mattered, wanting her to understand. “If my heart rate rises too quickly, the device sends out a silent distress signal to the guards. Even we can’t hear it, but they can.”
Now she was speaking just to fill the silence, and so she stopped.
Ayla’s eyebrows arched, ever so slightly. The breeze was a trailing finger, lifting the little tendrils of hair that had come loose from Crier’s plait. Automa hair was thick and glossy, usually worn high up on the head, a braid twisted into a tight crown. Crier felt very exposed all of a sudden, hyperaware of the tiny, wispy curls at her temples and the nape of her neck. She felt improper before Ayla’s gaze. In disarray.
“Is it because I saw you cry?” Ayla said, and then bit down hard on her bottom lip.
“I did not cry,” Crier said stiffly.
“Yes, you did. I saw it. I touched it. Seawater isn’t warm like that.”
They glared at each other a little.
“Fine,” Crier said. “But I am your lady. And you are not the only one who saw something not meant for your eyes last night.” She looked pointedly at the spot where the necklace must be. “Your Kind are not supposed to wear trinkets like that.”
Ayla’s hands jerked as if she was suppressing an impulse to reach for her necklace. “It’s not a trinket.”
“Whatever it is, it is forbidden.” She cocked her head. “Is it true that humans collect shiny objects? Like magpies do?” She’d seen how the black-feathered birds lingered in high branches and swooped down to investigate fallen coins; she’d even heard once about a crow that had nearly taken out a lady’s eye in an attempt to inspect her jeweled tiara. Sometimes, during meals in the great hall, she thought of that story and had to hide a smile behind her sleeve.
“You live in a palace of white marble and gold,” Ayla said incredulously. “There are pearls in your hair. And you’re calling me the magpie?”
“I am a lady,” Crier snapped. “You are not.”
“Well, my necklace isn’t a trinket,” Ayla snapped right back. “It’s not just something shiny. It contains histories.”
“Oh,” said Crier. “Really? What kind of histories? What do you mean, contains?” She peered at Ayla’s sternum as if she would somehow be able to see the necklace’s mysterious properties. “Is there a coded message inside? Is the necklace a key to a secret library? Is it an ancient relic?”
“No, no, and no,” said Ayla, eyes wide. “No, I . . . well, I don’t actually know.”
“That is disappointing.”
Ayla’s mouth twitched. Bitterness, maybe.
Looking at her, Crier felt dizzy. Off-balance. This close to the cliff’s edge, she was in danger of falling all over again—it was as if the rush of sea below them was calling out to her, beckoning. Ayla’s eyes were so dark.
Crier thought suddenly of the gardens. All that color—kept bright by human servants. Inside the palace, there was color only in her bedchamber, her tapestry of Kiera. Who had woven that tapestry? An Automa? Crier had studied fourteen languages, twenty-nine branches of science and mathematics, one thousand years of history for every formally recognized kingdom and territory, but she had never woven a single thread. Never painted, never written anything but essays. She looked at Ayla, who was looking back. Ayla’s hair was limp in the ocean breeze, sticking to her temples.
“Have you ever taken any lessons?” She hadn’t meant to ask that.
Ayla’s nose scrunched up. She did that a lot. “No. I don’t . . .”
“Don’t what?”
“Read, my lady. I can’t.”
Crier paused, taking that in. She couldn’t imagine not knowing how to read. It seemed somehow very cruel. “Is there anything you wish to learn?”
What she meant was: What do you find interesting? Were there certain words or ideas that made Ayla’s frown smooth out, that made her eyes brighten? Crier wanted to study her like a map. Draw an easy path between all the specific yet scattered points of her.
Ayla shrugged. “Maybe?”
Crier waited.
Ayla looked out over the ocean. “A very long time ago, I knew someone who liked to study nature. The natural laws. Once, I asked him why, and he told me that he liked knowing there’s certain laws in the universe. He said you can’t count on much, can’t trust most things to stay solid, but, you know, there’s always some sort of force at work. Even way out there past the sky, so far away that we can’t even imagine it, things work the same. Everything’s just bodies in