by Nina Varela
Were the other Hands actually all right with this?
And where was Reyka?
“Crier,” said Hesod, snapping her out of her thoughts. “Stay.”
Confused, Crier stayed where she was—just inside the door—as her father moved to take his spot at the head of the table. When he stood behind the white marble chair, the war flag framed him in black and violet.
There were no more chairs open. It took an embarrassingly long amount of time for Crier to realize that she was meant to stay posted in the doorway like this for the entire meeting, like a guard. Or a servant.
But I’m his daughter. It was a pitiful thought, from a small, weak place inside her.
I was supposed to be one of you.
But she wasn’t. She stood there, silent and humiliated, as her father greeted the other Hands. He was good at this: working the room, looking into everyone’s eyes, clasping their hands, making them feel seen and known. He was a skilled politician. A natural leader, able to change anyone’s mind over the course of a single conversation; able to make anyone follow him.
When Hesod commanded it, the Hands took their seats. Only Crier remained standing, horribly out of place, her skin hot with embarrassment. But it didn’t even seem to matter. Nobody, not even Kinok, had even looked at her yet—not even a glance, not even a split second of acknowledgment that she was in the room. It was as if Hesod had entered alone. As if Crier simply did not exist. In all her fantasies—when she had dared to let herself imagine this—she had been sitting in the spot that Kinok had taken. Sometimes, she even imagined herself at the head of the table. In her fantasies, all the Hands had greeted her, bowing their heads in deference, and she was wearing deep scarlet robes, and when she spoke the whole room listened.
She had never once imagined herself standing awkwardly in the doorway, completely removed from the actual meeting. A pointless, invisible observer.
It’s all right, she tried to tell herself. It’s your first meeting. At least you’re in the room. At least you’re allowed to talk.
Hesod called the meeting to open. First the Hands gave reports of the latest mundane happenings in their respective districts. Then Lady Mar—who Crier had always found fascinating, to the point where she’d made a conscious effort to follow the details of Mar’s rise to power in western Rabu—stood up, both hands braced on the table, and said, “There is no point in stalling. We are gathered for a reason. For too long, this Council has remained silent, passive, as a new war brews throughout the entire kingdom.”
“Do you speak of the human uprisings?” asked Councilmember Yaanik. “I would hardly claim that we have been passive. The uprisings are small, the work of a few human radicals throwing a fit. They have always been dealt with swiftly and without mercy.”
“I do not speak of the humans,” said Mar. “I speak of the Anti-Reliance Movement.”
Multiple Hands’ eyes flicked to Kinok. He, however, showed no reaction at all.
“With all due respect, my lord,” Mar continued, inclining her head in Hesod’s direction, “it seems unwise that the Scyre should attend this meeting at all. He is the face of the Movement. The face of the violence, the controversy. His political assemblies devolve into riots under his instruction—or, at the very least, his failure to condemn such behavior.”
Riots? Crier hadn’t heard anything about riots. Of course, her mind went straight to the Southern Uprisings—the ones Kinok was so famous for having squelched.
“It is true,” added Councilmember Paradem, from the Far North. Crier did not know how old she was, but she was far more visibly aged than the other Hands. Her skin had a certain dullness to it, her eyes clouded. Her head was shaved, perhaps to disguise the fact that her hair had lost its color. Sometimes, when she held a quill, her hands trembled. “I attended an Anti-Reliance assembly once, a year ago,” she said. “I expected a gathering of minds, but instead found myself caught in a crowd of hundreds calling for the total cessation of our relationship with humanity. It was base. Chaotic. Something I would expect from humans—not the elevated Kind. And what is the thesis of your little movement, Scyre? Creating a new capital? It would never work.”
Mar nodded. “The War is long over. With the proper governance, humans are capable of contributing to society.” Her mouth twitched, amused. “How far does this ‘anti-reliance’ extend? Should we kill the pack horses and the cattle? Should we sink the Iron Heart into the sea? Should we build our dwellings deep below the earth to avoid the touch of sunlight?”
“That depends, Councilmember,” said Kinok, speaking up for the first time. He pulled out what looked like a pocket watch, holding it up to the light and then letting it dangle from his hand like a hypnotist’s pendulum. He seemed very intent on making sure all the Hands could see it, and to Crier’s surprise, they all seemed to know exactly what it was. More than that, the sight of the pocket watch made them all sit up a little straighter, turn their eyes to Kinok, actually paying attention to him. “Do the pack horses and the cattle conspire to murder us in our beds and burn our settlements to the ground? Does the Iron Heart whisper in code, planning the next uprising? Does sunlight stockpile knives and farming tools, anything that can cut, and swarm the Midwiferies in the dead of night?” He stared around the room, cold, and every single Hand looked back. Rapt. “Proper governance applies to our Kind, not the humans. There is no governing a rabid beast. They are violent, and they grow more violent—and more organized, more powerful—each day. Humans are dangerous. We may wish to believe that they could never harm us, but they can; they have. There is no shame in acknowledging a threat—and removing it.”
The image of shoes swinging from the sun apple branches surfaced again in Crier’s mind. She hesitated for a moment, knowing it was not her place to speak, but—
“Yes, some humans can be dangerous,” she said, amazed when her voice didn’t shake. All faces turned to her, their expressions impassive. In a room filled with silent Automae, it was difficult to guess what anyone was thinking, and easy to feel mocked. Crier straightened her spine, standing tall, trying to look as imposing as her father. “But too often it seems we punish minor infractions with—with torture, confinement, even death.”
She could feel her father’s eyes on her.
“We were created to be the enlightened Kind,” Crier continued, forcing herself to look around the room, to meet their eyes. This was what she’d been waiting for, was it not? She couldn’t let fear silence her. “We were created to be more than human, better than human, but—are we really any better, if we resort to senseless violence so easily? How far are we willing to go? We must not—”
“Daughter,” Hesod cut in.
Her mouth snapped shut. Feeling cold, she finally looked at her father, only to find him looking back. But the look on his face wasn’t angry; it was a careful mask.
She’d seen this look so many times before, in reaction to her essays. Her thoughts. Her ideas.
“My apologies,” Hesod said, addressing the room at large. “My daughter thinks herself wise beyond her years.”
A smattering of laughter.
“She’d prove herself the wiser, then,” said Councilmember Shen, “if she occupied herself with the current state of affairs of the human population. As we know, there are reports of more uprisings in Tarreen. One of our Kind died this time. Head was severed and burned.”
Several of the Hands voiced their revulsion aloud. “Not even the most recent incident,” said another. “Just two days ago, twenty leagues south. An entire farm’s worth of servants attacked their lord. The casualties were all human, but it was a close call.”
Just like that, the silent, dignified room devolved into fifty people talking all at once. Mute, humiliated, Crier listened to them argue, some levelheaded and eloquent and some taken by outrage. The only person who wasn’t speaking was Kinok. He was leaning back in his marble chair, regarding the mess before him with cool, amused eyes. He was still holding the pocket watch, spinnin
g it in his fingers . . . and Crier finally got a good look at it. She realized it wasn’t a watch.
It was a—compass?
“Enough!” said Hesod finally.
The voices petered out into another ringing silence.
“There is business to attend to,” said Hesod. “Queen Junn of Varn has made a formal request—”
“The Mad Queen?” someone muttered.
“But what about the uprisings?” demanded Shen.
“What about Reyka?” said another, and Crier’s head jerked up—what about her?—but Hesod ignored the interruptions.
“Queen Junn of Varn has made a formal request for a tour of diplomacy,” he said. “To begin the process of mending the broken bridge between our nations. She wishes to travel from our shared border up to the city of Yanna, paying her respects to each Red Hand along the way.”
Crier inched forward, eyes wide. Queen Junn, here?
The one the people all called mad.
The one whose power Crier had for so long coveted, so pined to meet.
“Why now?” added Paradem. “Why come now? What has changed?”
“I do not trust it,” said Mar. “She is known as the Mad Queen for a reason. She is famously volatile, unpredictable. We are balanced precariously enough already.”
Crier could not stand it.
“Her Highness Queen Junn is not volatile,” she said loudly, her voice cutting through the room. The Red Hands all turned to stare at her at once, some of them blinking as if they’d forgotten her existence entirely. “She rules swiftly and intensely, but never recklessly. I have followed her court for years now. If she says she wants to mend the bridge between us, she means it. None of her actions in the past two years have contradicted this desire to mend our relations, or at the very least form a military alliance. She has been working toward this for a long time.”
“Then it should please you to hear that the queen made another request,” her father said. His eyes were unreadable. “It seems she is quite interested in meeting you.”
Inexplicably, Crier felt her cheeks heating up. Before she could even begin to process that, the council had moved on to their final order of business.
Councilmember Reyka had disappeared.
Crier was so consumed in her thoughts about Junn—the Mad Queen, the Bone Eater, the ruthless one, wanted to meet with Crier—that it took her a second to take in this new bit of information.
“Reyka?” she blurted out, amid the mumblings of shock from the other Hands. Reyka, her mentor, her friend, if an Automa could use such a word—Reyka, who’d never responded when Crier had sent her political essays to her. Could this be why? Had she been gone for weeks and no one knew?
Questions were flying from the mouths of the other Hands, but Hesod seemed to have no other answers to give. Reyka was just . . . gone. Not dead, no ransom, and no sign of disturbance, at least as far as they knew—just gone. She had vanished in the night. There was no way of knowing where she was, or why she had left, or when (if) she was coming back.
“Perhaps she’s finally joined the humans,” said Councilmember Shen. “That’s where she belongs, is it not? Always arguing on behalf of the humans, always so concerned about humankind. I would not be surprised if she renounced her own Kind, took up a servant’s uniform, and went to work in the fields.”
Faint laughter around the room. Crier felt a wave of nervousness. Would they say the same about her? Had any of them read her essay on the redistribution of representation? When she’d written it, it had felt like theory. Righteous, but harmless. Only now did it occur to her that it might have sounded threatening to the other Hands. It might have sounded as if she was arguing because she cared about humankind.
Which she did.
Like Reyka.
“Perhaps she has joined them, but not by choice,” said Kinok, and the laughter faded out. “It would not be the first time that one of our Kind has been kidnapped by human rebels. They will do anything to bring us down, to weaken us.” He paused. “Then again, perhaps Councilmember Shen is right. It was odd for Councilmember Reyka to be so . . . passionate about humans, was it not?”
He said it like a joke, and the Hands took it as one, smirking to each other.
Only Crier was left frozen, horrified. Passionate.
Suddenly, where once she’d seen a potential partner, an advocate, she now saw Kinok for what he was. A schemer. He’d pretended to be her ally, it’s you and me, Lady Crier, but an ally wouldn’t do something like this. Right? Crier knew she was naive, but she wasn’t stupid. An ally wouldn’t use her darkest secret against her like this, just for his own amusement. An ally wouldn’t mock Councilmember Reyka, who wasn’t even there to defend herself. No. Crier couldn’t—wouldn’t—trust Kinok. She couldn’t take her eyes away from the gleaming compass he dangled in his hands, like a trophy of some kind. Everyone else kept looking at it, too—furtive little glances, some curious, some wary, some almost . . . envious.
“Unfortunately,” said Hesod, once again cutting through the noise, “until Reyka decides to resurface, the council is left with an unoccupied seat.”
And Crier’s heart threw itself into her throat.
Is this why he finally agreed to let me attend a meeting? she couldn’t help but think, and then immediately felt ashamed of herself. Reyka was missing, possibly in danger. This was no time to be thinking of her own political aspirations.
“In the current political climate, it seems wise to fill this seat as soon as possible, even under the assumption that Reyka will return,” Hesod continued. “I already have my candidate for our newest Hand, but it will be put to a vote.”
Crier looked around at what she could see of the other Hands’ faces. Mar, Shen, Shasta, Paradem, Laone . . . all faces she had been looking up into since she was newbuilt. Was she finally about to join them, after so many years? As daughter of the sovereign, she was the obvious choice. Anticipation hummed beneath her skin, even though she was still so worried about Reyka. If she became one of the Hands, finding Reyka would be the first thing she would fight for.
“All in favor, say aye,” her father said.
The Red Hands waited. Crier held her breath.
“For the unoccupied chair of Councilmember Reyka,” said Hesod, “I nominate Scyre Kinok of the Western Mountains.”
Kinok.
Of course.
The hurt that curdled in Crier’s belly was almost unbearable—that it didn’t seem to have even occurred to her father to think first of her.
But this was all part of his strategy, wasn’t it? Offering Kinok a position on the council would provide—what had he said? Stability. Access. Power. It was a gesture not just to Kinok but to all supporters of ARM. It said you are welcome among us, and we are all on the same side. It said let’s work together. It also said we are watching you.
A sinister thought: What if her father, or Kinok himself, had had a hand in Reyka’s disappearance? The timing of it seemed all too convenient. A spot available, just now, as Kinok’s movement was on the rise and as Hesod was seeking ways to reintegrate his dissenters.
She tried to banish the dark suspicion, but it lingered like a foul smell.
Crier felt herself go numb as one by one, everyone in the room—with the exception of Mar and Paradem—said aye. The voices echoed around the marble room, a ripple of sound. Crier heard it, and understood it, and yet could not believe it, could not recover from it.
“It is settled, then,” said her father. “Councilmember Kinok—”
And that was the last thing Crier heard. Her head was filled with wordless, rushing noise, like the ocean, or like the first roll of rain in a thunderstorm. She stood there, swaying like a boat unmoored. Kinok had taken Councilmember Reyka’s seat. Had taken her seat. Kinok was the new Red Hand. Kinok was on the council, and she was not. She was finally in the marble room, and yet she had never been further away.
In that moment, Crier realized it was never going to happen. Her father wo
uld never take her seriously. No matter what she did. He’d literally created her to be his heir, and still she was not good enough.
She was never, ever going to be on the council.
She would never have a say in her nation’s future.
There was only one thing Queen Thea loved even half as much as her child Kiera, and that was the queen’s pet songbird. It had been gifted to her by the king of Tarreen, and as such it was a breed of bird that could not be found outside the jungles of the south. The bird’s feathers were a deep blue—the color of lapis lazuli, the queen often said—and it sang at dawn and dusk in a lovely, trilling voice, perched in its golden cage in the eastern solarium, and the queen sat beside it and watched, and listened.
Every day the Queen repeated this ritual. Dawn and dusk.
Until one morning, when she entered the solarium and found little Kiera eating the songbird alive, its bones crudely angled in her jaw, feathers drifting from her fingers to the floor like ribbons of perfect sky.
Later, Queen Thea informed the court that Kiera had done nothing wrong. It was the queen’s fault, she said, for not adequately educating her child. It was just a mistake, she said; there are some animals that humans eat, and some they do not. Kiera had been, quite naturally, confused. Now she was not.
But it was this handmaiden who cleaned the blood and feathers and bone shards from the floor of the eastern solarium. And this handmaiden who saw doubt in the Queen’s eyes from that day onward. How it grew and festered.
—FROM THE PERSONAL RECORDS OF AMES, HANDMAIDEN QUEEN THEA OF ZULLA, E. 900, Y. 9
10
Ayla spent the day of the Reaper’s Moon curled up in her cot, paralyzed with guilt. She almost wished that Crier hadn’t gone to the capital. She almost wished that she’d been forced to report to the lady’s chambers and do the usual litany of mindless things: preparing Crier’s bath, brushing her long dark hair, ironing her dress, painting her mouth with soft rouge. At least it would have kept Ayla moving, kept her hands busy, kept her mind off Nessa. Kept her from staring, paralyzed with indecision, at the basket of food that had been delivered earlier by a very suspicious maidservant. Bread and honey, salted fish, soft yellow cheese, sun apples, a parcel of candied nuts. It was more food than Ayla usually saw in a week. She didn’t want to eat it. She was starving. Her belly was rolling over itself. But eating would be like giving in. Like admitting something, some need. Right?