of poisoned water. It wouldn’t hurt the trees—and besides, most of them were already naked and dead-looking—but it began to kill the locusts the second it touched their shiny green skin.
Within a single day, the trees were empty. The dirt below their branches was littered with millions of dead, silent locusts, their bodies piled ankle-deep. Ayla was one of the servants assigned to clearing them away. Barefoot, she waded through the orchards, filling her basket over and over again with corpses and then loading the baskets onto a cart, dragging the cart out to the bluffs, tossing the contents of each basket over the edge and into the waiting sea. The locusts’ tiny iridescent wings caught the sunlight as they fell; with each basket, Ayla felt like she was pouring out a cascade of glittering gemstones.
One day’s work and all the locusts were dead; the orchards were saved.
That was what would happen if the Iron Heart was destroyed, if the Automae were deprived of heartstone dust. One day’s work. A living shadow lifted.
Ayla blinked. Realized Rowan was still watching her, waiting for her response. Benjy wasn’t looking at either of them. He was staring at the dirt floor, jaw working.
“I’m going to work for Lady Crier,” said Ayla. “I’m going to spy on the Scyre and learn everything I can about the Iron Heart.”
“What about your revenge?” Benjy mumbled.
“I won’t be rash,” she promised. There was no point in telling Benjy that the fire in her hadn’t diminished—had grown, even. This killing fire inside her—he didn’t need to know just how long and cruel it had been burning. Just how charred and scarred she was. Somewhere in the back of her mind, her brother’s voice echoed. Act only when the odds are on your side, Ayla. Gamble with bread and coins, not your life. “I swear to you, Benjy,” she said. “I won’t do anything to Hesod or Crier until I’ve found enough information to destroy the Iron Heart. I won’t let my revenge compromise the Revolution.”
Rowan patted her cheek, beaming. “That’s my girl.”
And even though her eyes were still watering from the terrible stench of the latrines, even though the idea of serving Crier disgusted her, even though part of her wasn’t sure she’d be able to find any information on the Heart at all . . . For the first time since that day, Ayla had a plan. Not just the nebulous, half-formed notion of I want to hurt Hesod. I want to take away his family like he took away mine. But a real plan. Something so much bigger than Crier, Hesod, Kinok, even herself. It felt like—like this was what she was meant to do.
Her heart was lit up with something quick and hot. A lightning storm inside her.
Somewhere along the line, she’d forgotten how it felt to begin.
Planning to spy on the Scyre was a lot easier than actually doing it. Ayla was far too occupied with the bustle of the household and its needs—most importantly, Crier’s—to get away for even a second. Her new schedule, it turned out, was just as demanding as her work in the fields had been.
This morning, for the first time in her four years as a servant to the sovereign, Ayla didn’t report to the stables or the orchards at dawn. Instead, she joined the thin stream of humans heading up from the servants’ quarters to the palace itself, and—after an Automa guard checked her face, gripping her chin hard as he verified her identity—she passed through the huge wooden doors.
It felt like sneaking into a dragon’s cave.
Ayla hurried through the vast, twisting hallways, ceilings arching high above her head, trying to memorize the layout, which felt far more complicated than it should, given she knew the palace was divided into four wings. The north wing was the most heavily guarded—she knew that simply from observing the guards as she worked on the palace grounds. That was probably where the sleeping quarters were, and maybe the sovereign’s study or his war room. Would Kinok sleep there as well, or were guests relegated to a different area of the palace? The kitchens and the great hall were in the east wing, every floor but the first with a vast view of the Steorran Sea. The grand ballroom was in the west, and the south held the guards’ quarters, extra harvest and weaponry stores, solaria, large rooms where the Red Council sometimes met. But the wings were huge—all four of them