by Nina Varela
Ayla went still. She stopped midstep, frozen as one of the obsidian statues on either side of the courtyard. “Cr—Lady Crier didn’t—get married?”
Wender’s eyebrow twitched. Automa surprise. “Have you been asleep for the past week?”
“I traveled here from the iron mines,” Ayla said. “Been in a carriage. She didn’t get married?”
“Even better,” said Wender, appearing to enjoy having the gossip. They nudged at Ayla’s waist, drawing her back into the dance, even as her thoughts roiled like a storm at sea. “Lady Crier ran away from her own wedding. She’s been missing for days now; the sovereign’s search parties keep returning empty-handed. I hear the sovereign is . . . well. First one of his Red Hands disappeared. Then another two were murdered overnight. Then a servant attacked the lady right under his nose. Now this latest humiliation. I wouldn’t be surprised if Sovereign Hesod loses his throne.”
Ayla was barely listening. She cast her gaze over the courtyard, trying not to let Wender see the shock in her eyes.
She ran away from her own wedding.
She’s been missing for days now.
You fool, Ayla thought senselessly. You’ve never left the palace. You think you can survive in this world, a fugitive from your own father? Crier, you fool. Crier, you—
A familiar face in the crowd. No, two of them.
There was Benjy, visible when the dancing couples shifted, in the very heart of the courtyard. He was dressed like a guard, in the queen’s colors, her crest glinting at his throat. He was grinning. He was waltzing.
With Queen Junn.
Ayla stared at them. Yes, that really was Benjy, her best friend Benjy, rebel Benjy, Resistance child Benjy, leech-hating Benjy, waltzing with the queen. And enjoying it, by the look on his face, the light in his eyes, his big toothy smile. A space was cleared around them, a loose circle of nobles and courtiers watching them dance. None of them looked surprised. Was it common for the Mad Queen to dance with humans like this?
The queen must have said something, because Benjy threw his head back, laughing like Ayla hadn’t seen him laugh in—she didn’t know how long. And that was what made the anger rise inside her. That was what kindled the embers. Because how dare he? How dare he, when just a few days ago he’d told her that he’d never understand how she could feel anything but hatred for a leech—how a leech had become her weak spot—how a leech had made her soft—
“Wender,” Ayla said. She knew the anger was leaking into her voice, but she couldn’t help it. “Thank you for the dance. I have to—I have to go.”
“Are you all right, Clara?” Wender asked, hands falling from her waist. They were staring at her with open curiosity, which, gods, that was the last thing she wanted, the last thing she needed; curiosity and suspicion were the same damn thing, in the end.
She started off into the crowd, dodging the other dancers, making a beeline for Benjy and Junn. She didn’t even know what she wanted from Benjy—an apology? An acknowledgment of his own hypocrisy? Maybe she just wanted to yell at him, to drag him away and say: How dare you? Acting like you’ve got the moral high ground, when in reality—
“Ayla.”
Fingers wrapped around her wrist, an iron grip.
“Get ahold of yourself,” Lady Dear said through her teeth. Her expression was pleasant, as if she were only saying hello. “Do not let your emotions get the better of you. I don’t know what happened, but whatever it is, it does not matter.” She tightened her grip on Ayla’s wrist. “Don’t draw attention to yourself. Not here. It will reflect badly on the queen.”
“But—”
“There’s a door in the northern wall,” she said, still smiling. “It leads to a garden that is sure to be empty. Go stay there until you’ve calmed down.”
“Let go of me,” Ayla muttered, and Lady Dear finally let go of her wrist. She was so angry she could have pulled a dagger on Lady Dear right then and there, but some modicum of sense remained in her. So she left Lady Dear behind without a second glance, cutting across the courtyard again, but this time not toward Benjy. There was indeed a small wooden door in the northern wall of the courtyard, very plain, most likely a servants’ shortcut. She made for it with a desperation that was difficult not to release on the nearest person. The door wasn’t locked, and Ayla was able to slip through.
Slamming it behind her, she threw her back against the wall and heaved a few breaths. Tears pricked her eyes.
Crier. Benjy. The queen.
It was too much. Her beautiful clothes felt waterlogged, like the silk weighed a hundred pounds. She couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t stand all this Automa finery. This fantasy, glittering gold on the surface and rotting beneath, poison to the core.
She lurched forward into the new darkness—the light from the paper lanterns didn’t reach here—and saw that she was standing at the lip of a large sunken garden. Stone tiers formed a basin of concentric circles, at the bottom of which was a small sculpture garden. It looked like each tier held a different type of flower, but it was too dark to make out the details as she stumbled down the stone steps, needing only to get away, to be alone and unlooked at, to breathe. Her thoughts still burned with the image of Benjy laughing and waltzing in public with the leech queen. The hypocrisy of it all.
No. She knew it wasn’t just the hypocrisy that stung.
It was the wanting.
The stone steps were rough and uneven. She’d just reached the very last step when she tripped, pitching forward, stomach swooping horribly. Ayla braced herself for a nasty fall—but it never came. She’d been caught by a pair of hands on her waist, holding her upright.
When Ayla looked up into the face of the person who’d caught her, she found her own eyes staring back.
“Storme.”
6
Crier had grown up studying the stars. But now, as her horse tore through the thick forest, the night sky was nothing but a shattering of black and silver through the branches. She was lost. Guideless. And weak.
She’d been riding for three days. The terror had slowly peaked and ebbed, turning to a sharp, cold thing stuck in her chest.
On the first day, she’d been haunted by the distant sound of hunting horns. Her father’s—no, he wasn’t her father anymore. Hesod’s guards calling out to her. He must have thought she was simply throwing a fit. Running away to make a point, but always with the intention of coming back.
He was wrong.
On the second day, there were no horns, and she was very nearly caught. She’d spent the night in a copse of trees, the most cover she could find in the hills. She hadn’t slept at all, but she knew the horse would need to rest. At least it was able to graze, and there were puddles on the ground from a recent rainfall. In the morning, Crier had stood at the edge of the trees, hidden in the shadows, staring out across the expanse of the hills. Ears pricked. Listening, watching, terrified. She’d seen the guards when they were maybe a league or so away—she saw them cresting a hill, movement where there had been no movement. Heart pounding, she’d leaped back onto the horse and run, and run, and run, thinking: How did they find me? How are they so close?
Then she’d realized.
Her heart was pounding.
Her chime.
She was such a fool. Of course, it was her chime—a silent signal, triggered by her own distress, synched with the chimes of the palace guards, that would always lead them straight to her location. Once a protective measure. Now her downfall. She’d ridden until she came across a stream wending its way between the hills, snakelike. Even in winter, white wildflowers blanketed the hills like snow. Crier dismounted, waded into the stream, and felt around for a rock with a sharp edge.
When she cut the chime out of her flesh, her violet blood dripped down her spine, down her arms, into the water. It hurt. It was difficult: the chime was in the back of her neck, so she couldn’t actually see where she was cutting, and pain made her hands clumsy. But she’d done it. Gasping, eyes stinging with t
ears, she’d done it. The chime—a tiny gold device, masterfully Made—found a new home in the bottom of the stream. And she was free.
Truly free.
On the third day, she began to feel the effects of heartstone withdrawal. She knew she had to get some, and soon. Conjuring a map of Rabu in her mind, flawlessly remembered, she tried to figure out exactly where she was. She knew by the sun that she’d been traveling roughly southwest. If she adjusted her course and rode due south, she was bound to hit a village. Those villages were mostly human, but there were always some Automae. Where there were Automae, there was heartstone.
Due south it was.
At twilight, she found a village. She tied her horse half a league away. It was too obviously a thoroughbred, a noble’s horse. On foot, slouching to account for her height, she made her way into the village. She kept her head down, eyes on the dirt road. Like how Ayla used to walk behind her in the palace, avoiding eye contact with the guards, with Kinok and Hesod and often Crier herself. It had always bothered Crier. She’d wanted to say: Look at me. Just—look at me.
Crier found the village marketplace, a small square with a handful of shops and vendors’ stalls. A butcher shop, a cobbler, a bakery. And an Automa-run apothecary. Crier had hesitated for a long time before entering the apothecary. What if someone recognized her? What if the sovereign’s guards had tracked her here after all and were lying in wait for her? What if—?
However much I can get for this, she’d murmured to the apothecary attendant in an approximation of Ayla’s voice, her commoner’s accent. Slurring a little, enunciating less. And she’d passed the Automa woman a thin gold anklet, the only piece of jewelry she hadn’t taken off, simply because she’d forgotten it was there. However much I can get for this. My mistress sent me.
The woman hadn’t even blinked. Because what would a human do with heartstone other than deliver it to their Automa employer? She’d passed Crier three parcels of heartstone in exchange for the anklet, and that was it. Crier had left the village and returned to her horse in a daze, some part of her convinced it was a trick, that the sovereign’s guards would spring out from behind a building at any moment.
But they didn’t.
Like this, Crier replenished her strength. She hoped enough time had passed that she could safely visit Rosi. What if the sovereign and Kinok had already looked for her there? What if they were waiting for her to show up? Was it really worth the risk? But if she was going to smuggle herself into Varn, she needed more than a set of servants’ clothes and a bit of heartstone. Maybe it was foolish, but she didn’t know where else to go. There was a chance Rosi might help her, if she played the Scyre Kinok trusts you angle. Even the sovereign doesn’t know his plans, so he has to play along with the search for me right now, but—! and so on. Rosi might lend Crier some coin, some clothes. Might make her feel less alone, if only for a short while.
Now, on the morning of her fourth day as a fugitive, Crier was headed back east. To Rosi’s manor. Provided she didn’t run into trouble, she’d get there a couple hours before sunset.
Everything will be all right, she told herself, repeating it over and over again until the words lost meaning, until it was more a mindless, reassuring drumbeat than anything else. Everything will be all right. Everything will be all right.
It was a clear, cold day. The hills were yellow with winter, dotted with those tiny white wildflowers (probably stardrops, Crier thought, remembering an illustration in a botanist’s handbook), and her mare was trotting along at a steady pace. The sky was a high ceiling of blue, smeared with clouds like white paint. The icy wind felt good on her skin. She’d never gone this long without bathing, and the chill made her feel clean. On a whim, she decided to name her mare Della, after a character in an old faerie story. Della was a servant girl who stole her cruel mistress’s dress and snuck into a royal ball, and the youngest princess fell in love with her instantly. The princess and Della were married the very next week, and the cruel mistress was forced to attend the wedding and watch as the servant she’d treated so terribly became a member of the royal family. It was all very satisfying. Things didn’t work out like that in real life, but Crier liked the story.
She made good time to Rosi’s manor. By late afternoon, Crier and Della crested one of the hills that ringed the manor, which sat in the cradle of the hills like a jewel set in gold. Or—it usually did.
Crier frowned. Every other time she’d visited, even the day after Rosi’s fiancé, Foer, was assassinated by Queen Junn, the manor had looked . . . well, like people lived there. There were always servants around, tending to the orchards and the horse pastures and the livestock pens. Candlelight glowing in the windows, lanterns lit outside the manor gates. But now . . . there wasn’t a servant in sight. The pastures were empty, the horses nowhere to be seen. The livestock pens were empty of pigs and goats. The lanterns were dead. Crier squinted: even the orchards looked overgrown, the ground littered with fallen, unharvested fruit.
Her stomach sank.
The last time she’d seen Rosi was just a few weeks ago, when she’d come to pay her respects after Foer’s death. At the time, Rosi had been suffering the side effects of Kinok’s Nightshade. Her lips and tongue had been stained black, her body skeletal, her veins standing out against her skin. She’d been manic, unable to concentrate on anything for more than a few seconds. She hadn’t seemed to care about Foer’s death at all.
Rosi . . . what’s happened to you?
Slowly, Crier led Della down the hill, the mare picking her way through the crumbling outcrops of rock. It took nearly an hour. By the time they reached the manor gates, the sun was low in the sky, beginning to disappear behind the hills. The closer they got, the more nervous Della seemed. Her ears were laid flat against her skull. She kept pawing at the ground like she was asking to stop.
Crier wasn’t faring any better. She couldn’t explain it, but it felt like her skin was prickling all over, hypersensitive. She had a death grip on the reins. She didn’t want to be here. The silence of the manor was like a living thing, heavy on her shoulders. There was still no sign of any servants. Even the wind had gone silent.
Something is very, very wrong.
But—it was Rosi. There was no real love between them, but Crier had known her for so long. Had exchanged countless letters over the years. If Rosi was in danger, Crier would help her.
She dismounted, approaching the big wooden doors of the manor on foot. It was a large building of granite and dark wood, about a quarter the size of the sovereign’s palace, high wooden roof curving up toward the darkening sky. It loomed over Crier as she ascended the stone steps. The dark windows looked like missing teeth.
The door knocker was shaped like a swallow, heavy in Crier’s hand. She knocked three times. Was she imagining the way it echoed on the other side of the door, like a shout into an empty hall? She had to be. She was being dramatic. Surely there was a logical explanation for this. Perhaps Rosi had fired the servants for some reason. Perhaps she’d decided to go traveling. Perhaps—
“Lady Crier.”
Crier whirled around.
Rosi was standing at the foot of the steps. Crier hadn’t heard her approach. She should have heard Rosi approach.
“Lady Crier,” Rosi said again, cocking her head to one side, except she cocked it too far, unnaturally far, and did not straighten up again. She stared at Crier, head tilted almost to her shoulder. Gods, she looked so much worse than the last time Crier had seen her. Her gold-brown skin looked pale in the way of dead things, the warmth and color of life sapped out of it. Her hair was thin and loose around her shoulders, and chunks of it were missing, patches of her bald scalp showing like the outcroppings of rock on the hills around them. Her skin stretched grotesquely over her bones. And her veins—her veins were raised and visible, a map of stark black rivers.
“Oh gods, Rosi,” Crier breathed. She tried not to show how scared she was. “Rosi,” she started, but she didn’t know how to finis
h the sentence. Are you all right? was a stupid question. What happened was obvious: Nightshade. “Rosi, how can I help you?”
Rosi laughed once, a sharp, hollow sound, too loud. “You fool,” she said. She finally straightened up, but only to ascend the first step. Crier fought the urge to back away, to press herself against the door of the manor. “You goddamn fool. You think I need anything from you? Traitor to the throne? Traitor to the Scyre?”
“Rosi, I can explain,” Crier said urgently. “I can explain everything. Kinok sent me here. We had to call off the wedding due to a threat. He trusts you to protect me.”
“Shut up.” Rosi ascended to the next stone step, the distance between them shrinking. “Shut your mouth, traitor. You abandoned the Scyre. You betrayed him. You fool, do you have any idea what I’d give to be in your place, and you squandered it?” She was breathing hard, mouth open. Her tongue was ink black. Her gaze kept skittering around, eyes practically rolling in her head. “Traitor! Were you in league with the other traitor, Lady Crier? Were you another of Reyka’s allies? Answer me!”
Reyka’s allies? “I wasn’t,” Crier said. She held still, but in her mind she was calculating the distance between her and Rosi. The distance between her and Della, who was waiting for her at the gates. Thank the gods Crier hadn’t tied her to the gatepost. Thank the gods she was ready to run. “Rosi, whatever you’ve heard, it isn’t true. I didn’t betray Kinok.” She thought quickly. “I—I wanted to marry him. I wanted nothing more than to marry him. But my father—”
“You liar,” said Rosi, and leaped forward.
Crier bolted.
She flung herself off the stone steps, landing hard on the ground. Behind her, Crier heard a terrible noise—as if Rosi, missing her target, had crashed right into the door of the manor—but didn’t bother to look back. She just sprinted, running faster than she’d ever run before. Distantly, she was very glad to be wearing pants instead of a long gown.