36. THIRTY-SIX #2
The boy followed for long minutes, his steps slowing behind her.
She nearly snapped at him to hurry up before realizing he probably couldn’t see.
The service tunnels were sparsely lit, their veins fading to near blackness between sconced distortion orbs.
She grabbed his hand, pulling him along without slowing her step.
The boy cleared his throat. “Where are we going?”
Said without trepidation. His voice was deep, like a man’s, though he didn’t seem much older than her eleven years. And his Tera’thian… didn’t quite sound Tera’thian. He had an accent.
“Somewhere no one see or hear us,” she responded in the same tongue. Her mother’s schooling gave her passable comprehension in Nelfinden, Tera’thian, and Chori, but she struggled to excel in any of them. By the way people reacted to her, she wondered whether she even understood Azadonian most days.
“Why?”
“Because I no in mood for follow orders.”
That shut him up, but only temporarily. The Tohatu’s slave clung to her fingertips through many twists and turns before, again, trying to strike conversation.
“That dancing was the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. I can’t believe the full cabinet participated.”
“In Azadonia, dance is require for democracy. When body lack motion, like a stagnant pool, it harbor sickness.” That was what her mother said, anyway: that a mind could empathize better after dancing.
It never seemed to work for Attilatia. “The Lethoso is functional. Release emotion, move blood, so mind can be altruistic instead of fearful or selfish.”
“I always felt like the point of dance is to let people know that, whatever is wrong with them, it’s also wrong with you.
” Attilatia’s mouth went dry. Why did that resonate so perfectly?
“Not that I’ve much experience,” he added, shyly.
“I imagine, evolving to live underground, your space is more confined and so dance is the most viable outlet.”
She had anticipated argument or skepticism from someone like him.
Not speculation she could damn near appreciate.
It was the sort of thing her dasha might have said.
She side-eyed him. Chaos, he certainly wasn’t ugly, for a barbarian.
Why was it that the only boy who didn’t know her as Tentika’s resident misanthrope had to be a part of the Tera’thian mill?
“I no really like talking,” she suggested.
The clean-cut stone of the service tunnels took them to the rear entrance of the distortion labs.
A distortion lamp of her own fabrication sat in a wall sconce at shoulder height.
She turned it twenty degrees south. The grooves beneath the metal backing clicked into the wall.
The stonework of the passage beside them shifted, creating a new tunnel.
The slave boy’s mouth dropped open.
She tossed him a smug smile and the bag of stolen nuts. “Yes, the treats are for you, but you could at least ask politely.”
They stepped through the opening, and the stonework settled back into place behind them.
The receiving room at the rear of the distortion lab was dark.
Darker even than the service tunnels had been.
The team had gone, but they would have left her the experiment’s report at her workstation.
She activated a pocket lamp and handed it to the boy—she was sure he couldn’t see a thing with those tiny pupils.
Electrical tendrils spiraled around one another as the magnets within whirled. His eyes went wide.
“Wait here.”
The slave didn’t “wait here”. He followed and tried to return both lamp and bag. “You will get in trouble for this.”
“If I do, is only bonus. Then I no have to sit through Tera’thian royal reception next time Kovathian sect entertain aid treaty. Eat, eah? You’ll like. Is sweet.”
“Then it will upset my stomach and I’ll get in trouble.”
Attilatia shrugged. “Suit yourself.” She started down the hall towards the files where the day’s reports were housed.
He pattered at her heels. “I don’t mean to insult you—”
“And I no take insult.”
“—but things are different for me. You have your freedom, but I have consequences.” There was the haughty presumptiveness she’d anticipated all along.
“It’s not like you know the difference.”
The boy stopped. The response had not been intended as crass, yet crass it was. Fates, even a language barrier couldn’t rescue her social ineptitude. Maybe he wouldn’t want to talk to her now.
“Well, I wasn‘t born into the Tume’amic.”
Wasn’t born into…? That went against everything she understood of them. And he’d said it so diplomatically. Now she was the uncultured one. “We all slaves to something. And we all have the means to escape, depending on what we willing to give.”
The distortion lamp in the boy’s hand hummed steadily.
Light and shadow swam across his face as he regarded her, expression unreadable.
An uncouth metaphor, perhaps, to present to a literal slave.
She turned from him and dug into the day’s report on the circuit tests, scanning the flowing Azadonian characters to the bottom of the page.
A single glyph shone with fresh ink: success.
Relief burst its dam, flushing into her limbs.
Now, no matter what Jenolavia decided, no other nation could control distortion.
Any devices on a distortion circuit had the ability to activate simultaneously, rather than independently.
What she hadn’t told the technicians was that, using the same control, she would also have the means to shut an entire circuit down.
If Jenolavia gave the Tera’thians access to their distortion rights, Attilatia could turn them off with a control the size of a bead.
“My master’s bidding aside, you’re not supposed to have me here, are you?” he asked.
“It do not matter what you know or what you see. Secret, no secret, it’s not as if your government could produce functional distortion.”
“Why?”
She wanted him to know—to rub it in his face.
If anything, knowing the truth would only make the Tera’thians more agreeable to continuing Azadonia’s preferred trade terms. “Because chances of finding stratum ruxechorin feed from is one in seventeen trillion.” And Azadonia’s means of locating it was passed down orally.
The boy tilted his head to one side. His voice was hesitant. “Why a limit at all? I thought distortion harnessed energy from infinite non-manifested realities.”
Again, slave boy was smarter than he looked.
“Yes, realities forged infinitely, but realities that contain transferable energy is forged only under specific condition. New energetic stratum can only be created when something remove itself from programming of its current existence—its planned trajectory, you could say—and make decision. Conscious selection is what create distortion stratum.”
“Choice?”