by Nina Varela
Dedication
For the queer readers. You deserve every adventure.
Map
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Dedication
Map
Timeline
Prologue
Fall, Year 47 AE
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Late Fall, Year 47 AE
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Winter, Year 47 AE
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Books by Nina Varela
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Copyright
About the Publisher
Timeline
BEFORE AUTOMA ERA
ERA 900, YEAR 7—RULE OF THEA BEGINS
Queen Thea, the Barren Queen, ruler of all Zulla, desires a child
Founds the Royal Academy of Makers at the palace
YEAR 911
Maker Thomas Wren creates Kiera, the first Automa
YEAR 915
Having a pet Automa has become all the rage among the human elite
Kiera becomes unstable, violent
YEAR 917
Thomas Wren arrested for attempting to kill Kiera
YEAR 920
While in prison, Wren perfects heartstone, the alchemical gem that powers the Automae, and he begins to produce large quantities
Wren is pardoned by the queen
Wren establishes the Iron Heart, a heartstone mine
YEAR 921
Automae begin to rebel against their human commissioners
YEAR 924
An Automa called Neo kills her human commissioner and escapes, calling all Automae to arms
First organized Automa revolt
War between humans and Automae is declared
YEARS 924–929—THE WAR OF KINDS
Neo and a group of Automa rebels kill Thomas Wren and take control of the Iron Heart
Kiera turns on Queen Thea; Queen Thea kills her
An Automa called Tayol assassinates Queen Thea
The tides have turned; the Automae are victorious
AUTOMA ERA BEGINS
YEAR 1–2
Tayol attempts to distribute land and resources to the Automa ruling class
Zulla is in chaos; there are many Automa raids on human villages
YEAR 3
Tayol becomes Sovereign of Zulla
Neo establishes the Watchers of the Heart: Automae who dedicate their lives to protecting the Iron Heart
YEAR 5
A human named Siena creates an Automa girl who does not require blood or heartstone
Siena names the girl “Yora” . . . and keeps her a secret
YEAR 6
The Automae of the mining nation Varn declare independence from the rest of Zulla
YEAR 7
Sovereign Tayol establishes Traditionalism
Tayol commissions an heir, Hesod
YEAR 10
Automa King Fierven rises to power in Varn
YEAR 31
Siena’s daughter, Clara, bears children of her own: twins Ayla and Storme
Hesod becomes Sovereign of Zulla and forms the Red Council
Hesod commissions an heir, Crier
YEAR 40
The Sovereign orders a raid on the village of Delan
YEAR 43
Scyre Kinok publishes the first pamphlets on a new movement he calls “Anti-Reliance,” the antithesis of Traditionalism
YEAR 44
Scyre Kinok begins to gain favor amongst the Automae in Rabu
Automa King Fierven of Varn is assassinated; his daughter, Junn, ascends to the throne
YEAR 46
The Anti-Reliance Movement continues to grow
Scyre Kinok seeks alliance with Sovereign Hesod
Scyre Kinok and Lady Crier are betrothed
YEAR 47—PRESENT DAY
Prologue
There was once a queen called Thea, and in her twenty-first year it was decided that she should bear a child. As was tradition in Old Zulla, the queen was sequestered in preparation for the bearing. Her body was purified with daily baths of milk and salt lavender, with regular ingestions of blue dara root, and her handmaidens wove symbolic ribbons and white dayblossoms into her hair. Humans in era nine hundred believed that near-total rest, particularly from the duties of the throne, was necessary for a human to conceive a child. This belief had no roots in the study of Organics, as it is known now that humans can create more of their kind in almost any setting, sprouting new life whether it is invited or not, much like weeds.
However, Queen Thea was an exception. According to all accounts of that time—including the records of the queen’s personal birth-witch, Bryn—the queen was, after a time, deemed barren. Despite this, accompanied only by Bryn and a single handmaiden, Queen Thea locked herself in her chambers and insisted upon an additional seven weeks of ceremonial preparation, followed by another three months of attempted mating with King Aedel. She would repeat this cycle twice more before formally accepting that she could not bear a child.
In era nine hundred, year seven, after the conspicuous death of King Aedel, Queen Thea declared that any Maker capable of building her a child—one that could perfectly imitate all the workings of a human—would be rewarded with a lifetime’s worth of gold and a seat at the right hand of the throne.
In the way of humans, who are ruled by the flawed pillars of Intuition and Passion, the Makers thought this request impossible. They were wrong.
—FROM THE BEGINNING OF THE AUTOMA ERA,
BY EOK OF FAMILY MEADOR, 2234610907, YEAR 4 AE
Fall,
Year 47 AE
1
When she was newbuilt and still fragile, and her fresh-woven skin was soft and shiny from creation, Crier’s father told her, “Always check their eyes. That’s how you can tell if a creature is human. It’s in the eyes.”
Crier thought her father, Sovereign Hesod, was speaking in metaphor, that he meant humans possessed a special sort of power. Love, a glowing lantern in their hearts; hunger, a liquid heat in their bellies; souls, dark wells in their eyes.
Of course, she’d learned later that it was not a metaphor.
When light hit an Automa’s eyes head-on, the irises flashed gold. A split second of reflection, refraction, like a cat’s eyes at night. A flicker of gold, and you knew those eyes did not belong to a human.
Human eyes swallowed light whole.
Crier counted four heartbeats: a doe and three kits.
The woods seemed to bend around her, trees converging overhead, while near her feet there was a rabbit’s den, a warm little burrow hidden underground from wolves and foxes . . . but not from her.
She stood impossibly still, listening to four tiny pulses radiating up through the dirt, beating so rapidly that they sounded like a hive of buzzing honeybees. Crier cocked her head, fascinated with the muffled hum of living organs. If she concentrated, she could hear the air moving through four sets of thumb-sized lungs. Like all Automae, she was Designed to pick up even the faintest, most faraway sounds.
This deep into the woods, dawn had barely touched the forest floor—the perfect time for a hunt. Not t
hat Crier enjoyed hunting.
The Hunt was an old human ritual, so old that most humans did not use it anymore. But Hesod was a Traditionalist and historian at heart, and he fostered a unique appreciation for human traditions and mythology. When Crier was Made, he had anointed her forehead with wine and honey for good fortune. When she came of age at thirteen, he had gifted her a silver dress embroidered with the phases of the moon. When he decided that she would marry Kinok, a Scyre from the Western Mountains, he did not make arrangements for Crier to take part in the Automa tradition of traveling to a Maker’s workshop, designing and creating a symbolic gift for her future husband. He had planned for a Hunt.
So Crier was not actually alone in these woods. Somewhere out there, hidden by the cover of shadows and trees, her fiancé, Kinok, was hunting as well.
Kinok was considered a war hero of sorts. He’d been Made long after the War of Kinds, but there had been numerous rebellions, large and small, in the five decades since the War itself. One of the biggest, a series of coups called the Southern Uprisings, had been quelled almost single-handedly by Kinok and his ingenuity.
On top of that, he was the founder and head of the Anti-Reliance Movement—a very new political group that sought to distance Automakind and humankind even further. Literally. Most of their agenda centered on building a new Automa capital to the Far North, in a territory that was uninhabitable to humans, instead of continuing to use the current capital, Yanna, which had once been a human city. It was, frankly, ridiculous. You didn’t have to be the sovereign’s daughter to know that building an entirely new city would require ten thousand, a hundred thousand, a million kings’ coffers of gold, and why would such a vain effort ever be worth the time and cost? It was a fantasy.
Before Kinok had begun the Anti-Reliance Movement, about three years ago now, he’d been a Watcher of the Iron Heart. It was a sacred task, protecting the mine that made heartstone, and he was the first Watcher to ever leave his post. Which, of course, had caused much speculation among Automakind. That he’d been discharged, banished for some serious offense. But Kinok claimed it had been a simple difference of philosophy regarding the fate of their Kind, and no one had uncovered any reason more sinister than that.
The one time Crier had asked him about his past, he had been elusive. “Those were dark times,” he had said. “So few of us ever saw light.” She had no idea what that meant. Maybe she was overcomplicating it: he’d been living in a mine, after all.
Still, the secrets he held—about the Iron Heart, how it ran, its exact coordinates within the western mountains—made him inherently powerful, and different. Many of her father’s councilmembers—the sovereign’s “Red Hands,” as they were called—seemed drawn to Kinok. Like Hesod, Kinok had a certain gravity to him, a certain pull, though where he was serious, Hesod was jovial. Where Kinok was controlled and quiet, Hesod was loud, quick-tempered, often brash. And determined to marry off his daughter to Kinok, despite all the whispers, the speculations. Or perhaps because of them.
Months before Kinok’s arrival, Crier and her father had taken a walk along the sea cliffs. “Kinok’s followers are few and scattered, but he is gaining influence at a rate I hadn’t thought possible,” he’d explained.
She had listened carefully, trying to understand his point. She had heard of Kinok’s rallies, if “rallies” was even the right word—they were essentially just intellectual gatherings, where small groups of Automae could share their ideals, talk politics and advancement. “Scyre Kinok is a philosopher, Father, not a politician,” Crier had said. “He poses no threat to your rule.”
It had been late summer, the sky clear and delphinium blue. Crier used to treasure those long, slow walks with her father, hoarding moments like pieces of jewelry, pretty things to turn over and admire in the light. She looked forward to them every day. It was their time—away from the Red Council, away from her studies—when she could learn from him and him alone.
“Yes, but his philosophy is gaining traction among the Made, the protection and rule of which are my—and your—responsibility. We must convince him to join a family structure. To bridge the divide.”
Crier stopped short of the seaflowers that had just begun to bloom by the cliff’s edge. “But surely if he does not agree with the tenets of Traditionalism, he will not agree to the kind of union you propose.” She couldn’t bring herself to say marriage yet.
“One might think so, but I have reason to believe he will accept the opportunity. To him, it will provide power and status. To us, it will provide stability and access. We will be able to track what the Anti-Reliance Movement is attempting to accomplish, and better rein it in.”
“So you disagree with ARM,” Crier said.
Hesod hedged. “Their views on humankind are too extreme for my taste. It is one thing to subjugate those who are inferior and another thing entirely to behave as if they don’t exist. We must build policy around the reality of where we came from. We were not created in a void, history-less. It is ignorant to think we cannot learn from humanity’s existing structures.”
“You find ARM too extreme. . . . Would you consider its leader dangerous, then?” Crier asked.
“No,” Hesod said coolly. Then he had added: “Not yet.”
And so she had understood. Crier was the bandage to a wound—one that was minor, for now, but had the potential to fester over time. A hairline fracture in Hesod’s otherwise ironclad rule, his control over all of Zulla, everything from the eastern sea to the western mountains—except the separate territory of Varn. Varn was part of Zulla but still ruled by a separate Automa monarchy. Queen Junn, the Child Queen. The Mad Queen. The Bone Eater.
Hesod didn’t need any more splintering. He wanted union.
He wanted to keep the same thing Crier knew Kinok wanted:
Power.
Now: the branches above Crier’s head were half naked with approaching winter, but the trees were so densely packed that they blocked out almost all the weak gray sunlight, shrouding the forest floor in shadow. Overhead, the leaves were like copper etchings, a thousand waving hands in shades of red and orange and burnished gold; underfoot, they were the pale brown of dead things. Crier could smell wet earth and woodsmoke, the musk of animals, the sharp scent of pine and wood sap. It was so different from what she usually experienced, living on the icy shores of the Steorran Sea: the tang of sea air. The taste of salt on her tongue. The heavy smells of fish and rotting seaweed.
It took half a day’s ride to reach these woods, and so Crier had been here only once before, nearly five years ago. Her father enjoyed hunting deer like the humans did. She remembered eating a few bites of hot, spiced venison that night, filling her belly with food she did not require. More ritual than meal. The core of her father’s Traditionalism: adopting human habits and customs into daily life. He said it created meaning, structure. Under most circumstances, Crier understood the merits of Hesod’s beliefs. It was why she called him “father” even though she’d never had a mother and had never been birthed. She had been commissioned, Made.
Unlike humans, all Automae really needed was heartstone. Where human bodies depended on meat and grain, Automa bodies depended on heartstone: a special red mineral imbued with alchemical energy; raw stone mined from deep within the western mountains and then transmuted by alchemists into a powerful magickal substance. It was how Thomas Wren, the greatest of the human alchemists, had created them almost one hundred years ago when he’d Designed Kiera—the first. Automae were modeled this way still.
Crier crept through the underbrush, keeping to the darkest shadows. Her feet were silent even as she walked across twigs and dry leaves, a red carpet of pine needles. Nothing would be able to hear her coming. Not deer, not elk. Not even other Automae. She paused every few moments, listening to her surroundings: the sounds of small animals skittering through the brush, the whispers of wind, the back-and-forth calls of the noonbirds and the old crows. She was careful to keep her heart rate down. If it spike
d too suddenly, the distress chime in the back of her neck would go off at a pitch only Automae could hear, and all her guards would come running.
The ceremonial bow was heavy in her hand. It was carved from a single piece of dark mahogany, polished to a perfect sheen and inlaid with veins of gold, precious stones, animal bone. The three arrows sheathed at her back were equally beautiful. One tipped with iron, one with silver, and one with bone. Iron for strength and power. Silver for prosperity. Bone for two bodies bound as one.
Snap. Crier whipped around, already nocking an arrow and ready to shoot—but instead coming face-to-face with Kinok himself. He was frozen midstep, partly hidden behind a massive oak, half his face obscured and the other half in watery sunlight. Every time she saw him, which was now about ten times per day since he had taken up residence in her father’s guest chambers, Crier was reminded of how handsome he was. Like all Automae, he was tall and strong, broad-shouldered, Designed to be more beautiful than the most beautiful human man. His face was a study in shadow and light: high cheekbones, knife-blade jawline, a thin, sharp nose. His skin was swarthy, a shade lighter than her own, his dark hair cropped close to his skull. His brown eyes were sharp and scrutinizing. The eyes of a scientist, a political leader. Her fiancé.
Her fiancé, who was aiming his iron-tipped arrow straight at Crier’s forehead.
There was a moment—so brief that when she thought about it later she was not sure it had actually happened—in which Crier lowered her bow and Kinok did not. A single moment in which they stared at each other and Crier felt the faintest edge of nerves.
Then Kinok lowered his bow, smiling, and she scolded herself for being so silly.
“Lady Crier,” he said, still smiling. “I do not think we’re supposed to interact with each other until the Hunt is over . . . but you’re a better conversationalist than the birds. Have you caught anything yet?”
“No, not yet,” she said. “I am hoping for a deer.”
His teeth flashed. “I’m hoping for a fox.”
“Why is that?”
“They’re quicker than deer, smaller than wolves, and cleverer than crows. I like the challenge.”