Crier's War

by Nina Varela

  Ayla tried to keep track of her turns as she hurried down the halls—left, left, right—but all she could hold in her head were the drawings, Benjy’s tiny ink freckles, her own inky hair, and she lost track—left and then right—no, right and then right. She was hopelessly disoriented.

  Then she came up short beside a door with a golden knocker shaped like a harp.

  The music room.

  She reached into her pocket and gripped the cool metal key Crier had given her. Panting, Ayla nearly dropped it twice before she finally got it into the lock. But it turned, and the door opened, and here: the music room.

  Her momentary gasp of relief fled into another feeling altogether—wonder. Fear. Crier hadn’t exaggerated the thick walls. As she shut the door behind her, the room’s silence enveloped her like a living creature, or like velvet pressed over her mouth. The inside of the music room was beautiful—spacious, with a high vaulted ceiling. Ayla could make out the big dark shapes of what must have been two dozen musical instruments, even more, hanging on the walls. But stars and skies, the silence. It felt somehow familiar, tomb-like. It took her a moment to figure out what this place reminded her of.

  Another place, dark and empty. Another place she’d been entirely alone, with nothing but the wind inside her head.

  The outhouse where she had hidden during the raid. When they had stormed in, and taken everything.

  Ayla sank down onto a leather bench and tucked her knees up beneath her forehead. She hadn’t realized until now that her whole body was shaking, but in the stillness of this room, she couldn’t stop it. She felt even something essential to the core of her—her revenge—beginning to tremble. It had always been like a hotly burning fire, but now it leaped and fell, leaped and fell, as though its flames had met with a light rain.

  It took her a while to realize what this feeling was: uncertainty.

  Just before dawn, Benjy shook Ayla awake with a violence that almost, almost, brought her back to that day.

  When she opened her eyes, he was hovering over her in the dark. His face was bloodless, his mouth pressed into a white line. He was gripping her shoulder with one hand. The other hand was twisted up in her blankets, fist clenched so tight that it looked as if the bones of his knuckles were about to burst right through the skin.

  “Ayla,” he said. “Something’s happened. They killed Nessa.”

  Ayla reeled. That’s impossible, she kept hearing herself say. I just saw her in the palace.

  Benjy said, “It’s not. They are capable of anything. You know that better than anyone. The others are saying the guards tried to take Nessa’s child, and Nessa fought back, and . . .”

  “How could this—have possibly happened—?” Ayla’s voice ripped through her. Her words were choking her. She tried to close her eyes, but when she did, it was the screams of her brother that broke into her mind, shattering the darkness. The smell of burned flesh, of ash. The paralyzing, numbing fear. She opened her eyes. Seeing was better than not seeing.

  Benjy’s face was stricken, his hands shaking with fear or anger or something bigger. “Come on. You know I wouldn’t lie about this. People saw her body, Ayla. Thom saw her body.”

  “But why—? What did she do—? Why did they want to punish her?”

  Benjy’s jaw clenched. “I heard trespassing. Someone said they’d found her handkerchief in the Scyre’s room three days ago. Guess they thought she was snooping around.”

  He kept talking but Ayla wasn’t listening.

  They’d found her handkerchief in the Scyre’s room.

  Thought she was snooping around.

  Her mouth tasted of bile, sour and dead and wrong. She could feel it rising in her throat—she was going to be sick, or maybe it was just the guilt, a physical thing inside her, choking her like a weed.

  My fault, she kept thinking. My fault. She was the one who’d gone sneaking. Who’d left the handkerchief there like a flag of surrender on the floor, the damning evidence. Now Nessa was dead, Thom a widower, Lily motherless.

  Ayla shook her head. “No.”

  “Keep your voice down.” Benjy glanced around them.

  “I have to go,” she managed, and then she was scrambling away, and then she was at the door, and maybe people were looking but she couldn’t tell, and then she was outside, her dress only half tied at the neck and wrists. In the predawn cool, where the dark tasted like salt.

  They found Nessa’s handkerchief in the Scyre’s room. In the Scyre’s room. Why didn’t Nessa tell the leeches that she had given her handkerchief away, that she’d never stepped foot in Kinok’s bedchamber?

  Maybe Nessa had told.

  Maybe by then it hadn’t mattered—or had been too late.

  They’d tried to take her child.

  Would they come for Ayla next?

  For Benjy?

  Ayla thought of her own face on Kinok’s wall. Benjy’s, his hair a curl of black ink. That long, red thread. Kinok knew Benjy was the only person Ayla cared about. If he wanted to punish her, he knew how to do it.

  She doubled over, one hand braced against the stone wall of the servants’ quarters, and heaved into the weedy grass, her stomach spasming, though nothing came up but a thin stream of spit. Her stomach was too empty already.

  If Nessa had told, Benjy was in grave danger.

  If Nessa hadn’t told, then she’d died for Ayla, because of Ayla—

  “Ayla?” Benjy called out from behind her, and Ayla ran.

  Ran from his face: his freckles, his doe eyes, his black-ink curls.

  Maybe it was already too late. The chart. The line connecting them.

  She rounded the corner of the servants’ quarters and kept going, her thin shoes slapping against the hard-packed dirt. She ran past the gardens. The orchards.

  And then she saw it.

  There, hanging between two trees at the entrance to the orchards. Where everyone could see. There, strung up like a lantern.

  Nessa’s shoes. And her handkerchief.

  The blood on it—from Ayla’s stupid bloody nose, after her encounter with Faye—had dried and darkened, but it was unmistakable. The handkerchief fluttered in the breeze, pale like Luna’s dress, which seemed to be both ages ago and happening all over again before Ayla’s eyes.

  A few servants were gathered beneath the trees. They were looking up at the shoes and handkerchief in silence. Just watching.

  Ayla could hear her own breaths coming too loud and too harsh in the stillness of the early morning, but she couldn’t stop.

  Malwin was among the crowd. She was recognizable by her white bonnet. After a long moment, she turned her face away from the handkerchief, the shoes, and hurried away with her shoulders hunched up around her ears. Before Ayla realized what she was doing, she was chasing after her.

  She caught up to Malwin quickly. “Hey!” The rage, the sadness, the panic that had flooded her veins all narrowed into focus. Made her shake with urgency. Nessa was gone. But Benjy still lived—for now. She had to be sure he’d stay safe. No one else knew about Kinok’s chart yet. She hadn’t told anyone.

  And no one—no one else was dying on her account, unless it was Crier.

  Malwin whirled around. Her eyes were wild, her face bloodless. “You,” she said. More like spat.

  Ayla ignored it. “You’ve been in the palace longer than any of us,” she said. “You know more than—than anyone now, after Nessa—”

  “What do you want?” Malwin spat.

  “Information. About Nessa and what she did, what she told them, what got her killed—”

  “You stole my place.” Malwin’s mouth twisted. “You stole my job, my coin. I owe you nothing.”

  “I’m not asking for myself.”

  “Then take some advice,” said Malwin, stepping into Ayla’s space. She was so close now that Ayla could smell her: herbs and flour, like the kitchens. Her hair was damp with sweat beneath the white bonnet. “Ask for no one but yourself. Care for no one but yourself. That’s th
e only way you’ll ever survive this place.”

  “Malwin—”

  “They know everything about us,” Malwin breathed. “Everything we do. Everyone we—” She took a step back, her fists clenched and trembling. “The Scyre’s always watching.”

  “The Scyre? What do you know about Kinok?”

  “Oh no you don’t,” Malwin hissed. “I don’t want none of what Faye got. You saw what happened to her sister.”

  “Faye . . . ?” Ayla frowned, the tapestry in Kinok’s quarters, and the chart it covered, wavering through her mind. “Did . . . did Faye do something to Kinok? Is that why the leeches killed Luna? Is that why you’re scared?”

  “I don’t wanna talk about it,” Malwin whispered, her eyes darting around. “Don’t wanna bring the bad things down on myself.” Then she leaned in close, speaking barely above a whisper. “All I know is this: track the sun apples. But the Scyre keeps his secrets safe. Don’t study him too close.”

  Safe. Study.

  Ayla waited, but Malwin didn’t offer up anything else.

  “And that’s all you heard?” said Ayla, trying not to let her frustration show.

  Malwin shook her head. “That’s all. Told you it wasn’t much. I don’t go poking around,” she said pointedly, “because I don’t want nobody else dying in this place, not because of me.”

  “Of course,” said Ayla, backing off. “Thank you, Malwin.”

  “Don’t come near me again. I won’t be tied to you.” Malwin spat on the ground at Ayla’s feet. “I won’t end up like Ness.”

  Then she stalked off.

  Ayla was left there, standing alone in the middle of the grounds, and for the longest time she did not move. She wanted to cry. But she’d lost that ability years ago.

  Benjy had wanted to join the rebellion in the South with Rowan. He should have gone. But she had told Benjy that the odds were in their favor. That Ayla’s position as handmaiden was their chance at real revolution. He had believed her.

  That feeling, the same one that had come to her in the music room last night, returned to her now. That leaping and falling. That fear. Had she made the wrong choice?

  Did it matter?

  She looked down at her hands. They were shaking.

  Rowan. She wanted to talk to Rowan now, needed her advice, craved her presence, and the feeling that no matter what happened, Rowan would be there to bandage her wounds, to get her back on her feet. Rowan, who had put her up to this in the first place—who had left, already, to investigate the uprising in the south. To throw herself headlong into the vision of justice she believed in.

  Rowan wasn’t here to comfort her, but Rowan was the reason Ayla knew what she had to do.

  After all, she had learned something today. That Kinok had a study, separate from his rooms. And in that study, there was a safe.

  A flock of birds took to the sky, crying out at the dawn.

  She’d come this far. And she knew:

  There wasn’t any going back now.

  9

  There was a strange cast to the dawn light the morning after her father’s men murdered a woman and hung her shoes in the sun apple trees.

  By daybreak, when Ayla was meant to come wake her, Crier had already heard about the killing—from a terrified servant no less, who’d entered her bedchamber to stoke the hearth fire; not even from her father. Crier stood in the center of her bedchamber, unmoored, shaking from a sick mixture of horror and rage and wrenching grief. She knew things like this happened, sometimes, elsewhere, but her father hadn’t ordered such an extreme punishment in years—and never one like this, for such a senseless reason.

  Crier pressed a hand over her mouth, trying to calm down. Maybe Hesod hadn’t ordered it at all. Maybe the guards had gone rogue. She knew it wasn’t possible, but—the alternative made her sick. To know that her father was capable of something like this.

  Thoughts roiling like the sea, Crier waited and waited and waited for Ayla’s knock.

  But Ayla never showed up.

  The sun rose, and Ayla never showed up.

  More than anything, Crier wanted to find Ayla. To track her down in the servants’ quarters and make sure she was all right. But there was no way Crier would be late to her very first council meeting. All she could do, in the end, was catch a maidservant and instruct her to deliver a full breakfast—bread, fruits, cheeses, a bowl of honey—to Handmaiden Ayla, wherever she was, and to inform her that she was relieved of all her duties for the next two days. The maidservant must have been confused, but she was trained not to show it on her face. She just nodded, murmured, “Yes, Lady Crier,” and hurried off in the direction of the kitchens.

  It wasn’t much. It wasn’t nearly enough. But if Crier could not see Ayla, at least she could make sure Ayla’s belly was full. At least she could go to the council meeting. At least she could fight against this, propose and draft more laws for the protection of humans, make it forbidden to kill a servant, or a child, something, anything. At least she could do everything in her power to make sure this never happened again.

  For now, that would have to be enough.

  The carriage ride took upward of three hours, and left Crier too long to think about what had happened at the palace—and what would happen when they arrived at the council meeting. The first time Crier caught a glimpse of the Councilroom, she was barely more than new-Made. It had taken weeks of pleading with her father before she was allowed to accompany him to the capital, and even then, she was expressly forbidden from entering the Councilroom. She was permitted only to sit beside her father in the caravan, watching the rocky hills slide by outside the windows, giving way to wider trading roads and bigger villages and then towns and then finally the capital city itself, Yanna, the pearl of Rabu, teeming with people, glittering in the spring sun. It was the first time she’d ever seen a city. It was also the first time she’d seen humans who were not her father’s servants. She still remembered how they walked with their backs bent, their eyes on the dusty street. Their clothes were old and sun-faded, their skin streaked with grime and oil and dust.

  “We do so much for them,” Hesod had said. “Beneath us, they thrive. Before us, there was chaos.”

  Crier had pressed her small hands to the window and peered out at the crowds of humans, watching how they parted around her father’s caravan. How they mixed and swirled together like silt in water, all colors. She saw a human girl who looked about her age with spindly arms and pale, tangled hair. Her feet were bare and dirty. Two streets over, all the buildings were tall and lavish, the streets free of litter and waste and other human detritus, the shops run by Automae. The difference between the human and Automa parts of the city was stark, almost shocking. It caught in her mind like a fishhook, leaving her unable to think of anything else. Her Kind lived in luxury while humans starved at their feet.

  She shivered as she stared out of the carriage window. They clopped over cobblestone streets and through the massive gates of the Old Palace in the heart of the city.

  It had once belonged to a human king and now belonged to the Red Council. The palace itself was made of pale coral-colored stone, shining in the weak winter sunlight, almost too bright to look at. This was where Crier, like all other nobles, had been Designed. Where her father had worked with Designers and Makers to create her blueprints before they were sent to the Midwifery. When she was younger, she liked to imagine her father strolling through the city and the palace gardens and the long halls with the stained-glass ceilings, thinking about exactly what kind of daughter he wanted to create.

  Now, thinking about her Design made Crier want to peel off her own Made skin. She couldn’t think Design without thinking Flaw.

  The inside of the Councilroom was all white. The floors, the walls, the two long tables bisecting the room, even the fifty chairs around the tables—all of it was made from spotless snow-white marble, somehow paler and cleaner than the rest of the palace. The walls were lined with windows facing east; the morning s
un streamed in, falling in bright squares on the tabletop. Dust motes floated in the air, tiny glowing pinpricks. The only color in the room—besides the red robes of the fifty Red Hands, who were all standing behind their respective chairs—came from a war flag. It was hanging on the northern wall, at the head of the table, torn and dirty, one edge burnt and shriveled.

  Crier had seen paintings of this flag in this room. It was a relic. A moment in history, crystallized, real. This flag—a band of black on the bottom for the Iron Heart, a band of deep violet above, the color of Automa blood; four vertical white lines to represent the Four Pillars—was the original flag that General Eden had carried into battle during the War of Kinds. In some paintings, the war flag was new and glorious, flying high above the battlefield. In others, it was soaked in the red of human blood.

  When Crier and Hesod entered the Councilroom, the other Red Hands bowed their heads in unison. Crier looked around the table, her eyes flicking over the familiar faces of the other Hands—fifty faces ranging from ancient to barely older than she was, fifty faces representing the various cities and regions of Rabu and the few inhabited portions of the Far North—all of them wearing the same solemn expression. She looked at them, taking them in . . . and then she looked again. And again.

  Someone was missing. Where was Councilmember Reyka? She’d been hoping to see her here. To find out if she had indeed read Crier’s essays, and why she hadn’t responded.

  And there was an extra face at the table. Kinok.

  Crier had known he would be here. He had taken a separate caravan, pulled by his own monstrous gray horses from the west. Crier didn’t know why he always insisted on traveling separately, but she didn’t question it. They might be allies, and engaged, but she still didn’t want to spend three hours in a cramped, rattling box with him.

  Now, though, she saw he’d taken advantage of arriving ahead of them. He had already chosen a seat at the table—the chair directly to the right of Hesod’s. In the Councilroom, those who sat closest to the head (to Crier’s father) were the most important, the most influential. And there was Kinok, the newcomer, the comparative youngling, standing like a proud, immovable statue behind the second most important chair in the room.