Crier's War

by Nina Varela

  “Don’t,” Ayla said. “Just—don’t.”

  Then she opened the door and ran.

  But she didn’t make it far. “Have you seen the lady?” the innkeeper asked as Ayla stumbled down the stairs.

  “Yes, she’s upstairs, ah, readying herself to leave.” Ayla fumbled for words that made sense. She’s cleaning up feathers. She’s holding my locket. She kissed me—and I kissed her back.

  But the innkeeper just stood there, wringing her hands as she blocked Ayla’s way. “Unfortunately, I must ask that you remain here for the time being. I’m afraid it isn’t safe to leave.”

  “Why?” Crier had appeared behind her—had followed Ayla down the stairs. Ayla stiffened, involuntarily, unable to meet Crier’s eyes, knowing if she did, all of her feelings would be written plainly for Crier to see.

  The innkeeper faltered. “I’m—I’m not sure, ma’am, but there’s some sort of—riot on the roads outside the village. I—I don’t know how it began, but—”

  “Humans or Automae?” Crier demanded.

  “Pardon?”

  “Who’s rioting,” she repeated. “Your Kind? Or mine?”

  “Mine, my lady,” she said. “Seems a fight broke out in the marketplace between one of mine and one of—one of the sovereign’s guards, and somehow it escalated, and now the mob’s headed this way. There’s a guard post nearby. That’s the target. We’ve—they’ve tried to burn it down before.” She looked terrified by her own slipup, but Crier didn’t even seem to notice. For that, Ayla was grateful. “It’s not safe to leave Elderell, my lady. At least not until extra guards come.”

  “How long will that take?”

  “I don’t know.” She gestured at the window. “See for yourself, my lady. It’s near impossible to move through the single road. I suggest you both stay the night and return tomorrow instead.”

  Stay the night. No, Ayla could not spend another night here, alone with Crier. Even the crowdedness of the servants’ building back at the palace would be more tolerable. At least there she’d be able to wrestle with her feelings away from Crier’s gaze.

  Crier looked out the window, and Ayla joined her. At first, she didn’t see anything. But then, when she scanned the rooftops of the village, she saw it: smoke, past the village’s outer gates, rising up into the sky, a black plume.

  “Staying is not an option,” Crier said to the innkeeper. Ayla noticed she wasn’t making eye contact either. “We must leave now, we can’t wait this out. We have to deliver a—a time-sensitive message.”

  The innkeeper looked despairing. “I must advise you to wait.”

  Ayla finally looked at Crier—for an instant, and then she looked away again, jaw working. “We can’t wait. We have to go.”

  “Tell my driver to ready the carriage,” Crier told the innkeeper.

  “. . . Yes, my lady. If—if that is what you wish.”

  Within minutes, the carriage appeared, and Crier and Ayla boarded in a hurry. Around them, the sky was darkening—not with evening. With smoke.

  The second Crier closed the door behind them, the driver cracked the whip and they were off, bumping along the cobblestoned street. Ayla pressed herself up against the far wall, as far from Crier as she could possibly get without actually just throwing herself out the window. Mercifully, Crier made no comment.

  They drove along, windows rattling with the uneven street, and at first it looked like everything would be fine. Like they’d be able to leave Elderell unhindered by whatever riot had broken out.

  Until Ayla realized something was wrong. She heard the driver curse aloud and urge the horses forward, heard a shout that didn’t belong to him, and then another shout, and then another. She tensed, pushing the velvet curtain aside to peek out at the street. At first, she didn’t see anything out of the ordinary.

  Something struck the window hard enough to crack the glass, barely an inch from Ayla’s nose. She gasped, rearing back. Someone had thrown a rock at the carriage window.

  “Gods,” Ayla said, her voice low. She scooted toward the middle of the carriage, the desire to stay away from Crier giving way to the desire to remain alive.

  “I can hear it,” Crier said. “Them.” Two shouts had become a dozen; a dozen had become too many too count, a wall of angry voices. “There’s a crowd. A mob. Close, and getting closer.”

  Ayla swore. “How far are we from the village gates?”

  “Not far, but I don’t know if we’ll be able to—”

  Another rock hit the window with a crack, new spider webs appearing in the glass. The noise of the mob was growing closer still. Ayla risked a glance out the cracked window and saw, to her horror, a wave of people in the street, another billow of smoke, this time rising from a rooftop only one street away.

  “My lady!” she heard the driver scream.

  Then the mob fell upon the carriage like waves crashing against rock. Another rock hit the side of the carriage, another earsplitting crack—then Ayla heard the sounds of a dozen hands hitting the sides of the carriage. They were being rocked back and forth, humans shoving at the carriage on both sides.

  She braced herself against the shaking wall. “Gods, they’re not going to stop until they rip this thing apart—”

  An absurd image flashed into Ayla’s head: the carriage cracked open like a giant black crab shell, her and Crier pulled like soft meat from the wreckage.

  “There are more,” Crier said—she had to yell to make herself heard over the shouting and the horrible creaking of the carriage. “They won’t let up.”

  “We either wait to see what they’ll do to us once they get inside . . . or we try to escape,” Ayla said, poising to break out. It was their only option. But—

  The carriage shuddered hard enough to throw them both sideways, Crier’s head nearly cracking against the window. Ayla gasped.

  She dived forward to see if Crier was all right—of course she was all right, her Kind could handle far worse than this—when she spotted something out the window.

  A flash of silver.

  A face.

  “Rowan.” The name slipped from her tongue in her shock, before she could stop it. She threw back the velvet curtains even as Crier shrank into the seat, staring in horror at the furious humans surrounding the carriage, a sea of hands and faces, teeth and wild eyes. Behind them, oily black smoke rose up from the rooftop of a nearby building. The humans stared into the carriage—stared at Crier—with white-hot hatred, screaming things Ayla couldn’t make out, slapping at the carriage windows, shoving themselves bodily against the wheels and sides.

  “Rowan!” Ayla cried out again. Because there she was: a woman standing stock-still at the center of the mob, staring at the carriage. Her silver hair stood out like a beacon against the writhing crowd, her mouth forming a silent word: Ayla.

  Ayla pressed both hands to the window, nothing but a thin pane of glass separating her from the mob. She didn’t care. “Rowan!”

  Crier crawled across the seats and grabbed the collar of Ayla’s shirt, trying to drag her away from the window, but Ayla squirmed out of her grip. “Let go of me!” she snarled. “Let go, that’s my friend out there—”

  The sound of a horn cut through the shouting. The innkeeper’s guards must have arrived. Ayla couldn’t see them yet, but she saw the moment the crowd realized what was happening: she saw some of them scream with new anger or fear, she saw a few peel away from the edges of the mob and make a break for it.

  Another one pulled out a wooden club.

  “Ayla,” Crier said urgently, tugging at Ayla’s arm. “You have to get away from the window.”

  “No! We have to get Rowan out of there!” Ayla struggled, almost panicking. “She can’t get captured, she’s important, we need her, we can’t do any of it without her! Rowan!”

  “Ayla, I’ll have the guards take her to a safe place, just get away from the window.”

  Ayla swiveled to Crier, panting. “You’ll protect her? You’ll make sure she’s
okay?”

  “Yes,” said Crier. She looked out over Ayla’s shoulder. Rowan was waving her arms and shouting to the other rebels, gesturing at something. Trying to calm them? Or rile them up further? “I promise you,” Crier said. “Just get down, get your face away from the glass!”

  Another rock hit the glass, this time breaking through; Ayla got a faceful of shattered glass. She felt the impact first and then pain, white-hot and searing, radiating through her entire face. Her lip and forehead were bleeding; blood dripped down her chin; she could taste it.

  Crier was pulling her down to the floor, while outside the carriage, there was a flash of black. The guards had arrived. Hazily, she could see a line of them closing in around the mob, swords drawn. Automae. Their faces were different, but all wore the same expression: blank as new parchment, cold as ice.

  It all seemed to happen in slow motion, even as Ayla scrabbled against Crier, pushing her way back to the now-broken window, because she needed to break free, needed to reach Rowan—

  First, the guards were at the edges of the mob, making it impossible for any of the humans to escape. Then, there was a burst of movement near the center, and the man who’d drawn the wooden club reappeared again, brandishing it above his head.

  Rowan wrapped her arms around him. She was trying to make him lower the weapon. But it was too late. The guards had seen a threat.

  Ayla couldn’t hear the noise the sword made when it pierced Rowan’s back. But she saw it happen, and so her mind produced a terrible, gut-wrenching noise. The noise of a blade pushed through flesh and organ and spine.

  The guard pulled his sword out of Rowan’s back. Slowly, so slowly, inch by inch, the metal dark with blood. Around them, the other humans were beginning to realize what had just happened; new screams, of fear and anger, tore the air. Red human blood spattered the man with the club. It dripped from the hilt of the sword. It bloomed, a growing patch, across the center of Rowan’s spine. Her dress was forest green. The red looked black.

  Rowan swayed and fell.

  Only then did Ayla scream.

  Ayla barely remembered returning to the palace, the imagined sound of metal on bone still echoing in her head. She hadn’t even looked at Crier for the rest of the carriage ride back, let alone spoken, and though they’d driven through the night, through sunrise and half the morning, neither of them had slept at all. Ayla had just sat there, hollowed, sucking on her broken lip. Blood on her tongue.

  When they pulled to a stop at the stables, she practically threw herself out of the carriage, eyes stinging with unshed tears. She wouldn’t cry. Rowan wouldn’t want her to cry. Rowan would want her to act.

  You did well, my girl.

  It was time for Ayla to finish what she’d started.

  Benjy. Have to find Benjy.

  He didn’t know. It seemed impossible that he didn’t know. That he wouldn’t have simply felt it, felt the universe change so terribly and abruptly, felt a phantom sword push through his spine.

  A field worker. A girl, hair cropped short, familiar face. Ayla caught her by the sleeve outside the servants’ quarters, maybe said something, maybe just said Benjy’s name. Either way, the girl pointed wordlessly toward the orchards.

  Ayla found Benjy under a sun apple tree, harvesting the shiny red fruits, his hands streaked with dirt.

  And he caught the look, the blood, on her face immediately. “What’s wrong?” he demanded, looking around wildly as if afraid Ayla was being chased down. “What happened?”

  She couldn’t get the words out for a moment. Didn’t want to. It was childish—like if she didn’t say it aloud, it wouldn’t be true; it wouldn’t be real.

  But that wasn’t how the world worked.

  “Rowan,” she managed, and then all the horror and grief returned in a rush, and the world snapped back into place, the haze disappearing, the shock making itself known again. She tried to fumble through it. Tried to explain. The mob, the crush of people, the chaos, the guards, the blood.

  “What are you saying?” He strode forward, put his hands on her shoulders, and only then did Ayla realize she was shaking. Benjy’s eyes were huge. He looked almost like the boy she’d first met four years ago, all eyes and cheekbones and freckles.

  You’re stronger than him, Ayla, Rowan had said once. You have to protect him.

  She swallowed hard. “Rowan is dead. She was killed by guards in the village of Elderell. By one of them.”

  Benjy just stared at her. “No.”

  “I’m so sorry.” And that was when the tear finally came—harsh and stinging and gutting. She dropped to a crouch and he was down there with her, arms around her, whispering no, his voice in anguish.

  She knew what his pain must be right now. It was the same as her own.

  They’d lost a mother. A mentor. The arrow that always pointed north. They had nothing without Rowan—would be nothing now if it hadn’t been for her.

  The leeches had killed her, just like they’d killed everything that ever mattered to Ayla. Just like they’d killed Ayla’s parents. Just like they’d killed Luna, Nessa, thousands of others. Rowan, who had taken care of her, had taken her in, had given her a life and a purpose. Rowan, who had scolded her countless times, but always out of the desire to make her stronger, to keep her alive.

  “Did you—did you actually look at her body? Are you sure she wasn’t just injured?” Benjy’s jaw was clenched tight, he was shaking Ayla, angry with her now. “She’s tough. You know she’s tough. She could still be alive.”

  “Benjy,” Ayla whimpered. “I saw her fall . . .”

  He was clutching her shoulders so tightly it was sure to bruise.

  “I want to mourn her properly,” Ayla said. “And we will. But not right now.”

  She began to wipe her face. To suck in the snot and smudge away the blood and blink back the tears.

  “What are you talking about? What do you mean, we can’t mourn her right now? When the hell else—?”

  “I’ve got a lot to tell you,” she murmured. “Time is running out.”

  She told him: about the black dust, spreading across Zulla like the poison it was. The moment it became as common as heartstone, it would be too late to launch an attack on the Iron Heart. There would be no point, if Automae depended on black dust instead of heartstone. The Resistance had to act now.

  “We have to break into Kinok’s study and steal the compass, like we discussed. Like Rowan wanted. Tomorrow. No more stalling.”

  “That doesn’t give us much time to make a plan, Ayla.”

  She nudged their shoulders together. “That’s what we’re doing right now.”

  Benjy huffed, and she could see he, too, was pushing tears away, trying to be brave, to do what was right. “While you were gone, I thought about how to get our hands on the safe. If someone can create a distraction on one of the upper levels of the palace, it would be possible to break into the study and at least steal the entire safe—we can always crack it open afterward.”

  “A distraction,” Ayla repeated.

  “Yeah. Only problem is—what kind of distraction?” He sniffed, rubbed his nose. “I was thinking maybe a fire or something . . . we just need to distract the guards for a few minutes, just for long enough to get into the study. . . . Something that would guarantee they’d all come running.”

  They fell silent, both thinking.

  “I know what we have to do,” Ayla heard herself say. “Her chime.” It felt like it wasn’t her speaking, like it was someone else, someone stronger. The girl who wanted revenge. The girl who would do anything for it. The girl Rowan had found on the streets of Kalla-den, starving and frozen. The girl who had lost everything. “If we set off Crier’s chime, every guard in the palace will come running straight for her. If it’s at night, she’ll be in her bedchamber in the north wing. Far away from Kinok’s study.”

  “That—that could work,” Benjy said, voice still thick with tears.

  “And I have to do it.” The re
alization landed like a stone in her belly, a hollow thud. “I’m her handmaiden. I can—I can visit her bedchamber, even in the middle of the night, and no one will stop me.” She turned to look at Benjy. “It has to be me.”

  His mouth twisted. “Ayla . . .”

  “Benjy. Do you remember what I’ve been working toward? What I’ve wanted for so long?”

  They stared at each other. Ayla knew they were both thinking the same thing.

  “You’re not just going to set off Crier’s chime,” Benjy said slowly. “You’re going to kill her. Ayla, are you insane? The guards will capture you, or kill you on sight.”

  “No,” she said.

  She looked to the east.

  Out there, past the orchards and the palace and the gardens, the Steorran Sea was crashing, as it always had and always would, against the rocks. Ayla pictured it: seething black water, pale-green froth. The cliffs. The spot where Crier had fallen. Where Ayla had moved without thinking, lunged forward, grabbed Crier’s wrist. Saved her life. Set this whole thing in motion. “I’m finally in my right mind,” she said carefully, the words feeling once again as if they were coming from outside her, from the Ayla of the past.

  “I’ve been—I’ve grown soft, I’ve grown weak, I lost sight of the only thing I’ve wanted this entire time, the only thing I’ve ever wanted. I want to kill them all, Benjy, but the daughter of the sovereign most of all. Hesod must pay for what he’s done. This is my chance, don’t you get that? I won’t miss it. I can’t.”

  Something dark flitted across his face. “Are you sure you’ll be able to do it?”

  “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

  “You said it yourself,” he muttered, looking out over the ocean. “You’ve spent so long at her side. You’ve grown soft—for her.”

  For a minute, she was silent. No matter what, she couldn’t say it wasn’t true.

  Finally, she swallowed, hard. “The only thing I’ve ever wanted is revenge. I’ve never once forgotten that.”

  “I know you haven’t,” he said. “But things have changed, haven’t they? I’ve seen the way she keeps you close. The way she looks at you.”