around at what she could see of the other Hands’ faces. Mar, Shen, Shasta, Paradem, Laone . . . all faces she had been looking up into since she was newbuilt. Was she finally about to join them, after so many years? As daughter of the sovereign, she was the obvious choice. Anticipation hummed beneath her skin, even though she was still so worried about Reyka. If she became one of the Hands, finding Reyka would be the first thing she would fight for.
“All in favor, say aye,” her father said.
The Red Hands waited. Crier held her breath.
“For the unoccupied chair of Councilmember Reyka,” said Hesod, “I nominate Scyre Kinok of the Western Mountains.”
Kinok.
Of course.
The hurt that curdled in Crier’s belly was almost unbearable—that it didn’t seem to have even occurred to her father to think first of her.
But this was all part of his strategy, wasn’t it? Offering Kinok a position on the council would provide—what had he said? Stability. Access. Power. It was a gesture not just to Kinok but to all supporters of ARM. It said you are welcome among us, and we are all on the same side. It said let’s work together. It also said we are watching you.
A sinister thought: What if her father, or Kinok himself, had had a hand in Reyka’s disappearance? The timing of it seemed all too convenient. A spot available, just now, as Kinok’s movement was on the rise and as Hesod was seeking ways to reintegrate his dissenters.
She tried to banish the dark suspicion, but it lingered like a foul smell.
Crier felt herself go numb as one by one, everyone in the room—with the exception of Mar and Paradem—said aye. The voices echoed around the marble room, a ripple of sound. Crier heard it, and understood it, and yet could not believe it, could not recover from it.
“It is settled, then,” said her father. “Councilmember Kinok—”
And that was the last thing Crier heard. Her head was filled with wordless, rushing noise, like the ocean, or like the first roll of rain in a thunderstorm. She stood there, swaying like a boat unmoored. Kinok had taken Councilmember Reyka’s seat. Had taken her seat. Kinok was the new Red Hand. Kinok was on the council, and she was not. She was finally in the marble room, and yet she had never been further away.
In that moment, Crier realized it was never going to happen. Her father would never take her seriously. No matter what she did. He’d literally created her to be his heir, and still she was not good enough.
She was never, ever going to be on the council.
She would never have a say in her nation’s future.
There was only one thing Queen Thea loved even half as much as her child Kiera, and that was the queen’s pet songbird. It had been gifted to her by the king of Tarreen, and as such it was a breed of bird that could not be found outside the jungles of the south. The bird’s feathers were a deep blue—the color of lapis lazuli, the queen often said—and it sang at dawn and dusk in a lovely, trilling voice, perched in its golden cage in the eastern solarium, and the queen sat beside it and watched, and listened.
Every day the Queen repeated this ritual. Dawn and dusk.
Until one morning, when she entered the solarium and found little Kiera eating the songbird alive, its bones crudely angled in her jaw, feathers drifting from her fingers to the floor like ribbons of perfect sky.
Later, Queen Thea informed the court that Kiera had done nothing wrong. It was the queen’s fault, she said, for not adequately educating her child. It was just a mistake, she said; there are some animals that humans eat, and some they do not. Kiera had been, quite naturally, confused. Now she was not.
But it was this handmaiden who cleaned the blood and feathers and bone shards from the floor of the eastern solarium. And this handmaiden who saw doubt in the Queen’s eyes from that day onward. How it grew and festered.
—FROM THE PERSONAL RECORDS OF AMES, HANDMAIDEN QUEEN THEA OF ZULLA, E. 900, Y. 9
10
Ayla spent the day of the Reaper’s Moon curled up in her cot, paralyzed with guilt. She almost wished that Crier hadn’t gone to the capital. She almost wished that she’d been forced to report to the lady’s chambers and do the usual litany of mindless things: preparing Crier’s bath, brushing her long dark