by Nina Varela
With the next breath—
—she was soaked and freezing. She stood huddled among a small crowd on the deck of a fishing vessel, in the middle of the ocean. Clouds loomed heavy and dark above; torrential rain swept almost horizontally with the force of the wind. All around her, in every direction, the ocean was a roiling black expanse. Amid the throng of people, she spotted someone familiar: Leo.
Now, she moved closer, careful to keep her balance on the violent sway of the ship, and saw that Leo held a little girl whose face was hidden, buried in his chest, but Crier knew it had to be Clara. Ayla’s mother; the daughter Siena had abandoned in favor of her own inhuman creation, Yora.
Yora’s heart, Crier thought fiercely. She had no idea if this would work, but she had to try. Siena had Made this locket for a reason: to record history, memories. It was a tool. A beautiful, ingenious tool, but still a tool. And tools were made to be wielded.
Yora’s heart, she thought. She tried saying it aloud: “Yora’s heart! Show me Yora’s heart!”
Nothing happened. Her words were snatched away by the sea wind, the pounding rain. Then—
—flashes of memory, so quick she could barely follow—
A coastline coming into view, the ship docking. Golden sand, pale green water, dawn-colored sky.
A caravan through the jungle, wild and tangled, wildness like nothing she’d ever seen, everything green, mossy trees and a creek bed and plants with leaves the size of Crier’s torso, hanging vines, shafts of sunlight filtering through the canopy overhead, the air thick and humid, the air like steam.
Hills rippling with winter-yellow grass, glittering with morning frost. A cave, a quarry, a river cutting through a deep canyon.
Clara asking, asking, asking—where are we? What happened to Mama? Eventually, the questions—and the tears—fading away.
Clara, older now. Thirteen, maybe. A golden chain around her neck, glinting in the light of a hearth fire.
Clara, older still, belly swollen with child, laughing on the shores of a wide lake, the wind tossing her dark curls, but behind her the surface of the lake unnaturally calm, unrippled, reflecting the evening sky, a massive mirror.
Show me Yora’s heart.
Fire.
In the first few seconds Crier thought she’d been transported back to the very first memory: the burning city, the smoke-filled streets, the terrified humans white with ash. But then her vision cleared and she saw she was on the banks of that same lake, the entire sky a pale, sick orange, the sun a bloodshot eyeball half obscured by smoke.
“They’re coming!” someone cried out. Crier whirled around. There was a small cottage higher up on the bank, white clay walls and a thatched roof. Three figures were standing outside it, and when she squinted against the dying light she saw it was Leo, a heavily pregnant Clara, and a man she’d never seen before. “They’re coming, you have to go now,” Leo said again, voice rough with fear. “Please, Clara. You’re running out of time.”
“I’m not leaving without you!” Clara said. She was holding both arms protectively around her stomach, leaning back into the man Crier didn’t know, and Crier realized: she was pregnant with Ayla. This man must be Ayla’s father. “Father, we’re not leaving you here to die!”
“I’m old, child,” Leo said. “And my leg—I cannot move quickly enough. I’d slow you down and it would be the death of us all.” He looked at Ayla’s father. “Yann. Please. You know I’m right. You know what has to be done.”
Somewhere in the distance, the sound of a war horn.
Crier knew that sound.
“Go,” said Leo, frantic. “Skirt the lake, you know where the rowboat is, when night falls cross the lake into Rabu. Please, Yann. Please, Clara. You have to protect the child.”
“If I make it through the night, I’ll meet you at the Queen’s Cove,” Leo was saying. “I’ll meet you there, Clara. For now, you have to leave me behind.”
“No!” said Clara, but Yann was nodding, looking grim.
“Take this,” said Leo, reaching beneath the collar of his shirt and pulling out—the necklace. The locket with the eight-point star, the red stone, the same locket Crier was holding at this very moment, sixteen years later, in the wilds of southern Rabu. “Take it, Yann. Keep it safe. It contains histories.”
“I’ll keep it safe,” said Yann, slipping the necklace over his own head, hiding it beneath his shirt. “What about the heart?”
“It stays with me,” said Leo. “Now go!”
“Father,” Clara sobbed, but she let Yann drag her away toward the lake, toward Crier. “Father, we’ll wait for you at the Queen’s Cove. We’ll wait for you. We’ll see you there, right?”
“Right,” said Leo. “Of course, daughter. I’ll see you soon.”
And Yann and Clara turned away, and the war horn sounded again, like the scream of a dying animal, and the world—
Fell away.
Crier’s eyes flew open. She lay there for a moment, staring up at the branches of the fir tree and beyond them, the night sky. She’d probably only lost a few minutes, but it felt like she’d aged a lifetime.
She knew one place Yora’s heart had been sixteen years ago. It wasn’t much, but it was the best lead she’d gotten so far.
She pressed the locket to her mouth. Thank you, Leo.
In the morning, she didn’t waste any time before pulling Hook aside. Once, she might have kept this information to herself, scared to act, scared to stand up against Kinok and her father and her own people, but she no longer had that luxury. She was going to act, and fast.
“You’re not going to believe me,” she said, after she and Hook had moved far enough into the woods that the others wouldn’t be able to overhear them. “But I think I know where to find Tourmaline. Or . . . where to begin.”
He gave her an incredulous look. “Just last night, you said you didn’t have any idea where it was.”
“I know. But then I used this.” She held up the locket, showing him the alchemical star. It was overcast this morning, a small blessing; she didn’t have to worry about the morning sunlight catching her eyes. “Hold it up to your ear and listen.” He did, and she watched his eyebrows rise when he heard the tiny inorganic heartbeat within, like the tick of a clock but more alive, tmp-tmp, tmp-tmp.
“This is a Made object,” he said, turning it over in his hands. He looked frightened, a little awed. “How on earth did you get ahold of this, Ayla?”
“Doesn’t matter. All that matters is what this locket can do.” Quickly, she explained the locket’s magickal properties, the memories within it, though she didn’t give him any names. “It once belonged to a man who used it to record his memories of his experiences with Tourmaline. With the Maker of Tourmaline. I figured out how to access those memories, and I’ve been sifting through them slowly, searching for leads. Last night, I finally found one. I think the man died in a raid at Lake Thea, sixteen years ago. And I think the Tourmaline stone was with him when he died.”
Lake Thea was the biggest lake in Zulla, half in Rabu and half in Varn, named after Queen Thea of Zulla, the Barren Queen. The founder of the Royal Academy of Makers. The one for whom Thomas Wren had created Kiera.
No, not Thomas Wren. A nameless peasant woman. H.
Hook narrowed his eyes. “And why should I believe you?”
“You don’t have to,” said Crier. “But I’m going to Lake Thea. To the Queen’s Cove. You and the others can accompany me or not, but I’m going. If there’s any chance at all of finding Tourmaline before K—before the Scyre does, I have to take it.”
He looked at her for a long time, scrutinizing.
“It’s only two days’ ride from here,” said Crier. “If I’m wrong, if it’s a dead end, you’ll have lost two days. But if I’m right . . .”
“And if you’re leading us into a trap?”
She blinked at him, surprised. She hadn’t even considered he might think that. “I—I suppose you can’t know for sure that I’m no
t. But there’s one of me and eight of you, and you’ve been roaming around killing Shades—what trap could be more dangerous than that?”
He was still hesitating.
“I said I’ll go alone and I meant it,” said Crier, resigning herself to a no. “Thank you for saving my life, thank you for a night’s rest. I’ll remember you and what you did for me. But—”
“We’ll go,” said Hook.
“What?”
He cracked a smile. “We’ll go with you, Ayla. Like you said, if there’s any chance at all of beating the Scyre at his own sick game . . .” His expression darkened for a moment, smile fading like the sun behind a cloud. “I’m sure you saw the extra pony back at camp.”
Crier’s stomach twisted. “I . . . I did wonder what happened to the rider.”
“The Scyre’s taken countless souls from us,” said Hook, fire in his eyes. “Erren was one of thousands. They were captured; we’ve been searching for them ever since. For them—to find them, to save them—I’d risk walking into a trap. I’d risk just about anything.”
“I know what you mean,” said Crier.
Over the next two days, as the nine of them rode west toward Lake Thea, Crier found herself unable to stop watching the humans.
They were fascinating. It was so obvious, now, how her father’s Traditionalism was just a pale imitation of human culture. Traditionalism was the corpse; this was the living body, bright-eyed and warm. Crier had never before observed how humans acted when there weren’t any Automae around, and the difference in behavior was astounding. The humans were loud. They laughed loudly, spoke loudly, sang as they rode. They joked easily, touched easily, grinned easily, even though Crier knew they had lived through terrible things, knew they feared the Shades, knew they had already lost one, if not more, of their own. She didn’t understand most of their jokes, but once or twice the joke was universal, and she—laughed. The first time it happened, it startled her. This helpless burst of noise. She could not remember the last time she’d laughed. It wasn’t something Automae did.
She didn’t know most of their songs, and for the first day remained silent and just listened. But the next day, as they made their way through flatlands that swelled slowly into hills, Bree pulled her horse up close to Crier’s and poked her on the arm.
“C’mon, Ayla,” she said, wiggling her eyebrows. “Everybody knows this one.”
Crier did know it, actually. It was a shanty, a traveler’s song; she’d once taught herself to play it on the harp. She still remembered the words. Of course. She remembered everything.
Under her breath, she sang along with the next line. “When the wind blows in from the cold white north, when the sunlight fades away . . .”
Bree grinned, settling back into her saddle. She dropped the reins and clapped along, singing loudly. “When the ocean dries and strands me, child, when the blue sky fades to gray—”
“HO-HEY!” Hook whooped from up front.
“When the black crow cries its very last, when the noonbirds lose their song—”
“HO-HEY!”
“When the heavens fall and the hells rise up and the demons rise along—”
“HO-HEY!”
“I’ll stick ’em in the eye and make ’em cry and say, ‘You can’t keep me from home!’”
By the end of it, Crier was singing almost as loudly as the others. And she didn’t know the next song, but she did know the one after that, and the one after that, and sang along. It was becoming easier to play the part of a human. She didn’t have to concentrate so hard on moving, breathing, speaking in the right voice. She ate as much human food as she could stomach and consumed small amounts of heartstone in the dead of night, and she rode with them under a sky like an overturned bowl, and she sang and laughed and wondered if she looked any different, because it felt impossible that her exterior wasn’t changing too.
Crier had never been to Lake Thea before, had only seen it in maps and illustrations, a small patch of blue. Logically she knew it was huge—a hundred leagues across, almost big enough to be considered a sea. But still, in her mind she’d always pictured it as that small patch of blue nestled between Rabu and Varn, feeding into a branch of the River Merra. So when they crested a hill and saw nothing but blue before them, stretching to the horizon and as far as the eye could see in all directions, it took Crier a few seconds to realize what she was looking at. The view looked like a mirage: sunlight glinting off an endless expanse of blue, a shattering of light that made everything look false and wavery—but then she saw the seabirds swooping high above the surface, the white-capped waves rolling in to the shore. . . .
The hills dropped off into short shelflike bluffs at the edge of the lake, and farther along the shoreline they dropped away entirely, flattening out into the banks Crier had seen in Leo’s memories, the pale color of crushed seashells. Gods, there was so much water. It reminded Crier of home, of the Steorran Sea, though this water was calmer, these bluffs gentle and grassy instead of sharp black rock. On the other side of all that water was Varn. Gazing down at the lake from her position on the hills, Crier felt closer to Varn than ever. But she knew the Varnian shoreline was heavily guarded and—yes, there on the bluffs, maybe a league away: a lighthouse. It was sure to be full of Rabunian border guards. They’d have to be careful.
“Ayla? You coming?”
The others had passed her. Bree was looking back at Crier over her shoulder.
“Yes,” Crier murmured, and urged Della forward. Onward.
The nine of them kept to the hills, riding parallel to the shoreline but maintaining their distance. Crier wasn’t sure exactly where Leo’s old village would be, but she remembered the position of the smoke-obscured sun from Leo’s memories: when she was facing the cottage, she’d been facing the sun. Facing west. So west they rode. A strong wind came off the lake, carrying a clean, brackish smell, rustling the yellow grass. Crier found herself relaxing, the tension in her shoulders fading away. It had been sixteen years, but she had this feeling. She was going to find answers here. She was so close, the sky was clear, the lake water Tourmaline blue, the seabirds crying out overhead. The rebels kept a steady pace, not hard enough to tire out the horses but definitely quicker than was necessary. Maybe they felt it too, that frisson of anticipation.
It was another hour before they found the village, and if Crier had been alone, she would have missed it entirely.
“There,” said Hook, the first any of them had spoken for a long time.
Crier looked in the direction he was pointing. But she didn’t see anything that looked like it had once been a village. She’d been looking for . . . ruins, like those in history books, stone foundations and crumbling walls. She knew the village had been raided and burned, so . . . where were the ruins?
They got closer, and she saw what Hook had seen. It was a stone, rough and unevenly shaped, poking out of the earth. If Crier stood next to it, it would only come up to her knee. There was a wreath of dead, dried-out flowers around the base of the stone, and a single word carved into it: Wells.
For some reason, that was what it took. That was when it really hit her. She was not walking through a history book, where things were distant, all the pain and suffering softened by centuries. She’d been expecting an illustration because that was all she’d ever known, but of course this was nothing like the illustrations. There had once been a village here, full of people whose lives were filled with sorrow and joy, who had children, who were in love, who loved each other, who wanted to protect each other, who just wanted to survive. A village full of people like Leo, who had sacrificed himself to save his daughter, his unborn grandchild.
Now there was nothing but a stone.
Because of Crier’s father.
Not my father anymore, she reminded herself. I will not be the daughter of a monster.
But as she looked out over the hills, the shoreline of Lake Thea, the long grass hiding the bones of a village long dead, she knew it was not quite tha
t easy.
I write this on the dawn of war.
The Scyre has begun amassing forces to the west. I know not what he plans, other than to take the sovereign’s throne; other than to overthrow the council; other than to seize Rabu itself and then, I have to assume, all Zulla.
He pours words like wine. Sweet and bloodred. Heady when consumed. Promises of a shining new life source. He will liberate us from our need to consume heartstone daily, or so he says; from the Iron Heart itself, the crack in our armor. But I must confess I have never understood. Would a new life source not come with its own vulnerabilities? We must derive power from something, and as long as we depend on that something—our weak spot. Our flaw.
What does he want to end reliance on, really?
I still remember his words at the first Anti-Reliance assembly, two summers past.
“Why do we call ourselves sons and daughters when we were never birthed? Why does Traditionalism dictate that we act out these elaborate scenes, playing at being human? We were Created to be more than human. Does the wolf play at being a common dog? Listen here. If we look only at the past, we lose sight of the future. And what a future it could be.”
What are you afraid of, Scyre?
What haunts you, Watcher?
What secrets lie within the Heart?
—EXCERPT FROM THE PERSONAL RECORDS OF RED HAND MAR OF THE RED COUNCIL OF THE SOVEREIGN STATE OF RABU, YEAR 47 AE
9
Tomorrow, Storme had said, but tomorrow came, Ayla woke up at dawn and immediately slipped out of her room to go find him, and . . . couldn’t find him anywhere. She didn’t know where his rooms were, and she didn’t want to draw any attention to herself by asking. So she wandered the palace for an hour, checking every open room, checking the kitchens and the dining hall and the training room and the fields and even the sculpture garden where they’d run into each other last night, but he was nowhere to be found. Frustrated all over again, Ayla decided that if her brother wanted to avoid her like a coward, fine. Let him! She had other things to do.