whatever you must. Just—don’t tell anyone.”
“Of course,” he said. “We are bound. It’s you and me, Lady Crier.”
There was one last pluck of the harp, a high, thin note wavering in the air, and the waltz came to a close.
They let go of each other and stepped back. Crier’s hands fell to her sides, empty.
“You and me,” she said.
The Maker Thomas Wren built a child that fit the queen’s requirements: ten times stronger than the strongest human ever recorded. Ten times faster on foot. This child required no food, no sleep; it could hear whispered conversation from a distance of one thousand paces and see in the dark like a cat; its mind worked through even the most advanced mathematical and metaphysical equations at fifty times the speed of human experts; it never tired, never weakened, never succumbed to illness.
Wren named the child Kiera and delivered her to the capital. Queen Thea was so overcome with joy that she adopted Kiera as her daughter and heir before the sun set that same day. She gave Wren his promised gold and a seat at the right hand of the throne, and for the next seven days the queen sent caravans of bread and honey to the farthest reaches of Zulla, celebrating her newbuilt daughter.
Kiera.
Wren’s greatest creation had only one flaw: because she was not alchemical magick, not automaton, not flesh and bone, but a combination of all three, she was not perfectly self-sustaining. There is a law in this universe. One cannot create something from nothing. Because she was created for and bound to the queen, Kiera required the queen’s blood to survive.
—FROM THE BEGINNING OF THE AUTOMA ERA,
BY EOK OF FAMILY MEADOR, 2234610907, YEAR 4 AE
8
Far above her head, even through thick layers of stone, Ayla could hear the noise emanating from the grand ballroom: music, echoing conversation, the rumble of several hundred voices all talking at once. Up there it would be bright and loud and warm. Down here, in the underground corridors below the ballroom, it was dark, silent, freezing cold. The wall sconces, delicate baubles of blue glass with candles flickering within, gave off the very strange effect of being underwater.
Ayla moved quickly through the darkness, ears straining for any sounds of footsteps or voices as she made her way through the hallway. This was her chance to explore and see if she could find any information on Kinok. She’d encountered two guards on routine patrol, but all she had to do was murmur “Errand for the lady” and they let her pass. Lady Crier’s name was like a secret password. A skeleton key.
The engagement ceremony had already ended, making it easy for Ayla to slip away, but she had no idea how long Kinok would linger at his own party. All she could do was hope that he planned to stay in the ballroom all night, greeting his admirers. Whenever she passed a door, she tried the handle. All of them swung open immediately, offering views of nothing more than dark washing rooms or larders or once a wine cellar, until she began to doubt herself. Perhaps she’d seen wrong. What could Kinok possibly be doing housed down here? But then, finally: one of the doors didn’t open.
She dropped to her knees, squinting into the tiny gap between the door and the doorjamb. The lock wouldn’t be too much trouble. Her brother had taught her how to deal with locks. She reached into the pocket of her uniform, retrieved the hairpin she had stolen from Crier’s room earlier, and inserted it carefully into the keyhole. There was no real finesse to lockpicking, not for her. Her brother, Storme, though—he had been the real expert. He’d been able to pick the lock on their family’s cottage in ten seconds flat. Ayla’s style was more of the “jimmy the doorknob and rattle things around for a while and see what happens” variety. She bit her lip, poking the hairpin around inside the keyhole, and—click.
Then she took out a handkerchief—the one Nessa had lent her earlier, to clean her bloodied nose—and used it to prevent any trace of fingerprints or skin oil when she turned the doorknob, pushing the door open gently. She was still kneeling, and that was the only reason she saw it.
A hair, silently drifting to the flagstones from the door’s latch.
Her body went cold. It wasn’t an ordinary booby trap, the kind she and Storme used to prank each other with—a pitcher of water above