Crier's War

Kinok. The war hero. Lady Crier’s betrothed.

He’d quelled human rebellions and was responsible for the deaths of many. Still, when dealing with monsters, Ayla almost preferred that kind of frontal attack over Hesod’s insidious tyranny, the way he professed his appreciation for humankind with one breath and ordered massacres with the next. The way he made laws pretending they were for the “good” of humans. Like the one that banned any use of large storage spaces: places where grains or dry goods could be kept for the drought and cold seasons were explicitly banned under the guise of caring for human welfare. Hesod—and the Red Council—said it was because humans might hoard. They might let their food rot and spread disease. But the rebellion knew better. Rowan had told Ayla and Benjy that the Automae were worried that any large storage spaces could be used to meet in secret or hide weapons. And in their fear, they sentenced many families to almost starve to death during the winter seasons.

Self-defense was something Rowan had insisted on teaching them, whether it was with a knife or just their fists. Rowan was a strict but fair teacher. She’d make Ayla and Benjy practice a single move over and over again until their arms were aching, their muscles trembling, the
calluses on their palms split open and bleeding, but she always praised them afterward and rewarded them with a hot, hearty dinner. She rubbed ointment on their sore muscles, tended to the broken skin on their knuckles and palms.

One afternoon, she’d pulled Ayla aside after a particularly brutal round of training left Benjy sulking by the hearth fire, nursing a sprained wrist.

You’re stronger than him, Ayla, Rowan had said. You have to protect him.

At the time, Ayla hadn’t understood. Sure, she was quick and wily, but Benjy was physically much stronger. He won their fights eight out of ten times. What are you talking about? she’d asked. Just yesterday he practically tossed me across the room. My tailbone’s still hurting.

But you got up, said Rowan. You fought three more rounds. And here you are again today, even though you’re in pain. Whereas Benjy . . . She trailed off. I wasn’t talking about physical strength, Ayla. I was talking about resilience. I was talking about how you never, ever stop fighting, no matter how much it hurts.

The last page was the final draft of her Design, the one that the Makers would have used to actually create her. Unlike the previous drafts, this one had only Torras’s neat, blocky handwriting—none of her father’s scrawl. But that made sense. Torras was the Midwife, not her father. Crier gave a quick once-over to the ink drawings of her body, the cross section of her inner workings. She was more than ready to return these documents to Kinok and forget all about her ridiculous paranoia.

But there was something off about this page.

Crier held it up to the moonlight, frowning. The proportions of her body were all the same. None of the numbers had changed. What was—?

There. The cross section of her brain. A small portion of it was redrawn to the side in greater detail: the portion that represented her pillars. They were not physical elements of her body, but metaphysical elements of her mind, her intelligence, her personality. Each blueprint had shown four pillars in her mind, balancing out like scales.

Intellect. Organics. The two human pillars.

Calculation. Reason. The two Automa pillars.

In this blueprint—only this one—there were five. Inside the Design of Crier’s mind was another little column drawn in deep-blue ink. A fifth pillar.

Passion, it was labeled.

Passion.

Crier, the daughter of the sovereign, had five pillars instead of four. It was unheard of. Everyone knew Automae were created with two human pillars and two Automa pillars. Crier had never imagined there could be one with three human pillars. And that was what Passion was, without a doubt: human.

The papers were shaking in her hands. No. Her hands were shaking. Suddenly paranoid, Crier glanced around to make sure she was truly alone in this corner of the gardens. What if someone sees?

What would happen if the wrong person—if any person—discovered that the heir to the sovereign of Rabu had been sabotaged by her own Midwife? What would happen to her? She shuddered, thinking of Kinok’s words back in the forest during the Hunt. They were disposed of. Would she be disposed of? Or, no, no no no, what if someone tried to use her against her father? This was perfect blackmail.

The heir, the sovereign’s daughter, a mistake. It would bring shame to her family. Worse, it could cause the political scandal of the century. People could call for Hesod to step down as sovereign. They could use Crier to threaten her father. Through him, they could gain power over the entire Red Council. Over all of Rabu—and more.

Crier was Flawed. She was broken.

The thought shook her deeply. All this time she’d been treated like the jewel of the sovereign’s estate, a glorious creation, but no. She was an abomination.