and bolted forward quick as an Automa—one second she was halfway across the room, the next she was right in front of Ayla, her chest heaving. Ayla leaped backward, drawing the bag of linens up in front of her like some sort of pathetic shield, but it was too late. “Don’t touch her!” Faye shrieked. “Don’t touch my sister!” And she lashed out blindly with one arm, her hand catching Ayla’s nose. Ayla staggered back, pain spiking where she’d been struck. When she reached up to touch her face, her fingers came away red and she could feel the hot sticky drip of blood from her nostrils.
“I said don’t touch her,” Faye rasped, shaking her head, flinging droplets of sweat. “Don’t touch her, don’t touch her, take me instead, don’t touch her don’t touch her don’t touch her no no no no no NO—” Her voice broke and she backed away, first slowly and then nearly tripping over her feet. She hit one of the tubs, boiling water sloshing over the opposite side, a paddle clattering to the floor, and then she howled and ran out of the washing room, into the swallowing dark of the corridor outside. Cool air rushed into the smelly, humid washing room.
Shaking, Ayla tilted her head back to stop the blood flow. Her nose hurt, but not enough to be broken. Just a low twinge pulsing along with the beat of her heart, a sick reminder of Faye’s—what? Grief? Madness? Both?
The apples, the apples.
“Here,” said someone from behind her, and she jolted—but it was only Nessa standing in the doorway. Her baby was still strapped to her body, and she was holding out a handkerchief, scrutinizing Ayla with her beady eyes. “For the blood,” she said. “You’re lucky the lady has been far too busy greeting guests today to bother with you.”
“I am fortunate,” Ayla mumbled, and began to blot clumsily at her nose.
Nessa sniffed. “In the future, stay away from that girl. She’s not well and she never will be. Gods only know why she’s kept around.”
Gods only know, indeed.
Ayla nodded. “Yes’m.”
Nessa turned on her heel and headed in the direction Faye had run, and Ayla was alone with her thoughts, the steaming baths, the blood in her mouth. The memory of Faye’s mad eyes.
The day had been agonizingly long. All Ayla wanted to do after scrubbing the floors and desperately trying to scrub the image of Faye’s terrified face from her thoughts was to fall flat on a bed and never wake up. Her nose ached, and Nessa’s kerchief still sat in her pocket, like evidence.
Instead, she had been summoned to Crier’s chambers.
“Sing,” Crier commanded. They were in one of the smaller rooms off her bedchamber, and Ayla had just dumped a heavy, scalding pot of water into the freestanding bath. Her arms ached as she watched the water slosh along the slick white porcelain.
“My lady?” said Ayla.
“Malwin sang to me often,” said Crier, beginning to undo the buttons along her sleeve. “It was pleasing. I want you to sing for me as well.”
“I—I’m very unpracticed, my lady,” Ayla tried. It was true. She hadn’t sung in years, not outside her own head. The act of singing was so mired in memory: her mother’s voice singing lullabies and sea shanties, her father joining in, a duet like a nightingale accompanied by the deep, low rush of the ocean itself. Little Ayla and Storme laughing, singing along, dancing clumsily in front of the hearth fire. No. Ayla did not want to sing.
But she remembered a time in the market when visiting Automa officials were touring the town. Hesod had approached a man and a woman and told them to dance. The woman, so filled with fear, had burst into tears. But they’d complied. Because to refuse would mean a swift punishment. And so the man had swung his sobbing partner in circles, their movement unnatural and jerky, like dolls being whipped around by a cruel child. Ayla stared at Crier now; it seemed the daughter was just like the father.
“Then consider this your practice,” Crier said.
So, Ayla sang.
She sang an old folk song as she poured rose-scented oil into Crier’s bath, averting her gaze while her mistress undressed and sank into it, lathering soap along her legs. She sang as she brushed and oiled Crier’s dark hair afterward, felt its surprising softness, noticing, too, the smooth perfection of her Made skin, the way the collarbones formed an open V below her delicate chin.