by Nina Varela
“Come, Crier,” said Junn, motioning at the guards to stay put. “If you wish to speak, we’ll speak.”
They found an outcropping of rock at the edge of the camp, secluded enough that even Automa ears wouldn’t be able to listen in. Junn clambered up onto the biggest rock, a moonlit boulder shaped like a tortoise shell, and beckoned. Crier, somewhat at a loss, climbed up to sit beside her. Together they looked out over the dark hills. High above, the moon was a waning crescent, a white-toothed grin.
“Speak,” said Junn.
Crier’s bravado faltered. She was angry. For Reyka, she was angry. She wanted to confront Junn, to demand answers. She’d spent weeks preparing for this moment, drafting furious speeches inside her head, thinking wildly of justice and remorse and Junn begging for forgiveness, but now the moment had come, and they were face-to-face, and all the words left Crier at once.
“I want answers,” she said. “You said we were allies. You asked for my help, you said we should work together, I—I gave you names, Laone and Shasta and Foer, and you killed them, fine, I should have expected that, they were too close to Kinok, but—of all the names—I never gave you hers.”
“Whose,” said Queen Junn.
“Reyka’s!” Crier snapped. “The missing red hen, Reyka, Councilmember Reyka. You killed her for no reason!”
“I did what was necessary,” said Junn.
“Killing her wasn’t necessary,” Crier hissed. She knew she was being disrespectful, and if she wasn’t careful she’d be the next Reyka. But the grief was still fresh, and, perhaps even stronger: the sense of betrayal. “She was on our side. She’d been working against Kinok in secret for years. She was our ally and you killed her. Why?”
“She was careless,” said Junn, still so terribly calm. Her countenance was a lake, the surface unruffled, smooth as glass. “Kinok was onto her. He was tracking her movements, and I’m sure he had already identified a number of her contacts. Even the sovereign was catching on, and he has always been blinded by his own arrogance. Foolish man. So convinced of his own authority, he dismisses even the most obvious signs of defiance. I suppose you already know that.”
Crier didn’t answer.
“This is a war, Crier,” Junn said. “Your only true ally is yourself. The moment Reyka started trusting the wrong people—or putting too much trust in the right people—she became a threat. Because even the right people are still people, Crier. And everyone, everyone, has a breaking point. Kinok is exceptionally good at finding them. Reyka’s breaking point was a person, and that person was more vital than Reyka herself. That person had to be protected.”
Dinara. She had to mean Dinara, but the memory that flickered behind Crier’s eyes like a guttering candle wasn’t of Reyka’s daughter. It was of the sword at Ayla’s throat. The trickle of blood. Scyre, I will bargain with you.
Yes. Everyone had a breaking point.
Crier felt . . . embarrassed, or ashamed. She’d broken so quickly. One threat to Ayla, and Crier would have given anything to make it stop. And she knew that if it happened again, right now, her reaction would not change.
“Reyka was a threat. I eliminated her. I took no pleasure in giving the order, but I did not hesitate to give it. This is not a game. One leak, one slip of the tongue, could result in so much more than a single death.” Junn closed her eyes and tipped her head back, moonlight softening the planes of her face. With her eyes closed, she looked her age. Seventeen, maybe eighteen now. “I have always been willing to trade one life for thousands,” she murmured. “I am the Mad Queen. I am Junn the Bone Eater. Funny, isn’t it, considering I am not the ruler who burns villages to the ground. I am not the ruler who slaughters humans for fun. What is it they say about me? That I bathe in human blood—is that rumor still circulating? I like that one.”
“How did the rumors begin?” Crier couldn’t help but ask, anger bending to curiosity. She’d never given much thought to the origin of the whispers, despite always suspecting they were exaggerated at best.
“Oh, I started them,” said Junn.
“What?”
“I became queen when I was sixteen years old, Crier. Mere days after my father was assassinated. The country was in chaos, my father’s advisers thought me a silly little girl, the people thought me weak and naive. It didn’t help that my father had always kept me hidden from the public eye, to keep his secret safe.” She smiled wanly. “Of course, he didn’t know I’d been sneaking out of the palace for years. But I digress.”
“So . . . you started the rumors to make people respect you as a leader?”
“Not respect. Fear. I’ve found it far more useful in the long run.”
“I see,” Crier said quietly. She understood what Junn was saying. But still, sitting in the moonlight beside the Child Queen, she thought: That’s not the kind of leader I’d want to be. Then Junn’s words caught up to her. “Your father kept you hidden to . . . keep his secret safe? What secret?”
Instead of answering, Junn reached into the folds of her robes and drew out a knife.
Crier stiffened, but Junn didn’t make any moves to attack her. She held up the knife, appearing to admire it, moonlight turning the blade to molten silver. Then she lowered it to her other forearm. Before Crier could react, Junn slid the blade across her own skin.
“Your majesty—” Crier gasped, though Junn herself looked calm. She wiped the blade off on her deep blue robes, pocketed it again. Tilted her arm up to the light.
Red blood oozed from the shallow cut in her forearm.
Red blood.
Crier stared, uncomprehending.
“Everyone sees only what they want to see,” said Junn. “Humans, Automae; it doesn’t matter. We’re all the same in that respect.”
“That’s not possible,” Crier said, even as the evidence glittered like rubies on Junn’s skin. “There’s no way you could hide that. From everyone. For all these years. Your whole life.”
“Yet I did.” Junn lifted her arm, licking at the rivulet of red, human blood. “Not from everyone. My personal guards know. Certain trusted advisers and elders of my father’s court. My Storme.”
“But . . . your heartbeat. Your eyes . . .”
Junn smiled. “When I visited your palace, did you listen to my heartbeat? Did you watch my eyes, waiting for them to flash gold?”
No, she hadn’t.
Crier’s hearing was strong enough to pick up any heartbeat in her immediate vicinity—and so she’d learned to tune them out. They were distracting. Unnecessary background information. She didn’t pay attention to the rhythm of the heartbeats around her unless she had a specific reason to. The rabbits in their den. Deer in the woods. Ayla, always.
Had Crier watched Junn’s eyes? Only in the sense that she had, at the time, wanted them on her. She’d wanted Junn to look at her, speak to her. But had she been waiting for Junn’s eyes to flash gold in the candlelight at dinner? No, why would she. Junn was an Automa—there was no reason to believe otherwise, to search for signs of deceit.
“You drank heartstone,” Crier said.
“I’ve grown accustomed to the taste, though it gives me the strangest dreams.”
“Was your father secretly a human too?”
“No. Father was an Automa. But he loved humans. Not like your father claims to love us, but like you do. Like I do. For everything we are, everything we aren’t, everything we can become.” She tilted her head back, baring her throat. “For our love. Our fury. For what we create: stories and cities and every last god. For our ghosts. For our drinking songs. Because . . . for every human who does a monstrous thing, a thousand others will rise against them. We have always killed and saved ourselves. Protected each other. Fought for futures we will not live to see. My father loved humans, Crier. When he was newbuilt, he met a human girl, the daughter of one of the Midwives. They remained friends for years and years, even though she was no one and he was destined to be king. When she fell pregnant by a man she wouldn’t name, my fath
er gave her coffers of gold. When she left the newborn with the physician and disappeared overnight, he raised the child as his own.” Her eyes were closed, her hair a spill of pale gold down her back. “He kept me a secret from everyone but a handful of advisers until I was older. Until I knew how to hide in plain sight.”
“But you still snuck out of the palace.”
“That I did. I was lonely, you see. In my room, with my books. I wanted to meet my own Kind.”
“And did you?” Crier asked.
“Yes,” said Queen Junn, eyes sliding open again, the light brown of fallen leaves. “Many of them. I used a fake name, stole through the city, drank my fill of wine. Early on, I met a boy. I told him I was lonely. He said he knew loneliness down to the bone. He said he’d find a way to keep me company even when I returned to the palace, and he did.” Lips stained red with her own blood, smiling at the moon. “He wrote me letters.”
Love letters. Crier thought of the many letters she’d drafted and never sent to Ayla. She thought of love, a creature that took infinite forms, and marveled that her Kind had ever sought to be rid of it. Had taken something hot and true and replaced it with cold, loveless bonds, same as they’d taken lifeblood from the humans in the Iron Heart and transmuted it to crystal, crushed it, drank it like nasty wine. Crier had not imbibed any heartstone since she’d learned the truth about the Iron Heart, and now, under the stars, beside a young, ruthless, human queen, she vowed to never take it again. She would find Tourmaline and survive like that, or she would not. Either way, she wasn’t touching heartstone. Better for her body to wither than her soul. “Are you still lonely?” Crier asked, without really meaning to. “Even after everything? Even now that you can leave the palace?”
“I am always lonely,” said Junn. “My heart, if I have one, is a house of empty rooms and empty halls. My thoughts and footsteps echo. Sometimes I feel like a guest in the house of myself. But sometimes, someone’s footsteps cross my floor, and that is enough. These days, I luxuriate in my loneliness. I walk through my empty halls naked and singing.” Her smile hadn’t slipped. “What I really wanted was a reason to stay,” she said. “And I got what I wanted.”
Crier frowned. “Stay . . . in the palace?”
“Hm. Anywhere,” said Junn. “Now, what is it that you want, Crier? You’ve escaped your gilded cage. The world is your oyster. Your pearl. What next?”
What next?
How was she supposed to answer that when she had no idea what tomorrow would bring? She’d escaped her cage once, but here she was, flying right back into it. Right back to Sovereign Hesod.
“I don’t know,” she said at last. To Queen Junn, to the moon, to the halls of her heart. “I don’t know.”
It had only been a few weeks since Crier had run away from home, and the part of her that thought she would never return had been expecting it to look completely different. To grow and change along with her. She was half right. When their party crested a hill, and Crier saw the whole of the sovereign’s land spread out before her—the palace itself, the pearl on the black cliffs of the Steorran Sea, those four white marble spokes glittering in the sun; the servants’ quarters, the stables and outbuildings, the orchards, the flower gardens, the yellow fields, and beyond all of it the sea—it was like looking at her own face in a mirror and not recognizing it. Crier had grown up in this place. It was the first home she had ever known, and she had known every inch of those hallways, every tapestry and sculpture, every flower in the garden, every book in the library. But it was a prison, too. Her gilded cage. How was it possible for something to be both? Even now, it felt like both.
Of course, it wasn’t exactly the same palace she’d left. The main courtyard and half the fields were dotted with white tents: the queen’s royal guard and allies. Thin pillars of smoke rose up from dozens of campfires. Crier could see the soldiers swarming like beetles all over the grounds—they numbered about a thousand, according to Junn.
They reached the courtyard within the hour, and riding through the makeshift army camp was even stranger than seeing it from afar. There was a big tent set up right outside the palace doors, and Crier could see physicians and Midwives scurrying around inside. The air was thick with the smells of smoke and charcoal and cooking meat, and the sound of a thousand soldiers shouting and talking. Everywhere, people were preparing for battle.
Kinok was coming. He’d already destroyed the Heart, positioning himself as the only chance of survival. The only one who could find Tourmaline. His next move, Crier knew, would be to take the throne of Rabu. Establish himself as king. And tell the whole world to kneel.
Varnian riders had tracked him and his army—his followers, the Anti-Reliance Movement, a sea of black armbands—as they marched from the Aderos Mountains to the east, never too far behind Queen Junn’s party. Never too far behind Crier.
He was coming for her.
“Your highness,” she said after they entered the palace and made their way to the great hall, after Queen Junn had called for bread and ale and heartstone. Crier stepped up beside her, feeling Ayla’s questioning gaze at her back. “Your highness. I have a request.”
“You and your requests,” said Junn, waving away a servant boy carrying a skull-shaped teapot of liquid heartstone. “I know. You want an audience with your dear father, is that it?”
“He is not my dear anything,” Crier said, not even trying to hide her annoyance. “But—yes.”
“Come with me.” Junn’s eyes cut to Ayla. “Only you, though.”
Crier nodded. She didn’t want Ayla anywhere near the sovereign. “That’s fine.”
Flanked by guards, Crier followed Junn out of the great hall and down the long, gilded hallways to the east wing and then downstairs, to the underground quarters where Kinok had once lived. Junn led her to a nondescript door that did not seem like a door that would imprison her father—except for the presence of more guards—and stopped in front of it.
“In here,” said Junn. “The guards will wait just outside the door.”
Crier started to ask why—Because you think he will try to hurt me? Because you think I will try to help him escape?—but thought better of it. Neither answer would make her feel less ill. Instead she just nodded, slipped inside, and closed the door behind her, heard the click of the latch.
It was darker in this room than the hallway. There were no windows, of course; the only light came from two blue-green wall sconces and a single lantern. The only furnishing was a rough-hewn wooden table with a chair on each side, lantern sitting on the tabletop. A couple months ago, this had been a storage room for dry goods, extra linens. Now it held the sovereign of Rabu.
For there he was, looking as dignified as possible considering the circumstances. He was seated in the chair facing the doorway, and his posture was flawless, confident, as if the old wooden chair was his white marble throne in the Councilroom of the Old Palace. He wasn’t unbathed like the prisoners they’d rescued from the Iron Heart. He clearly had not been deprived of heartstone. He looked perfectly healthy, his skin flush with color. The only difference between this Hesod and the Hesod Crier knew was his clothes: plain wool garments instead of the rich, jewel-toned brocade he favored.
She hated herself for it, but she couldn’t help feeling relieved. She’d been conjuring up images of her father the prisoner for days, imagining him starved and skeletal, bloodless, half dead. Heartstone withdrawal was terrible. She did not wish that kind of suffering on him, even if he deserved it.
“Daughter,” said Hesod, and Crier realized she’d been staring, frozen just inside the door. “Come. Sit.”
She started forward automatically—then stopped. “No,” she said. “I will stand.”
“Such a contrarian you’ve become.” He sounded amused. “You used to be so obedient. Well, do as you wish. What is it you have come for? Am I correct in assuming you’ve joined forces with the girl queen?”
“No, I haven’t,” Crier said. “At least not entirely.”
“Not entirely? This isn’t a philosophical debate, child. You cannot argue one side and then the other for your own entertainment.” The lantern was reflected in his eyes, twin flares of white-gold. When he tilted his head and the light caught his eyes at an angle, his irises flared gold to match. “At least come into the light, will you? I haven’t seen your face for weeks.”
Crier hesitated, but . . . it was only a couple steps. She took them, moving into the circle of lanternlight. “I am not on Queen Junn’s side,” she told him. “And I am not on your side. I am on my own side. I want to end this war before it begins. I want Kinok put on trial for his crimes. I want . . .” She steeled herself. “I want you to tell me the truth.”
“That’s very broad,” he chided her. “Tell you the truth about what? My favorite human food? Sun apple tart.”
“Tell me the truth about heartstone,” she said, meeting his eyes. Her hands were shaking. They still shook every time she thought about what she’d seen in the bowels of the Iron Heart. “Tell me—tell me it really is just a red gemstone. Tell me the Watchers extract heartstone ore from deep within the earth. Tell me the Iron Heart is really a mine.”
“That would not be the truth,” said Hesod.
“Gods,” Crier choked out, one hand flying to cover her mouth. Horror flooded through her, cold and immediate, like she’d just leaped into the icy waters of the Steorran Sea. “Gods, you can’t be— Father. Please. Please. Tell me heartstone isn’t made from human blood.”
“Not the truth,” he said.
Her back hit the stone wall. She’d stumbled away from him. “How—how many deaths is that?” Fifty years since the War of Kinds, fifty years since the creation of the Iron Heart. Fifty years of death. “How many have died so we could live?” Not just died. She could imagine few fates worse than what she had seen in that room. Shackled to a cot, weak and delirious from a combination of blood loss and some sort of sleeping draft, knowing nothing but the darkness and the other bodies around you and the steady drip of blood into black vessels. “How many?”