she had seen a laundry maid trip and spill a basket of dirty clothes all over the flagstones in the western hallway, but she hadn’t stopped to help. She’d been on her way back from the music room. That was step one.
But Crier didn’t ask. In fact, she didn’t say anything at all for almost an hour. Her jaw kept working, her long fingers kept tugging at the small, curling tendrils of hair that always escaped her plait. It seemed like she was preparing for something.
Ayla didn’t want to know what it was.
So when Crier finally said, “Ayla,” in a raw, gutted voice as Ayla poured her a second cup of heartstone, Ayla had looked her dead in the eye, steam rising between them, and said:
“Don’t.”
“But,” Crier had started, “Ayla, it’s important, you’re in—”
“Danger?” Ayla cocked her head. “As opposed to the rest of the time, when I’m perfectly safe?” She didn’t let Crier respond. “Unless there is a battalion of your father’s guards outside the door at this very moment, ready to drag me away, I don’t want to know. It doesn’t matter.”
Crier’s mouth opened, closed, opened again. “I,” she said. “I, but, but that wasn’t—that wasn’t everything, I wanted to—”
“I. Don’t. Want. To. Hear. It,” said Ayla. A few weeks ago, it might have been a nasty thrill, talking to Lady Crier like this. Today, she felt nothing. Nothing at all. “Whatever you’re going to say, I swear to you I don’t want to hear it.”
And Crier had taken a funny little breath and fallen silent, and neither of them spoke again.
Anyway. The music room was step one.
This, here, was step two.
The gardens at night were a completely different animal. During the day, they were pretty much just like the rest of Hesod’s land, all neat and methodical and utterly soulless, nature removed from anything even remotely resembling wildness. But when the sun began to sink, slipping down the winter sky like a drop of water on a windowpane, it was like the shadows touched things and made them chaotic. Like that story, that old old story about the king whose touch turned things and people into gold. That kind of weird alchemy—things transforming into other things, things warping and twisting and tangling up, carefully trimmed roses becoming wild thorn bushes when the shadows slid over their green spines. Sun apple trees became gnarled; fruit glowed like gems or rotted right off the branch; seaflower bushes grew legs and crept to different rows, until Ayla, who had spent a third of her life in this damn garden, found herself getting just a little bit lost.
But she wasn’t late.
She spotted Benjy under the apple tree with the knot that looked like an eye, just like they’d planned. She scurried through the roses, trying not to think of anything at all, and watched Benjy perk up when she drew near. The air smelled like roses and too-ripe fruit. Underneath it, the bite of salt and sea spray.
Benjy looked furious in the new moon dark. He looked cold and cruel and like he’d been carved out of bronze. All his edges sharp and deadly.
Footsteps silent on the soft dirt, Ayla joined Benjy under the branches of the sun apple tree.
“Hey,” said Benjy, more breath than voice.
“Where are the others?”
“There,” he said, gesturing into the orchard. Ayla saw a handful of figures melting out of the darkness between the rows of sun apple trees. Within moments they joined them under the tree. There was Yoon from the kitchens, Tem and Idric from the stables, a couple other faces that Ayla had seen around the palace but couldn’t name. Seven in all, and all of them looking at Benjy, waiting for him to speak. Ayla wasn’t sure when he’d become their leader, but she found herself grateful for it. She didn’t want anyone to look at her. She was afraid of what they would see on her face.
“What time is it?” Yoon asked, breaking the silence. “When should we—?”
Benjy glanced at his wrist, and Ayla caught a glimpse of his grandfather’s watch. “Five minutes till the first distraction. Then we take the palace.” He looked around their small circle, meeting everyone’s eyes. When he reached Ayla, he lingered on her face. “Then we’ve got fifteen minutes,” he said, and paused.
Ayla realized a beat too late that he was waiting for her to jump in. “Yes,” she said, trying not to cringe when seven pairs of eyes bored into her. “From the moment we