Iron Heart

by Nina Varela

  “Are you ready?” Jezen asked Crier.

  “Yes,” Crier whispered.

  Jezen looked at Ayla. “Are you?”

  “Does it matter?” said Ayla.

  “Fair enough.”

  Like the other Midwife had, all those years ago, Jezen lowered her blade to Crier’s chest. She didn’t have the delicate little physician’s instrument Ayla had seen in the memory; she had only a small dagger. But it was well sharpened, and it would have to be enough. Jezen ran the knife along Crier’s skin, finding that same near-invisible seam, the skin splitting apart easily. No blood. Using only the tip of the knife, she pried open that small section of Crier’s chest. The door to her heart. Crier had squeezed her eyes shut the moment the blade touched her skin; she kept them shut now. Ayla brushed her fingers over Crier’s forehead. “It’s okay,” she murmured. “It’ll be over soon.”

  “I trust you,” Crier breathed.

  And I will trust myself, Ayla thought. I have to.

  Crier’s heart, unlike the Automa girl’s heart from the memory of Siena, was beating. Ayla could hear it ticking like a clock, could see the faint vibration of each pulse. She saw where the tiny gold and copper veins fed into it. This was the challenge: fitting the new heart into Crier’s chest at exactly the right angle, reattaching the veins and vessels. Ayla remembered the sound she’d heard in the memory, like a latch clicking into place.

  The blue heart rested on the flagstones beside her, nestled in a scrap of cloth. Ayla raised her head to look at Jezen. The Midwife’s eyes were an unusual green, like chips of emerald.

  It was time.

  So carefully, shifting her knife only the tiniest fraction of an inch each time, Jezen began to cut Crier’s heart out of her body. Ayla watched, unblinking, as Jezen severed the veins one by one, detaching them cleanly from the surface of the heart. The veins seemed alive, moving independently of each other, like wiry, hair-width blades of grass swaying in a nonexistent wind.

  Jezen severed the last vein. Crier’s face smoothed over instantly, her whole body going lax. Ayla swallowed hard, trying not to panic. This was what it looked like when Crier died.

  But it was temporary. Ayla picked up the Tourmaline heart and held it in both hands, waiting, as Jezen lifted Crier’s old heart out of her chest. There was the familiar hollow space, the pocket left behind. Ayla shoved aside her panic, took a deep breath, and let instinct and memory take over. She turned the blue heart in her hands, matching the angle to what she had seen in Siena’s mind. She remembered the positioning of the alchemical symbols: fire, water, earth, air, gold. Here, just like that. Then, without hesitating, she lowered the Tourmaline heart into the hollow in Crier’s chest. She pressed it into place, feeling Crier’s inner workings flutter beneath the pressure, flexing and shifting to accept this new object. Maker’s iron, as the bandits in the woods by the River Merra had said. Black magick, that. Iron that moves and breathes. She held out a hand and Jezen passed her the knife, and Ayla slid the tip of the blade under Crier’s veins, guiding them into place. The etchings on the surface of the heart weren’t just letters. They were a map. The tips of the severed veins matched perfectly with the points of each letter, latching on. Stilling once more.

  Ayla pulled the knife away. There was a faint, almost inaudible sound. Like a latch.

  Nothing happened.

  Ayla sat back on her heels, waiting. For Crier’s eyes to open, for her chest to rise and fall again.

  Nothing.

  “Ayla,” Jezen said.

  “No,” Ayla said, louder. Think, think. Why hadn’t it worked? What was different? What would it take to breathe life into this heart?

  The only other time she’d seen Tourmaline come to life, it had been in the hands of a boy with a hammer. He’d been making a bomb. Ayla remembered the symbols he’d etched into the surface of the bomb, ready to be activated with a drop of blood. Fire, saltpeter, sulfur. Mortar. Salt. And she remembered what Lady Dear had said, on that sunlit afternoon in the palace at Thalen.

  Have you heard of the language of flowers?

  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.

  “Ayla,” Jezen said again, but Ayla wasn’t listening. She grabbed the knife again and bent over Crier’s lifeless, lightless body, biting her lip so hard she tasted blood.

  Fire, saltpeter, sulfur made a bomb. That was where she’d start. She needed energy, but not too much all at once; a slow burn, not an explosion. Ayla held the blue stone in place with one hand, careful not to touch the veins, and with the other, she lowered the knife. Using the very tip of the blade, she began to scratch the first symbol into the surface of Yora’s—Crier’s—heart.

  Moon and water for transformation. Fire for energy, tempered by earth, to keep it from raging out of control. Phosphorus to invoke light; magnesium to keep it burning. Salt and copper for life, for blood. Ayla carved the eight symbols in the shape of a circle. Then, in the center, she connected them with an eight-point star. She could feel Jezen’s eyes on her, but she didn’t look up. She just ran the knife over the pad of her thumb, waited for a bead of red blood to well up, and pressed her thumb to the eight-point star.

  Nothing happened. Oh gods, oh gods—Ayla was about to pull away, panic rising in her throat, when—

  The Tourmaline began to glow.

  Pale blue light emanated from it, as if the stone was a lantern and Ayla had just lit the candle, reflecting on the underside of Crier’s chin, lighting up Jezen’s face from below. But—

  “Oh,” Ayla breathed.

  The heart wasn’t the only thing glowing. All over Crier’s body, all over her arms and legs and the exposed part of her chest, tiny cracks were forming. No—not cracks. Symbols. They must have existed all this time, invisible to the eye: alchemical symbols etched into this Made girl’s skin. Now, as the power of Tourmaline spread throughout her body, the symbols were glowing, emitting a pure white light, flickering even brighter with each pulse of Crier’s heart.

  “It worked,” said Jezen, reverent. “I can’t believe it worked. A new heart.”

  One of the music room windows exploded.

  Ayla and Jezen didn’t even have time to react before a figure leaped through the broken window, glass crunching beneath their boots when they dropped down onto the stone floor. They were dressed all in black, their face covered with a silvery metallic mask. A Watcher?

  “I’m here for the sovereign’s daughter,” the Watcher said, their low, rough voice muffled behind the mask. “Hand her over and live. Resist, and you will die.”

  “I choose resist,” said Ayla.

  “Then die.”

  The Watcher closed the space between them in less than a second. Ayla threw herself over Crier’s body, slashing blindly with the knife. She was shocked when it actually made contact, violet blood spattering the floor, but it was barely a scratch. The Watcher, eerily silent, Automa silent, fisted a hand in her hair and yanked her upright. Ayla caught a glimpse of their eyes through the slits in the mask. Then she was fighting hard against their grip, jabbing the knife at anything she could reach, hoping only to buy Jezen and Crier some time.

  “You’re the handmaiden,” said the Watcher. They were holding Ayla at arm’s length. She couldn’t reach them, the knife useless in her hand.

  “So what if I am,” she snarled.

  “Bad luck for you,” said the Watcher. “Scyre Kinok wants only the sovereign’s daughter alive. Everyone else dies. But the handmaiden dies painfully.”

  They threw her sideways. She hit the wall hard, skull cracking against stone, and crumpled to the floor. Dizzy and gasping, bile in her throat, Ayla saw only a pair of shiny black boots advancing on her before she was pulled to her feet again. The Watcher wrenched her head back, baring her throat, and Ayla clawed at their wrist, their arm—she’d lost the knife when she fell, heard it skitter across the flagstones—but it w
asn’t enough, it wasn’t anything, even the strongest human couldn’t compete with an Automa’s strength, and Ayla, though quick and clever, was not the strongest.

  The Watcher let her struggle hopelessly for another few seconds, then threw her to the floor again. Ayla cried out and curled up into a ball, lifting her arms up to protect her head, waiting for the blow, the knife strike, but it didn’t come. The Watcher had told her they’d make it painful, draw it out, and they meant it. Instead of going for her skull, they drew a leg back and kicked her in the shin.

  The pain was indescribable. Like someone had set off a powder bomb on her leg, but instead of blowing it to pieces, the explosion just kept going. She heard her bone shatter under the Watcher’s boot, felt her leg burning, surely it had burst open, surely it was bloody and mangled, surely this level of pain could not be contained by her skin. Ayla felt herself scream, the sound ripped from her throat, animal and raw, a sound she wouldn’t have thought herself capable of making. The pain was radiating up through her body now, coming in waves, her mind was flashing white, she was screaming again, if she felt this for a moment longer, even a moment, she’d go mad. Where was the Watcher? Why didn’t they just finish her off?

  Panting, trying not to vomit, Ayla cracked one eye open. The Watcher was—gone?

  No.

  Crier had woken up. She was on her feet, and she was glorious, even through the haze of pain. The runes were still glowing on her arms, her collarbone, even her cheeks and forehead. Jezen had closed up her chest again, but Ayla could see the blue heart pulsing, the blue glow swirling just beneath her skin. And her eyes—her eyes were glowing silver white. Just like Yora’s. This was the power of Tourmaline. Energy derived not from blood—from suffering, from death—but from the elements, magick, the belly of the earth.

  She was weaponless, but it didn’t matter. She stepped forward and the Watcher stepped back. They were brandishing their dagger, but their hand was shaking so hard the blade was trembling in the air.

  They were afraid of Crier.

  They were terrified.

  Crier lunged. The Watcher scrambled backward and escaped through the broken window, and then it was just Crier, Ayla, and Jezen again, the room silent save for Ayla’s harsh, racking breaths.

  “Ayla,” said Crier, and flew across the room, falling to her knees beside Ayla. Her hands fluttered uselessly over Ayla’s body, her leg. Ayla couldn’t see her own shin—she couldn’t move, could barely keep her eyes open—but whatever Crier saw made her features twist with horror. “Midwife Jezen,” she said, sharp and controlled. Oh, that was bad. The only other time Ayla had heard Crier’s voice like this was when Kinok had a sword at Ayla’s throat. “Midwife Jezen, she needs a physician. Now.”

  Outside the window, outside the music room, the sound of war horns. Like braying animals. Time slipped and Crier was saying, “Ayla, wake up, Ayla, open your eyes, come on,” and there was a second figure hovering over Ayla, all white, ghost white, like Luna’s dress in the marketplace a thousand years ago, before everything. Jezen was speaking. Her voice was higher in pitch than Crier’s, high like bells. Ayla could only make out every third word. Shards of bone. Bloodstream. Kill her.

  It will kill her.

  “Fetch a physician,” Crier was saying. “Please, go fetch a physician, there’s no time, I’ll stay here with her—”

  No.

  No, that wasn’t the plan.

  “Crier,” Ayla gasped, black spots popping up behind her eyes. “Crier, you—go, you have to go. I’ll be okay, I promise. Just go.”

  “No,” Crier said. She sounded close to tears. “No, I’m not leaving you. We just need a physician. This is so bad, Ayla, this is so—”

  “I can save her,” Midwife Jezen cut in. Crier’s head snapped up, those starry, glowing eyes darting in the direction of Jezen’s voice, but Ayla wasn’t about to take her own eyes off Crier. Her head was so heavy, vision turning dark and blurry at the edges, and she’d be damned if she looked at anything else.

  “If I move quickly, I can save her life,” said Jezen. “But if Kinok’s assassins already found you here, we’re all in danger. You are the target. He wants you. The best thing you can do for Ayla right now is to get far away from her. Go, Lady Crier. Whatever it is you’re going to do, do it now. Go and stop him.”

  “But—”

  “Go!”

  Pressure on Ayla’s forehead, hot against her icy skin. Then the shape of Crier, little more than a shadow now, was gone. With nothing left to look at, Ayla closed her eyes and let herself sink into the numbness, the dark water, feeling only relief when it closed over her head.

  20

  The heart inside her chest was not her own.

  Crier could feel it beating. She could feel it throughout her entire body, stronger than a normal heartbeat; with each pulse, the Makers’ symbols on her skin glowed brighter, winking like stars. She held up one arm in front of her face, examining the previously invisible markings. The symbols etched into her skin. All her life, she had been carrying these threads of magick. Only now were they revealed to her, as Yora’s heart filled her with a new kind of power. Words floated through her mind, the opening lines of the first book she had ever read. The Maker’s Handbook.

  All things possessed a certain prima materia, a pure, intangible substance older than the Universe Itself.

  If humankind is formed from such material, from organ to bone to flesh to even the intangible Soul, then surely the Maker can transmute human life.

  She had always been strong.

  But for the first time, Crier felt truly alive.

  Her mind kept trying to analyze and categorize each new sensation, to take this huge nebulous feeling and wrangle it into a shape that made sense. But how? Consuming heartstone paled in comparison. It had always felt like stepping from cool shadow into a patch of sunlight. A comforting warmth, a small replenishing of strength. This was—drinking moonlight. This was her whole body weightless and airy. Crier thought if she went to the sea cliffs right now, the tide would rise to meet her. If she pricked her fingertip, she’d bleed molten silver.

  She let her body guide her through the familiar halls of the palace. As she neared the main entrance, she could hear a clamor of voices from the grand ballroom. Human and Automa, so many voices, a hundred at least. Queen Junn’s army. The Tarreenians. The other humans, servant and rebel alike. Was there a difference between the two? Maybe not. Ayla probably didn’t think so. Ayla would probably say: To exist in this world at all is an act of rebellion for us, Just Crier.

  Ayla.

  Just keep moving, Crier told herself. She trusted Midwife Jezen. More than that, she trusted Ayla. If Ayla said she’d be okay, then she would be. It was simple as that. Ayla would hold up her end of the bargain—it was time for Crier to do the same.

  She didn’t see anyone else until she reached the main entrance. Eight members of the Green Guard were stationed inside the huge wooden doors, faces impassive, weapons in hand. When Crier approached, she got the distinct pleasure of watching their eyes widen in shock, if only for a split second. She smiled to herself. Silver eyes, skin covered with glowing runes; she probably looked like a creature from the old stories. One of the deep-sea fish-women who lived in the crevices of underwater rock formations, mouths open, using their long, luminous tongues to lure in prey. Or a candle-witch from the western mountains: a monster who took the form of a beautiful girl, who led her admirers deep into the mountains, lantern bobbing happily for miles and miles while the poor souls in love with her stumbled ever forward through the blinding snow, until they froze to death and the candle-witch devoured them whole.

  I am coming for you, Kinok, Crier thought.

  To the guards, she said, “Let me pass.”

  “It is not safe outside the palace walls, Lady Crier,” one of them replied. “The Scyre’s battalion has arrived.”

  “I understand that,” said Crier. “Let me pass.”

  Whatever their orders, Crie
r was not their charge. Moving as one, the Green Guard bowed their heads and stepped aside, clearing the way. Crier pulled one of the heavy wooden doors open just enough to slip through the crack, and then she was free. Outside, late afternoon was shifting quickly into early evening, the sky deepening from clear blue to the color of a new bruise. The air was cool on Crier’s skin. She took a deep breath, filling her lungs, and kept going. There were more guards stationed outside the doors, but they made no move to stop her; they would have been able to hear the conversation from within. She left them and the palace behind.

  The main courtyard, like the servants’ quarters and the orchards and the fields, had been repurposed for battle. There were a dozen cloth tents dotting the grass, horses tied around the perimeter, Automae and humans hurrying around between the tents. All of them were suited for battle. Some, like Ayla, were in padded wool or what looked like riding leathers. Some were more heavily armored, in shimmering chain mail or chest plates of solid metal, swords at their hips. Many of the Automae wore the white masks of Varn, and it was eerie, all those blank, empty faces, featureless except for eye slits, like statues come to life.

  As Crier made her way across the courtyard, everyone who saw her stopped and stared. Some of the humans shrank away from her, frightened. She wanted to tell them there was nothing to be afraid of, but that could come later. For now, she had one mission. She would not stray.

  Only two people didn’t shrink away. Ayla’s brother, Storme, was standing by one of the campfires, conferring with Ayla’s curly-haired friend. Benjy. Their heads were bent together, Storme’s hand on Benjy’s shoulder. They both looked up when she approached, and their eyes widened.

  “What . . . ?” Benjy started.

  “You,” Crier said to him. “Go to the music room. Ayla needs you.”

  “What? What’s wrong with Ayla? Is she hurt?” Storme demanded, even as Benjy gave Crier a nod, clapped a hand on Storme’s shoulder in farewell, and took off back toward the palace in a long-legged sprint.