managed to set off Crier’s chime, but that wasn’t why the plan had failed. Benjy and the other rebels had assumed something had gone wrong on her end and taken a chance, making their way to Kinok’s study even without the distraction. They’d made it into the study without being caught by the guards, they’d even found the safe hidden in the bookshelf—but when Benjy, the only one among them who could read the language of the Makers, had cracked the lock, they hadn’t found the compass that would lead them to the Iron Heart. They’d found something else entirely: a faded piece of parchment with three words on it.
Leo
Siena
Tourmaline
Her grandfather’s and grandmother’s names, and something else.
When they heard the guards raising the alarm, the rebels fled the study, taking the piece of parchment with them. As planned, they waited for Ayla in the music room, all of them wild-eyed and panting among the silent, beautiful instruments, like grave robbers in an untouched tomb.
Ayla didn’t know what expression she’d been wearing when she burst through the door, but Benjy took one look at her face and told the others, “Crier’s still alive. Run.” And they had: out the same window they’d stolen in through and then through the dark orchards, and none of them had stopped running until they’d left the palace grounds far behind them and were lost to the lightless hills between the palace and all the surrounding farms and villages. From there, Benjy and Ayla had split off, spent the night in the branches of some farmer’s sun apple tree, and made their way to the fisherman’s shack before dawn.
And now: fugitives. It was the only part of the plan that had gone as expected. But instead of glory—instead of the compass in their possession, the Iron Heart in their control, Kinok’s Movement under their foot, Crier’s heart in Ayla’s hands (no, pierced by her knife)—instead of glory, they were scattered. Ayla and Benjy had no way of knowing if the others had survived the night. They were on the run. Alone. Empty-handed, after giving all their coin to the man with the fish cart.
Oh, he was definitely going to leave without them. Take their coin and run.
“Bastard,” Ayla muttered.
But she didn’t get a chance to curse him any further, because her attention was drawn by a crash on the other side of the market, just a few stalls away from the fish cart. Her blood ran cold: guards. Half a dozen of them, all wearing the sovereign’s crest. As she watched, one of the soldiers upended a barrel, spilling oysters and brine all over the cobblestones. One of the human vendors shouted in outrage and another guard pushed him to the ground, sword aimed at his throat.
“We have to get out of here,” Ayla breathed.
“You’ll have to help me,” Benjy said tightly.
She looped her arm around his back, helping him to his feet. He leaned heavily on her, wincing with every step, and together they moved away from the market square as quickly as possible, sticking to the last shadows of the fading night. Somewhere to the east, the rising sun must be curling its fingers over the edge of the Steorran, staining the sky and water the palest palest pink, like the sheen of a pearl button.
There were two things that Ayla had wanted. The first was revenge. The second was something she would not admit to herself, could not put into words, because even thinking about it made her heart feel like a bridge giving way, tumbling down into water, all her pieces carried off by the current of something far older and more powerful than she was. Right now, Ayla had nothing but her pieces. She could not give way.
Slowly, with a hand pressed over her mouth. That was how Ayla left everything she’d ever known behind her, the sovereign’s palace and Kalla-den and the northern shores and somewhere among them the village she’d been born in, Delan, all of it now at her back. And those three words repeating themselves over and over again in her heart: Leo. Siena. Tourmaline. Leo and Siena, her grandparents’ legacy—the memories in her locket, which Crier had, and the second locket, which Kinok had somehow gotten his hands on.
One thing was becoming clear. The only way to keep going, to keep fighting, was to learn more about her past.
And she knew just where to start. Storme.
Which meant they were headed to Varn. Whose borders on land