“So it’s a knitting machine?” Trent said. “Luff”—
“And an excellent one at that,” said the quartermaster, petting the station’s tenant. It spoke in tones that pitched lower than the other droids and appeared more mech than the rest of them. Luffy responded to him, then switched to Plainari. “How about you make our friends a scarf.” He pointed at Trent. “Do you know who that is?”
Alpha looked at Trent, then at his master again and shook his head.
“He is a special friend. Would you like to give him a special gift?”
The little guy nodded.
“Hop to it, my boy,” Luffy said. He walked back to Trent and Grenn.
Alpha turned the knob to the ‘Scarf’ setting and disappeared into the pedal mechanism. The machine jostled as it approached ‘.200000,’ but settled once it did.
Luff addressed Cobblewell, who flitted dutifully around his head. “Something to have him work out.”
Alpha reappeared and checked the gauge for himself before he floated up to the needles and watched them go.
Luffy leaned toward Trent, lowered his voice to answer unasked questions. “He is a little slow. He cannot upgrade himself because he cannot comprehend his own architecture.” Melancholy painted the quartermaster’s gaze as he looked upon the runt. “So I give him this work. It is not his fault, and he is my creation, one of the first of my brood. I cannot bring myself to abandon him.”
“Couldn’t you make your own scarves?” said Trent.
“I could, and I could make them well. But I cannot betray myself like that, Master Russell.”
The machine ran whisper-quiet, and the needles, once they got going, set into a steady beat. Alpha busied himself, darting between the columns, setting a gear in place when it popped out, untangling yarn before it reached the needles. A small marvel came to Trent at the singular purpose the knitting machine followed—made for one thing, and even though it didn’t do it well, it did it all the same.
Grenn’s device buzzed against his leg. As he tapped across the screen, Xenia landed on it and fluttered her wings. It took him a moment to grasp what she wanted. “You—you wanna hold it for me?”
Xenia intoned a response and nodded.
Grenn looked to Luffy, who shrugged. Xenia pulled the communicator from Grenn’s hand and held it in front of his face, allowing him hands-free use. “That’s pretty fantastic.” He walked around the room in test, and Xenia flew with him.
“She seems to have taken a liking to you, sir Grenn,” Luff said as Alpha’s machine neared the completion of its fifth foot. A pair of sheers cut the fiber, and the needles pushed the twine’s end through a final stitch.
Alpha pulled it tight to bind it off and grabbed the scarf off the columns. The mech got just out of arm’s reach to Trent when he stopped.
“Go on, my boy,” Luff said. “Give it to him.”
The droid got close enough for Trent to grab the scarf, then he scuttled away.
“Thank you,” said Trent.
“Alfie,” Luffy said when Alpha didn’t respond.
Alpha’s gaze flicked between Trent and the quartermaster. Though he said nothing, the little mech bowed, then he flew to Luffy and landed on his master’s right hand. The quartermaster sang a few notes while Alpha nuzzled against him.
“Master Russell,” said Luffy when Alpha flew back to his station, “I am sorry I do not have more to show you, and what I did is, uh, not ready yet. But you did get a scarf out of it.” A wistful smile reached the quartermaster’s eyes.
“And it’s a good scarf,” Trent said. The machine used an unrecognizable pattern, at least to Trent in his cursory look-over, and missed a stitch every few rows. “My wife used to knit. Really good with her hands.” He looked at Alpha, who watched him. “This is good as any of ‘em.”
The droid didn’t react, just went back to his work.
But Luffy peered at him, and Trent felt the true-sight pierce him for the first time; he felt every part Russell Hollowman that he hadn’t since he left. “This is kind of you to say,” Luff said. He stared at the ground for a second before he continued.
“People, Master Russell, become covered in the unspeakable pollution of their lives. Morals and logic fail when they most need them, and those things color a person’s soul in manners undetectable as they give way, inch by inch. I know you are unsure of yourself, Grand Master. I can see it painted across your spirit. Despite your resoluteness, you walk with a hesitant heart—no doubt, in part, why you left. But when the core of a person remains pure, when they have an absolute guiding principle on which they can measure every decision in their lives, when that remains constant, they can scour all that blight away without losing who they are.
“To never waver is of the gods, so that leaves us somewhere in the middle; to be human, we must make mistakes. The two exist not at odds, but in harmony, in a tension that creates synthesis. And Master Russell, I assure you, you have found yours. It is good to see you didn’t lose yourself. Not really. You must just see it for your own.”
A small jolt of adrenaline buzzed Trent. He often found himself without reply when someone spoke to him with earnest kindness, but he’d made a habit of telling people in those times what he said to Luffy. “Your words honor me. Thank you, sir.”
Luffy bowed his head. “Cobblewell.” He spoke with his apprentice as he headed for the inner office’s door. Most of the bots had returned to their stations. One worked on a necklace that smoked and caused the air above it to shimmer. The mech scuttled about as small fires cindered around its station, putting them out as fast as the next one started.
Cobblewell stayed inside the lab when they crossed its threshold to the comparative chaos outside, and they made their way again through the maze.
“Xenia,” Luff said, her name alone a mild chide as she accompanied Grenn toward the exit. The droid, though jovial with her new friend, sagged in the air when she looked to her master. “What is this? You wish to leave me?”
She looked between Grenn and Luffy. Though sheepish, she nodded and chanted a response.
The quartermaster smiled. “My dear girl, who would I be to stop a daughter of mine from pursuing her life? Nothing could give me more joy than seeing your own. If you would like to accompany him, you go with my blessing. But it is not mine you need.”
She turned to Grenn.
“I mean, if you want,” he said. “Yeah.”
Her response, as she flew in a loop through the air over Grenn’s hair, rang from her like a bell, and she beat her head into Grenn’s chest a few times before settling again in front of his face.
“Okay,” said Grenn. He felt his sternum. “Easy.”
“So wonderful, sir Grenn,” Luff said, calling after the younger man. “A tip on the language.”
Grenn waited for the quartermaster’s advice.
“It’s all in the whistles.” Luffy whistled a note that hung on the air for several seconds after he made it.
Grenn pursed his lips, and an approximation of a whistle came from his lips, though nothing as clean as Luffy’s. Xenia giggled and whistled at Luffy’s tone. Hers, too, played for a while.
“Laugh it up,” Grenn said, and he made for the exit, where Xenia lifted a short-sword for him. Grenn buckled it around his hips. “Show me something else.”
“You know, Master Russell, I’m surprised you have no cybernetics,” Luffy said while they hung back. “They have become vogue in your missing time. I could show you one or two things if you’d like. Later, of course.”
“No need for ‘em, Luff. Though yours—they’re easy to miss.”
“Easy to miss what is not there.”
“Then perhaps you could help me with somethin else I may have missed.” Trent turned to fully face him. “The demon gettin inside. Grenn told me you might know how it happened.”
“Little charmer, aren’t you?” Grenn said, halfway across the room.
Luffy covered his mouth with his right hand and sighed.
“Alas, Master Russell, I do not always have the answers you seek. Many hypotheses, each of them as ghastly as the next for differing reasons.”
Trent shrugged. “Just the one you think’s most likely.”
Luffy squinted. Light danced behind his eyes, as though manifest calculations burned just behind them. “If you will trust me, I can assure you nobody within Karhaal’s walls called that thing to us, but you must heed my next words if nothing else. There is no easy way to tell you this, and I have kept my thoughts to myself for the time—excepting the king, but even he wrote off my feelings as nothing more than hunches.”
As though the workers around them could detect their master’s mood, the pandemonium of his workshop quieted.
“In your time gone, a darkness has wheedled itself into the world. I do not know how, but someone—perhaps this new master?—has manifested their agents throughout Coroth. Believe me, I have searched for them, but it is as though one of the gods machinates to obscure my sight, for I cannot see them. But I assure you, I have detected them. I know it. During the world’s Peace they have infiltrated some of the highest echelons of our government. Arnin. Even the Order, I have no doubt.”
“Without anyone knowing?” Trent said. “That’s a feat.”
“Believe me, Master Russell, I know how crazy it sounds. I had hoped I would have proof before I made anyone else aware of my inclinations, but you have returned, and that means events will quickly set in motion that could mean our end. It may already be too late to stop their plans. That is a bleak outlook, I know, but no one—no one—can comprehend how deep their conspiracy goes.”
The quartermaster headed away. “Though I caution you to take what I say with a skepticism, Master Russell. Were I a demonic agent, I would have a vested interest in being the one to make you aware of this. And being the person in charge of Karhaal’s defenses, I know I am—suspect—thanks to the day’s events.”
He ported to a theater three stories above and leaned over a work station. “I assure you, my urlans and I will do everything we can to make sure a breach does not happen within the city again.” His voice somehow still carried over the workshop’s din to reach Trent. “I apologize, Grand Master, I will be at your service, or anyone else’s, in a couple hours. Right now, I need distraction.” He addressed the urlan next to him. “Tell me about that jailbreak.”
Trent watched the quartermaster for another quarter-minute, then he followed the man’s advice and left him to his work.
1
Could it be the Undertaker? Trent thought while he and Grenn headed toward the Spoke. And who at Arnin—surely not the queen. Someone in the electorate?
Twilight had swept across the sky. Clouds hovered thirty feet overhead, coughing a silky haze across the city that burnished the lights’ glow and made shadows of its people.
“And you’ll get even faster at predicting?” Grenn asked.
Xenia chirped.
Grenn raised his hands in front of his screen. “Devnil, look, no hands.”
“Yeah, great,” said a Karlian Grenn’s age from the call’s other side. His hair burned raucous-red. “We’re all meeting in Vqenna tonight, getting outta the holy place. Try to take our minds off—what happened. You’re coming?”
Grenn frowned. “Should be able to make it. Got something to do first, though.”
“Kay, and if you can, try to skirt the pretender. I’ve heard you and he are friendly.”
“He’s right here with me, Dev.” Grenn turned the screen to bring Trent in frame. “You can speak with him yourself.”
“Master Hollowman,” said Dev. “So good to see you.”
“I hope you don’t mind my being a fucking asshole.”
“I—I—I don’t mean you’re pretending to be who you say you are, sir. You’re just pretending to be someone else right now”—Dev looked at Grenn and said the next word as an accusation—“apparently.”
“Who found him again?” Grenn said. “You can tell everyone I said you’re welcome.”
“Whatever. So Vqenna, Third Street, first removal. Be there.” Before Grenn responded, Devnil cut off the communication, and the device returned to a menu.
“Friendly guy,” said Trent.
“Buddy, come on. Almost no one wants to believe you are who you say you are. It’s nothing against you.”
Trent huffed. “Sure. How’s that thing working?” The tablet had somehow gained a connection.
“Karhaal intranet.” Grenn walked toward a street that fed off the Spoke to the northwest.
“We’ve got that now?” Trent walked after Grenn, who didn’t respond to his question. “Where are ya heading? The guy said Third Street.”
“I’m not going straight there.”
“Goddess alive, Grenn, this isn’t more girls, is it?”
“Give me some credit. I don’t take part with people from the Order, not after one almost got me expelled for—fuck, it’s not important.”
“Sounds like you deserved it. Knowin you.”
“I wouldn’t have agreed with you at the time,” Grenn said, “but you’re not wrong.”
Chill stung Trent’s face and dried his eyes. He wrapped Alpha’s scarf around his neck and tucked it into his armor. An aimless tune he hummed kept trying to round back to On a Dragon’s Wing. They turned onto a side street that led to a removal, where the buildings hung over the street five stories above them.
“Messaging,” Grenn said, and Xenia brought up the proper application. “Topography. Analytics. Liscerring Daily.” With each command, the faerie-mech started a different program. “Huh.”
Xenia whistled.
“Careful with him,” said Trent. “He’s just tryin to get ya on his good side. Don’t those things have voice commands built in anyway?”
“Yeah, but she’s doing this,” Grenn said, impressed.
The mech chirped and moved a few feet before she noticed Grenn had stopped in front of a building, the windows of which threw eerie glows into the fog. Its eve cast a deep shadow on its door.
Grenn held out his hand, and Xenia dropped his device. “Stay here with Trent.”
“Nuhn?” Xenia intoned.
“I know,” said Grenn, “but I’ll be right back.”
“Grenn,” Trent said.
The younger Karlian turned halfway, a pace and a half from the establishment’s door. His shirt clung to his body from the mist. “You have your secrets, I’m sure too many to count. This is just one of mine.”
Trent didn’t protest, and Grenn knocked a pattern that lasted too long for Trent to commit to memory. After the last beat, fifteen seconds passed before the door opened on a hinge. A sliver of platinum light pierced into the alcove’s darkness.
“If I’m not out in five minutes,” Grenn said, “just assume I got held up and go on without me.” He pushed the door enough to slip inside.
Before he disappeared behind it, Trent asked, “In a good way or bad?”
Grenn chewed his lip. “Guess I’ll see.” The door closed behind him.
The longer Trent stayed in Karhaal, the more disconnected he became from the city he once called home and life. His influence had evaporated, and now institutions—whatever clientele this one served—existed within Karhaal’s hallowed walls.
A voice wailed from a story above. It made him think of the brief time he and Lillie had lived behind a bordello, and how the night’s random sounds would turn one or both to the other. The sound now reminded him of his solitude and the ill of the last twenty years, how he’d moved from a life for which he’d fought and so many had died to one where a casual vacancy took from him the only thing that had kept him fighting. Then the world moved on to a state that felt every bit like a waking dream, and he’d become someone simply alive. No matter how hard he tried to push backwards, even an inch, his life marched inexorably in a bearing he didn’t want to go.
Standing alone in the middle of a Karhaalian street felt about right, considering it all, and as the seconds crep
t by on his watch, he wondered if this too would come to pass: Grenn disappearing with nary a word, that everyone in his life he valued would leave him. The demon attack that afternoon hadn’t impressed upon him the loss he’d feel in the event of Grenn’s death, but being unable to talk to him, the only familiarity that bridged his old life to his new, filled Trent with bathetic sorrow, a skittish disquiet that made him want to fix everything now, because later would be too late.
At three seconds past five minutes, the door opened. Xenia chirped when Grenn stepped from within. No one accompanied him. His eyes had become bloodshot, and he let his head rest against the exposed bricked next to the door. Grim gloom surrounded him.
Xenia purred and perched on Grenn’s shoulder.
Conscious relief toned Trent’s judgment. He didn’t need to know what the young man had done—if he’d done anything. “Ya good?”
“Probably.”
Trent detected the slightest warble on Grenn’s voice, but that could have been his imagination trying to paint a picture he couldn’t see. He clapped Grenn on the shoulder, and after the young man collected himself, they headed for Third Street.
On its removal lay a Vqennan night district. An onlooker couldn’t have missed it for all the Priests and Karlians gathered there—Trent hadn’t seen so many of the Order in one place since the War’s height.
What garnered attraction sat tucked in the removal’s corner. The Withering Ox. A bar of the same name had existed elsewhere in Vqenna before, and the inside oozed with familiarity. A young woman pushed a quarter-piece into the slot of an old electric jukebox that stood next to the entrance.
She looked to her table, a booth on the pub’s front side, where two women and a man watched her. “It works!”
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