Iron Heart

by Nina Varela

  “Oh,” Ayla said, trying not to look as startled as she felt.

  “Good morning to you too, Ayla,” said Junn. “May I come in?”

  It was a funny question from a queen. “Sure,” Ayla said magnanimously, stepping aside, and the queen swept into her room, bringing with her the faint scent of fruit and flowers, wet earth. Maybe she’d come straight from the aviary. Ayla thought Junn would sit at the little table where Ayla usually ate breakfast, but she walked right past the table to sit on the edge of the bed. For some reason, it made her look young. She wasn’t much older than Ayla, but she always acted like she’d been ruling for decades instead of two years.

  Ayla stood before her, waiting.

  “Little spy,” said Junn. “I have a job for you. It’s very simple. All I want you to do is observe.”

  Ayla narrowed her eyes. “What exactly will I be observing?”

  “The monsters. At the border between my country and yours.”

  “You can’t be serious.”

  “I am always serious,” said Junn. “But there’s no need to worry. You will not be in danger. You don’t actually have to get anywhere near the monsters. Or the Tarreenians killing them. My guards will accompany you the whole time, and you need only speak to the heartstone traders at the border, perhaps a nearby village. Really, all you have to do is stop at a local tavern, get a drink, get someone talking. See if you can glean any information about our friend the Scyre. You seem to understand him, after all.”

  Ayla ignored that last bit, as it felt like an insult. “And how am I getting there?”

  “In a carriage, obviously.” Junn’s lips twitched. “I heard you’re not much for horses.”

  Damn you, Storme.

  Ayla scowled. “I suppose there’s nothing I can do to get out of this.”

  “Not if you prefer your head attached to the rest of you,” said Junn, eyes glinting, though by now Ayla knew it was a joke. Probably a joke. Almost definitely a joke.

  She longed to refuse. She didn’t want to leave Storme or Benjy, she didn’t trust Queen Junn’s assurances that she wouldn’t be in any danger, and she sure as all hells didn’t want to sit in a carriage with the queen’s guards for the few days it would take to travel to the border and back. But . . . the blue smoke Storme had mentioned. This new weapon. If there was anything that could help her defeat Kinok, wouldn’t it be something mysterious and powerful like that?

  People had been using it to defend against the monsters. If Ayla could track them down, if she could get her hands on that weapon. . . .

  “I want a knife,” she told Junn. “A good one. Fit for a royal. Freshly sharpened.”

  “That can be arranged.”

  “One more thing.” Ayla crossed her arms over her chest, studying the queen. “In case you forgot, I’m Storme’s sister. If this turns out to be a trap and I die, he will despise you.”

  And she had the immense satisfaction of witnessing Queen Junn taken off guard, if only for a moment. The queen’s expression didn’t change, but something flickered in her eyes.

  “Understood,” she said, a bit stiff.

  “Good,” said Ayla. “When do I leave?”

  Junn glanced at the window, at the risen sun, the sunlight falling in gleaming yellow panes across the floor. “Now.”

  The last time she’d been in a carriage, she’d watched Rowan die.

  This time, she was haunted twofold: by memories of Rowan, swaying, falling, and then by imprints of Crier. A palimpsest of Crier overlaying reality. Crier on the green velvet seat opposite Ayla. Crier gazing out the carriage window, chin propped in her hand, one eye gold and the other brown.

  The outside of the carriage was a dull, scratched-up black, so as not to draw attention, but the inside was like a miniature version of the queen’s palace: white-walled with a carved, gemstone-set ceiling, velvet seats. Ayla felt like she was riding along inside a heavily decorated skull.

  Of course, she wasn’t traveling alone. Aside from the driver, she was accompanied by four of the queen’s personal guards—the Automa women with deep green uniforms and shaved heads—who sat in the carriage with Ayla, plus another two guards who rode along behind, plus two scouts who rode up ahead. It had already been three days on the road, and the Varnians had yet to display a personality. Ayla had never been so bored in her life. Not for the first time, she wished she could read better. She wished she could have brought along a pile of books to keep her occupied. But she had nothing of the sort, and all she could do was stare out the carriage window as the world slipped slowly by. In the beginning the view was gold: the miles of hills surrounding Thalen. As their party traveled farther north, toward the border of Rabu and Varn, the hills became shallower, like small creases in the earth, and the yellow grass became shrubland, with short scrubby trees sprouting up like burrs on an animal’s hide. The sky became paler, the air colder. Sharper in the lungs.

  They were riding parallel to the River Merra, headed in the general direction of Lake Thea—one of the bigger points of entry into Rabu. Along the Varnian side of the border there would be plenty of small towns and villages; along the Rabunian side, villages and the southern estates. The farther away from Thalen they got, the more nervous Ayla felt. Despite the queen’s insistence that this was a beginner mission, no risk. There was no such thing as no risk. And she couldn’t stop thinking about the way Storme had pulled her aside right before she’d left, as the queen’s servants stocked the carriage with a week’s worth of food and heartstone, clothes, coin, even wine. “Be careful,” he’d said, eyes grave, scar pale in the morning light.

  Ayla had almost replied with something snarky—I thought your queen said there was nothing to worry about—but held her tongue. “I can take care of myself, brother,” she said.

  He shook his head. “Just . . . promise me you won’t do anything reckless. Promise me you’ll stay in the carriage, in the villages. Never alone.” He touched her shoulder just once. “Those monsters . . . whatever you’re imagining, whatever you’re expecting, they’re a thousand times worse. Please be careful, Ayla. Promise me.”

  “I promise, Storme,” she’d told him.

  Midafternoon on the second day of travel, Ayla asked one of the guards for paper and charcoal. She knew they’d brought both along, in case they needed to send missives back to the queen. The guard gave her a piercing look, as if trying to figure out what nefarious scheme Ayla could possibly pull off with a scrap of parchment and a nub of charcoal, but evidently came up with nothing, because she gave in to Ayla’s request, and even handed her a thin, leather-bound notebook instead of a single piece of paper. Right—the guards were wary of her not because she was a human, but because they were dedicated to protecting their queen, and according to rumor, Ayla was a violent fugitive. It was a pleasant change, being distrusted for something reasonable.

  Ayla curled up by the window with the notebook open on her lap. At first she practiced writing out her letters and symbols, writing out different combinations in concentric circles, like she’d seen on the door to the alchemy library back in the queen’s palace. After a while, she found herself letting the charcoal trace across the page, forming not letters but . . . shapes, swirling lines. One line for the horizon, charcoal scraped horizontally to shade in the sky, tiny marks for the shrubs that covered the hills like spores. Black tangles of tree and brush. The final result was messy and childlike, all the lines shaky; Ayla’s hand wasn’t used to holding charcoal; she did not write. But it was recognizable as a drawing of her surroundings.

  She turned to a new page and kept going.

  She drew the Bone Tree. As best she could remember it.

  She drew the sun apple orchards from the sovereign’s palace, the low outbuildings where the servants lived and worked. She drew flowers: apple blossoms and salt lavender and roses. She drew, and the hours fell away like curtains to reveal the purple dusk. Outside the carriage window, darkness swallowed the shrubland, but Ayla kept drawing, the page lit o
nly by the single lantern dangling from the carriage ceiling, a flickering yellow light. They’d be nearing the first border village by now, a small outpost a couple miles off the shores of Lake Thea. The plan was to stop there overnight; a traveler’s inn was the perfect place to overhear whispers from all corners of Zulla.

  As they veered back toward the River Merra, the scrubby trees became bigger, the space between them smaller, until they were bumping along a muddy road through what could generously be called a forest, a thick green lining both sides of the river. Ayla drew the river, picturing a map of Zulla in her mind and trying to get all the curves and bends right. It began in the Far North as snowmelt, cut down through the heart of Zulla, fed into by Lake Thea and continuing down into Varn, merging at last with the Steorran Sea. . . . Ayla dropped her eyes to look at her own drawing and tried to pinpoint where she was right now. How close to the river were they? She strained her ears, listening for the sound of rushing water, of the riverbank frogs that sang even in winter—

  “TURN BACK!”

  The nub of charcoal skittered across the page, a rough black scar. All four guards tensed, hands flying to their weapons.

  “TURN BACK,” the voice of their scout came again, and with the crack of a whip the carriage shuddered to a stop. “GO, GO,” the scout yelled from outside, somewhere in the dark. “TURN BACK NOW—BANDITS UP AHEAD—JUST OFF THE RIVER—THEY’VE SPOTTED THE CARR—”

  A whistling noise, an odd thnk, a wordless cry of pain.

  Then, the sound a body made when it fell from a horse.

  One of the guards swore and pushed Ayla to the floor of the carriage, away from the open window. Ayla could hear the carriage driver shouting and cracking the whip over and over again, trying to get the horses moving, but it was too late. Within seconds, the driver’s shouting cut off abruptly, replaced by the shrieking of panicked horses. The guard who had pushed Ayla swore again, louder this time, and went for the door, one boot landing just a hair’s length from Ayla’s nose. “I’ll fend them off,” the guard barked at the other three. “Protect the queen’s ward!”

  And she leaped out into the darkness, slamming the carriage door behind her.

  Ayla lay there on the carriage floor, frozen. Just weeks ago, she’d been in this same situation—trapped in a carriage, surrounded on all sides by an angry mob, helpless in the midst of a fight. On that day, she’d been too scared to do anything. She’d watched Rowan die from behind a pane of glass. Never again, she thought now, eye level with the guards’ boots, heart pounding in her ears. She would not be the cornered fox tonight. She couldn’t freeze up. She couldn’t panic. She had to think.

  The people attacking them were not the monsters she’d been sent here to investigate. They were just people, just—bandits, the scout had said. And they had to want something; they wouldn’t just attack for no reason. All right, so, what did they want with Ayla and her party?

  Of course. The answer had to be the carriage itself. Or—the horses. Unlike the sovereign, Queen Junn had no fields, no crops. No need for horses that weren’t thoroughbred. The carriage might have looked old and worthless from the outside, like it belonged to any old merchant; but anyone who knew anything about horses would recognize their fine breeding. Two horses fit for a queen would fetch a pretty price. Had the bandits spotted them hours ago and waited until nightfall to strike?

  The shouts from outside were growing louder, closer. It was hard to tell, but they seemed to be coming from all directions. The bandits were swarming the carriage. How many were out there? How long would a single Automa be able to hold them at bay?

  The other guards seemed to be thinking along the same lines. “I’m going out there,” one of them muttered, and slipped out the carriage door—a momentary rush of noise, no longer muffled, shouts and the clang of steel against steel. There was nothing Ayla hated more than just lying here. She pushed up onto her elbows, but one of the two remaining guards shoved her down again, boot on her spine.

  “Stay down,” the guard hissed. “Don’t be a fool. If you want to make it out of this, you’ll do as we say.”

  “What’s going on out there?” Ayla demanded. “Can you see anything?” Their night vision was much better than hers.

  “Just stay down, girl.”

  Not very reassuring. In her head, Ayla tried to map an escape route. If she could get out of the carriage, off the muddy road, into the thick trees . . .

  That was all she came up with before one of the carriage windows exploded inward with a rain of glass and—a powder bomb? No. A sort of waterskin that burst open when it hit the opposite wall, spraying water all over the interior of the carriage, including Ayla. But the water felt strange on her skin, too thick, and that smell . . .

  “Get out!” one of the guards cried. “Get out now!”

  Through the window, a flaming arrow. It struck the wall just as the waterskin had and fell to the floor. One of the guards stamped it out immediately, but the velvet curtains had already ignited, and the first arrow was quickly followed by a second and a third. Ayla scrambled to her feet as the flames spread across the carpeted floor, the velvet benches. She understood now. They hadn’t been sprayed with water. They’d been sprayed with oil. The interior of the carriage soaked with it, pure tinder. Within seconds, everything was burning. Ayla coughed, eyes watering, as one of the guards hauled her up by the back of her shirt and practically tossed her out the carriage door. She hit the ground hard, slipped in the mud and fell again, hard enough to knock the breath out of her. For a moment Ayla sat there, her entire spine lit up with pain, gasping for air, blind in the sudden darkness.

  Behind her, the fire roared, and she heard the pop of the other windows shattering from the heat. Ayla dragged herself upright, a wall of blistering heat at her back, and tried to keep her breathing steady. She closed her eyes and saw another fire imprinted on the backs of her eyelids, as if burning inside her skull: the fire that had raged through her village, devouring whole homes and families, her parents. A wall of orange-gold, the ends of her hair catching like tinder just from being too close. The air wavering, smoke in her lungs, in her throat, her skin so hot she remembered being terrified it would melt right off her bones. She hadn’t even witnessed the worst of it, not after Storme shoved her into the outhouse. But she’d listened. To the roar. The wood of her family’s home splintering, collapsing. Distant screams.

  No. She couldn’t lose herself to memory. Ayla forced her eyes open and tried to make sense of the chaos laid out before her. Lit by the burning carriage, it was a riot of movement, a tangle of bodies: maybe ten bandits, human, in leather and furs, some on foot wielding short curved swords, three on horseback with crossbows. The source of the flaming arrows. All of them were converging on the queen’s guards, who moved with superhuman speed, darting in and out of reach, blades catching the firelight and flashing gold like an Automa’s eyes. The guards were holding their own, but Ayla could see one of them was clutching her side and another was favoring her right leg, though not slowing down. They were skilled warriors, stronger and faster than the human bandits, but still . . . it was ten against four, and the bandits on horseback, having succeeded in setting the carriage on fire, now had their crossbows trained on the guards, following their movements. Why weren’t they shooting? Were they waiting for something?

  Ayla tried to think. Think. She wrenched her gaze away from the fight only to see the carriage driver slumped sideways on his bench, two arrows sticking out of his chest. He was an Automa; he was still alive but looked half gone, eyes wide and unseeing, chest heaving, his entire front stained with blood that looked black in the darkness. The flames hadn’t reached his bench yet, but they would soon. The horses were wild with panic, eyes rolling, straining at the reins. Ayla was surprised they hadn’t just run off, taking the burning carriage with them, but then she saw thick, heavy chains looped around the wheel axles, leading off into the dark. The horses were trapped.

  Think!

  The bandits ha
dn’t noticed her. They were preoccupied with the guards. It was only twenty paces or so to the edge of the road, the tree line. The bandits were human, they wouldn’t be able to see her in the dark. She could make it.

  But.

  She looked back at the driver. He was still conscious. Panting like a dying animal. Watching her, sort of, if he was capable of watching anything at all. The fire had begun to lick at the bench—it wasn’t soaked with oil, but it was mostly made of wood. It would burn, and he’d burn along with it. This Automa. This leech. She didn’t care if he died. One less to worry about, in the end. She didn’t care.

  “Dammit,” she muttered, and clambered up onto the driver’s bench. She threw the driver’s limp arm across her shoulders, smoke acrid on her tongue, and dragged him off the bench. He was heavier than he looked, heavier than a human would have been. The two of them landed in the mud, Ayla listing sideways under his weight. He let out a small pained noise, eyes fluttering shut. More violet blood pulsed from the arrows in his chest. Ayla wriggled out from underneath him and laid him on his back; that was all she could do. If he died tonight, it wouldn’t be from fire.

  And then she ran.

  She half expected to be struck down before she reached the tree line, half expected the punch of an arrow to the back, but she was able to leap from the road into the woods unharmed. She paused for a second, breathless, blinking hard as her eyes adjusted to a darkness much deeper than that of the open road. Most of the trees were still bare from winter, but there were enough firs to carve the night sky into tiny pieces of deep blue glass like the mosaics in Queen Junn’s palace, catching the moonlight before it had a chance to filter down and illuminate the forest floor. Even ten paces into the woods, the light of the burning carriage—which had become an inferno, bigger than the biggest harvest bonfires, a pillar of pale smoke rising up up up into the stars—was little more than a slight orange glow off the tree trunks.