Iron Heart

by Nina Varela

  “Shit, shit,” Ayla heard herself gasping, wrenching her ankle from Rosi’s grip, trying to kick her in the face, missing. She should be dead by now, Rosi should have torn her throat out, but then Rosi tried to lunge after her and Ayla saw what was keeping her alive: Rosi’s body was just . . . broken. Her right shin was shattered so badly the white bone had pierced through the skin, and her wrists looked broken too, the hands flapping oddly. She was moving like a puppet, like her brain was issuing commands and her body was trying to obey, but all its reactions were clumsy and delayed.

  Ayla had to calm down. If she panicked, she’d make stupid mistakes and get herself killed. She had to calm down. She scrambled backward over the rocks, putting as much distance as possible between her and Rosi, even as Rosi kept lurching after her. They were barely twenty paces from a sharp drop-off. They might have tumbled right over the edge.

  Weapons. Weapons. Her dagger would do nothing, Rosi probably wouldn’t even feel it.

  The blue powder bomb.

  Ayla groped at the small pouch at her hip, head spinning. Her temple was throbbing; she could feel the hot trickle of blood running down the side of her face. Head wound, never good. She managed to stagger upright, fingers closing around the bomb, ready to throw it—

  “Wait!”

  Crier. She was above them, scrambling down the mountainside after Ayla. With one hand, she was holding her shirt up over her mouth and nose. Guarding against the blue smoke.

  “Crier, stay back!”

  Rosi was on her feet again, eyes rolling in her head. The jut of bone from her shin made Ayla want to throw up.

  “I know her!” Crier said, muffled through the shirt. “We can still save her, I know she’s still in there somewhere—Rosi!”

  “It’s too late,” Ayla shouted, eyes on Rosi. “Crier, I’m sorry, it’s too late. We can’t save her, she’s too far gone. She’s not Rosi anymore.” She gripped the bomb tight. One throw, it’d be over. Rosi’s body blown viscerally apart. Crier wasn’t responding. “Crier, I’m sorry. But I’m not trading her life for mine—or yours.”

  Rosi lunged.

  Ayla heard Crier shout her name, but there was nothing but fear in her voice; she wasn’t trying to stop Ayla anymore. Ayla ran, graceless on the rocky terrain but still lighter on her feet than Rosi. More in control of her body than Rosi. She heard Rosi crawling over the rocks behind her, making this guttural, drawn-out noise, a last breath elongated, rough and broken. Rosi was speeding up. Pushing the shell of herself to the limit.

  Ten more paces. Ayla was gasping, exertion and pain and terror all at once. She made it to the edge of the drop-off and turned around. Rosi was coming for her, tongue lolling, skin peeling off her palms. She was coming and she wasn’t slowing down.

  At the very last second, Ayla threw herself sideways.

  Rosi didn’t.

  Rosi made no sound as she fell. Shuddering, nauseated, Ayla peered over the edge of the cliff. It was a long way down.

  She backed away. A hand on her shoulder. Crier.

  “I’m sorry,” Ayla said again. Crier was staring at the spot where Rosi had disappeared. The patch of thin air.

  “No, you were right,” Crier whispered. The words seemed scraped out of her. “It was too late. I was—foolish, and it could have cost you your life.”

  “I don’t think it’s foolish to believe someone could still be saved. Not at the heart of it. I don’t think that’s foolish at all.”

  Crier didn’t answer.

  “Rosi of House Emiele,” Ayla murmured. She had no sympathy for Rosi, who worshipped Kinok and had once referred to Ayla as Crier’s pet. But Crier had known her for years, and Crier had just watched her die. “From light you were born, and to light you shall return. Go now into the stars. They’ve been . . . they’ve been waiting for you.”

  She tapped two fingers to her forehead. Crier did the same, and in the sunlight her eyes burned gold, and her lashes were wet with tears.

  By the time they’d dragged themselves back up the mountainside, the Watchers had come.

  “Stay down,” Ayla hissed. They crouched behind one of the stone sentinels, watching in horror as the rebels, alive but clearly injured, many of them slumped over as if unconscious, were bound together at the wrists by Automae in black robes, their faces hidden with silvery metal masks. The Watchers of the Heart. Ayla had never seen one, never met anyone who’d seen one; the whole point was that the Watchers never, ever left.

  Until one.

  Crier cocked her head, listening intently. “Someone just said Kinok’s name,” she whispered. “He’s—he’s here. Inside the Heart. The Watchers are saying—‘Bring them to Scyre Kinok. Await his orders.’” She sucked in a breath. “One just said, ‘The lady and the handmaiden aren’t here. Keep searching the mountains.’”

  Ayla cursed. “How in all hells does he know we’re nearby?”

  “Shouldn’t we do something?” Crier whispered. “You still have the powder bomb, we could create a diversion. . . .”

  “There are six Watchers, and Dinara’s people are tied up,” Ayla whispered back. “One powder bomb wouldn’t give us enough time to untie them all, and anyway, there’s no way we could fight off six Watchers.”

  “But—”

  “Just Crier,” Ayla said, nudging her. “I’m not saying we’re not going to save them. I’m just saying we’re not going to do it right now.” She narrowed her eyes, trying to make out what exactly was happening. One of the Watchers was sort of . . . running their hand over a large boulder in the mountainside, where the walls of the bowl rose up. “Trust me, I’d love an explosion, I’m really looking forward to using that bomb, but we have to be smart about this.”

  Crier nodded. “All right, that’s— Wait. Look.”

  The Watcher had stopped running their hand over the boulder. Instead, they were pressing their hand to a specific spot. They were leaning forward a little, as if putting some effort into it. At first, nothing happened—and then the stone beneath the Watcher’s hand shifted, solid granite rippling like water, and a seam appeared in the very center of the boulder. A fracture, then an opening, the boulder itself splitting apart like an oyster shell. Revealing . . . darkness. Black rock?

  No. The mouth of a tunnel.

  “There it is,” Ayla breathed, more to herself than Crier.

  The Watchers moved quickly. It took only a couple minutes for them to herd the rebels into the tunnel, into the darkness. Then the last two Watchers were following them through, and the boulder shifted back, the two halves rejoining, completely seamless. Ayla had just witnessed it, and still it seemed impossible that the boulder could really open like that, a door hidden in plain sight.

  “Well,” said Ayla.

  “Yes,” said Crier. “I agree.”

  They waited for what felt like an excruciating amount of time but was probably less than an hour, judging by the sun. Then, silent with fear and adrenaline, they passed through the stone sentinels one last time. They skirted around the edge of the clearing, Crier listening for signs of anyone—Watcher, monster—approaching, until they reached the boulder.

  “You remember where?” Ayla said. The first either of them had spoken for a long time.

  “I remember.”

  Crier reached out and pressed her hand to the stone. As with the Watcher, for a moment nothing happened, and then: The shift. The ripples. Up close, it was even stranger; it felt like it should be a hallucination, a trick of the light, because stone did not move like this. Stone did not breathe like this, one moment seamless and the next cracking open. Ayla took a step back, not trusting any of it—especially when she saw tiny symbols fluttering across the surface of the stone, as if they were trapped inside and had been drawn out by sunlight, by magick. The language of the Makers. She recognized some of the symbols. Most of them, even. Two in particular were repeated over and over again: earth and transcendent, mutable quicksilver.

  The door opened. They were standing at the mouth
of the tunnel. Nothing but darkness stretched out before them, the sunlight illuminating only the first few paces, as if the shadows were somehow thicker here and would not let it any farther.

  “Ready?” Ayla asked Crier, even though she herself was not. She hated darkness like this, hated how narrow the tunnel looked, how the door would close behind them and they wouldn’t know how to open it from the inside and they’d have no choice but to go forward and there could very well be a squadron of Watchers waiting for them at the first bend. She hated everything about this, and she was going to do it anyway, and if she died in there it would be nobody’s fault but her own.

  The wound on her temple was still throbbing, though the blood at least had dried.

  “No,” Crier answered. “Not particularly.”

  “Glad we’re in agreement,” said Ayla, taking a deep breath. “I’d have been a bit concerned if you did feel ready. Probably would have checked you for a head wound.”

  “You have a head wound,” Crier pointed out.

  “And I’m doing a very good job of ignoring it. All right. We can’t stay out in the open like this.” She hopped up and down a little, but it made her head swim, so she stopped. “Hey, Just Crier. Wanna sneak into the Iron Heart with me?”

  “Since we’re here,” said Crier, very solemn.

  Shoulder to shoulder, side by side, they stepped into the darkness and were swallowed.

  Ayla was blind, and even Crier could barely make out which way the needle of Dinara’s compass was pointing. They moved through the tunnel as quickly as possible, Ayla clutching the back of Crier’s shirt, pausing every so often so Crier could listen for footsteps. The ground was uneven and often muddy beneath their feet, the walls rough-hewn stone. It felt like they were trespassing in a rabbit’s burrow, a hollowed-out, earthly realm they should never have entered.

  Neither of them spoke. The air felt heavy like it did in sacred places, the hush of a cathedral or a graveyard. They followed the compass in silence for what felt like hours, making their way deeper into the belly of the mountain. Ayla couldn’t help but wonder if the compass was broken; it felt like they were just walking in circles. Like they were doomed to be lost in this endless, pitch-black underground labyrinth.

  Just as Ayla was about to say something, she realized: it was getting lighter.

  The air changed from the dead, stale air of the deep underground to something cleaner, the faintest breeze lifting the hair at Ayla’s nape. As they walked, the cave walls began to glisten with moisture; Ayla ran a finger along the wall and felt dripping water, slick fungus. Soon it was light enough to see the fungus, pale like lichen on the dark rock. And up ahead, she heard—

  “Birdsong,” said Crier, breaking the silence for the first time since they’d entered. “Do you hear that? Birdsong.”

  “How . . . ?” Ayla started, but didn’t have to wait for an answer. They cleared a bend in the tunnel, and she found out how.

  The tunnel had led them to the far end of an enormous cavern. An impossibly vast cavern, like someone had hollowed out an entire mountain, from the foot all the way to the highest peak. The sovereign’s palace and all the gardens and orchards could have fit inside this space with room to spare. Ayla couldn’t even see where the cavern ended, the walls disappearing into a shadowy gloom, but gods, it must have been at least half a mile long. She’d never felt so tiny. Milky sunlight filtered down from high above, and Ayla craned her neck, trying to figure out how far up this place went, but instead found the source of the birdsong: actual birds, turning and wheeling in the light. There must have been an opening at the top, a crack in the mountain like the mouth of a volcano, allowing fresh air and sunlight to stream down.

  To illuminate the Iron Heart.

  Huge and imposing, almost as tall as the cavern itself, the Heart was a castle. A fortress. A collection of spires. Clinging to the cavern wall like a massive insect, the base was formed of sheer black walls rising from the cavern floor; about halfway up, the fortress joined with the cavern wall, carved directly out of the night-black stone. Hundreds of little chambers and spiraling towers, a city in miniature. Even from here, Ayla could see huge alchemical symbols etched into the sheer walls. The four elements, plus iron and gold.

  An underground river cut through the cavern. Green, slow-moving, snakelike, it curved around the base of the Heart. Pale green froth marbled the surface. Ayla and Crier were about fifty paces from the river’s edge—close enough that when Ayla breathed in, she tasted the river water on the back of her tongue, briny and oddly metallic.

  “Let’s keep going,” she said shakily.

  “Yes,” said Crier, and fell silent once more.

  The pitch blackness of the deep underground never returned, but it did grow darker as they walked what had to be a trail parallel to the river, leading them to the fortress itself. Finally, out of the darkness: a flickering light came from up ahead, like a faraway hearth fire. Crier’s pace quickened and Ayla followed, desperate to leave the dark behind. The light grew stronger and stronger, turning from deep red to orange to hearth-flame yellow, shadows scattering and reforming on the walls. The closer they got to the light, the more Ayla could hear . . . a thresher? A mill? Tumbling water, clanging metal, a whip-crack splintering noise like ice cracking on a frozen lake. She hadn’t heard that sound since she was a child in Delan, at the edge of the ice fields.

  “I think we’re getting close,” she whispered, and of course that was when they hit a dead end. Or—not. The tunnel was blocked off by an iron gate, but when they crept up to the gate, when they peered through the bars . . . It seemed they were stationed high up on a wall, overlooking a big underground chamber. And gods, it was crawling with Automae. Watchers. They were dressed in the thick, protective leather Ayla had seen blacksmiths wear, their faces masked. Thick white smoke billowed from the center of the cavern, where Ayla could see leaping flames and a row of huge metal vats, like the heartstone cauldrons in the kitchens of the sovereign’s palace but triple the size. The smoke stung her eyes.

  “This has to be the forge,” she whispered. “The heart of the Heart. They’re making heartstone.”

  Crier opened her mouth to reply, but then her eyes widened. “Someone’s coming,” she hissed.

  They had no choice but to retrace their steps, racing back down the tunnel, even though the Watchers would be coming from the same direction. Ayla kept her eyes on the tunnel walls, looking for any sort of escape route, even a fissure in the stone—and then she saw it. A round, hatch-like door. She grabbed Crier’s sleeve and dragged her over, praying it would be unlocked, praying there wouldn’t be more Watchers on the other side—

  They tumbled through the hatch into a bloodred room.

  Ayla blinked, disoriented. The room was lined with wall sconces, candles flickering behind red glass, casting a sickly, bloody light. For a moment, ridiculously, Ayla thought they’d stumbled into the Watchers’ sleeping quarters. There were two rows of little white cots, exactly like the cots in the servants’ quarters of the sovereign’s palace. And they were occupied. Twelve sleeping bodies. Ayla tugged at Crier’s sleeve—they had to get out of here, what if the Watchers woke up—

  “No,” Crier whispered. “Oh, no.”

  Then she was moving toward one of the cots. Have you gone mad? Ayla wanted to say. She scampered after Crier, prepared to drag her out of here by force if necessary, but . . .

  Up close, this wasn’t—this person didn’t look like a Watcher. They didn’t look like an Automa at all. Ayla frowned, something flaring up in the back of her mind, a prickle of horror she did not yet understand. She looked down at the person on the cot. The human. Their face was gaunt, sunken cheeks and eye sockets. They were dressed in plain white clothing, a shirt and pants—all of the sleeping people were, Ayla realized—but the parts she could see, the hands and feet, the wrists, the forearms—were just as skeletal.

  “What . . . ?”

  There was a contraption at the foot of each bed. A s
tone vessel with a thin metal pipe no wider than a finger sticking out of it. Ayla followed it with her eyes, from the mouth of the vessel up the edge of the cot, and then she saw the sleeping person’s wrists were tied to the cot, and their ankles, so their limbs were akimbo, and the pipe ran up the edge of the cot to the person’s wrist.

  “Crier,” Ayla said. “Crier. What is this?”

  Crier was leaning over another cot, eyes huge, one hand pressed to her mouth. She shook her head once, hard.

  “Crier,” Ayla said.

  “This one’s alive,” said Crier. “I think most of them are. I can hear their heartbeats. Not all of them.”

  “Crier, what is this?”

  “They’re being drained.” She sounded oddly calm, as if she’d bypassed horror and gone straight to numbness. Her eyes flicked from the cots to the stone vessels to Ayla’s face. “The Watchers are draining their blood. They’re—collecting it.”

  Ayla staggered away from the cot. She bent over for a moment, trying not to be sick. Taking deep breaths didn’t help. The air smelled so strongly of blood, thick and oily on her tongue, in her throat, in her lungs. “But they’re alive,” she said. “Can we . . . we have to—get them out of here.”

  “We’ll have to wake them up. They might not be able to move, but we have to try. We can’t drag ten unconscious bodies out of here.”

  “Twelve,” said Ayla, counting the cots.