Iron Heart

by Nina Varela

  Waiting for Storme to come back for her. Waiting and waiting and finally accepting that he wasn’t coming, nobody was.

  Crawling up and out, falling once, landing hard on the foul wet ground . . .

  Ayla, someone was saying. Ayla. Now, or then? Did it matter?

  Both outcomes would be the same.

  Except this time she wouldn’t escape. And she wasn’t alone. They would both die here.

  I don’t want you to die, she thought hazily. I don’t—I don’t want you to die. Crier, I want you to live.

  “Ayla!”

  The shout startled her into opening her eyes. She felt dizzy, her head was swimming. Darkness at the edges of her vision like flames devouring paper. Storme hadn’t come.

  “Ayla, I need you to calm down,” a familiar voice said. “Ayla, you have to breathe.”

  I can’t, Ayla tried to say, but nothing came out. Her face was wet. Blood? No, salt on her lips. She was crying, which some part of her found humiliating, but mostly she just couldn’t breathe, couldn’t speak, her chest was too tight. Like someone had cracked open her rib cage, reached inside her, and wrapped their cold fingers around her lungs.

  “Ayla. Ayla, please try to breathe. I think he’s coming back, I hear footsteps. You have to calm down.” Crier’s voice was low and strained, like she was speaking through clenched teeth. “Ayla, I’ll get us out of here, I swear to you, but I need you to calm down. Just try to breathe. Slowly, in and out.”

  Breathe. Ayla’s brain was shivering, rattling around. She was still there, still there, hidden in the latrine. She had been locked inside it, in that terrible coffin, ever since.

  She had never emerged. Not really.

  Nobody had ever come for her.

  Crier gasped, and there was a wrenching noise, the clatter of metal on stone.

  A figure stepped into the cell. There was something familiar about the breadth of those shoulders, that silhouette. Ayla squinted through the darkness and the haze of her own tears.

  The figure took another step forward. The light from the high, narrow window fell across his face.

  For a moment, Ayla thought she was hallucinating. Or she’d passed out and this was a dream. Because there before her was Storme. He was a man now, but in the wavering light, she could have sworn there were two of him, one superimposed on the other, a faded imprint, a little ghost. A little boy. Barely nine years old. Ayla blinked and the child-Storme disappeared, but the older one didn’t.

  “You came,” she breathed.

  Storme let out a funny breath, almost a laugh, sad around the edges. “I came. Sorry it took this long.”

  Ayla took him in, her brother, her twin. He looked a little worse for the wear, hair matted with dirt or blood, a nasty scrape across one cheek. But he was whole and alive, and he was here. He’d come for her. “No, you’re—you’re just in time, I think,” she said faintly. “But how?”

  “I’ll explain later,” he said.

  “You,” said Crier, and Ayla finally tore her eyes off her brother. “You . . . you were Queen Junn’s adviser.” She sounded stunned.

  “Still am, actually,” said Storme, crouching down before them. “Hello again, Lady Crier. What a terrible place for a reunion. We have to get out of here before the Watchers come.”

  “I’m chained to a wall,” Ayla said.

  “Yeah, I thought you might be. Hold on.” He rummaged around in a small pouch at his hip, and Crier gave Ayla a look of deep bewilderment that would have been funny under any other circumstances.

  “You know each other?” she said, eyes darting between Ayla and Storme.

  “You could say that,” said Ayla. “He’s my twin brother.”

  Crier’s eyes widened. “Your—? And he’s alive?”

  “Thus far,” said Storme, who was sprinkling some sort of white powder on Ayla’s manacles. Then he took out a tinderbox.

  “Is your brilliant escape plan to blow my hands off?” Ayla squeaked.

  He rolled his eyes. “I’m not going to blow your hands off. Can you hold still for a second? The Watchers are gonna show up any minute. Our diversion in the western sector will only distract them for so long.”

  “Stars and skies,” Ayla mumbled. “Fine. Fine. Please, for the love of all the gods and then some, please be careful.”

  “Your dead twin brother is alive and also adviser to the queen of Varn,” said Crier, dazed.

  “It’s a long story,” Ayla said. “I’ll tell you later, promise.”

  “Shut up, both of you, stop distracting me,” said Storme. “Almost . . . ah. Brace yourself, Ayla.”

  Panicked, Ayla screwed her eyes shut. There was a weird smell, like sharp bitter smoke, then a noise like a dozen snakes hissing at once. Then a flare of heat on her inner wrists, painful enough that she sucked in a breath—and the iron manacles cracked open like oyster shells, releasing another curl of smoke just as she dared open her eyes. They fell from her wrists, clanking on the stone floor.

  “Oh,” said Ayla. “Well, all right.”

  Storme snorted. Within a minute, he’d repeated the same process for Crier.

  “Let’s get out of here,” he said.

  Rubbing her aching wrists, Ayla got to her feet. Crier was still crouching; she seemed a little shell-shocked. Ayla bent down, holding out a hand. “Come on, Just Crier,” she said. “Time to go.”

  Crier’s dark eyes flicked to Ayla’s hand. She took it, and Ayla pulled her upright, and—there was a moment in which Crier was standing over her, very close, and Ayla was tilting her chin up to meet Crier’s gaze. Their hands were clasped between them.

  “Will you please,” Storme whisper-yelled from the doorway.

  They followed him, slipping out of the cell and into the dark stone corridor beyond, and they did not let go.

  Storme led them through the veins of the Heart. It was clear something was going on—they kept hearing what sounded like distant explosions.

  “That’ll be the diversion,” Storme said. As they ran, he explained: “Me and Queen Junn’ve been keeping an eye on these mountains for ages. We’ve been spying on the Watchers, tracking the shipments of heartstone, trying like hell to find the Heart itself. Trying to find a way inside. But we weren’t just spying on the Watchers. Junn’s always known Kinok would be a greater threat than anyone believed. Since the beginning, since the first whispers of him leaving his post as Watcher of the Heart, she knew. She said, Nobody does something like that unless they’ve got something else planned. Something much bigger.”

  He led them down a corridor so narrow they had to walk sideways, inching their way along the wall. “Shortcut, sorry. Anyway. That’s why we went on that ‘diplomacy tour,’ that’s why we visited the sovereign’s palace. To observe Kinok. Maybe you already knew that, Lady Crier.”

  They emerged from the shortcut and Ayla’s stomach dropped—there were people waiting for them on the other side. But they were dressed in green, the queen’s emerald green, the crest of the phoenix at their throats. Three humans, two Automae, all of them grimy, the humans panting and bloodied.

  “Adviser Storme,” said one of the Automae. “The human prisoners have been delivered to safety. Only two of our own have fallen. We’ve come to retrieve you.”

  “Wait,” Ayla blurted out. “Which human prisoners?”

  The Automa gave her an odd look. “I believe they were captured earlier today. From the mountain pass.”

  Ayla and Crier exchanged a glance. “There’s more,” Ayla said. “Not all of them are alive, but—there’s this room in a corridor right off the forge, round like a hatch. There are humans inside. They’re being tortured, they’re badly hurt, they need help. Please.” She turned to Storme. “Please. I’ll go alone if I have to.”

  “We’ll go alone,” said Crier.

  Storme shook his head. “Find the round door,” he instructed the two Automae. “Rescue anyone still alive. We’ll wait for you at the seastone.”

  “Yes, sir,” they
said in unison, and headed back down the corridor, silent as shadows.

  Another explosion shook the corridor, closer now. Ayla squeezed Crier’s hand, reflexive, and tried to keep her expression steady when Crier immediately squeezed back.

  “Very, very much time to go,” said Storme. “We’re not too far now. I’ll take lead. Bell, Rina, flank the girls. Neven, at the back.”

  “Yes, Adviser Storme,” the humans said.

  They’d only gotten a few more paces when the entire world broke apart.

  The ground lurched beneath their feet, sending everyone sprawling, even as a great wave of heat billowed into them from behind. Head spinning, Ayla didn’t realize what was happening until Storme gasped, “That’s not us. That’s not us.”

  BOOM.

  This time, the walls rattled with the force of the explosion. Bits of rock rained down on them from above, and there came a second wave of heat, so hot Ayla thought it might singe her clothes. She struggled to her feet, spitting pink where she’d bitten her tongue. Her eardrums had popped; all sound was muffled. “If it’s not you, then who?” she shouted.

  “Kinok,” said Crier, eyes huge. “He’s going through with it.”

  “Going through with what?” Storme asked, coughing.

  “Destroying the Iron Heart.”

  BOOM. Ayla remained upright only because Crier was holding her hand. She staggered, coughing, the air thick with rock dust.

  “Run!” Crier said. “Run!”

  It was madness. Blinded by clouds of dust, skin burning with each new wave of heat, they ran. Ayla lost all sense of time and place, knew only that she had to keep chasing Storme’s voice. The heat seared her throat and lungs. At one point, she heard the tunnel collapsing behind them, a rockslide, stone crushing and scraping against stone—she tried to turn around, to see how close it was, but Crier tugged her ever forward.

  At last, they emerged. The entrance blended seamlessly into the lichen-spotted stone of the mountainside. Ayla didn’t know exactly how much time had passed since she and Crier had found their way into the Heart, how long they’d been unconscious in that cell, but it was far past midnight now, the liminal blue-black hours just before dawn. The mountains were quiet with night, the only sounds being the singing of insects and the calls of faraway birds, farther down the mountain where green things gripped the rock. Then—BOOM. A roar of fire, a shriek of earth; Ayla saw a flock of birds take off, terrified, into the night sky.

  “Look!” Crier said, pointing.

  High above, at the peak of the mountain, a tower of smoke. Pale against the night, it billowed up into the stars. Endless. Ayla was struck silent, just watching. Her heartbeat was a riot; she could feel it pulsing in her dull, ringing ears. Sunlight had once streamed down onto the Iron Heart. Some crack in the mountain, a pinprick opening into that enormous cavern. Now, smoke rose up.

  “He did it,” Crier said. Her eyes were glassy. “Those explosions. All that smoke. I can’t believe he really did it. Destroyed it. Oh gods.” She looked to Ayla, searching. “Oh gods, what now?”

  What now? Where the hell do we go from here?

  “I don’t know,” Ayla whispered. “I don’t know.”

  “Do we know which vein that was?” Storme asked the woman Rina about an hour later, as their party picked their way farther down the mountainside, away from the still-rising smoke. Rina had a map, was holding it up to catch the moonlight. A map of the Iron Heart, Ayla thought, and wanted to laugh. She and Benjy had spent so much time obsessing over such a thing back in the sovereign’s palace, convinced it was the key to the Revolution. The key to everything. Well, here it was. Newly obsolete.

  “Hey,” Crier murmured.

  They were still holding hands. They hadn’t let go, not even once. Ayla’s hand was sweaty; there was dirt and sweat and probably blood slicking their palms, but she didn’t want to lose this point of contact. This point of warmth, solidity, in the middle of a huge and frightening thing. The machinery of war. Kinok versus Queen Junn versus—the sovereign? The human rebellion? Both?

  Ayla looked up at Crier, who was already looking back. “Hey.”

  “I am glad we made it out alive,” said Crier.

  “Don’t think I’ve forgotten what you did,” Ayla said quietly. “Offering up your life in exchange for mine. I’m gonna give you hell for it later. After I’ve had a good sleep.”

  “I would expect nothing less.” Her mouth twitched, a tiny crooked not-quite-smile, and Ayla felt her own heart move in her chest.

  She shifted her grip, interlacing their fingers. “I could’ve taken him. Bastard’s lucky the chime went off when it did. I was two seconds away from unveiling my incredibly advanced combat skills.”

  “Yes. I’m disappointed I lost a chance to witness your signature move, ‘Aggressive Squirming.’”

  Ayla couldn’t help it. She laughed, exhausted but true. When she quieted, Crier was watching her.

  Then Crier went tense, hand twitching in Ayla’s grip. “Adviser Storme,” she said. “Someone’s coming.”

  Storme looked up from the map, but he didn’t seem at all concerned. “I know,” he said. “I’m expecting her.”

  Her?

  No, it can’t be, not out here—

  But when a figure on horseback melted out of the shadows, Ayla knew exactly who it was.

  Unlike the rest of their party, Queen Junn looked perfectly pristine, as if she were sitting in her own throne room instead of on the back of a shaggy mountain pony in the middle of the Aderos Mountains. She wore a cloak of silver silk; it looked like she was wrapped in moonlight. Her hair was twisted into a crown of glossy black braids. There were pearls in her ears.

  “Handmaiden Ayla,” Queen Junn said lightly, as if continuing a recent conversation.

  “It’s just Ayla, thanks,” said Ayla. “I’m getting very tired of everyone calling me that, I haven’t been a handmaiden for ages.” Storme coughed pointedly, and she rolled her eyes. “Hello, your majesty.”

  “Always well met, Ayla,” said Junn. “And—Lady Crier. I did hope I’d see you again.”

  “Just Crier, actually,” said Crier.

  “Yes, of course,” said Junn. “The runaway. I am pleased your loyalties did not waver. Let’s get going, then. I wish to reach the seastone before dawn.”

  “Wait,” Ayla said. “Wait, just—what’s going on? Where are we going?”

  Junn was already turning her horse away. “Yes, I suppose you’ve missed a lot over the past few days. Too much to explain right now, really, so forgive me for telling you the short version. I have taken control of the palace of the sovereign of Rabu. The sovereign himself is my prisoner. Currently, lovely Benjy is in charge. Come,” she said, waving in the way of queens. “We are headed there now, and we should hurry.”

  The whispers become shouts.

  The rumors are true, my friend.

  The Iron Heart has been destroyed. Already, the heartstone stores are dwindling. Already we have turned to hoarding. Thievery. How long will it take before thievery turns to murder?

  A new fear rises to the surface: Councilmember Paradem was right. Scyre Kinok is our Kind’s only hope.

  —FROM A LETTER INTERCEPTED BY QUEEN JUNN OF VARN, FROM RED HAND MAR TO RED HAND ILLYAN OF THE RED COUNCIL OF THE SOVEREIGN STATE OF RABU

  18

  Three days of riding had taken a toll on them all. It was preferable to traveling on foot, but Queen Junn’s reinforcements had only two caravans, both of which were needed to transport the liberated prisoners from the Iron Heart. Most of them were so weak they could barely walk, let alone stay upright on a horse for twelve hours. They were laid out on low cots, watched over day and night by the queen’s physicians. Crier had seen Ayla visiting them a couple times, in the evenings, when the rest of their party was occupied setting up camp for the night.

  Crier couldn’t bring herself to do the same.

  Couldn’t face them.

  Not knowing what she knew. Or what she
thought she knew. Every time she closed her eyes, she saw that room in haunting detail: the bloodred light, the black stone vessels, the thin silver tubes. The two humans who had already died. Crier had never been that close to a dead body before. It had been so jarring: the absence of sound. She was so accustomed to hearing human heartbeats, the quiet ocean-rush of breath, that she usually tuned it out, let it fade into the background like so many other mundane noises. When she’d first approached the bodies, it had taken a few moments to figure out why everything felt off. It was like walking through a forest and realizing all the birds had stopped singing. Wondering how long you’d been oblivious to it, wondering what had scared them into silence. Crier had faltered, shaken her head as if to clear it. A silly instinct. But it had felt like her head was stuffed with cotton. A heavy, physical silence.

  Then she’d realized what was missing.

  On the first night—after they’d reconvened with Queen Junn’s guard at the seastone, which turned out to be a large greenish rock; after they’d been given their own sturdy mountain ponies; after the queen’s soldiers had returned with Dinara and the rest of the human rebels, who’d been locked away in one of the many chambers of the Heart, and the prisoners from the blood room; after they’d completed the long, arduous trek down the mountainside, which took the rest of the night and most of the morning; after they’d met the rest of the queen’s party at the base of the mountain, switched their horses for fresh ones, and kept going, riding to a campsite a few leagues away, reaching it just as darkness fell—after all that, on the first night, Crier hadn’t been able to hold it in any longer. Knowing full well she was being reckless, not finding the energy to care, she marched right up to Queen Junn’s heavily guarded tent and said, loud enough that there was no way the queen wouldn’t hear, “Your highness. I wish to speak with you.”

  She’d been expecting a dismissal. But a moment later the tent flap lifted and Junn slipped out into the night air, a small figure dressed in deep blue, blending in with the dark. Her hair was loose around her shoulders. She was careful to fasten the tent flap shut behind her, careful not to let Crier see more than a sliver of what was inside. Crier thought back to that night Junn had spent in the sovereign’s palace, the night Crier had wandered the halls and heard soft, lilting noises coming from Junn’s room, two voices ringing out. The queen and her adviser. Scandalous to take a human lover, Crier had thought. Now she knew that lover was Ayla’s long-lost twin brother. Was that what the queen was hiding in her tent?