Crier's War

by Nina Varela

  The water, and Ayla, had gone perfectly still, and Crier could almost feel the weight of her listening. As if her silence had a shape and pulse of its own.

  After a long pause, Ayla turned to her and said, “Wait. That’s it? That can’t be the end. That’s a terrible ending! The whole point of stories is that they’re different from real life! The hare is dead and the princess is dead inside? What about the war? Stars and skies, what about the princess? Did the peace treaty work? Or did the hare die for nothing?”

  “I don’t know,” said Crier. “Did he?”

  Ayla spluttered. “That’s not an answer! Come on, how does the story end? You read the book, you should know.” Her face in the moonlight was almost furious. Her eyes were sparks, her compact body drawn up like a soldier preparing for battle.

  For some reason, Ayla’s outrage—over a story, over her words, over, maybe her—made Crier smile. A thought came to her: a story of its own, one that had only just begun writing itself in her mind: a story of two women, one human, one Made, who told ancient faerie stories to each other. Who splashed each other at the edge of the water. Who whispered the beauty of snow and the fear of death into the darkness of a late autumn evening.

  And with that thought, with that bud of a story blooming inside her, Crier let her body slide into the deep tide pool.

  She waded in up to her shoulders, the cold so bracing it left her light-headed. Her dress became ten times heavier in the water, wrapping hard against her skin.

  “Crier!” Ayla hissed behind her. “What are you doing? I still want that ending!”

  Crier.

  Just Crier, no Lady.

  This was a new feeling.

  She turned back to face Ayla. “You’ll have to join me to find out what happens next.” To find out the ending to both stories. The princess’s, and hers.

  She heard Ayla huff, but couldn’t interpret whether it was a sigh of annoyance or something else. And then:

  Ayla splashed into the water. She didn’t glide in gently as Crier had done, but plunged in, creating waves, charging right toward Crier. She arrived, face-to-face with Crier in the pool, both of them standing and shivering, though Ayla much harder. Crier’s body could handle temperatures far more extreme.

  A drop of water gleamed on Ayla’s lower lip. Strangely, it made Crier want to—drink.

  “So?” Ayla whispered. Her body gave an involuntary shudder.

  Crier paused. Ayla had come to her. She had come through the cold of the water, for her, for her story.

  Ayla stepped even closer. They were mere inches apart. “How does it end?” she asked, and her words made Crier feel hot instead of cold.

  But then Crier remembered the story she was telling. The war. The hare. The princess. The cruel king. “It ends happily,” she lied. She willed her face not to move, her Made lungs not to breathe. “The princess delivers the treaty and the trick works. Her father makes peace with the neighboring kingdom. All is well.”

  “Ah,” said Ayla, more breath than word, a sweet little sigh. “That’s good.”

  Neither of them moved for another long moment, just staring at each other in the dark, Ayla’s face unreadable, masked again, this time by moonlight and shadow. She was still shivering.

  “You’ll fall ill,” Crier said at last. “We can’t stay.”

  And so, drenched and shivering, they pulled themselves back up onto the rocks, the ends of their wet clothes dragging across sand and soil all the way back to the palace. They parted silently at the edge of the garden, and the night felt emptier, the air colder than the water had been, when Ayla left, each of them promising not to speak of what had happened.

  That night in her bed, though, moonlight falling through the window like a curtain of white silk, Crier could not stop thinking of Ayla—her face, her words, her curiosity, her habits. The ways she moved and spoke. She was unaccustomed to this lack of control over her thoughts—usually she thought only about her studies, or a book she was reading, or carefully constructed fantasies about the future. She had only ever experienced a similar compulsion, a loss of control, when she listened to a piece of music she thought particularly pleasing, diverting, and then found it playing in the back of her mind, perfectly reproduced, for days. An invisible orchestra. Soft strains of piano and violin, a deep heartbeat drum that only Crier could hear.

  Now piano was replaced by the way Ayla’s dark eyes flickered over Crier’s bedchamber the first time she had seen it, the way her gaze had lingered on the hearth, the reading nook, the massive bed. Violin was replaced by the tightening of Ayla’s jaw when she knelt beside Crier at breakfast, hands clasped in her lap, head bent in deference to her lady.

  Piano. Violin. And the deep heartbeat drums were replaced with a single question: Why did you save me that day on the cliffs?

  Can you sense the human in me?

  There were two possible answers to that question, and Crier had no idea which she would rather hear: No, you are the perfect Automa, or . . .

  Yes. You are different.

  I see you.

  No matter how hard she tried, Crier could not force herself to sleep. Ayla was there, always, in the shadows of her mind, looking back, her gaze not like the stars but like the soft darkness that enfolded them.

  Stop it.

  When she didn’t think of Ayla, she thought of Queen Junn, whose upcoming visit would perhaps finally bring answers to the curiosity in Crier’s mind.

  The restlessness drove her out of bed and into the hallways. She just needed to walk around for a little while, to sort out her thoughts. Along with Ayla’s face, she also couldn’t stop thinking about Kinok’s chilling words during the council meeting—even after the night full of stories, the horror of the day, of its humiliation, was still there, alive and hungry, waiting for her in the darkness. Did he really think there was a chance Councilmember Reyka had a Flaw? Surely Kinok had just said it to get under Crier’s skin. A latent threat. But what if there was some truth to it? And now Reyka was gone?

  Her mind raced with something—a kind of heat—and she thought again of how Ayla had been when she found her at the celebration: worried.

  Crier was worried. What would happen to her if others found out her secret? Found out about her Flaw?

  Crier paused for a moment, angry with herself. Kinok had so much power over her, he was ruling even her thoughts.

  Maybe she could take some of that power away.

  She didn’t know whether Kinok had a copy of her Design papers, but if he did . . . if he did, she wouldn’t put it past him to blackmail her. He could control her for the rest of her life. But if she got it back . . .

  Her father and Kinok had remained at the Old Palace with the other Hands. Hesod had told Crier once that all the real politics happened after the official council meetings—laws were created and negotiated and altered in conversation over glasses of liquid heartstone. While Crier had come home early, Hesod and Kinok wouldn’t return until tomorrow morning. Another blow.

  But it was as good a chance as any.

  Knowing full well it was dangerous and stupid and a terrible idea, Crier made her way to Kinok’s study. He kept it locked, of course, while he was in the city, but Crier had once gone through a phase where she learned everything about how locks worked, to the point of designing her own unpickable locks simply for amusement. Locks were interesting, like the gears of a clock or like the workings of a mechanical toy. And unlike the locks Crier had designed, the lock on Kinok’s study was not unpickable.

  So, using one of the bone hairpins keeping her braid in place, Crier picked it.

  She felt a little thrill as the lock clicked open, a satisfying snick. Then she slipped through the door and into Kinok’s study.

  The room was dark. There were no windows, only a dead hearth and a cold lantern. Crier lit the lantern, oil sputtering to life, and looked around. Writing desk, bookshelves, a tapestry on one wall to help insulate the underground room. Now that she was here, Crier did
n’t know quite where to begin. She didn’t even know if her Design papers were going to be here at all.

  She snooped around halfheartedly, too nervous to really touch anything. Kinok couldn’t know she’d been in here; it would make everything so much worse. Now that the restlessness and the excitement of taking some power back were beginning to fade away, Crier felt more foolish than anything. What was she doing, breaking into Kinok’s study in the dead of night? What could this possibly accomplish?

  Embarrassed with herself, she glanced over the papers on Kinok’s desk one last time. His handwriting was hard to read, especially in the weak, flickering light of the lantern, especially when Crier’s heartbeat was pounding so loudly in her ears. She just wanted to get out of here, to go back to the safety of her bed. She was about to extinguish the lantern flame when something caught her eye.

  There was a book open on the desk. At first glance, Crier had seen that it was an incredibly dense book about Zullan shipping and trade laws, and she’d paid it no mind. But when she’d leaned forward just now, the lantern light had caught on something: something written in the margin of the book in pale, spidery ink. Two words.

  Yora’s heart.

  It was everywhere, she saw. In the margins and in Kinok’s notes. Sometimes those two words were paired with others: Yora’s heart . . . PROTOTYPE?; Y’s heart . . . fuel, everlasting, no more rel.; Yora’s heart . . . t.w.? s.? Something in Crier stilled as she stared at the words. What did it mean? Who was Yora?

  Somewhere beyond the windows, already lined with dawn, an owl cried out.

  Startled, Crier dropped the book back onto the desk. A single page of notes fluttered out and, impulsively, she rolled it up and hastily stuffed it up her sleeve before slipping silently from the room. She blew out her lantern in the hall, its faint oil smoke swirling around her as she hurried away, feeling her way back to her room in the dark, rolling the mysterious, hastily scrawled words over and over again through her mind: Yora’s heart.

  E. 900, Y. 4–5: T. Wren appointed as royal scientist; still young & unknown; all available accts (see: Handmaiden Primrose, Maker Oona) of the time note him as “fame-hungry,” desperate for recognition, obsessed with Q. Thea

  personally appointed by Q. Thea—why?

  obsession romantic/sexual in nature?

  E. 900, Y. 10: Wren receives letter from Unknown Woman “H——.” (Name on letter obscured, no records of her in Academy files or any other accts from this period—purposeful? Even Wren, in his own writing, refers to her as “H.” Perhaps to protect her identity from future historians. Perhaps to protect himself.) “H——” being a former lover from Wren’s years at the Maker’s Academy—letter informs him that H—— has borne his child.

  Excerpt from Wren’s personal journal (I):

  “[ . . . ] the letter arrived [ . . . ] battered. Half the words bleeding from water stains. Nigh unreadable. Only a single word stood clear from the rest. Her name. The girl-child. My child. Siena.”

  Wren goes to H— immediately. By his own account, he wished to spend time with the child Siena (b. sometime in Y. 9; now almost two years old) and raise her as his own.

  Excerpts from Wren’s personal journal (II):

  “[ . . . ] Siena has my eyes. My nose. Without a doubt she is mine; she is sired by me. She will be raised by me as well. H reluctant. Regrets sending the letter, regrets seeing me again. Refuses, sometimes, to let me inside the house; to let me see my own daughter.

  [ . . . ]

  A discovery.

  This could be—it. This could be everything. To think. She was hiding it. That’s why she didn’t want me in the house. She doesn’t care whether I see the child or not. She didn’t want me to see this. For good reason. I think I might be carrying a lifetime’s supply of gold in my pocket. I think I might be carrying my own legacy.

  It was the child. A toddler; they get into everything. She kept presenting me with little trinkets from around the house. A pen, a shoe, a little wooden toy. Papers from H’s study. Blueprints. Designs. Thank the gods I looked them over instead of returning them blindly.

  Siena.

  I don’t know if I will see you again.

  But I owe you everything. . . .”

  E. 900, Y. 11: T. Wren builds the first prototype of what would later become the Automa. He names his creation: “Kiera.”

  —NOTES ON THOMAS WREN, FROM THE RESEARCH JOURNALS OF SCYRE KINOK, FORMERLY OF THE IRON WATCH

  Late Fall,

  Year 47 AE

  12

  The Mad Queen arrived with a spray of color and gold.

  It had been two weeks since the council meeting, two weeks since the Reaper’s Moon, and the weather on the northwest coast of Rabu had gone sullen and cold. The queen’s retinue, glittering and flamboyant, were an odd contrast to the gray morning.

  Ayla had been up with Crier long before dawn, for once accompanied by a few other handmaidens as they all flitted around Crier like honeybees, braiding her hair and painting her face and wrangling her into the kind of gown that one wore, apparently, when meeting a queen—silk the color of dark golden mead, the bodice lined with hundreds of pearls.

  To Ayla’s disturbance, Crier had seemed almost . . . giddy. But how could she be? Despite the queen’s youth, she had a reputation for being violent, temperamental. Even the Automae called her Junn the Bone Eater.

  For a moment as she was getting ready, Crier had caught Ayla staring at her red, painted lips in the mirror. It was embarrassing, such a foolish slip-up, but the sight of Crier’s mouth had made Ayla think of another moment: the night of the Reaper’s Moon, when Crier had slipped into the tide pool and Ayla, a moth to flame, had followed. Under the moonlight, Ayla could have sworn . . . They’d been standing so close together in the dark water, clothes clinging to their bodies, and Crier’s eyes had lingered on Ayla’s mouth.

  Because I could use it, Ayla told herself. Because the closer I get to Crier, the closer I get to revenge.

  That was the only reason why.

  It had nothing to do with Crier’s beauty. With the way her mind worked, the careful way she used words, the haunting shape of the story she’d told Ayla that night.

  It had nothing to do with the key to the music room, or the way Crier seemed to trust her so readily, her voice going thin and tender in Ayla’s presence, her eyes always so watchful, so full of depth.

  No. Ayla wouldn’t let herself get caught staring again. For the rest of the morning, she didn’t meet Crier’s eyes even once, ignoring Crier’s searching glances. Then she and Crier joined Hesod, Kinok, and a veritable parade of other human servants in the courtyard to wait for Queen Junn.

  The sky opened up with a downpour of rain during the second hour of waiting. There were a few minutes of chaos as the servants were sent rushing off to fetch a canopy, and then the truly miserable portion of the morning began: standing, soaked through, under a leaking canopy, unable to see more than a horse’s length in any direction past the sheets of freezing rain. The leeches were fine—they didn’t seem to feel the cold—but Ayla was shivering, just as she had been the night of the Reaper’s Moon, when she stood in the tide pool with Crier.

  Once again, Ayla thought of the way she’d told the story of the princess. The way she’d looked at Ayla in the moonlight . . .

  No. She couldn’t think about that.

  Perhaps Crier had been right—perhaps Ayla was like a magpie, drawn to the shininess of trinkets. Perhaps Crier was just that—a shiny, distracting trinket. An inconvenience, adorned with a secretive half smile.

  But the moment Ayla tried to push Crier out of her mind, Nessa’s death would flood into it in her place. Or Benjy’s ink-drawn face. She felt scrambled and torn. She was here for revenge, and to help the Revolution, but so far, she had only created more pain and suffering and confusion.

  The twin deluges of thoughts and pouring rain only began to let up a little when, at last, the Mad Queen’s procession became visible through the fog.
/>   It wasn’t the first time Ayla had seen the clothes and colors of Varn—even with the borders locked, plenty of traders made it through and sold their wares in Kalla-den and other human villages—but it was the first time she’d seen a Varnian who wasn’t poor and starving. The procession was marked with deep green flags bearing the queen’s emblem, a phoenix clutching a sword in one clawed foot and a pickax in the other. The chariot in front was dripping with silver and gold. The servants trailing behind the queen—a long line of horses, carts, some stragglers on foot—were all dressed in jewel tones: green, blue, and violet. Their faces looked . . . strange. Unnaturally pale, like they were made from porcelain. Then they got closer, and Ayla saw it wasn’t that these people had bone-white skin—it was that they were wearing white masks over their noses and mouths. The masks looked like they were made of clay or porcelain, molded perfectly to the nose and lips of the wearer. Some of them were decorated: wine-dark blush, painted lips, swirls of silver and green. Individually, the masks were pretty. But all together, the sea of expressionless white faces left Ayla feeling unnerved.

  A horn sounded.

  “Open the gates,” said Hesod.

  It took nearly half an hour for the whole procession to file into the courtyard. Ridiculous, thought Ayla, as they all waited for the queen herself to actually appear. This close—half a courtyard away—she could see the details of the queen’s chariot, the size of the enormous warhorses all the queen’s soldiers and servants were riding. She could also see how the humans were drenched and shivering under their rich clothes.

  Leeches were just the same across the border, then.

  Another horn, and finally the heavy gates closed behind the last of the servants and the procession was all gathered inside the courtyard. The rain had lightened to a cold mist, the sky washed out and sunless. In front of Ayla, Crier was standing straight-backed, her chin lifted regally and her rain-slicked hair sticking to her neck. Even when she’d gotten rained on, she hadn’t moved a single muscle.