by Nina Varela
She was so busy craning her neck to see the birds flying around at the highest point of the domed ceiling, she didn’t realize the queen was already here until Maris pushed her forward, hissing, “Don’t keep her waiting.”
Ayla stumbled forward, following the stepping-stones to the platform. Queen Junn was seated, facing away from the door to the aviary, her form hidden by the high back of the chair. A spindly little table between the two chairs held a silver tea tray, a teapot, two cups. Until Ayla clambered up onto the platform, all she could see of the queen was her hand: she was stirring the contents of one of the teacups with her finger.
“Ayla,” Queen Junn greeted her.
Ayla curtsied, perfunctory. “You summoned me?”
“Sit.”
She sat down across from the queen.
“Have a cup of tea, Ayla.”
Queen Junn was drinking heartstone, deep red. The second teacup was filled with what looked like regular herbal tea. Ayla picked it up, took a sip, and grimaced when it burned her tongue. When she looked up, the queen was watching her. In the yellow sunlight of the aviary the queen looked oddly young. Much softer than she had last night in the throne room—or a few weeks ago in Hesod’s palace, first in candlelight, then under a flat gray sky. She wasn’t wearing a gown this time. In fact, she was in pants and a shirt that looked almost like Ayla’s old handmaiden uniform, if the uniform had been green and made of silk.
“I’m glad you came to me, Ayla,” said Queen Junn. “I’m glad you sought refuge in Thalen. Or at least sought out your brother.”
Ayla tried not to react visibly, but the queen saw through her.
“Yes, I know who you are,” she said, amused. “Storme’s twin sister. Ayla.”
“He told you, then.”
“Even before he told me, I had my suspicions. The two of you share a passing resemblance, but your mannerisms . . . It was like dining with Storme and his reflection. You make the same expressions, though his are more muted; he’s far better at controlling his emotions. You lack subtlety, handmaiden.” Junn gave Ayla a pointed look, as if to say, You should improve on that.
It rankled. Ayla remembered Storme’s own words the night she’d confronted him in the palace hallway, close to tears, begging for answers: How did you end up in Varn? How did you become adviser to the queen?
Why didn’t you come back for me?
Storme, infuriatingly calm, had said: Stars and skies, Ayla. Lower your voice. Control yourself.
“Your eyebrows . . . ,” the queen was saying, arching one of her own. “The twist of your mouth when you’re displeased. Yes—like that. He does the same thing. And I knew he’d lost a sister in his home country. The first moment I saw you, I wondered.”
“Then . . . you’ll let me stay here until he comes back?” Ayla asked. She didn’t care for the queen’s musings, the way her words circled like seabirds. Why couldn’t powerful people ever just get to the point?
“I’d let you stay here either way,” said Junn. “I think you could be of great use to me.”
Ayla opened her mouth. Shut it again. Considered the risks of telling Junn everything she knew about Scyre Kinok instead of waiting for Storme. A fortnight was so much lost time. But for all she knew, she could have told Storme and he’d say, We can’t tell the queen, she’s secretly working with him. Queen Junn could send out all the green feathers in the world and Ayla still wouldn’t trust her one bit. What if she talked and all it got her was a stay in the dungeon?
Queen Junn raised her teacup to her lips, steam curling before her face like the tail of a white cat. “You’re clever,” she said, taking a sip of liquid heartstone. “If you are anything like your brother, you possess a sharp mind, one for science, for strategy. It’s tragic, really, when great minds are limited only by circumstance. You’re not a handmaiden anymore, Ayla. Your circumstances have changed, and so have your limits.” Her lips, stained deep red with heartstone, curved into a small private smile. “That, and . . . I once knew someone like you. A girl who spent many years trapped in a gilded birdcage, expected only to perform, to sing when urged, to serve, to otherwise be silent. She was never a servant, but that didn’t make her free. Her only escape was . . . books. Letters. The outside world existed only in fragments, only behind windowpanes. Except when she read, and when she wrote.”
“That’s all very pretty,” Ayla said. “But there’s no shortage of people who are clever or caged. What’s the real reason?”
Queen Junn’s smile sharpened. “See? Clever girl. For the past year, I have been closely monitoring Sovereign Hesod’s correspondences. My spies have intercepted hundreds of letters, documents, and coded messages between him and various members of the Red Council, plus a web of other contacts throughout Zulla. I have read all of them a thousand times over, searching for information on Scyre Kinok and the sovereign’s own underground dealings, for any potential threats against Varn. However, I am an outsider. I have found much of the sovereign’s coded language impenetrable. Even your brother and other Rabunians couldn’t help. But you, Ayla . . . you lived within the palace walls. You were handmaiden to the sovereign’s daughter.”
“I can’t read,” Ayla said bluntly. “I don’t think I’ll be able to decode anything.”
“You can be taught.”
“So you want to teach me to read so I can . . . ,” Ayla started, then trailed off. No, this still wasn’t the real reason the queen thought her useful. This was an excuse, or a test, or just a way to keep Ayla busy; keep her from asking questions. The queen wanted something else from her. Ayla just didn’t know what.
Well, if it meant seeing Storme, Ayla could play student. For now.
She hoped the queen really did have ulterior motives. Ayla couldn’t see herself being any good at cracking a coded language, no matter how clever she was. There were a thousand different kinds of cleverness, weren’t there? Ayla was body clever. Scrappy. She had a certain quickness on her feet, thanks to Rowan. The long afternoons of sparring with Benjy in the middle of Rowan’s cottage, once nearly falling backward right into the hearth fire. She’d been trained well. Going suddenly limp—that was all Rowan. Takes ’em by surprise every time, she said. Ayla had asked: Exactly how many times have you needed a quick escape? And Rowan had just grinned, skin wrinkling like old leather around her eyes.
Thinking of Rowan hurt like a snapped bone.
Ayla had been nine years old when the sovereign’s men raided her village and burned it to the ground. The only reason she’d survived was Storme. He’d shoved her into the outhouse, into the pitch-black hole where human waste was pooled knee-deep. By the time she emerged, her entire family was dead—or so she’d thought. She didn’t remember the details of the following weeks. Somehow, she’d made her way down the rocky coast to the village of Kalla-den. But the northern winter never passed without claiming a few lives, and Ayla—small, starving, wracked with grief—would have been one of them. It was Rowan who found her on the snowy streets. Took her in, warmed and fed her, said, Stay, little bird, stay as long as you like. Benjy had a similar story: abandoned as a newborn, raised in a temple. At nine, he ran away to join the Revolution. Rowan found him and took him under her wing. She was always doing that over the years: mothering lost children, feeding travelers and runaways and anyone who needed it, no matter how young or old.
But she wasn’t just a guardian. She was a revolutionary, too. The head of a whisper network, the center of the Resistance in northern Rabu. It was Rowan, too, who had understood Ayla’s need for revenge better than anyone.
It was Rowan who’d died on an Automa’s sword. Right in front of Ayla. Not even three weeks ago. And it hurt. It hurt, and unlike a snapped bone, Ayla didn’t think this would heal.
Ayla took a deep breath, hoping the queen wouldn’t notice.
“I can’t promise anything,” she said. “But I’ll try.”
Queen Junn leaned forward. Her eyes were the light brown of driftwood. “Let me make one thing v
ery clear,” she said quietly. “If the tides turn my way, Scyre Kinok will be dead by midsummer. And the tides always turn my way, handmaiden Ayla. If there is a force in this world, godly or not, it favors me.”
“You rely on good fortune?” Ayla asked, trying to temper her shock. The queen planned to eradicate Kinok. “You rely on gods and stars?”
“I rely on myself,” said Junn. “Favored or not.”
Ayla took another sip of too-hot tea, considering. She didn’t think for a second that killing Kinok was Junn’s only goal—after all, what did she stand to gain from his death? There were probably a dozen other plans, a dozen other schemes kept close to the chest, hidden in the shadows. Agreeing to work for Junn felt like walking blindfolded into a pitch-black room, knowing full well the floor was covered with mousetraps and proceeding anyway. But . . .
If anyone were going to kill Kinok, the Mad Queen seemed like a good bet. And maybe Ayla could even do some spying of her own, seeking out any information that could help the human Resistance. For years, her people had been attempting to rise up against the Automae. For years, the attempts had ended only in death.
Rowan’s face flashed through Ayla’s mind one more time before she raised her chin, meeting Junn’s eyes. “You can rely on me as well, your majesty.”
“Lovely,” said Junn. “Now, as a token of my appreciation, I have a gift for you.”
She knew all along I’d say yes, Ayla thought, trying not to scowl. The door to the aviary opened, the guards stepping aside to let a servant through. A pageboy, though taller than most, in the customary green. Head bent in deference, he crossed the stepping-stones and knelt before the platform, offering the queen a small silver box.
“Well?” said the queen, when Ayla didn’t move. “It’s for you.”
Ayla took the box, praying it wasn’t full of explosive powder or a poisonous mist or some sort of Made contraption that would stab her in the face—despite the queen’s apparent interest in keeping her alive, she wasn’t about to trust a royal leech. Trying not to cringe too obviously, she opened the lid.
It wasn’t a weapon. It was a bracelet.
Ayla frowned. She tilted the box from side to side, letting the sunlight catch all angles of the bracelet. It was a delicate gold chain with a small blue jewel dangling from it, sparkling in the sun. It was pretty, sure, but—was Ayla supposed to wear it? Oh, maybe she could sell it. Discreetly, of course, so as not to offend, but the jewel alone must be worth at least a hundred silver queenscoins. And if that chain was real gold . . .
“Thank you,” she said. “It’s very beautiful.”
For some reason, the queen laughed. “So it is,” she said. “But that’s hardly the point. Clever girl, you should really be more observant.”
“What—?” Ayla started, and then she followed the queen’s gaze down to—the pageboy. He was still kneeling in the dirt, motionless, head bent, but now that Ayla was looking, really looking, there was something terribly familiar about those long limbs, that dark curly hair. “Benjy?”
Benjy the pageboy looked up. “Hi, Ayla.”
Queen Junn left them alone in the aviary, sweeping out of the room with one last quicksilver smile. The guards stayed behind. Ayla climbed down to sit beside Benjy on the edge of the stone platform, ears ringing from the constant birdsong, and couldn’t help gaping at him. In a palace like this, she might have been less surprised to see a ghost.
“How,” she burst out, the second the door closed behind the queen. “How—what—?”
“I was captured by one of the festival guards,” Benjy explained. “Right after you—I actually saw them catch you, I wasn’t too far away, but half a second later I was being wrestled to the ground.” He huffed. “They were about to throw me in the dungeons overnight, but we were intercepted on the way there. One of the woman guards, the ones all in green. Said I wasn’t going to the dungeons, I was coming with them. So I get handed off, and the woman guard takes me to a guest room and tells me to get comfortable. I didn’t try to fight it—I figured you were around here somewhere, and I wouldn’t be any help if I got myself sent back to the dungeons. Then, this morning—”
“Let me guess,” said Ayla. “You got bathed.”
The differences were obvious: his curls were sleek and shiny, the grime scrubbed off his skin, the briny rotten-fish-stowaway smell replaced by the scent of perfumed oils. Where he’d been growing the beginnings of a beard while they were on the run, he was now clean shaven, looking younger for it.
He rolled his eyes. “Can’t imagine what gave it away.”
“For starters, I can see your freckles again,” she teased. “But also, they got me too.”
“I can tell. You smell like . . .” He sniffed the air dramatically. “Gods, is that lavender?”
Ayla snorted, pretending to shove him away. “I know, it’s so much, I feel like Cr—” She cut off, swallowing hard. “Like a lady.”
She could sense Benjy looking at her, his gaze intense on the side of her face, but she couldn’t look back. She just stared down at her lap, but even that was strange. Her lap wasn’t usually dressed in layers of deep blue brocade.
“The queen wants to train me,” Benjy offered, quiet. “Brush up on my combat skills, something like that. Did you know some of the guards here are human? Before I came here they showed me the armory. I’ve never seen so many weapons in my life. Do you think I’d be good at archery? I don’t think so. I’m better at close range, I think, because I’ve got such a long reach.” He cleared his throat. “But maybe if—”
“I’m sorry I couldn’t kill Crier,” Ayla burst out. She’d been holding it in for what felt like a thousand years, ever since the night they’d fled the palace, and here, now, she was breaking. Maybe it was the cold, claustrophobic feeling that she’d simply traded one gilded cage for another; maybe it was the confusion about Queen Junn’s motives; maybe it was the dizzying relief of seeing Benjy again, knowing he was okay, that neither of them were alone in this palace, this city, this country. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I ruined everything. I put your life in danger, I could’ve gotten you killed, just because I couldn’t—I couldn’t—”
Above them, the birds circled and sang.
“I know you are,” Benjy said eventually. He reached out and took her hand, squeezing once. “And . . . I know why you couldn’t.”
She shook her head, not even sure what she was denying, only that she had to deny it.
“You forget I know you better than anyone else,” he said. “You want her. Or love her. Or at least something close. Something just as intense as your hatred.” He squeezed her hand one more time and then let go. “I was furious with you. Still am, I think. I won’t pretend otherwise. And I won’t pretend to understand how you could care for her, after everything. How she became your weak spot. How she turned you soft. But I . . . will try to accept it, I guess. I accept it, I accept—whatever happens. I don’t know. Yes, I’m furious, but yes, you’re my best friend, and yes, I love you. Till they put me in the dirt and then beyond. We both could have died that night, but here we are. And now we’re cooperating with the leech queen herself. In the name of the Revolution, the greater good, in the name of stopping Kinok, but still. It’s a compromise. It makes my skin crawl. And I’m doing it anyway.”
“Do you think Rowan would want this?” Ayla whispered. “This compromise?”
They both flinched. It was the first time either of them had said Rowan’s name aloud since her death.
Rowan, their guardian, their savior.
“I don’t know what Rowan would want,” said Benjy. “Whether she’d tell us to cooperate with the leech queen or not. But she’d want us to stick together. So I’ll do the skin-crawling thing. With you.”
Ayla’s eyes stung. “Yeah,” she said roughly. “Yeah. With you, always, no matter what. Till the dirt and then beyond. But—but what you said—you’re wrong.” Her fists were clenched. She unclenched them, flexing her fingers. “You’re wrong.
I don’t—I could never want Crier. Never love her. I could never love a leech.”
Benjy didn’t answer for a long time. At last, all he said was, “All right, Ayla,” and he said it so gently, she wanted to hit him, or cry.
Lessons began the next day after breakfast.
After the handmaidens had cleared away the breakfast dishes and scurried from the room, Ayla sat on the cloudlike bed, waiting. She’d never done anything like this before. The closest she’d come was sitting in on Crier’s endless tutoring sessions in the palace library, but those had been so dull—advanced mathematics, diplomacy, the minutiae of events that happened a thousand years ago in kingdoms Ayla had barely heard of. She’d done everything possible to not listen.
She didn’t know what to expect. But it certainly wasn’t Lady Dear.
Ayla hated her on sight.
She was an Automa noblewoman, and everything about her advertised it: the deep violet gown; the jewelry dripping from her throat, her wrists, her ears; the gem-encrusted rings on each finger; the white porcelain comb holding her hair in place. Her skin was the light brown of a riverbed, her collarbone dusted with something that glittered in the lamplight, like she’d smeared stardust across her skin.
“Get that look off your face,” was the first thing Lady Dear said after introducing herself, looking down her nose at Ayla. She was older, perhaps nearing fifty, though it was hard to tell with Automae.
Ayla tried to smooth out her expression. Queen Junn’s words came to mind: You lack subtlety.
“Pay attention, girl,” said Lady Dear, and her voice was less cold, more weary, than Ayla might have expected. “Right now, her majesty thinks you could be useful. I suggest you keep it that way.”
4
Under the weight of what Faye had told her, all thoughts of her own termination seemed insignificant. Crier had to tell her father about Kinok’s plans. If what Faye had said was true, if Kinok planned to destroy the Iron Heart, it would be enough to make her father understand exactly what Kinok was capable of—that the Anti-Reliance Movement wasn’t just a movement. For Kinok, it meant absolute control, absolute power. The fate of Automakind in his hands. Once the sovereign understood that, of course he wouldn’t force his daughter to marry a monster. The wedding would be called off, Kinok would be arrested, and it would all be over.