“That’s right,” she said to the person on the cot. Focus, focus, don’t panic. “You’re going to be okay. Please open your eyes.”

“Hook?” they whispered.

Ayla frowned, scanning their body. She didn’t see any hooks. “Please open your eyes,” she said again, not sure what else to do. “Please.”

“Ayla,” Crier said suddenly. “The door—”

—opened.

“I’ve been looking for you two everywhere,” said a familiar voice behind Ayla.

Ayla’s heart hit the floor. She spun around, going for her knife, only to get a face full of—something, a cloud of dust, a yellowish haze obscuring her vision. Her head was swimming again, ten times worse than before. The floor was tilting, and the walls, the room balancing itself like a set of scales, tipping back and forth in a nauseating rhythm.

The last thing Ayla saw was a pair of eyes, glinting like a cat’s in the flickering red light.

Kinok had found them.

It was determined, then, that the single greatest Flaw of Humankind was this “Emotion.” If humans were not so ruled by emotion—ruled, in their own words, by the “heart” instead of the mind—if Emotion were removed from the equation—then Intellect could fill the void left behind; Intellect, the foundation of all scientific, political, and cultural achievement and advancement. The four Pillars of the human soul, the prima materia, are Intellect, Organics, Passion, and Emotion (or, by some accounts, Intuition) and it was decided by the Makers—after months of debate—that the latter two Pillars must, like diseased limbs, be amputated for the good of the body. Only Intellect and Organics would remain.

In the place of Passion and Intuition, the Makers chose two traits much more inclined to result in the progress of Automakind, the progress of a unified society, all minds working toward the same glorious future, unhindered by the fog of Emotion. The Four Pillars that would comprise the prima materia of the Automae would then be: Intellect, Organics, Calculation, and Reason. It was decided. And it was so.

—FROM ON THE FORMATION OF THE FOUR PILLARS, BY ELIRA OF FAMILY NESTON, 782510832, YEAR 5 AE

16

Crier came to first, and spent the next hour listening to Ayla’s heartbeat.

They were in some sort of cell, a small room carved directly into the mountain, stone floor and rough stone walls, a single arrow-slit window near the ceiling providing just enough low, reddish light to discern Ayla’s features. Both of them were bound to the wall, wrists manacled in iron cuffs thick enough to hold an Automa. Crier on one side of the cell, Ayla on the other, a person-length between them. Enough space that Crier could not reach Ayla, even pulling the chains to their limit.

So she listened to Ayla’s heartbeat.

Like the rest of the Iron Heart, the air smelled of smoke and copper. It was cloying, eye-watering; they couldn’t be too far from the forge. Ayla’s heartbeat was slow and even. Crier closed her eyes, concentrating on it, letting everything else fall away. She was reminded of that morning in the woods, months ago, her Hunt. Standing still beneath a high ceiling of dead, rustling leaves, a rabbit’s burrow somewhere beneath her feet. Four tiny heartbeats. Back then, the world had smelled of dirt and green things, firs, oncoming winter, and Crier had been Sovereign Hesod’s daughter, Kinok’s fiancée. Back then, the air was cold and clear, and she’d been suffocating.