Crier's War

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.

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 last page was the final draft of her Design, the one that the Makers would have used to actually create her. Unlike the previous drafts, this one had only Torras’s neat, blocky handwriting—none of her father’s scrawl. But that made sense. Torras was the Midwife, not her father. Crier gave a quick once-over to the ink drawings of her body, the cross section of her inner workings. She was more than ready to return these documents to Kinok and forget all about her ridiculous paranoia.

But there was something off about this page.

Crier held it up to the moonlight, frowning. The proportions of her body were all the same. None of the numbers had changed. What was—?

There. The cross section of her brain. A small portion of it was redrawn to the side in greater detail: the portion that represented her pillars. They were not physical elements of her body, but metaphysical elements of her mind, her intelligence, her personality. Each blueprint had shown four pillars in her mind, balancing out like scales.

Intellect. Organics. The two human pillars.

Calculation. Reason. The two Automa pillars.

In this blueprint—only this one—there were five. Inside the Design of Crier’s mind was another little column drawn in deep-blue ink. A fifth pillar.

Passion, it was labeled.

Passion.

Crier, the daughter of the sovereign, had five pillars instead of four. It was unheard of. Everyone knew Automae were created with two human pillars and two Automa pillars. Crier had never imagined there could be one with three human pillars. And that was what Passion was, without a doubt: human.

The papers were shaking in her hands. No. Her hands were shaking. Suddenly paranoid, Crier glanced around to make sure she was truly alone in this corner of the gardens. What if someone sees?

What would happen if the wrong person—if any person—discovered that the heir to the sovereign of Rabu had been sabotaged by her own Midwife? What would happen to her? She shuddered, thinking of Kinok’s words back in the forest during the Hunt. They were disposed of. Would she be disposed of? Or, no, no no no, what if someone tried to use her against her father? This was perfect blackmail.

The heir, the sovereign’s daughter, a mistake. It would bring shame to her family. Worse, it could cause the political scandal of the century. People could call for Hesod to step down as sovereign. They could use Crier to threaten her father. Through him, they could gain power over the entire Red Council. Over all of Rabu—and more.

Crier was Flawed. She was broken.

The thought shook her deeply. All this time she’d been treated like the jewel of the sovereign’s estate, a glorious creation, but no. She was an abomination.

Her father said he did not completely understand all the different forms of human love, but that he had thought carefully about it and that perhaps, beyond his fascination with their history, their little cultures, he did love humans. In his own way.

Like how they loved dogs, he said, enough to feed them scraps of meat.

“Is there something you find amusing, Lady Crier?” Kinok said, staring at her curiously.

Of course Kinok had noticed. He noticed everything. He was looking at her now over the rim of his own teacup, his lips stained slightly red.

“It is not important,” Crier said, a little flustered by Kinok’s unwavering gaze. “I merely thought of a book I was reading last night.”

“Ah. Which book?”

“A collection of essays on economic structure,” she said. “Specifically, the intersection of market structure with physical or geographical environment.”

Kinok’s eyebrows lifted. “I see.” To Hesod, he said, “Such inherent curiosity. Perhaps it is best that she has not yet attended a meeting of the council. I think, given an hour, she would take over as head.”

Crier preened, until she saw Hesod’s jaw tighten.

“On the contrary,” he said. “I believe attending next week’s meeting will be an invaluable experience for her. Perhaps it will give her pause the next time she is tempted to voice her own opinions on how to run a nation.”

Crier glanced at Kinok. He gave her a small, crooked smile. “It will be an honor to have her there.”

Which meant he would be in attendance as well.

She remembered what her father had told her: that Kinok was not a threat to Hesod’s hold on Rabu and the other territories. Not if he joined a family. Not if he submitted to Traditionalism.

It seemed Hesod trusted him enough to include him in the affairs of the Red Council now.

Hesod prided himself on spreading Traditionalism throughout Rabu—the Automa belief in modeling their society after
human behavior, as though humans were a long-lost civilization from which they could cherry-pick the best attributes to mimic. Family was important to Sovereign Hesod, or so he and his council preached. The irony was not lost on Ayla.

After what Ayla had come to think of as that day, the day that changed everything, the splitting point in her mind, the thing that cracked her life into a before and after, the waking nightmare, the bloodstain, the splintered bone that would not heal, that day, Ayla had allowed herself one week to mourn.

Even at nine years old, she’d known that it was all too easy to drown in grief—get pulled under and never come back up. One week, she told herself. One week.

One week to mourn the deaths of her entire family.

Mama. Papa. Her twin brother, Storme, who had loved Ayla more than anything else in the whole world. Who had been wrenched away from her, trying to protect her from Them. Storme, who, from the sounds of his screaming cut short, had met his end then and there, just beyond the walls of what had been their home.

You couldn’t depend on much in this world, but you could depend on this: love brought nothing but death. Where love existed, death would follow, a wolf trailing after a wounded deer. Scenting blood in the air. Ayla had learned that the hard way.

Benjy fell silent, but Ayla could finally feel his anger—could tell that it was now directed at her. His strides grew long, determined, as they reached the narrow path that curved up toward the palace. She could see the peaked roofs of the palace towers now in the distance.

She hurried to catch up with him, panting in the heat. By now they were farther from the crowd. She grabbed his shoulder, and he stopped walking so suddenly she nearly crashed into him.

“I know what you’re going to say,” he said through gritted teeth.

Ayla struggled to catch her breath. “You could always . . . watch the comet without me.” The words grated in her throat like she’d swallowed a mouthful of salt.

His dark-brown eyes locked onto hers. The breeze danced in his messy hair. He’d grown taller than her, and broader too. She held his gaze.

For a full minute, he said nothing. They just stood there, breathing hard, looking at each other. Thinking the same thing: it was too soon.

Ayla wanted to say: Don’t leave me.

Ayla should have said: Leave me. Because maybe it would be better that way.

Benjy’s anger seemed to transmute into sadness, his lips
parting. Finally, he said, “I won’t do that. I won’t go without you, and you know it.”

She did. And that scared her more than anything. He wouldn’t leave her. It made her heart rage. Leave, she wanted to scream. Don’t stay for me.

But then another part of her, buried so deep it had almost, almost, gone silent, knew she couldn’t do this—do any of it—without him.

His lips were still slightly parted, as though there was more he wanted to say. She knew how badly he needed this. Revolution. Blood. Change. She waited for him to keep going, to try again to convince her. But he also knew how much she wanted what she wanted: Lady Crier’s blood on her hands.

“The moon is full,” said Rowan now, looking straight ahead, in the hushed, coded tone Ayla had come to know so well.

The three of them moved easily through the crowd of humans, used to dodging people and carts and stray dogs. The chaos of the Kalla-den streets was a strange kind of blessing: a thousand human voices all shouting at once meant it was the perfect place for conversations you didn’t want anyone to overhear.

“Clear skies lately,” Ayla and Benjy said in unison. Nothing to report.

It was Rowan, of course, who had taught them the language
of rebellion. A sprig of rosemary passed between hands on a crowded street, garlands woven from flowers with symbolic meanings, coded messages hidden inside loaves of bread, faerie stories or old folk songs used like passwords to determine who you could trust. Rowan had taught them everything. She’d saved Ayla first, Benjy a few months later. Took them in. Clothed them. Taught them how to beg, and then how to find work. Fed them. But also gave them a new hunger: justice.

Because they should never have needed to beg in the first place.

“What news?” Benjy asked.

“A comet is crossing to the southern skies,” Rowan said with a smile. “A week from now. It will be a beautiful night.”

Benjy took Ayla’s hand and squeezed. She didn’t return it. She knew what the code meant: an uprising in the South. Another one. It filled her gut with suspicion and dread.

They turned onto a wider street, the crowd thinning out a little. They spoke more softly now.

“Crossing south,” Ayla repeated. Her heart sank. “And how many stars will be out in the southern skies?”

Rowan didn’t pick up on her skepticism. “Oh, I’ve heard around two hundred.”

“Two hundred,” Benjy repeated, eyes gleaming.

Two hundred human rebels gathering in the South.

“High time, loves.”

Rowan was gone as swiftly as she had appeared, leaving only a crumpled flyer in Benjy’s hands—a religious pamphlet,
something about the gods and believers. Ayla knew it would be riddled with code—code that only those in the Resistance could decipher.

Back then, Rowan’s hair had still been brown, streaked silver only at the temples. But her eyes were the same. Deep and steady. “You were ready to die,” she had said.

Ayla didn’t answer.

“I don’t know what happened to you, exactly,” said Rowan. “But I know you’re alone. I know you’ve been cast aside, left to die in the snow like an animal.” She reached out and took Ayla’s hands, held them between her own. It felt like being cradled: like being held all over. “You’re not alone anymore. I can give you something to fight for, child. I can give you a purpose.”

“A purpose?” Ayla had said. Her voice was weak, scraped out.

“Justice,” said Rowan. And she squeezed Ayla’s hands.