Beside me, Alix drops his gaze, squeezing his books so tightly there’s a crack in one of the spines.
I walk closer to him, laying a hand on his arm. “We’re right here for you, Alix. We’re going to do this together.”
“I know. It’s just...the Colossus is—”
“Nothing like you,” I say firmly. “And if you need a distraction, well, just think of slimy fish guts.”
Alix chokes on a laugh. I mime fish guts spilling down onto my hair, and he hunches over his books, shoulders shaking.
It’s nice to know that my inappropriate sense of humor, as Master Vasilis called it, is good for something.
“This way,” Zara says brightly, as if she’s a student giving us a tour of the place. The pirate queen with brine in her veins has completely been transformed into an eager, young scholar. It’s terrifying, really.
She slips between two of the buildings at the edge of the agora and we come out into what must be the back lanes of the Scriptorium. Here there aren’t official Scriptorium buildings but more villas. They’re all secured behind high walls, some with small windows that let us see beautiful gardens with fountains and busts and fruit trees, others just impenetrable stretches of white. I’m sure these walls have gates somewhere, but we’re at the back of these homes, not the front, our little shale path squeezed between the walls on both sides.
Every time we pass one, I wonder if this is Master Theodis’s home. But every time I glance at Alix, he still stares forward.
The farther we go, the older our surroundings become. The houses don’t gleam quite so brightly. Plants cling to cracks in the walls. The path turns derelict beneath our feet. It feels as if we’re walking back in time.
We come around the corner and Alix goes so suddenly still, I don’t need to ask to know we’ve arrived. We silently follow the wall around to the front road. The wooden gate has rotted off its hinges, leaving a large gap through which I can make out the villa. Its worn and sad, with stained walls and broken tiles, its garden long overgrown into a snarled mass.
Alix pulls his himation from his face. The loss in his eyes stabs like a knife. I recognize that look because I felt it, when my brother was taken away. This place has sat abandoned for centuries. But not for Alix.
“Are you all right?” I ask softly.
He shakes his head. “But I need to do this.”
Slowly he squares his shoulders. And he steps into his old home.
27
* * *
ALIX
I slip through the gap in the gate and onto the front pathway, plants poking up around my sandals. I still remember every stretch of my father’s meticulously tended garden. His favorite nectarine tree over there that used to give the sweetest fruit. The bed of crocuses surrounding the bench where he used to read to me in the evening. The herb garden he and I tended together. It’s all gone, replaced by a snarled mass of yellow leaves and thin, decaying branches. Everything he and I worked on together has been erased, as if it never existed.
As painful as that is, it’s worse seeing the villa. I used to love looking at it, lying on my back in a hidden part of the garden. I thought it had a nice face. A welcoming face. Now it sags, its once gleaming shutters broken and dirty, its once white walls smeared brown and riddled with cracks, pottery tiles from its roof lying on the ground broken and chipped.
The villa once had a set of great wooden doors to greet guests, carved with the sigil of my father’s house, the swan with the olive branches. Now nothing but the hinges remain. I climb the steps, my fingers nervously drumming against my books.
I brace myself but stepping inside is still a blow. The dust kicked up by our entrance glints in the light streaming in at our backs. At my feet, I can barely make out the mosaic pattern of marble and gold, which would look like the sun if all the dirt in here was swept away. The nooks in the walls, which once overflowed with each day’s offerings from the garden, are empty. The tapestries and statues have been stolen away. All of the grandness of the villa is gone. It looks dead, like my father is dead.
All I want is to find my father’s study and his library and all the other rooms I spent so many happy days in back then. Only we don’t have time, and perhaps it’s better if they live on in my memory as they used to be. I know now that whenever I think of the spaces I’ve seen so far, my good memories will always have to compete with how it looks now.
Leaving my books on the ground by the door, I head down the side hallway, the others following me silently. Our sandals leave footprints in the dust with every step. If anyone comes here, it will be very clear where we’ve gone. Why would they, though, after all this time? This is a corner of the world that’s been long forgotten. The house of the great traitor. Even if it was once a home—a good home, a happy home—what would the rest of the world care?
I stop at what seems to be a normal stretch of wall, with golden sun decorations running along at chest height. The chip near the one I’m looking for is still there, where I dug it out of the wall too forcefully once. Now I’m more careful, grasping its raised edge and easing it out. It reveals the bronze seal behind it, the rune still emblazoned on its surface.
I should unlock it. Instead I stand there.
“What if I don’t like what I find in here?” I ask. My words sound far too loud for the silent hallway. “What if I find out what I am and it’s something that I don’t want?”
Karis steps up to me, lacing her fingers through mine. “You’re you, Alix. And nothing you learn in there will change that.”
I want to believe her. I’m just not sure I can. At least I’m not alone. I squeeze her hand and reach out with the other to press my fingers against the seal. The rune in it is so familiar, the humming tune I made up for it springs to my lips before I think about it. The rune on the back of my hand flares brightly and a rumbling shudder quakes down the hallway as the entire wall in front of me shifts toward us.
Karis frowns. “What rune is that? It’s an unlock rune and yet...”
She trails off. I understand why. The rune she’s looking at isn’t one but two, built on top of each other. I look down at the familiar lines on the back of my hand. “My father told me it meant home.”
Home. Even though he isn’t here anymore.
The wall swings out. There’s a small tunnel on the other side and I have to let go of Karis’s hand to navigate my way through. The world goes dark as I close the wall behind us, the dim light from my eyes not strong enough to let us see anything. I don’t need to see. For me, it’s only been a few short weeks since I last stood here, not enough time to hold centuries.
I take three steps. Turn to the right. The lamp is somehow still there. I strike my flint and a golden glow springs to life. I move forward, not focusing on anything but the lamps scattered throughout the room, leaving brightening light in my wake. It’s only once they’re all lit that I turn.
A fresh blow of pain hits me in the chest. As bad as it was seeing how much the rest of the house had changed, it’s worse seeing what’s happened here. The walls are still painted with pictures of gardens and the ocean and the islands, but they’re flaked and crumbling. The furniture is still here, too, the only pieces I’ve seen so far in the house, but dust clings to them in a thick layer, smudging out everything.
The rest of the villa always looked elegant. Father said it was important that his home look the way the other Scriptmasters expected it to. These secret rooms alone were decorated for comfort, with soft couches to recline on, roomy bookcases, and a round table off to the side, where even now some dice lie, in the middle of a game I wish I remembered. Everything is still and quiet. Not that it was loud back then, but it wasn’t like this.
Two doors lead off the main room, one open, one closed. I go to the open one first, taking a lamp and holding it high.
“My room,” I say, not sure who I’m talking to.
A map of the islands decays on one wall and a map of the world decays on the other. Little figurines and boxes and trinkets sit perched on every remaining available space, objects from the outside world that Father would bring me whenever his duties called him away. It was as close as I got back then to being able to touch the outside world.
I pick up a little swallow carved from stone, its mouth open as if singing. It was the last piece my father brought home, because he said he missed the way I sang while he was away. I rub the dust from its head and slip it into my belt pouch.
“I like it,” Karis says.
“I liked it, too.”
Liked. Past tense. As soon as it’s out, I wonder if it’s true. When it became true. Suddenly, I’m so glad that Karis is standing here beside me and that I’m not facing this alone. Karis is fierceness and stubbornness, and she makes me feel braver.
I turn away, knowing we don’t have much time, and go to the other door where Zara and Dane are waiting. There’s no lock rune on it. No locking mechanism at all, and yet it still feels wrong to lay my palm on the wood. “This is my father’s workshop. He asked me not to come in here, and I never broke that rule.”
“Surely he wouldn’t begrudge you that now,” Zara says.
No, he wouldn’t. Maybe, after all these years, he’d want me to see what’s inside. I’m the only one left who really knew him, the only one who can carry on his memory, his work.
I lift the latch on the door and push it open.
28
* * *
ALIX
After so long I expect the door to creak, but it soundlessly gives way.
My father’s workshop is dark, and I don’t know where any candles in here might be, so I hold my lamp in front of me and take a hesitant step inside. My light slips over a workbench, wooden and sturdy even after all these years. The light finds a face.
No, not a face. My face.
I jerk back. Beside me, Karis holds up a candle, and as she moves the light over the length of the automaton, I see it’s missing an arm and a leg. It doesn’t even have a seal. Its face, though... Its face is still mine. I reach out with shaking fingers and touch it. Shivers crawl all over me at the feel of its cold metal.
Zara steps forward, too, raising a lamp she must have grabbed. Her circle of light shows more workbenches and more automatons lying on them or leaning against them. Most are missing limbs, some are less than half-built. All of them are still. All of them bear my face.
A vice clamps around my chest, squeezing tighter and tighter. No matter where I turn, I see myself. Lying on the benches, covered in dust, staring blankly with eyes that look exactly like mine except without the fire. They’re exact copies. Dead copies.
“Alix?” Karis’s voice is so soft, I almost don’t hear it.
“I thought I was unique,” I whisper. “I thought he made me to be unique.” All this time, these things were right on the other side of the door.
“You are unique.” Karis steps closer, and the ferocity in her voice pulls me back. “They might look like you, but they aren’t you. Whatever spark of life makes you yourself, they clearly don’t have.”
Couldn’t they have had it, though? I don’t understand how my father made me, but couldn’t any one of these automatons have easily become me? And couldn’t I have easily become one of them, half-finished and lying in the dust? Maybe all I am is the copy that worked.
Griefs splinters in my chest. How could my father have not told me about this? He didn’t tell me, and now he’s gone, and I’ll never have the chance to ask him.
Zara clears her throat. “I’m sorry, Alix, but we can’t linger here long. Everyone spread out. See what you can find.”
“Why don’t you wait in the front room?” Karis says.
A part of me wants to do that, to run from here and never come back, but I shake my head. This room might be the only place in the entire world that can tell me about myself. That can tell me about my father. The only thing worse than losing him would be realizing I never really knew him at all.
Karis opens her mouth, but I move forward before she has a chance to say anything, toward the nearest workbench. There’s an automaton lying on it—or half an automaton. It has no legs. I look away. I never quite knew what people meant when they said that they felt sick to their stomach. Now I do.
Bronze tools carved with runes lie scattered over the benches alongside hammered sheets of metal. There are papers, too, and even though they’re decaying, I can see my father’s meticulous printing. I think of him, working in the front room or in his study in the house proper, bent over his papers and his letters. Teaching me to do the same. All that time, he never told me what he was working on. Was I on the other side of the door as he studied these other automatons? Waiting eagerly like I always did to spend more time with him?
Did he ever think of telling me the truth?
I can’t stand those thoughts slithering through my head. I force myself to keep moving.
I see a fully finished automaton, identical to me down to the last rune. Somehow, that’s even more disturbing. I’m already turning away when I notice the book tucked beneath its arm.
I don’t want to touch this dead twin, but I don’t see a way around it, so I shift its arm and pull the book free, the leather cover flaking away beneath my fingers. I turn it over in my hands. It isn’t a tome, or if it is it’s unfinished. The unmarked cover doesn’t have a seal on its spine. I open it. There are more notes here. I flip through them, and then stop at the image of a great, glowing orb, covered with runes. It’s labeled near the top: The Scrivolia “The Automaton Heart.”
We were right.
I press my fingers over the words. The Automaton Heart. This time it brings forth a thin strain of memory, of my father calling it that, a Heart to hold the automaton’s blood, the Script ink.
I shift the book and parchment flutters from it down onto the workbench. A broken seal stares up at me, bearing the crest of the Scriptorium. I pick it up with shaking fingers.
Master Theodis,
We’ve completed our deep study of the runes inscribing the surface of the Scrivolia. They have revealed that it should be possible to unlock the Heart to even greater levels of power. All of our attempts to regain the secrets of refining Script ink or to build more vessels have failed. With the rumors of war only growing, we must find a way to gain more of the Scrivolia’s power so that we can increase our automaton forces.
Knowing of your expertise in the area, the inner council has appointed you as head of the project. We need you to find a key to unlock the greater treasures that the Scrivolia can provide. We need it now. You will be provided with whatever funds and supplies you require.
The magistrate thanks you for your service.
Councilor Reill
The world doesn’t feel quite solid beneath my feet, as if broken, empty sky spools out from beneath me. I look back at the notebook and see a single scrawled note in my father’s hand:
The fools. Don’t they know that any key can lock as easily as it can unlock?
“Alix?” Karis steps up to my elbow. “What did you find?”
I numbly hold it out to her. Her eyes, burning like my own in the candlelight, look over the letter. Her mouth opens in surprise.
“Me,” I say hoarsely. “This is why my father made me. I’m this key the Scriptorium wanted.” I know it with a certainty I can’t even try
to deny. This is what I was made for. This is what I am. The magistrate wanted a key to unlock the Scrivolia to greater power. My father wanted a key to take the Script ink away from them. So he made me. All along, a part of me knew that I had been made for a reason but facing the truth of it is still wrenching. I’m a tool.
My father built me to be a tool.
I look back down at the picture of the Heart. The memories press in, blurs sharpening into images. Of my father coming into my rooms dripping wet, a frantic look in his eyes that I didn’t recall ever being there before.
“I remember,” I whisper. “My father rushed into my rooms one night. He said we’d been discovered and that we had to do it now.”
“Do what?” Dane asks.
“Do this.” I press my hands against my temples, not wanting to lose the memory of that night. Of sneaking with my father into the highest tier, through the pouring rain that darkened the shadows and stung cold against my skin. Moving through the Scriptorium like ghosts while we heard the shouts of those looking for us. Stumbling down a stairway that curled deep into the ground until we reached the Automaton Heart, burning in the crypts beneath the Acropolis like the sun.
“We went to the Scrivolia. I locked it.” I remember placing my palms against the metal surface, burning hot as fire. I remember the melodies that had crashed into my head when I touched it.
The memories are already breaking apart, splintering even as I try to dig deeper into them. “The Automaton Heart went dark but then men found us.” Scriptorium soldiers found us. My father shouted at me to run. So I did. I ran, and he fell. The memory hits me like a thunder strike, searing me to my core. A soldier advancing on my father, his sword gleaming in the light from his torch. My father’s eyes going wide as the metal bit through his body. The way he’d been shucked off the blade like a discarded rag, the light already leaving his eyes. “They killed him,” I whisper. “I left him to die.”
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