and Automa parts of the city was stark, almost shocking. It caught in her mind like a fishhook, leaving her unable to think of anything else. Her Kind lived in luxury while humans starved at their feet.
She shivered as she stared out of the carriage window. They clopped over cobblestone streets and through the massive gates of the Old Palace in the heart of the city.
It had once belonged to a human king and now belonged to the Red Council. The palace itself was made of pale coral-colored stone, shining in the weak winter sunlight, almost too bright to look at. This was where Crier, like all other nobles, had been Designed. Where her father had worked with Designers and Makers to create her blueprints before they were sent to the Midwifery. When she was younger, she liked to imagine her father strolling through the city and the palace gardens and the long halls with the stained-glass ceilings, thinking about exactly what kind of daughter he wanted to create.
Now, thinking about her Design made Crier want to peel off her own Made skin. She couldn’t think Design without thinking Flaw.
The inside of the Councilroom was all white. The floors, the walls, the two long tables bisecting the room, even the fifty chairs around the tables—all of it was made from spotless snow-white marble, somehow paler and cleaner than the rest of the palace. The walls were lined with windows facing east; the morning sun streamed in, falling in bright squares on the tabletop. Dust motes floated in the air, tiny glowing pinpricks. The only color in the room—besides the red robes of the fifty Red Hands, who were all standing behind their respective chairs—came from a war flag. It was hanging on the northern wall, at the head of the table, torn and dirty, one edge burnt and shriveled.
Crier had seen paintings of this flag in this room. It was a relic. A moment in history, crystallized, real. This flag—a band of black on the bottom for the Iron Heart, a band of deep violet above, the color of Automa blood; four vertical white lines to represent the Four Pillars—was the original flag that General Eden had carried into battle during the War of Kinds. In some paintings, the war flag was new and glorious, flying high above the battlefield. In others, it was soaked in the red of human blood.
When Crier and Hesod entered the Councilroom, the other Red Hands bowed their heads in unison. Crier looked around the table, her eyes flicking over the familiar faces of the other Hands—fifty faces ranging from ancient to barely older than she was, fifty faces representing the various cities and regions of Rabu and the few inhabited portions of the Far North—all of them wearing the same solemn expression. She looked at them, taking them in . . . and then she looked again. And again.
Someone was missing. Where was Councilmember Reyka? She’d been hoping to see her here. To find out if she had indeed read Crier’s essays, and why she hadn’t responded.
And there was an extra face at the table. Kinok.
Crier had known he would be here. He had taken a separate caravan, pulled by his own monstrous gray horses from the west. Crier didn’t know why he always insisted on traveling separately, but she didn’t question it. They might be allies, and engaged, but she still didn’t want to spend three hours in a cramped, rattling box with him.
Now, though, she saw he’d taken advantage of arriving ahead of them. He had already chosen a seat at the table—the chair directly to the right of Hesod’s. In the Councilroom, those who sat closest to the head (to Crier’s father) were the most important, the most influential. And there was Kinok, the newcomer, the comparative youngling, standing like a proud, immovable statue behind the second most important chair in the room.
Were the other Hands actually all right with this?
And where was Reyka?
“Crier,” said Hesod, snapping her out of her thoughts. “Stay.”
Confused, Crier stayed where she was—just inside the door—as her father moved to take his spot at the head of the table. When he stood behind the white marble chair, the war flag framed him in black and violet.
There were no more chairs open. It took an embarrassingly long amount of time for Crier to realize that she was meant to stay posted in the doorway like this for the entire meeting, like a guard. Or a servant.
But I’m