Chapter 17
Jesamin
Isupposed it had been too much to hope for that I would make it through this journey without revealing Talos’s true nature.
My golem, my friend, my weapon of war. Many of the Artificers’ final engineering projects in the Collegium were beautiful, useful creations—mine had been a small hand-cannon capable of firing multiple slim, pointed rails straight through a man in full plate armor.
I’d demonstrated it on a dummy loaded with iron plates, and the Masters had given me sidelong glances even as they put their signatures to the sheepskin scroll that declared me one of their equals, eligible for a Mastery.
Maybe they were wondering whose hands my weapons would end up in, and they were right to do so. It was Renaud who came to me with grand plans for an affluent future, tentative pricing for shipments of iron and brass and witchwood, and the name of a buyer in Serissa.
I had immediately destroyed my working prototype. I had burned Renaud’s carefully-written plans. I’d advertised myself as an Artificer for beauty and utility over conflict, and that was the discontent at the heart of things, the reason he truly chose to leave me.
I would make no man wealthy by instigating war and death.
But we don’t get to pick and choose our natural talents. So as I struggled over those bits of Artifice that were meant to be benign and lovely, like the Thing, I also poured my natural inclinations into Talos’s design.
He was useful. He was beautiful. He was awe-inspiring and unique, and he was a weapon to the very core of him.
My golem’s clockwork wound down, and the swords slowly spun to a halt. Most of the creature’s milky blood had been flung away from him to spatter over the walls of Liuridar’s ugly, hive-like buildings, but he still held them up, dismayed at the mess.
“And here I thought he was merely an unusual golem,” Wroth said, his expression impossible to read. He knelt, checking the pulse of the man’s corpse, and rose scarcely a moment later. We had both known from the moment the creature flung him that he was no longer alive.
“Oh, he’s unusual in many ways.” I didn’t meet Wroth’s eyes; I didn’t entirely believe I would see the gleam of avarice there, but I wasn’t willing to risk it. “Ah…do you think there’s more of these things lurking about?”
I unsheathed my sword, carefully maneuvering around the creature so I wasn’t near its hands, and prodded at it.
My blade slid right into its thin, onion-skin flesh, which sizzled at the touch of the cold iron edge, but it didn’t move.
Well, of course it didn’t move; Talos had essentially reduced it to flayed ribbons, but I wasn’t taking chances.
My change in subject was transparent, but Wroth allowed it.
“Oh, yes.” His voice was a low, irritated growl as he studied it. “I’ve never seen this particular beast before, but that means nothing here. It could be singular in nature, or it could have emerged from a nest. But if there’s one, it’s always best to assume there are more.”
I found a handkerchief in my pack, wiping down my sword before sheathing it, and beckoned Talos to me. My golem held out his arms, allowing me to carefully clean him. The blood appeared inert, if disgusting, but I scrupulously kept it from touching my skin.
“You’ll need to be bathed entirely,” I said, sighing heavily. “I’m sorry, Talos.”
Talos retracted the swords, unfurling his hands from his forearms once more, and shrugged eloquently.
Wroth was still eyeing him as I tossed the handkerchief aside, calling it a loss. “Have you considered making a golem of chthonium?”
I turned and stared at him, a frisson of apprehension running through me. If Wroth asked me to make something like that…it would be like Renaud shoving his plans in my face all over again. “Gods, no. Can you imagine…? It would be unstoppable. The potential for abuse is…I can’t even fathom.”
But when I met his eyes, I saw no reproach, only acknowledgement and a touch of relief. A chthonium golem? Talos was dangerous enough being made only of iron and bronze.
“Just an idle thought,” he said, and shook his head, mane flying.
“I wouldn’t wish to see one of his kind in the hands of an enemy.
Don’t worry, Jesamin. I would not ask you to make weapons for my sake.
Better to be an Artificer who thinks through her actions, than one who makes things simply because she can. ”
Gods help me, I believed him. Whereas Renaud had seen me as a walking treasury, buried so deeply in my Artifice I wouldn’t mind becoming a warmonger, I thought Wroth understood that once a weapon was made, someone out there would intend to use it…whether it was needful or not.
“If we ever faced a threat like the wargs again, I would make something. But never a chthonium golem. That would be pure madness.” I focused on the building with the shimmering scarlet sheen creeping over its black walls.
If I let my eyes relax, I could just make out the faintest outline of an arch-shaped door, if it could be called that; it was part of the wall itself, nearly seamless, but for Marrion’s hastily-scrawled blood-sigil just illuminating its edges.
Before Wroth could say anything, I strode forward and knocked on the door. Instead of swinging open, it slid upwards, vanishing into the chthonium, and I found Marrion only inches away, her hand raised, staring at me through a glimmering red veil.
“Oh thank the gods,” she said, visibly relieved; her hair, once neatly braided, swung to her waist in a wild tangle, and dark marks streaked her red robe. She favored her left arm, holding it cradled against her chest.
“Marrion, are you hurt?” Wroth asked over my shoulder, leaning in so close I felt him pressing against my back.
“I fell in the first scuffle, and someone stepped on it, but I’ll be fine,” she said sourly. “It’s only bruised. A bit embarrassing, truthfully, but it was chaos. Some of Alvar’s men found us.”
I looked over her shoulder and saw the knights cleaning their weapons around a fire made of one of the provisions barrels.
Nikos was stoking the flames, blood drying in a crackled mask across his face.
Rasmus had set up a crude tripod, and was stirring a cauldron with a look of grim concentration as Erland scooped powdered ox blood into it.
“Come in, if you please,” Marrion added, her voice tense, and I realized she was also craning her head to look over my shoulder at the city. “The barrier will let you through.”
Wroth nudged me gently, ushering me through the prickling veil of scarlet light. Talos followed, his head rotating on his shoulders to watch our backs.
“We’ve already scouted both floors,” Marrion told Wroth. “It’s safe, and we have a clean water source.”
I almost stopped in my tracks, frowning at the place we found ourselves in.
The room was rounded, the walls ribbed like the lining of some enormous creature’s throat, swooping upwards to culminate in an odd chthonium appendage jutting from the ceiling.
All of it metal, and yet identical to a living thing—a strange thought flitted through my mind, a word, biomachina. Almost alive, yet only machinery.
But the organic architecture was belied by slabs of chthonium that emerged from the far wall, set at nearly the height of my shoulders, and they still held what the Fae had left behind.
I stepped closer, looking at the collection of glass.
Beakers and vials and jars, tiny glass pipettes not unlike those we’d found within the chthonium Artifice in Lonmire.
Little thin rectangles of glass that looked like window panes for a dollhouse.
All were scattered, and some had been smashed into explosions of glittering fragments.
Behind them, on the walls, engravings had been embedded into the chthonium itself. They must have used tools of chthonium; nothing else left so much as a scratch on its lusterless surface.
The Artificer in me longed to touch them, wondering if perhaps there were hidden compartments, but I kept my hands to myself, very aware that we were grouped in this room together, and setting off any inimical traps would kill us all.
But, almost as interesting as the glassware and engravings, there was a thick, round pane of glass set in the floor like a port, and dark water rushed beneath it.
My head tipped to the side as I studied it.
Marrion approached, smiling despite the lines of pain pulling at her brows. “Watch,” she said softly, and knelt to run her fingers on the ribs of chthonium framing the port.
The glass retracted, much as the door had done, and water sprayed onto the floor.
She dipped a bucket on a rope, hauling up a bucketful of clean, clear water.
And with another brush of the fingers, the window slid back into place, so quickly it would’ve severed the rope in an instant if it had remained in the water.
“Nobody wanted to reach in,” she admitted. “Use the bucket if you need fresh water.”
She brought it to the cauldron, and my eyes trailed from the port to the glassware on the tables.
Given the advanced nature of Fae Artifice, I wouldn’t expect them to drink from a hole in the floor.
They would simply shape the chthonium to deliver it via pipes.
Nor would it serve as a toilet, for the same reason.
I thought they had been studying the water, as the alchemists did. The port was merely easy access to samples.
There was a rounded door at the end of the table, and I took a long flight up to the next floor, finding more chthonium nooks and crannies in the walls, more glassware, and bits of cloth that turned to dust under the slightest touch.
And in the middle, a large round tub that rose to my waist. It was inset a foot into the floor, the bowl textured with smooth peaks and valleys. Almost cauldron-like, just like one Rasmus stirred below.