Crier and Ayla shared a glance. “What do you mean?” Crier asked.

Instead of answering, Dinara reached under the collar of her shirt and drew out a thick iron chain. There was a battered iron pendant dangling from the end of it.

A compass.

Beside her, Ayla sucked in a breath.

“What?” Crier asked. “What is it?” But even as the words left her lips, she remembered. She had seen something like this before. In that same council meeting. Kinok had taken it out and held it up, letting it swing from his fingers like a hypnotist’s pendulum, and the Red Hands had indeed seemed hypnotized. The presence of the compass had made them sit up straighter, stare at Kinok with wariness, jealousy, awe.

“This is an Iron Compass,” said Dinara with a sharp, wicked grin. “We don’t need an Automa’s senses to help us find the Iron Heart, my lady. This thing will lead us right to it.”

Do you think it’s as dangerous as everyone says? The Heart?

They say it’s the Heart of a great monster. A beast the size of a mountain. They say it’s a living thing and that’s why the leeches guard it so heavily: they don’t want anyone hunting it. But that means it’s vulnerable, right? They wouldn’t guard it if it wasn’t vulnerable. Killable. Everyone I’ve asked says it’s in a different place—always somewhere in the Western Mountains, of course, but nobody knows which mountain, and that range stretches for hundreds of leagues. It would be like trying to find one specific blade of grass in all the golden hills of Varn. One specific gem in all the mines. Madness. But maybe I’m mad.

If they don’t have heartstone, they don’t have anything. We know that. How it is made? The monster? The mountains? Is it really just a gem they’re mining? I think it can’t be that simple. It can’t be that. I don’t think there’s anything natural about that stone. I don’t think it grows from this world. Not something as terrible as that. Is it Made, like them?

I want to know.

Maybe I’m mad.

If you get this, R, don’t try to stop me. It’s too late.

—FROM A CODED LETTER INTERCEPTED BY AUTOMA SOLDIERS, CIRCA YEAR 30 AE

15

That night, Ayla discovered why the rebels had been camping out in the heartstone keep for three days instead of heading directly to the Iron Heart. They were making weapons. Ayla first heard the strange noises coming from beneath the floorboards as she sat in a circle with Crier, Dinara, and a few others, including Fen—who seemed to have made glaring at Crier his top priority, which meant Ayla had made glaring at Fen her top priority—eating an evening meal of cured fish and hard brown bread. A flask of brandy was passed around. Ayla sniffed it, took a hesitant sip, and shuddered—the only alcohols she’d ever liked were honey mead and watered-down wine, and the brandy was so much worse, somehow sour and bitter and fiery all at once. It tasted how lye smelled. She passed the flask off to the man beside her and caught Crier giving her an amused look. Ayla made a face at her, sticking her tongue out like a child, and the amusement deepened.