around at the feathers scattered everywhere.
“Yes. Apparently, she left it behind the last time she stayed here, sometime this fall. I think she did it on purpose. Perhaps she knew she was in danger, perhaps she was leaving a clue in case someone came looking for her. Either way, she was working with the queen. And I’m not sure, but I think Kinok could be connected to her disappearance.”
“Why are you telling me all of this?” Ayla asked.
Crier bit her lip, a human gesture. “You already knew about the feathers. I have to trust you, don’t I?”
Ayla paused. “You didn’t trust me an hour ago, when we were in the carriage.”
“I didn’t want to endanger you,” Crier said.
Ayla registered that it was true. She could read Crier, she realized—had been able to for some time. “That night,” she said quietly. “The night your chime went off.” She couldn’t bring herself to say the night we lay side by side on your bed. It felt like it had happened in another lifetime. She felt her body heat up at the memory of it. “I asked you what you know about Kinok. What have you learned?”
“That his reach extends through all ranks of Automa society. That he is controlling his followers with a black dust. They take it instead of heartstone. They call it Nightshade, but it seems to have . . . damaging effects.”
“Yes.” Ah. The crates of dust—that’s what it was, then. Not a weapon, exactly, but a substance. “And not just Automa society.”
Crier looked at her. “What do you mean?”
“He knows all about us, too. My Kind. How we’re connected to each other, who we care for. He even charted it—I saw it in his chambers, it was like a map of our relationships, our connections. Not just bloodlines but also friendships, romances. Any kind of love.” The word love floated in the air between them. “And . . .” Could she really tell Crier all this?
“And what?” Crier stepped toward her and Ayla backed up, remembering the strength and power of Crier’s grip on her just moments ago—it was the strength and power of an Automa. An enemy.
But an enemy who could help.
“I believe,” Ayla said slowly, remembering what Rowan had told her and Benjy in the orchard just last week, “that he’s had help spreading false information about the Resistance among us. Spreading claims of an uprising among the humans, perhaps to . . .” Her mind was spinning. “To set us up.”
Crier was staring at her so powerfully she feared Crier’s eyes would set her skin on fire. “Rosi told me that Kinok had armed the southern estates in advance of the first Southern Uprisings,” Crier said. “Almost as if he’d—”
“Been the first to know about them. Or—”
“Been the instigator.”
Ayla felt sick. “He didn’t just have insider knowledge. He was the insider. The west was a tinderbox and he was the flint, the spark. He created a rebellion to justify slaughtering my Kind . . .”
“And make himself look like a hero in the process,” Crier concluded.
Ayla felt dizzy. The room was spinning. Crier’s face; her strong hands; the closed door; the box of green feathers.
“You said he spread these lies through humans, not just Automae. Do you know who helped him?”
Ayla paused, and swallowed hard. She felt sick, thinking of Faye’s panicked face, the words she’d muttered, which had seemed like nonsense at first, but now . . .
It’s all my fault, Faye had said.
Crier was looking at her with fascination. Ayla hesitated. To give up a name was a huge risk. And yet, it was the name of someone who had potentially betrayed Rowan, betrayed the Resistance.
“Faye,” she whispered.
“That kitchen maid? How?”
Ayla’s breath shook as she spoke—the story coming together as she told it, all of its pieces finally falling into place. “The crime Luna was punished for was not her own. It was Faye’s. Faye even told me—it was all her fault. She’s racked with guilt about something. I couldn’t figure out what, but she said—‘sun apples.’ She was so—fixated, I had no idea why. Rambling about Kinok and his sun apples and something that had gone terribly wrong. But then I realized: it’s a code word. There are stacks and stacks of crates shipping out of the palace, all labeled ‘sun apples,’ but they’re filled with black dust. So they must be going to . . . his followers, I guess.”
Crier stared at her. “Kinok is moving shipments of black dust under