She turned. “No,” she said, thinking quickly. Any of these guests might be well-connected enough to have heard about her, the runaway servant, the would-be assassin. “I am the daughter of . . . Lord Thom, of the iron mines.”

The Automa cocked their head. They were older than Ayla, though it was impossible to tell how much older. Their skin was a rich, deep brown, their hair a lighter gold-shot brown, as was common in Varn. “You look Rabunian,” they said.

Ayla just shrugged.

“What is your name, human?” the Automa asked.

“Clara.” Her mother’s name on her tongue felt at once familiar and foreign. A word in a dead language. “And you?”

“Wender.” They leaned forward. Their fine pearl-studded shirt was sleeveless, and the candlelight caught on the corded muscles in their bare arms. “Would you like to dance?”

Ayla hesitated.

“I have no interest in courting you,” Wender clarified, looking amused. “I simply wish to avoid potential conversation with . . . everyone. If you will not dance with me, I might simply find a place to hide away until the night ends.”

Despite herself, Ayla bit back a smile. “All right, then,” she said, getting to her feet. “I’ve never heard a better reason to dance.”

Wender led her away from the banquet table and into the middle of the courtyard, where other dancing couples turned slowly to the music of the harp. A gentle song, like a fall of light rain. Ayla glanced up, and sure enough: she could see a few glittering Made butterflies high above the crowd, floating like sparks in the night air. When she looked down again, a shimmer of light, low to the flagstones, caught her eye. She squinted, unsure what she was looking at. Some sort of . . . moving mirror?

Then the crowd parted, or rather the crowd was parted, because the moving mirror was not a moving mirror at all but a peacock. One Made entirely out of colored glass. It strutted through the crowd on spindly glass legs, a massive train of green glass tailfeathers dragging behind it with a horrible scraping noise. Glass on stone. Its body and neck were lapis lazuli blue, its beady little eyes like chips of obsidian. Its beak was pure gold.

Stars and skies, Ayla thought, only just barely managing not to gape at it. She’d never seen a Made object like this. Only ever trinkets, and her locket, nothing bigger than her palm. Well, until the Made butterflies. The sovereign had never been one for displays like this. But here . . .

“Clara?” said Wender.

“Sorry,” she murmured, and turned away from the peacock, which continued its slow strut through the crowd. She let Wender put their hands on her waist, her own hands on their strong shoulders. Their Made skin was warm beneath her touch.

“The only reason to attend these things is the gossip,” Wender mused, eyes on the crowd. They led Ayla in slow, lazy circles, not quite a waltz, mostly just an organized shifting. “But everyone’s been discussing the Rabunian scandal for days, and tonight is no different.”