map of yourself. One star in the constellation, one door unlocked. I will accept it, and be honored, and I will not forget.”

  “I don’t think you’ll like my stories,” Ayla told her. She thought of the stories Crier had woven for her on the night of the Reaper’s Moon. Not that long ago. Princesses and foxes, bears and snow-choked passes and peace treaties. In the forest: Hana and Winter, a soul sinking into the mountains, another iteration of forever.

  “I’m not . . .” Crier gazed into the fire for a moment, at the black heart of it, where the flames were born and died. She took a while to answer, as she often did. During pauses like this Ayla tried to imagine what it looked like inside Crier’s head. What it looked like when she gathered her thoughts, sifting through heaps of words until she found those flecks of gold. “You keep comparing yourself to a book. That is not how I see you. If I want to learn about you, it’s not for . . . pleasure, or leisure, or the desired mastery of a subject. I am not trying to learn you like a language. I am trying, Ayla, to learn you like a person. Like people do, with the knowledge that I will never know everything. That it is impossible to know everything.” Despite her words, she sounded a little put out about it, in a way that made Ayla want to laugh. Not unkindly. “Because you deserve to be known, in whatever capacity you wish. I am trying to become a person who deserves to know you. I want that. More than anything.”

  “My history is bloody,” Ayla told her. “It is tied to your own.”

  “Mine?”

  The time had come, then. For the full story. If Crier wanted to know her, she had to know this first.

  “I come from a village to the north,” Ayla began. It felt impossible: telling this story to this person, after so many years. “When I was nine, Sovereign Hesod’s men raided my village. They burned it to the ground. Almost everyone was killed. Including my parents. I was one of the only survivors.”

  Crier was holding very still. She wasn’t breathing.

  “After that day, I managed to make my way down the coast to the village of Kalla-den. But I was starving and weak, and it was winter. I collapsed in the street. I should have died. I would have—but someone found me. Her name was Rowan.” She took a shaky breath, steeling herself against the rush of memories that accompanied that name. “She took me in. She did that often—found the lost children, saved them, let them into her home. Benjy—my friend with the curly hair—grew up with me there. It was Rowan who found us work at the sovereign’s palace. At my request.” She caught Crier’s look. “Why did I want to work for the man who killed my parents?”

  Crier was silent. Her eyes never left Ayla’s face.

  “Because I wanted revenge,” Ayla said, returning her gaze. She would look Crier in the eyes for this; she would not flinch away or hide. “I wanted to do to him what he had done to me. I wanted to find what was most important to him, and I wanted to kill it.”

  “That was the real reason,” Crier said, voice cracking. “That was why you—that night. It wasn’t just to set off my chime. Oh, gods.” Then she paused, confusion breaking through the horror. “But—the first time we met, you saved my life. Why?”

  “I have asked myself that question countless times,” Ayla said softly. “And . . . I don’t know. I hated you then, I really did. Maybe it was instinct, maybe it was . . . gods, I don’t know. I couldn’t let you die that night on the cliffs, and I couldn’t kill you later. I thought I’d be able to. I thought—after Rowan died, I thought the anger and grief would be enough, but they weren’t. I know that now. Even if you hadn’t woken up, I would’ve run.”

  “Why?” Crier whispered. “Why couldn’t you do it?”

  Because. Because. Because.

  “A lot of reasons,” said Ayla. She reached for Crier’s hand again, cupping
it between both of her own. “Some I’m still trying to figure out. But. In the end . . . ah, hell. Do you want to know something embarrassing?”

  Crier choked out a laugh. “Embarrassing?”

  “To me,” Ayla clarified. “You’ve got to understand: I wanted revenge for so long. Seven years of wanting it, seven years of dreaming about it, seven years of promising myself I’ll avenge them, I’ll make him sorry, I’ll make him suffer . . . and in the end . . . I just don’t think I have it in me. That’s the embarrassing thing. The humiliating, awful, secret thing. I never could have done it. Even if it hadn’t been you lying in that bed, even if you were exactly like your father, even if you were cruel and monstrous and everything else I expected you to be, I don’t think I could have killed you.” Her eyes were burning. “I’m a coward. I’m weak.”

  “You’re not,” Crier said immediately. “Not a coward. Never a coward. Strength isn’t measured by the ability to cause harm.”

  “Rowan was part of the Resistance,” Ayla said, barely hearing her. “She was a leader, a fighter, she wanted your Kind gone, or at least, not in control of us. She wanted to liberate us. And she did things she didn’t want to do. She became things she didn’t want to become or—things she shouldn’t have had to become. For our sake, for the greater good, for the future of my people. And I was supposed to kill you, I was supposed to want to kill you, and I couldn’t do it. Our mission that night failed because of me. I ruined everything.”

  “I still don’t think that makes you weak,” said Crier. “And I’m not just saying that because it was me at the other end of your knife.”

  Ayla shook her head, blinking back tears. “I—I can’t agree with you. Maybe someday, but not yet.”

  “Then I will wait for someday,” said Crier.

  I want to know you.

  The thought was clear and bright as starlight.

  I want to know you, too.

  That night, they slept in the same bed. Crier fell asleep almost immediately, or at least faked it well, but Ayla lay awake for hours. She listened to Crier’s slow, even breathing beside her, less than an arm’s length away. If Ayla were brave, she would have closed the space between them. She would have crawled over and tucked her face into the hollow of Crier’s throat and breathed her in and wrapped an arm around her waist and tangled their legs together under the blankets. If she were brave, she would have done that.

  But she wasn’t brave. She kept to her own side of the bed, her own pillow. When she did sleep, it was fitful and plagued by wild, howling nightmares: Ayla dreamed of her mother’s face, her father’s, Storme’s, all their faces smearing together like melting wax, devoured by green fire, then the fire was seawater, a frothing, roiling maelstrom, a series of tiny wooden huts smashed apart by the waves and sucked down, down, down to the bottom of the sea. Ayla dreamed of Queen Junn, of bloodied swords, of a war—legions of humans, starved and skeletal, up against a battalion of Automae in shining silver armor like molten moonlight, like ice. She dreamed of the Iron Heart, and in her dreams it looked like a massive cave, a mouth, a gaping maw, so dark it could have been a hole pierced into the fabric of the universe. As she watched, the darkness seemed to move. First it was shadows come to life, pouring out of the cave mouth, then it was flames again, black this time, swallowing the light. Licking at her ankles, her clothing, her flesh, too hot, too hot, she was burning, she wanted to scream—she tried to run and found she couldn’t move. The flames were heartstone red now, more liquid than fire—the ground tilted beneath Ayla’s feet and she was sliding down a slick, muddy riverbank toward the crashing river below, but the water was red, it was red and there was something else wrong, the texture was off, it didn’t look like water, it looked like—

  Blood.

  Ayla woke with a jolt right before she fell into the river of blood. She shoved the blankets off and lay there, trying to catch her breath, worried she might be sick. The sky was still black outside the windows.

  Dawn was a long way off.

  14

  They left Lady Shiza’s estate the next morning with a pouch of heartstone dust and directions to the hunting grounds to the west, where Shiza said she’d seen blue smoke rising over the trees. Two leagues west would lead them into the foothills of the Aderos Mountains. That was where Kinok was headed, so that was where they would go. It was easy traveling at first, walking through shrubland and yellow grass. Then the hills began to rise up, wooded and rockier than Crier had experienced on her journey from the sovereign’s palace down to the southern estates, to Lake Thea.

  The trees weren’t as tall here as they were to the east, back near the River Merra. It was mostly copses of fingerbone birches, bare with winter. Crier took the lead, listening as always for any danger, and together she and Ayla picked their way up into the foothills, navigating around boulders and thick clumps of saplings. A few hours passed with no sign of anything unusual, anything connected to the blue smoke. They had been traveling on foot since early in the morning, and judging by the sun’s position it was nearing midafternoon now. Crier kept a close eye on Ayla. They’d passed a couple mountain streams, so Ayla had been able to drink her fill of water, but she hadn’t eaten since last night.

  Finally, just as Crier was about to suggest they stop for the day and find shelter, they found a gap in the trees, a clearing ringed with young birches—and strewn with the remnants of a human camp. By the looks of it, the camp had only recently been abandoned. The humans had tried to hide their tracks—the pale ashes of a campfire were strewn at the edge of the clearing, purposefully mixed with the dirt, and piles of dead leaves had been scuffled around to hide boot- or hoofprints. But Crier could smell those ashes, a sharp back-of-the-tongue scent mingled with the muted scents of earth and decay, and more than that, she could smell . . . something else, something stronger, like the ozone snap of a powder bomb but not.

  “Crier,” said Ayla. She was crouched over the roots of a tree, frowning. “Come look at this. Don’t touch.”

  The second Crier crouched down beside Ayla, she knew this was the source of the powder bomb smell: there was a strange scar at the base of the tree, like it had been struck by lightning, the bark scorched and peeling back around a deep, piercing wound. There was a shard of stone lodged in the center of the tree’s wound. Blue gemstone, a blue deeper than lapis lazuli, deeper than sapphire, like it wasn’t stone at all but a piece of the midnight sky. Was this what caused the blue smoke? Was it some sort of . . . shell, for the powder bombs? Or was this the deadly substance itself?

  Crier turned, scanning the rest of the clearing for more clues. She didn’t see any other pieces of the blue stone, but she did see a spot of bright color on the ground, half hidden among the dead leaves and the underbrush. Caught in a bramble, like a butterfly in a spiderweb, the only reason it hadn’t blown away.

  One of Queen Junn’s green feathers.

  “Hey,” said a voice.

  Crier whipped around. How had she not heard someone coming? At the edge of the clearing there was a human boy. No older than Crier herself. He was carrying a loaded crossbow, the bolt pointed at Crier. She’d definitely been on the run too long, because her first thought was: Oh, not again.

  “You wanna put that away?” Ayla said from off to the left. “We’re not doing anything. We’re just travelers.”

  The boy’s eyes were fixed on Crier. “No such thing as just travelers in these woods. You’re coming with me.”

  “To where?” Ayla said.

  “We mean no harm,” Crier managed.

  He shook his head, bolt still aimed at Crier’s chest. “Can’t trust nobody snooping around a spot like this. You’re coming with me.”

  Crier and Ayla exchanged a look. Crier’s look was, Let’s cooperate. He might know something about the blue smoke. Ayla’s mostly involved wide eyes and dark, angry eyebrows, but Crier chose to interpret it as, Yes, good plan.

  The boy made Crier and Ayla circle around to walk in front of him. “Don’t tr
y anything,” he said. “It’ll be dark soon. You run off now, you’re Shade bait for sure. You’re good as dead.”

  “You know, I think you attract trouble,” Ayla whispered to Crier, ducking under a low, thorny branch.

  Do I, though? Crier almost asked.

  Another half hour of tense, silent hiking, the sun sinking beneath the tree line, and they reached their destination. The boy with the crossbow had led them to a heartstone keep: a stone silo where heartstone dust was stored before traders picked it up and sold it throughout Zulla. A hundred-odd heartstone keeps dotted the foothills of the Aderos Mountains, always heavily guarded by the Watchers of the Heart. But this one had clearly been abandoned for years. The outer walls were more green than gray from soft, springy moss between the stones, tendrils of ivy snaking up the outer walls, patches of pale lichen everywhere. The roof was less of a roof and more a blanket of moss, a deep green fur speckled with tiny white stardrops.

  “Inside,” said the boy, gesturing at the thick wooden door.

  Crier’s eyes adjusted, and she saw she’d stepped into a big circular room with a low ceiling. The keep was dark and cool. Stone steps curved up one wall, leading to an upper floor. The only other notable feature was a hearth big enough to comfortably roast a boar. And, of course, the keep wasn’t empty. Half a dozen humans were milling around, polishing weapons or resting on mats on the floor. They’d all looked up when the door opened, heads turning in unison like startled deer.