beneath a seaflower bush. Gasping. Shaking. Crier squeezed her eyes shut and pressed her face into the dirt, which was illogical but felt like the only thing she would ever want to do for the rest of her life. The dirt smelled like rain and soft green things and not dying.
Four seconds. Five. She shoved herself upright. Her face was wet, dirt sticking to her cheeks, and she did not understand why. She tasted salt. Sea spray, but different.
The girl was already looking at her. Crier saw her own shock mirrored in those dark eyes. But why were they both shocked? Of course the girl had saved her. Crier had needed help. This girl was in Hesod’s command, and therefore also in Crier’s command. Why would she do anything else? Why was Crier’s vision blurring?
The girl reached forward and pressed her thumb to the soft skin below Crier’s left eye. Again they stared at each other. The girl’s eyes flicked between her hand and Crier’s face, as if she was confused by her own actions. Crier held very still, and when the girl’s thumb came away from her skin, she saw the way it glistened with something wet.
Tears.
Crier’s hands flew up to her cheeks. Her skin was grimy, almost sticky, damp with dirt and—tears. Water from her eyes, salt on her lips. Tears, like the strange wet that streaked down human faces, but these were her own. They were hot like blood. It felt like she was bleeding, like she was wounded. But Automae did not cry like humans did. Why would they.
The girl wiped her thumb on her shirt. My tears, Crier thought, staring at the damp spot. My salt.
Her eyes stung.
“Lady Crier!”
Six guards were heading toward them, dark figures in the gloom. Even when running, their strides were identical; they did not fall out of line; their uniforms were pristine. Six guards—Crier’s distress chime must have gone off. She scrubbed at her face, wiping away all evidence of the tears. Nobody could see. (Somebody already had.) It was bad enough that she had nearly died, doubly bad that she had been saved by a servant. A human.
What would her father think?
What would Kinok think?
Crier got to her feet and did her best to brush the dirt off her clothes, to fix her messy, wind-whipped hair. Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed the human girl doing the same. She watched the girl hide the gold necklace back beneath her shirt, avoiding Crier’s eyes.
So she had not imagined the Maker symbol carved into the small, coin-like pendant. Crier stared at the girl again, this time with a new shock.
A symbol written in a language that had been dead for a hundred years, the old language of the alchemists.
How did you get that? Crier thought, unable to tear her eyes away from the girl’s face. Who are you?
But already the guards had reached them and immediately fell upon the girl, wrestling her arms behind her back and shoving her head down, trapping her between them. Three on the girl, the other three pointing their swords at her throat, her stomach, the base of her neck. The girl did not struggle. There would be no point. It took six hundred and seventy pounds of force to snap a human’s neck. The guards could apply that pressure in half a second.
She stared at the guards. “What are you doing?”
“Was it the human?” one guard asked. “What was it doing here? Did it attack you?” He was the one holding the girl’s head down. Crier could not see her face.
The way her grip had shifted on Crier’s wrist. The fierce look in her eyes. The press of her thumb into Crier’s wound. How, for a moment, Crier had been absolutely sure the girl was going to let her drop. The shock on both their faces when the girl had pulled her up up up and over, back to solid ground.
Of course the girl had saved her.
But for a moment—for a moment—
“No,” Crier heard herself say. “No, it did not push me. I fell. The human saved my life.”
The girl’s head jerked beneath the guard’s hand. Like she had just tried to look up. At Crier.
“The human saved me,” Crier repeated. She glanced toward the spot where she had heard her father and Kinok speaking, but they were long gone. They must have been heading back toward the palace when she fell. “I sustained a minor injury. I require medical assistance. Escort