var and Alberdina had a lot of things for Delia to do when she brought the last loads of breakfast back to the camp, though they let her eat first. Hauling deadfall to pile up beside the round tower for someone to chop up took the greater part of the morning, followed by hauling luncheon from the Foothold Gate to the camp. Then rolling beer barrels down to the camp. Then hauling water from the lake to the camp to be stored in a couple of those barrels that happened to be empty. By the time supper came around—more travel bread, this time with venison and roasted wild onions and honey—she had done more physical labor than she’d ever done in a single day in her life.
Ivar and Alberdina had not been idle. Ivar had chopped such an enormous amount of wood that it came all the way to the top of the tower wall, and she guessed it was about three cords’ worth. Nor had that been all he’d done, since he’d obviously hunted, killed, gutted, skinned, and butchered that deer.
Alberdina had been hunting as well—food and herbs. She’d found wild onions, swathes of bee-balm to tuck under the bedrolls to repel bugs, a big cache of nuts, and the wild honey she’d given them to eat with their travel bread. How on earth she’d gotten the honey away from the bees, Delia had no idea, and was too tired to guess. She’d found a lot more as well, since she’d been tying bunches of bee-balm and herbs upside down all over the outside of the shelter, but Delia didn’t recognize what all of the plants were.
So Delia didn’t get to see anything of what the mages did to actually create the Gates. Just the results, which were that the four curved uprights glowed faintly once the sun set.
She sat outside the shelter, which was full of equally tired mages, working slowly at the honey-soaked bread and the savory but tough venison. It was worth eating, however tough it was; those wild herbs that Alberdina had found gave it excellent flavor. Alberdina came to join her, and they gazed at the lake, the Gates, and the dark blue sky slowly going to black.
“Is this what it’s going to be like?” Delia asked, with the last piece of honey-soaked bread in her hand, nibbling at it slowly with tired jaws.
“You mean living out here, once we’re free of the Empire?” Alberdina asked. “Probably. Very probably. There’s going to be a lot of hard, physical labor, and everyone is going to have to pitch in. Your servants are going to be very busy doing other things than tending to you. You’re going to have to learn to wash clothing in a stream, and how to do your own mending. You’ll be set tasks like the ones I gave you yesterday and today, things that just need a pair of uneducated hands. It won’t be fun. It won’t be easy.”
“What if I just—don’t come along?” she asked in a small voice, because with the reality of what was going to happen setting in, living life out here in the middle of nowhere didn’t seem in the least attractive.
“Then when the Emperor finds out what we’ve done, and he will, who do you think he’ll take his wrath out on?” Alberdina countered. “It’ll be the ones who stay behind. The farmers and the laborers left, well, he might leave them alone, or he just might put everyone to the sword and move in an entire new population. But you? A known member of Kordas’s household? Anything you can imagine, it’ll be a hundred times worse.”
“So I don’t have a choice.” She felt like crying. What had Kordas and Isla gotten her into? She hadn’t asked for any of this.
“Well, you could always betray us,” Alberdina said coldly. “Then he’d probably marry you off to some old reprobate in his Court that’s gone through four wives already and is looking for a fifth. You’d still have the life of a lady. If that’s what you want, you can get it. Kordas is probably right in thinking that once we close and burn down those Gates, the Emperor won’t be able to find us, so betraying us probably won’t do us any harm. And it isn’t as if you have the ability to tell him where we are.”
Hearing it put that baldly just made her want to cry even more. She hadn’t asked for this! Was that really much of a choice, either hard labor in the wilderness, or being handed off to some nasty old man as a “reward” for telling the Emperor how everyone had fled to escape him?
Wasn’t there a third option?
But she couldn’t think of one.
“Just think of how Isla and Kordas have been feeling all these years,” Alberdina persisted. “Knowing that at any moment, on the Emperor’s whim, everything could be pulled out from under them. That at any moment, the Emperor’s troops could come pouring in, taking literally everything and almost everyone, all to feed his ego and his war machine. And everyone that was left would be starving on scraps and forced to build things back up again just so the Emperor could sweep in and take it all again. I’ve seen it happen to entire baronies. When the Emperor moves in, he takes every person under the age of fifty and over the age of thirteen, he takes everything that can be ridden, eaten, or drunk, and he sweeps out again.” She paused, and Delia wondered what else she was going to say. “I don’t think he’d spare you a second time, and your pedigree wouldn’t save you. He might leave Kordas. He might not. Kordas was educated at the Palace, so he knows the basics of military strategy. The Emperor’s wars need officers as well as soldiers.”
Delia felt cold and numb.
“That’s what the Plan is meant to save us all from,” Alberdina said after a pause. “Seems to me some hard work and blisters don’t look like a bad option.” She paused, and patted Delia on the shoulder. “It won’t be so bad. And you’ll get used to it. Hellfires, you’ve got Fetching Gift, so it’s possible Kordas will have you using that rather than gathering wood and herding chickens.”
“For what?” she asked, bleakly.
“Don’t know. But I suspect there’s a lot of things it could be useful for. Probably the best thing for you to do is to start thinking of them. You’ve got a head on those shoulders, so use it, so you won’t have to do as much work with your hands.” Alberdina chuckled a little. “I know for sure the mages aren’t going to be going out and gathering wood. Make sure you are so valuable doing something else that no one will want you to waste your time working like a mule.”
She got up and left Delia sitting alone in the dark, muscles aching and stiffening, feeling very much depressed. All she could see in front of her were a lot of more or less terrible choices, and no way out of them that she could live with.
When she went back to her bedroll, she was tempted to cry herself to sleep—but she was so tired that despite her aches, she fell right asleep before she could squeeze out a single tear.
She wasn’t the first one awake the next morning, so she wasn’t the one who had to fetch bags and baskets of breakfast from the Foothold Gate—that had fallen to Ivar and a couple of the younger mages. But as soon as she was up, washed and changed, and fed, Jonaton came looking for her as the mages packed up their things in preparation to go through the horse Gate once he’d tuned and opened it.
He found her finishing the last of a bacon roll, and tugged her to her feet. “Come along,” he said. “I need you to come anchor this thing, like you did with the Foothold Gate.”
“Why?” she asked this time, though she did get to her feet and follow him to the two uprights that formed what would be the horse Gate. “Why not Ivar or Alberdina? They don’t have magic either.”
“Because Alberdina is going to be looking after me, and Ivar and Bay are going to be guarding us. Remember, there are bears.” He grinned as she shivered. “Don’t worry. If a bear shows up, Ivar’s already got plans and a bear-trap in place. I promise you a bear-steak and a bearskin for your bed.”
That only made her think about where that bed was going to be. In the middle of winter. In the wilderness. Would it be in the dubious shelter of this ruined tower? Or in a tent? In the snow?
Had Jonaton even thought about any of this? Or was he just concentrating on the tasks at hand? Hakkon probably wouldn’t mind beds on cold, hard ground, but surely Jonaton would be as miserable as she was going to be!
And what about the Circle? They were all old men—
But they seemed made of whipcord and tanned sinew, and surely they already knew how awful this was going to be, and they didn’t seem to care. They even seemed to be happier, as if going from an easy life in a manor to swatting waterbugs in a wilderness, until they finished mummifying, was an invigorating playtime! Even their endless banter, swatting at each other, and quibbling, had tilted lately into increasingly absurd accusations of behavior she was probably too young to know about.
The mages—who still looked exhausted—lined up on their packs in front of what would be the horse Gate. She sat behind the Gate uprights where Jonaton put her and worried over it all without paying any attention to what Jonaton was doing. Besides, it wasn’t as if this was the cellar, where the whole place was alight with glowing diagrams and sigils. This was out in the open and broad daylight, and frankly it just looked like Jonaton was doing some sort of absurd dance. Her mind just kept going around and around in an endless, bleak play of how horrible it was all going to be, and how she couldn’t do anything about it.
She only looked up when the waiting mages broke out into weary applause, picked up their packs, and started filing through the Gate in groups of two and three, because there was plenty of room for that between those uprights. It was … unsettling, to watch them walking toward her, then suddenly disappearing.
Finally there was no one left on the round peninsula but her, Jonaton, and Alberdina. Jonaton staggered a little; Alberdina jumped to her feet and caught him. She handed him a leather bottle, and he drank everything in it down in several long gulps.
“Better?” she asked.
He nodded, as strangers suddenly started appearing between the Gate uprights, laden with all manner of boxes, bundles, and packs. They headed straight for the ruins as if they knew exactly what they were doing—which they probably did. There was a plan, after all. Just because she didn’t know what was in it, it didn’t follow that Isla had neglected to attend to the least little detail.
“Mornin’,” said one in a floppy straw hat to Alberdina. “Nice day fer fishin’, ain’t it?” And he gave a little gulp of a laugh. Well, that seemed to make sense, since aside from his pack, he had a huge bundle of fishing poles on one shoulder. He was followed by a blacksmith, and a confused-appearing man, probably some kind of herbalist or grower, with a string of garlic hanging from his belt.
Evidently Alberdina knew the fisherman, because she gave him a little tap on his shoulder as he headed for the ruins.
Several dogs came through; there were two mastiffs, and several dogs that seemed to be part of a hunting pack, because they kept together and hard at the heels of the man she assumed was their master.
“I think I’m—” Jonaton began.
“You’re eating first,” Alberdina contradicted him, and gestured to Delia to come too. Some of what the newcomers had been carrying were foodstuffs, so at least she was not going to have to fetch more baskets and bundles from the Foothold Gate. Delia ate glumly; Jonaton ate gluttonously. Alberdina was too busy directing all the new people as to where everything was to pay any attention to either of them.
And still more people poured in through the Gate, a regular procession of them. Then something she had never seen before—small logs strung on bits of rope, each end of which was attached to a longer rope, so that the whole thing looked like a rope ladder made for someone who was too obtuse to realize that the rungs were going to roll under his feet. It passed through the Gate, and she couldn’t see the other end.
But then she realized what it was, as boxes and bundles and other large containers were shoved across the Gate, riding freely on those rolling logs. Some of the men started gathering them up and taking them to the ruins. It was all so organized! She could hardly believe her eyes.
And then the procession of containers stopped, the rollers were neatly stowed aside, and a flock of traumatized sheep blundered through, preceded and followed by herd dogs. A squad of woodsmen and builders came through, bearing backpacks laden with more weight in tools than a team of horses could hope to move. They moved up the hill as one unit, without even waiting for directions.
“Kristoff! Has anyone sent that coracle across?” Jonaton bellowed to someone over in the ruins.
“Right here!” shouted the fellow who’d had all the fishing poles, bringing over something she’d taken to be a very big basket, which was, in fact, a round thing of woven willow, with a tarred canvas cover sewn tightly over it. There was a board across the middle of it.
He put it in the water behind the two water-Gate uprights and gestured to her, and to horror, she realized that this was how she was supposed to get “behind” the water-Gate.
A Tow-Beast came through the land-Gate, led by one of the Valdemar stableboys. It was at this point that it truly dawned on her that the land-Gate could not possibly be linked to the Foothold Gate in the cellar.
The man with the round boat-thing gestured to her again, impatiently, and with great reluctance she went to him. “Yer t’ git down in this here coracle, milady,” he said, sitting on the bank and holding the contraption “steady” with both hands. “Jest sit down here on bank, next ter me. Tha’s right. Now put yer feet in ’er—”
Little by little, he coaxed her into the unsteady thing, until she was perched, terrified, on the board across the middle, afraid it would turn over at any moment, and even more afraid that he was going to let go of it.
But he didn’t, and Jonaton went to work again.
Doesn’t he know I don’t know how to swim? she thought frantically.
But the stranger held the wretched thing tightly against the bank, and she squeezed her eyes shut and endured. She’d never been so panicked and frightened in her entire life. Her stomach was certain that at any moment she was going to find herself in the water, being sucked down to her death.
But eventually, she’d been scared for so long that fatigue set in, and she opened her eyes. Kristoff—if that was his name—gave her a reassuring nod. Her hands hurt. She glanced down at them to see that she was holding on to the board she sat on so tightly that her knuckles were white.
“Heerd ye got a Gold foal,” the man said, matter-of-factly. “Tell me ’bout her.”
He’s trying to get my mind off this, she thought. He sees how scared I am. Well, maybe it would work.
So she told him all about Daystar, how old she was, how Delia had helped with the foaling, how she was getting the filly used to being handled, and what steps would be next. And when she was done, he nodded.
“Well,” he said, tilting his head to one side. “Sounds like that there Fetchin’ Gift be right handy. Why, I c’n think of a mort’o ways it’ll be useful out here. Like—well, ain’t jest horses what hez trouble birthin’. Cattle, sheep, hooman wimmin—reckon yer gonna be right popular with Healer Alberdina. An’—well, they’s one good way o’ makin’ a big shelter, an’ thet’s ter bend down a bendy tree, like a birch, stake ’er down, and throw canvas over ’er. Ye c’n bring thet top right down, aye? An’ what if a barge breaks loose an’ floats out inter a lake? Ye c’n Fetch her up t’ th’ bank wi’out nobody hevin’ ter go arter ’er.”
He continued at some length, with great enthusiasm, until after a moment, she realized that not only was he right about some of that, she might very well be so busy that she would never have time to do all the hard labor she’d envisaged herself doing.
He glanced over at the men setting up more shelters in the ruins. “Ain’t lookin’ for’erd ter sleepin’ on ground,” he said with distaste. “Be glad when th’ livin’ barges start a-comin’ over.”
“What are living barges?” she asked.
“Barges fixed up as housen,” he said. “Cozy, they is. Live in one m’self, what with bein’ a fishin’ man.” And he began to describe what sounded to her like something that was every bit as comfortable as a little cottage, if nothing near as spacious.
“But how do you keep it warm in the winter?” she asked.
“Leetle stove. I’d show ye how big, but I reckon ye don’t want me t’ turn loose of this coracle,” he said with a chuckle. “It ain’t no manor, but it ain’t no tent, neither. Wust thin’ come winter’s gonna be gettin’ bored, I reckon. We ain’t a-gonna be able ter move in winter, gonna be plenty idle hands ter take care of the stock an’ all. Reckon come fall, we’ll pick a good place, make stockades fer th’ critters, an’ stretch oursel’s along the river all th’ way ter this here lake. We’ll be like a long, skinny town. Then come spring, oncet th’ stock’s done birthin’, we’ll move agin.”
She could even see it in her mind’s eye: the “town” of living barges along the shore, the animals in their pens ashore, maybe some people (hardier than her!) living on shore in something that gave more shelter than just a mere tent—
“Thet there tower’ll be a fine shelter oncet a good roof’s on ’er,” Kristoff said cheerfully, jerking his head at the tower ruins. “An’ thet there Ivar, he’s seed people up north what make winter housen outa sod. All right and tight they be, too. We’ll do. We’ll do. An’ when we finds a new place ter set up ferever, like, it’ll be a home in no time. Jest wait an’ see.”
“Kristoff!” Alberdina shouted from the other side of the water-Gate. “Get yourselves out of the way! Barges are coming through!”
“Jump, milady!” Kristoff told her, and she jumped, and somehow he caught her, and they both scrambled out of the way just before the prow of a barge and a spill of water appeared on her side of the Gate. It slid rapidly into the lake with an enormous splash, sending the round boat-thing spinning away.
“Well now,” said Kristoff, staring after his coracle. “I don’ s’ppose ye c’ld Fetch ’er back, c’ld ye?”
Delia was more in the spirit of things now, though, and flashed a genuine smile back to him. “What, and deprive you of the great honor of being the First Swimmer in the Lake?”
* * *
Kordas could tell that Isla was still furious with him. And she had a point. He was being reckless. He was promising things he had no right to promise.
He was going to steal the Emporer’s entire Palace workforce.
He was proposing to kidnap fifty children in the name of “saving” them, which was morally dubious.
And when the Emperor discovered he had done this—he’d have to make sure everyone who was going to remain in Valdemar went into hiding, or find some other way to deflect the Emperor’s wrath. He could only hope that those who stayed behind would be so insignificant in the Emperor’s eyes that he wouldn’t bother with them.
Of course Merrin would be left behind. And Merrin was certainly significant enough to make a good target for wrath.
And the Emperor will surely be furious that Merrin didn’t see any of this coming.
And yet, the conviction remained that he was doing the right things, promising the right things, no matter how it seemed now.
So he ignored the smoldering anger in Isla’s eyes, and asked, “Have you got Gate talismans for the two new Gates yet? And can Delia Fetch them to me?”
“Yes to both,” she said, though it was clear she was doing so around gritted teeth. She moved aside, and Delia took her place in the limited view in the scrying mirror.
“Can you tilt your mirror so I can see the table?” the girl asked, holding two metal disks in her open hand.
Rather than saying anything, he did so. And there was a long and uncomfortable silence, as she stared straight ahead of her, while beads of sweat began to run down her forehead and she grew paler and paler with effort.
And then, just as he was about to tell her to stop trying for the moment, there was a clink, and two metal disks appeared on the table in front of him and skidded to the floor.
Delia swayed, and Isla’s hand appeared on her shoulder, steadying her. “Go lie down,” Isla told her sister, and Delia vanished from view.
“You are certain these—Dolls—can do what they say?” Isla asked, somehow managing to look both dubious and angry at the same time.
“As certain as I am of anything in this world,” he told her. “This will turn any Gate in the Duchy into a way to our refuge. And no one will be the wiser. Our mages won’t have to make any tokens at all, unless you want some more permanent ones, and from here we could make one for every man, woman, child, barge, or anything else we need to bring across.”
“Well,” Isla said, still smoldering. “I suppose that will be worth what you promised. To those of us who escape, that is.”
Unspoken were the words he had already thought. But it will certainly make those who stay into targets for the Emperor’s anger.
“I’ll try and think of a way to make things look like something else freed the vrondi,” he said, feeling a bit of desperation. “We’ve got a lot of minds over here. Maybe we can think of something.”
* * *
Kordas admitted to Star that he had trouble remembering every step and detail of the Plan, and Star reassured him, “We can remember it for you.”
“Wholesale?” Kordas replied. “It’s a lot of knowledge. There are two generations of planning in this. It isn’t getting any easier for me to keep track of it as the Plan is modified.”
“This one understands the burden of this and your other Plans upon you. We would be wise to visit with the Keeper of Records soon. The Keeper of Records speaks through this one often, to share insights and answer you with precision that this one does not possess alone.”
Kordas had always thought of vrondi as—in all honesty, as minnows, swimming in lovely schools, every one of them as smart as, maybe, a toddler. Now, his first impression of Star as being particularly intelligent was challenged. What if every minnow was part of a greater mind, instead of being a thousand little minds? What if they had a collective memory? Then he recalled the sound of Star’s voice when the Doll pleaded to be set free. Maybe that wasn’t the emotion of just one Doll he’d heard in that plea—it was, perhaps, a cry from all of them.
And you know the sound of someone pleading for their life, don’t you? Kordas rubbed at his neck absently, frowning. No, now wasn’t the time to think of that. Really? Feels like any time is the right time. You know what you are. And you’re ready to take on more, aren’t you? You know that even in a tightly controlled operation, someone always dies. Accidents happen, but they wouldn’t happen at all if the operation hadn’t been ordered. So are they really accidents? You know the Plan is going to kill people. A lot of people. That’s the real pity in you—you decided you could live with killing a lot of people before you even figured out how many it would be. You know it, and you’re still not stopping.
As if to match his mood, the Copper Apartment shook and rumbled. Another earth-shaker, and even in the City, they never seemed to be very far away.
Help them through, whenever you can.
“All right. I need to think things through. I need to—to find out what all I have to work with. What’s next—Ah. After Court, will any suspicions be raised if I see how you—vrondi, I mean by that—are imprisoned?”
Star paused a long while. “There is a way. A Duke can walk freely in the Annexes, if a pass-token is worn. A pass-token is issued by someone of superior rank to whoever would scry or confront you. Such pass-tokens are held in a drawer of one of the administrative areas we can freely Gate to.”
“And if we aren’t being observed, I can just take one?”
“This one is not empowered to stop you, nor under obligation to alert anyone if you do. More accurately, this one should file an incident report, but the rules stipulate no immediacy, so this one can wait. Indefinitely.”
“So if I happened to pocket one of these pass-tokens—even if we’re scryed from the Palace, they wouldn’t make an issue of it, because a pass-token had to have been authorized by someone above the scryer.”
“Correct, my Lord. This one can tell you that scrying is a job populated by those of very low ambition, operating devices which do most of the work. Thus, in the interest of their own self-preservation, scryers prefer that their superiors never take note of them, unless they have certainty of a violation.”
“Which a Duke, with a pass-token, wouldn’t qualify as. I like it,” Kordas answered. “There is a lot I need to learn yet, about what happens and where. I want to see the Trap so I can disable it somehow, and free any vrondi caught in it right now. It makes sense to me that the Empire would keep a vrondi-trap close to where Dolls are produced.”
“You are correct. The Trap is in the Fabrication Annex. And yes, the Trap catches my kind continuously.” Star sounded particularly sorrowful. “It has seldom been empty.”
Court filled Kordas with an aching anxiety—a despondent feeling that, while he knew he was present for things that affected countless lives, it was also unspeakably boring. Literally unspeakable; despite the hundred-plus people present, only those there on official business could talk, and even then, they were expected to keep it brief. The other reason it bored Kordas was that he could see their patterns, all based on the Three Games in one manner or another. He doodled in a little sketchbook he’d picked up for his satchel. Horses, of course, and some flowers, and corn, bits of tack decorations, an imaginary landscape with a cottage. Without a doubt, everybody’s minds were being scanned while they were present, so he depended upon the protective amulet behind his crest to make him seem like he’d rather be out riding a Gold on lush green hills than here.
Which was true.
Court ended when the Emperor simply stood and left. He made no special statements, or even gestures—he just went through his office door, and that was that. No guards accompanied him; a Herald proclaimed, “The Emperor has Adjourned the Court.” Claimants and petitioners in line, dressed in their finest, clutching folders of papers and charts, stood around looking stricken, while every noble in the place left through a Gate within minutes.
Kordas returned to the Copper Apartment immediately and flopped on the bed. Star, Rose, and Clover followed Beltran into the bedroom from where they’d waited on his return in the main room.
“How could hours of nothing happening be so tiring?” Kordas sighed.
Star replied, “With respect, my Lord, a Doll may not be the best to answer that. These ones are usually stored in a closet.”
Kordas and Beltran both laughed. Damn it all, I shouldn’t laugh at that. It’s tragic. But it’s also top-shelf snark, Kordas thought. And Star probably said it that way on purpose. They’re not just poor souls to be rescued, they’re also likable. He checked Star for the sign that they were safe to speak, saw that they were, and rubbed at his eyes. “Beltran, what have you kept yourself busy with?”
“Officially, being a tourist and lounging. Unofficially, watching the timing of things, listening, and judging why this place works at all. I’ve found some disturbing clues that tell me that it might not work at all, before long. The earthshakes—you don’t seem to notice any but the large ones, probably because you are a lifetime horseman and you’re accustomed to jolts and rolls with every hoofstep. But I—I’ve had trouble sleeping here at all, and I figured out some of why. It isn’t just the strangeness of the surroundings. It’s that this City is always shaking.” He sat down beside Kordas. “This city has cracks in it. Every building and bridge, too. I’ve always had sharp eyes, so they stand out for me. Here.”
Beltran got up and went to the window, and pulled out his side-knife, chisel-pointed like Kordas’s, made for dining not fighting. “Here’s an example.” The trim around the window rocked half a thumb-width when Beltran pried at its edge. “This place is under constant repair,” he continued, “and everything in the Palace has been pointed and patched, and its seams painted. But that can only do so much.”
To illustrate the point, Beltran jammed the knife deeper under the window trim and pried with more force. The entire window trim broke away as one piece, showering plaster and stone dust, and then the window surround simply—fell off, clattering to the floor.
Clover spoke, “This is true. It did not seem important to mention this, amidst your other plans, as they already put you under such stress, my Lord.”
Kordas exhaled gustily. “I wasn’t expecting that.”
Star said, “There are forces affecting the City and Palace that did not feel germaine to your plans, due to the time frame, but we can tell you more if you wish.”
Kordas sat up fully. “Absolutely,” he replied, his eyes sharp with that look his Herald knew well. It was the look of Kordas sensing opportunity. “But let’s have a look inside the Fabrication Annex first.”
* * *
It was apparent that the scrying mages had lost even more interest in them, since Kordas easily palmed a pass-token from an unguarded drawer and they were within the Fabrication Annex moments later. To have called it a maze of wooden beams, brass, steel, and crates would be an understatement. Some of the work areas were five stories tall, connected by wooden trestles, and most of the guardrails were broken. There were pockmarks and cracks almost everywhere, and in some places, mending-plates were three or four thick holding braces together. The place was loud, very loud, and Dolls moved in crews without taking any special notice of Kordas, Beltran, and Star. Steam jetted out from hundreds of places, striking condenser awnings that turned the vapor into rain that showered down into troughs with every major hammerfall, between one and four times a second. The whole of the place sounded like a waterfall, with headache-baiting clashes of steel mixed in. Sparks flew from grinders where Dolls skillfully smoothed down stampings pulled from huge dies, and yet, there were areas where the air was not only chilly, there were actually icicles hanging under machinery, all lit by a blue glow.
“This is how pellets are made,” Star narrated. “Thin sheets of seaweed gelatin are fed in here. The dies above drop onto these banks of pistons, driving the tray here downward and compressing air as it goes. The searing grid encapsulates the air with the gelatin, then hardens it into the small spheres you know. It was found that this size alone was the safest and most reliable for pellets. Poomers simply use more of them, rather than using a larger, more unstable size.”
The machine was huge, larger than a warship. They walked down two stories of steps, and they hadn’t yet reached its base. By the look of it, it was one of sixteen in the Annex, each one a barge-length apart. “Finished pellets are ejected by these felt-padded arms as the piston returns to the top, and all the pellets fall safely into these trays on rollers, which then pack into standardized crates.” The machine clanged again and hundreds more pellets dropped into trays. “This is as close as we should get.”
Star pointed to a crew of at least twenty Dolls, hanging from or crawling through the nearest machine, some oiling, some tightening bolts or tapping shims. “If the tolerances shake loose while we are near, an entire tray might detonate.”
“How often does that happen?” Beltran shouted.
“No more than once in—”
A shriek followed by an ear-piercing pneumatic explosion came from somewhere far down the line of machines, simultaneous with a stabbing flash of blue light. A trestled bridge shattered—not merely splintered—as super-chilled air hammered a shockwave upward and disintegrated its center span. Star, Beltran, and Kordas were all thrown backward off of the walkway when the shockwave reached them, which was fortunate for them. Flash-frozen shards of wooden beams and Doll-armatures had ripped through Dolls with impunity and embedded themselves in structures near where they’d just been.
Disoriented and gasping, the two humans tried to find their bearings in the mist, which blew against them with gale force before slowing to a breeze.
Inside the Fabrication Annex, it began snowing.
Kordas and Beltran could barely hear as they struggled for breath in the sudden chill. Star and the others helped them to their feet, while snow drifted around them in flurries. They were all silent while Beltran dazedly dabbed at a nosebleed.
All five of the Dolls looked toward where the explosion had originated. Finally, Star said, “Twelve of us have ceased to be,” and spoke no more for a time.
Beltran leaned on Kordas, who drew the five Dolls in against them. “I am sorry,” Kordas said, pulling them close. “I am so sorry.” Snow whirled around the seven figures and settled upon them, and all seven of them rested hands on each others’ shoulders.
The machinery above continued its pace, except for one, which the Dolls had already begun repairing.