“Is there any news?” I ask quietly. “About Matthias?”
Rudy swallows, shaking his head. “No.”
A door opens to my left and Karis steps out. I’ve seen anger and fire and sadness from her, but never defeat. It hurts to see her like that, as if a piece of what makes her herself has broken. She isn’t as strong as she sometimes wants people to think. I want to be there for her, to prove I’ve grown. Only I don’t know what to say.
Rudy bows his head. “I’m sorry,” he murmurs.
“Right.” Karis glances away, fiddling with the edge of her shirtsleeve. She must have found a shift in her room, because she isn’t wearing her clothes from the Streak anymore. There are still splotches of dirt on her skin, haphazard, as if she didn’t care enough to clean it all off. “Is that what you came to tell us?”
“No. Calantha wanted me to come.” Rudy turns to me. “You can probably tell from my seal, but I’m a scholar. A good one, or so I’ve been told. Calantha thought that perhaps your runes might give us some clue as to why you were...born. She wondered if perhaps you would be all right with picking up your tome and letting me...” He trails off.
“Study me?” I ask.
Rudy grimaces. “Yes.”
If someone else had asked, it would have bothered me. To be studied. I can’t be angry at Rudy, though, not when he’s so obviously grieving. Besides, if it can help us take down the magistrate, perhaps without me fighting, I’ll do it.
I nod.
Only Karis shakes her head. “What does it matter? Why do you keep fighting for all this when Matthias is gone? Don’t you regret what happened?”
Rudy looks at her, such bright pain in his eyes that she drops her head.
“Do I regret it?” Rudy’s voice is soft but not timid. “I knew how Matthias already suffered in that place. I knew better than anyone because he told me, gritted it out as I held him when he couldn’t sleep. He would shake like he was falling apart and I couldn’t stop it.”
“Don’t...” Karis whispers, but Rudy keeps going.
“I knew that, and I still watched him as he ran toward those soldiers, knowing what they would do to him. Knowing just as surely that I had to leave him, because it was what he wanted and what he asked of me. I regret what I did every moment of every day.”
Karis’s shoulders tremble and I stand there, ill, not knowing what to say, for either of them.
She looks up and I can’t distinguish the plea from the pain in face. “Then why? Why do you still fight for that woman’s cause when she took him from you?”
Rudy watches her, tired and solemn, but hopeful. “Because Matthias believed in that cause. Because when I fight for this rebellion, I’m still fighting for him, for the world he wanted. I’ll always believe that.”
Karis is silent, searching Rudy’s face. Then she whispers the last words I ever expected to hear from her. “All right.”
* * *
Rudy gives us clothes to change into: Scriptorium chitons. Karis looks as uncomfortable back in her acolyte chiton as I feel, though at least the himation they gave me is long enough to cover most of my runes.
He leads us to a small study that borders the courtyard. It looks as if a miniature storm has passed through. Books and papers are strewn about everywhere: on the desk, spilling from the shelves, littering the floor.
Rudy flushes. “Sorry, this is my study. I haven’t had time to clean up lately...” He bustles about, grabbing piles of papers and stuffing them back into the bookshelves, only for them to cascade out again.
I help him, piling a stack of scrolls onto the nearby desk. There’s a small pottery shard there, carefully kept free of the mess by the wooden stand it sits on. Bold figures painted in black stand out against the red clay of the pottery. It’s an automaton and a girl.
In my father’s villa I saw books and jars and tapestries depicting automatons. In all of them, the automatons were massive and set in violent poses, commanded by whoever was depicted with them. This one is different. The automaton isn’t that large, perhaps only a few heads taller than I am. The girl sits on its shoulder, and its hand cradles her. There is nothing threatening about that pose.
Beside me, Rudy hauls up another sheaf of papers. He pauses. “That was found in an archeological dig north of the city.” He carefully runs his finger over its edge. “Fascinating, isn’t it? I’ve never seen an automaton depicted like that before.”
“I haven’t either,” I whisper. My father had once thought that perhaps automatons weren’t always used as weapons, that perhaps Eratian runes were once used more like the runes from Zara’s or Kocha’s home countries. I’ve never seen the smallest scrap of evidence to prove that.
At least not up until now.
Rudy picks up the shard and holds it out to me. “Here.”
I shake my head, even though I do want to take it. I want to hold something like that in my hands. “You don’t need—”
“Take it,” he says, putting it in my hand. “You have more right to it than I do.”
I look down and feel a tug in my chest. “Thank you,” I murmur.
Rudy turns away and manages to clear a space. I gently tuck the shard into my belt pouch and then step forward. I unpin my chiton enough to bare my chest, trying to relax.
“May I?” Rudy asks.
I nod.
Rudy circles around me, studying my runes much like Zara and Finn had. I wonder if this feeling, as if I’m an object on display, is going to be a permanent fixture in my life.
“Fascinating,” he murmurs. “The depths of these runes are actually deeper than on a normal automaton and they...” He stops, looking horrified. “I—I’m sorry, I didn’t mean...”
“It’s all right. I know I’m not normal.” The world disabused me of that notion a long time ago.
Rudy glances at the tome in my hands. “I don’t suppose... Could I see a rune in action, just once?”
I look down at my tome myself. I know there will be more runes there, from when Zara controlled me. I’ve been hoping no more would ever be added. Each is a reminder of a feeling that pains me. Only Rudy is asking for my permission. It would be my choice. Surely there’s something different about that.
I hold the tome out to Karis.
She startles, panic flashing through her eyes, and I wonder what she’s remembering. Perhaps our first meeting. When she used my tome. When I lashed out at her. Does that moment haunt her as it haunts me?
“Alix,” she says. “I would never—”
“I trust you, Karis.”
They’re words that I have never said, not even to my father. They’re true, though. Karis wouldn’t hurt me. I know her.
She nods and hesitantly takes the tome, and for the very first time, as it leaves my hands, I’m not scared.
Karis opens my tome to a new page. She takes a reed pen from the desk, dipping it into its ink pot. “Um, what should I write?”
“How about reach?” That seems safe.
She nods and bows her head, a strand of her hair falling onto the page. The rune on my right arm flares and I find it stretching forward. It’s as disconcerting as always. I shake out my arm and Karis quickly gives my tome back to me.
Rudy scribbles madly on a piece of parchment. “So, it’s an instant reaction,” he mutters. “I thought there might be some delay...”
“Rudy,” Karis says after a few moments, when it’s clear he’s lost in his work. “You said something yesterday about a seal. That it was what you and Matthias stole.”
Rudy stills, bent over the parchment, and guilt takes over his face, as if for a moment he forgot what happened. “Yes.” He crosses to a bookcase, where a small, ornamental chest sits. He opens it and pulls out a bronze seal.
“This is what we stole that night.”
It’s a larger seal, about the size of my tw
o palms cupped together, and unlock is scrawled into its surface.
“We found something like that,” Karis says, pulling the stop seal from her belt pocket. “It froze Alix’s arm when he touched it.”
Rudy nods. “The magistrate has been developing them. We’ve recovered over a dozen. Without Script ink, he can’t have more tomes made, so he’s been experimenting with seeing if he can use these seals in their place.”
I rub my arm. “The stop seal certainly worked.”
“It might have worked on you,” Rudy says, “but none of the others have so far. The wake runes don’t seem to be strong enough to reanimate an automaton, and without that, the other seals have nothing to work with.”
“But what was so special about this seal?” Karis asks. “Why did my brother risk his life for it?”
“The unlock rune,” Rudy says.
I don’t understand. Judging from the confusion on Karis’s face, neither does she.
“So?” I finally ask.
“Well, why would they need a rune like that? Stop I can understand, because all automatons have stop runes. It would be useful. But, Alix, you’re the only automaton I know of who has the ability to undo lock runes. Scriptmasters use lock runes in the first place because only they can unlock them. It wouldn’t make sense for them to create a seal so that anyone could undo their locks. Which means we have to assume there’s something out there that not even the Scriptmasters can get open. That they need, I don’t know, some sort of key to open, like this seal. And there’s something else odd about this rune.” He runs his fingers over it. “All unlock runes are structured off of the same base rune, with different strokes added on top. But look here.”
I lean forward, studying the rune, but I don’t understand what Rudy is hinting at. Reaching out, I brush my fingers across it and a melody floats through my head, new and yet familiar.
“The base rune,” I breathe. “It has an extra stroke.”
“Exactly,” Rudy says. “I work here in the City of Scholars and even I don’t know a single Scriptmaster who has the knowledge to modify a base rune. It just isn’t done. But this extra stroke clearly...” He stops, his gaze snapping back to me.
“What?” I ask.
“This rune. Your rune...” He rushes over to me. “They’re the same. You don’t have just any unlock rune, you have this one.”
I twist so that I can see. He’s right. The rune on the seal and on me are identical.
“That means that whatever they want to unlock, whatever the magistrate wants to unlock, you already can, Alix,” Karis says slowly. “That could be why he wants you.”
I struggle to sort back through my memories. Is that what I’ve been missing this whole time? Is that what my father wanted me to do? Perhaps that means if I unlock whatever this is, I’ll feel a little more complete. I’ll have done whatever it is that I’m supposed to do.
Only, isn’t that what the magistrate wants? Surely my father wouldn’t have wanted the same as that man. I’m missing something here.
“There have been rumors, too,” Rudy says quietly, glancing at the door, as if afraid of being overheard. “About something called the Automaton Heart.”
That name again. Karis and I look at each other.
Rudy frowns. “What is it?”
Last night, Karis didn’t seem to want to be completely open with Calantha. But I’m sure Rudy’s safe. “Back on the Scriptorium on Tallis,” I say, “we sneaked into their Hall of Records and I found some information on my father. It spoke of something called the Automaton Heart. My father was the one who caused it to stop.” I hesitate, then add, “I was the one who caused it to stop.”
Rudy’s eyes widen.
Karis steps forward. “Do you have any idea what it is?”
“We aren’t quite sure.” Rudy glances at the door again. “But we think it might be a Script ink vessel, somewhere here in the city.”
A Script ink vessel. That means it could be the golden light that I remember.
“And you think the magistrate is looking for it?” Karis asks.
Rudy shakes his head. “No. We think he’s already found it. That he’s trying to get it to work.”
All that’s left after his words is silence. Zara had said that a vessel that size would contain enough Script ink to reanimate every automaton still out there. If the magistrate gets that sort of power, we’d never be able to overtake him.
It would all be over, and we’d be left standing in the ashes.
25
* * *
KARIS
I slip out a side door, not sure where I’m going, only knowing I need some space to separate this clog of thoughts swirling through my head. Of Matthias taken, days before I arrived. Of this rebellion and of Calantha. Of the magistrate and his library and the Automaton Heart.
I think of all that power come back into the world. It makes me want to run, to find my brother and to get out of here before something happens to one of us that I can’t undo.
It makes me want to stay and do something.
The thought surprises me, but it’s already digging its way into my head. I know now what Zara had really been asking me when we’d walked through the streets of that fishing village. At the time I was so sure I knew my answer. That all I wanted was my brother safe. That I didn’t owe anything to this world that has only ever kicked me down. Why do I have to start doubting now? Matti tried to help and now he’s been taken. For all I know, the same thing could happen to me, to Alix, to all the rest of us, too.
My steps slow and then stop as a sour prick of wrong touches the back of my head. When I first came outside, I could hear the villa. Talk drifting out the windows. The clanking of clay bowls in the kitchen courtyard. Now there’s nothing but a silence that hangs like a weight over the grounds.
Something’s happened.
I shove my way back through the gardens, trying to remember where the villa sits without the noise to direct me.
Ahead of me there’s a row of cypress shrubs. I remember those, surrounding the automaton we passed our first night here. I step through the bushes and stutter to a halt.
A man stands in front of the automaton, his back to me, hands clasped loosely behind him. He turns as I scrape through the bushes and somehow I know who he is before he even faces me.
The magistrate.
There’s a marble bust of him on Tallis, pale and cold. It’s not painted. I knew the man himself couldn’t possibly look the same, but I’m still thrown at the shock of his red hair, neatly oiled and streaked with gray, like fire with ash. He wears a simple leather breastplate over a linen robe, with a knife at his hip. His eyes, as they latch on to me, are as deep a blue as the bottom of the ocean.
The world goes still, silence pressing against my ears. I’m waiting for him to arrest me, when, of everything, he smiles.
“Ah.” His voice is surprisingly soft. “I was expecting Master Calantha.”
I make myself move, ducking my head in the hopes that it will distract him from the movement of my arm as I slide it behind my back, to hide that I wear no bracelet—if the acolytes here even wear bracelets. “I’m sorry.” The words drop like stones from my tongue. I stare down at my feet. “I didn’t mean to intrude. I’ll just...” I take a step back.
“It’s all right. Why not keep me company until she arrives?”
My stomach tilts down. Please no.
“What’s your name?” he asks.
“Demetria.” The word comes out without me even thinking, and as soon as it does, I inwardly wince. Why did I give him my mother’s name? After all these years?
“Demetria. That’s pretty.”
I nod. I know I should be saying something but I’m scrabbling, trying to think of what he’s doing here. What he’s doing smiling like that? A monster shouldn’t be able to put on a human mask.
<
br /> “You know,” he says, “most acolytes are at the Scriptorium in their classes this time of day.”
I freeze. This is a man who could throw me into a dark, dank cell and forget about it before the door clanged shut. He and the other magistrates before him have held sway over our nation for as far as Eratia’s history stretches. How did I ever think I could come here and face him? A man as powerful as him?
I’m sure this is it. But when I risk a glance up through my lashes, he’s still just smiling. There’s no venom, no malice in that smile. It’s like we’re sharing a joke.
“Don’t worry, I won’t tell. I skipped plenty of my own classes when I was your age.”
“You?” The word is out before I can catch it.
But he laughs. Honestly laughs.
“Yes, even me. School is important, of course, but I think we both know there are things that no records room or lecture hall will teach you.”
We both know. A slow shiver crawls up my spine, even though his voice didn’t change. His face didn’t change. Maybe he truly thinks I’m a truant student who shares some sliver of familiarity with his own past. Then again, maybe he didn’t. I haven’t gotten this far by ignoring my gut.
I raise my head and look at him. It is unbelievably reckless. But whatever game this man is playing—this man who inked runes into the skin of Zara’s crew, who has my brother—I will face him head-on. If I’m going down, I’m going down in flames. “And what would those things be?” I say, putting as much brazenness as I can muster into my voice.
Something in the magistrate’s eyes changes, so quick I almost miss it. It isn’t surprise. It isn’t annoyance. It’s knowing. Then it’s gone, and he’s back to amusement. “I’m glad to see a fire in our youth. You remind me of myself when I was younger.”
“I am not like—” I clamp my jaw shut, dizzy with what I almost admitted. Saying those words would have been treason.
“Ah, I see you don’t approve of some of my policies. Then again, that opinion is hardly irregular nowadays. But you know, Demetria, everyone always appreciates what I give them. Peace. Security. Thirty years of it.” He waves his hand, rings glittering in the garden’s light. If my words faze him, if he cares that someone as young as me is speaking back to him, it doesn’t show. “Such a long time that some have started to think that such things—peace and security—are given. They aren’t. Nothing is ever given to you. You either take what you need no matter the cost, or you watch it be taken from you. Then again—” he looks down at me “—I suppose you already know that, don’t you?”
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