by Nina Varela
Storme.
Now, Ayla picked her way along the rows of seaflowers, heading in the direction of the rocky bluffs that overlooked the Steorran Sea. Her boots left wet imprints in the soft, dark soil.
The palace was laid out like a giant compass rose with spokes pointing north, south, east, and west. The center of the compass was the palace itself, all white marble and glowing windows, and the spokes were the groupings of outbuildings that served to separate the sun apple orchards from the seaflower gardens, the pastures, and finally, the grain fields. At the outer edge of the northernmost spoke sat the servant quarters, and to the end of the eastern spoke, just past the storage house, lay the sea, frothing and angry and always cold.
Ayla walked right up to the edge of the bluffs. It was slippery here, the black rocks wet with sea spray. Treacherous, especially at night. She reached into her pocket and grasped the knife she’d stolen from a leech in the market at Kalla-den nearly a month ago, the first time she’d ever gone to sell flowers.
Her first opportunity. To get a weapon.
She had been so overwhelmed with the adrenaline of getting away from the sovereign’s palace that she’d just—slipped her hand into the folds of a leech girl’s skirt and taken it, hidden by the swarming crowd.
Stealing it had been easy enough, but using it would take patience.
And practice. She was familiar with sparring, the specific movements of the body, the weight of a knife in her hand—though the one she’d used to practice with had been significantly heavier than this one, and balanced differently. As she settled into a fighting stance—feet shoulder-width apart, front foot pointed forward and back foot slightly angled—she smiled a little, remembering the endless afternoons she’d spent sparring with Benjy after Rowan took him in. Self-defense was something Rowan had insisted on teaching them, whether it was with a knife or just their fists. Rowan was a strict but fair teacher. She’d make Ayla and Benjy practice a single move over and over again until their arms were aching, their muscles trembling, the calluses on their palms split open and bleeding, but she always praised them afterward and rewarded them with a hot, hearty dinner. She rubbed ointment on their sore muscles, tended to the broken skin on their knuckles and palms.
One afternoon, she’d pulled Ayla aside after a particularly brutal round of training left Benjy sulking by the hearth fire, nursing a sprained wrist.
You’re stronger than him, Ayla, Rowan had said. You have to protect him.
At the time, Ayla hadn’t understood. Sure, she was quick and wily, but Benjy was physically much stronger. He won their fights eight out of ten times. What are you talking about? she’d asked. Just yesterday he practically tossed me across the room. My tailbone’s still hurting.
But you got up, said Rowan. You fought three more rounds. And here you are again today, even though you’re in pain. Whereas Benjy . . . She trailed off. I wasn’t talking about physical strength, Ayla. I was talking about resilience. I was talking about how you never, ever stop fighting, no matter how much it hurts.
The knife was finally starting to feel natural in her hands. Just a few days of sparring in the dark was already beginning to pay off. She came here whenever she could, past the edge of the gardens, out of sight, slipping into shadow and becoming lethal with the blade.
Jab. Swipe. Duck.
The most effective way to kill an Automa was to deprive them of heartstone. The second most effective way was beheading. But to do so required force, more force than a human could produce with their bare hands.
Swipe. Change hands. Jab.
You could also kill a leech with a stab to the heart.
Slash. Recoil.
At the right angle, it could be done in a matter of seconds.
Lunge. Ayla thrust the knife forward, twisted it into an invisible body—imagining it being Crier’s—and then, sweating, she let her arm drop. Slipped the knife back into her pocket. Catching her breath, she looked up at the wide and open night sky. She pulled her locket out from beneath her shirt, a talisman.
This was another secret she kept from Benjy. Her necklace wasn’t a weapon, and yet it was so much more dangerous than a stolen knife. She held it up to the moonlight, admiring it as she’d done countless times before: the eight-point star engraved into the gold. The red gemstone at the center of the star. This, too, she could only do in the cloak of night. Alone.
There were no exceptions to the law. If you got caught with a forbidden object, you could be killed. Even if the object, like Ayla’s necklace, was completely harmless and honestly sort of unimpressive. Probably the Maker had created it with some sort of purpose—maybe it was supposed to be a little music box, or maybe the locket could transform into a golden beetle and flit around people’s heads—but whatever that purpose was, Ayla had never figured it out. She’d never even been able to open the locket, no matter how hard she picked and pried at the tiny clasp. The only interesting thing about the necklace was the fluttering noise that came from within—like the ticking of a clock but softer, more rhythmic. Tmp-tmp, tmp-tmp. Almost like a heartbeat.
It wasn’t a weapon, it wasn’t a tool, and it could easily get her killed. Ayla should have tossed the necklace into the ocean years ago. But she hadn’t. Because her mother had given it to her—pressed it into Ayla’s palm when she was no more than four or five, keep it safe, child, remember us, remember our story—and because, stars and skies, she couldn’t, the necklace was all she had left of them, the only proof that her family had ever existed at all. Like Ayla herself, this necklace used to have a twin; it was one half of a matching set. The second necklace had been lost years and years ago, before Ayla and her brother were even born. Ayla wouldn’t let this one share the same fate.
She slipped it back beneath her shirt.
The wind was freezing against her cheeks. Her mouth tasted like salt. The sea was lit up with moonlight, sparkling. A hundred feet below, the waves burst into white foam. She didn’t have long until curfew, until she’d have to retreat back into the servants’ quarters for the night, but for now she could stand here on the cliff’s edge and hold the knife in her pocket. A promise of what was to come. Revenge. Killing Hesod’s daughter. Even if it took years.
There was a noise to her left. The sound of footsteps on wet rock.
Ayla turned.
Someone else was standing on the bluffs maybe thirty paces away, looking out over the ocean. Had they seen her? Her heart quickened, then settled. No. They were facing away from Ayla. They hadn’t yet noticed she was here. Another servant?
Then, a voice: “—and is that the only reason you’ve agreed to this marriage?”
“You already knew that,” said a second voice, and Ayla shrank farther behind a seaflower bush. The first voice Ayla didn’t recognize. The second was undeniable. It was the sovereign himself, Hesod. She had only ever seen him from a distance, as he was always in the palace and surrounded by guards, but she’d heard his voice. He’d given a speech, once, after a stableboy had tried to attack one of the guards. The stableboy was killed on the spot, of course. Throat pierced with the same awl he’d been using as a weapon. And the next day, all the servants were gathered in the main courtyard and forced to their knees, bent over, foreheads pressed to the packed dirt. And Hesod had stood above them and said: I would rather kill you all than replace a single guard. I suggest you do not let it come to that.
But there was nobody protecting him right now.
“Your marriage to Crier would be of enormous benefit to Rabu,” Hesod continued, and Ayla’s ears pricked.
“I see you’ve noticed my growing popularity,” the first voice drawled.
“I have—” And Hesod’s voice dropped low enough that even an Automa wouldn’t have been able to pick out the words over the waves and the sea wind. Ayla strained to hear more, but still could catch only pieces.
“—it is always political, Scyre Kinok,” Hesod was saying.
Kinok. The war hero. Lady Crier’s betrothed.
He’d quelled human rebellions and was responsible for the deaths of many. Still, when dealing with monsters, Ayla almost preferred that kind of frontal attack over Hesod’s insidious tyranny, the way he professed his appreciation for humankind with one breath and ordered massacres with the next. The way he made laws pretending they were for the “good” of humans. Like the one that banned any use of large storage spaces: places where grains or dry goods could be kept for the drought and cold seasons were explicitly banned under the guise of caring for human welfare. Hesod—and the Red Council—said it was because humans might hoard. They might let their food rot and spread disease. But the rebellion knew better. Rowan had told Ayla and Benjy that the Automae were worried that any large storage spaces could be used to meet in secret or hide weapons. And in their fear, they sentenced many families to almost starve to death during the winter seasons.
“It is no secret,” Kinok said, “that the union of our two political visions would only benefit Rabu. With Varn growing stronger, with Queen Junn gaining more support, whether she bought it or not . . . her people are still divided, but they will fight for her.”
“Rumors,” said Hesod dismissively. “Junn is delusional. Her people are weak, and her system, if it can even be called that, lacks structure. Varn will fall easily, if it comes to that.”
“Of course, Sovereign.”
The wind changed again and their voices fell away. Ayla found herself leaning forward, nearly sticking her nose into the seaflowers, straining her ears to catch anything—
“Politics aside, I have heard there may be developments in your experiments. Would you care to elaborate on the results?”
Kinok was quiet for a moment before she heard him respond, “All of it is still very nascent, Sovereign.”
“Well, I’m sure that given your knowledge, given your history, you will triumph in your endeavors,” Hesod responded.
What were they talking about? What endeavors?
Hesod was still speaking, and now his tone had turned somewhat warning. “To have been a Watcher of the Heart is a great honor, and we must ensure that honor is not tarnished,” he was saying.
Ayla blinked. Kinok was a Watcher? She thought they weren’t allowed to ever leave the Heart. That was the whole point, the sacrifice. They guarded the location of the Heart for their entire lives.
“It was an honor, yes,” said Kinok. “And a position I did not take lightly. Nor do I take my current work lightly.”
“I’ve always considered myself a guardian of the Heart,” said Hesod, sounding far away, as if he wasn’t really listening to Kinok. “At least from afar. As head of the council, it is my duty to ensure that the trading routes are clear and well guarded to make way for the shipments of heartstone. One could say I protect the veins of this land.”
“And the Watchers are ever thankful, Sovereign. We know the Heart requires so much of so many to keep its secrets safe.” Kinok paused. “Though it might help if you allowed Varn to trade across your borders, instead of forcing them to take to the sea.”
Keep its secrets safe. Kinok had to mean the location of the Iron Heart. Ayla’s breath caught in her throat; as a Watcher, Kinok knew where the Iron Heart was . . . its exact location. How it worked. He knew everything.
And he was standing only a few paces away from Ayla.
Of course, everyone knew the Heart was somewhere to the west, somewhere deep within the Aderos Mountains. The vast mountain range hid a massive mine, which produced heartstone: the mysterious red jewel that, when crushed into a fine dust, fed all Automae. According to Rowan, human rebels had tried many times to attack the caravans that carried shipments of heartstone dust all over Zulla, and every single time they’d failed; they’d lost dozens, sometimes hundreds, of human lives for every stolen gem, making it both a risky and ultimately futile effort. The supplies of heartstone seemed limitless.
Here was the crux of it: if leeches didn’t ingest the dust every day, they’d stop functioning. It was their lifeblood. Depriving them of heartstone dust was the easiest way to kill them—faster, even, than depriving a human of food or water. So of course they guarded the dust, and the Aderos Mountains, more heavily than anything else.
That was why finding the Iron Heart had become the obsession of the Revolution.
The key to the rebellion, the one piece of information that Rowan had been searching for tirelessly for as long as Ayla had known her.
And now, it was only a few paces away.
This was bigger than any uprising. Bigger than any of Rowan’s full moons.
Ayla’s heart fluttered like a bird’s wings in her chest. Hesod’s next words, Automa-quiet, were lost to her, but then there was another sound. A footstep on wet rock.
Then rustling.
Ayla was not spying alone.
5
It had been so long since Crier had properly slept that she was shocked to awaken and find herself in the gardens hours later, her Design scrolls still tucked into her sleeve. Night had fallen, crickets chirped. She had heard voices—that’s why she’d woken up. Now she steadied herself against a branch, trying not to rustle the flowers and leaves as she inched closer to the sound.
It was her father.
And Kinok.
Having, apparently, some sort of private conversation.
Crier frowned. For all her political aspirations, she had always disliked the way her father would take private meetings, or would shut himself away in the north wing and shuffle around lives and livelihoods like pieces on a chessboard, arranging them like he had the gardens, and his estate, and Crier’s engagement: logically, masterfully, neatly sidestepping every possible obstacle months or years before it even began to form. And now, this—a secluded conversation with Kinok, out here, in the darkness of the gardens. Her special place, where she came to think and be alone.
She had not meant to listen in, and it was not like she could hear much of anything above the wind and the crashing sea—but now that she was here, she was curious.
“—and far be it from me to spill such secrets, Sovereign,” Kinok said.
Secrets. It was bad enough being excluded from her father’s work—Crier could not stand the idea of him having secrets with Kinok. Part of her thought it better that she could not hear what they were saying, but the other part, a larger part, worried that this was about her Flaw. What if Kinok did know and was now revealing it to her father?
How would he react?
Would she be terminated?
It had happened before—young Automae with Flawed Designs, assigned early termination. That was back before Hesod’s rule, but it didn’t mean it couldn’t happen again.
She slipped out from behind the seaflower bush and moved to the next one, and the next, careful to remain hidden.
Her father and Kinok, their backs turned, were maybe fifty or sixty paces away.
If she just darted from this row to the next, maybe she could get closer. She would be visible for less than a second. She set her shoulders and continued, reaching the end of the row. The moonlight was pale on her skin.
“—this will be more fruitful than I had ever hoped,” Hesod said, but his next words were lost as the sea wind howled. Crier leaned forward, straining to hear.
She was right on the edge of the bluffs.
And then the ground beneath her feet fell away.
There was a split second in which Crier simply pitched forward, frozen, mind whirring—why am I off-balance—why am I slipping—and then she realized the bluff was crumbling. Her weight had been a catalyst, the rocks were breaking and sliding off the cliff face and she was sliding with them—down down down. She twisted wildly, fingers scrabbling for anything solid, and found nothing but broken rock and slippery yellowish grass and—
A jut of rock. Solid. She grabbed it with both hands right as the Crier-sized chunk of cliff fell. She heard it crack and shatter against one of the jagged black rocks that stuck up out of the water and tried not to think about h
er own body hitting that rock. How she would have cracked and shattered.
How she still might. She was dangling off the edge of the bluff with nothing but air beneath her feet.
The Design papers slipped from her sleeve, like an afterthought, and fluttered down into the darkness, flapping, birdlike, until she could no longer see them.
She was going to fall, she knew it. The jut of rock that had saved her was smooth and slick. There was a twinge of sensation in her wrist, and she realized her flesh had torn open. A deep three-inch gash, skin peeling away to reveal strips of finely Made muscle and bone. Dark purplish fluid dripping from the wound, running down her arm.
“Help,” she said, but it came out hoarse, weak, pathetic; Kinok and her father would never hear her over the crashing waves. “Help—please—I, I need—please.” Her fingers slipped another half inch. Another. She was going to fall. Crier was ten times stronger than any human and she was created to be perfect and she was going to fall and crack and shatter against the wet black rocks and spill her perfect insides into the sea. And be swallowed.
No. No no no please no—
A hand grabbed her wrist, holding her up as she dangled off the cliff’s edge.
“Oh—”
Crier looked up and into a pair of dark eyes.
It was not Kinok who had saved her. Not her father.
It was a human.
For a moment Crier was frozen. She forgot the ocean and the rocks below.
She had never really seen a pair of eyes like this. It was like standing in the doorway to a dark room, like balancing on the threshold, holding a lantern up and watching how it kissed some things gold and left other things in shadow. It was the kind of dark that hid and held a lot of things. A hot fluid dark, a summer tide pool dark, a wild breathless dark.
A hand on Crier’s wrist, holding her up. A thumb digging into the tear in her flesh.
A face, moon-shaped, with thick, arched eyebrows and a mass of tangled dark hair. Red uniform, dark like dried blood.