Chapter Eleven #2
“With no kill-stitch, it’s unsafe to remove or attempt to destroy the lattice,” she said.
“The purpose of a kill-stitch is so a pattern can be broken in an intended, gradual manner, without destroying it or causing it to backfire. The lack of a kill-stitch is intentional, and I’ve never encountered it in a lattice that isn’t meant to harm… ”
Her voice faded toward the end of that sentence.
She thought of the Bastion Weave. In his journal, Matteo had said that he’d built it without a kill-stitch.
If found and destroyed, how would it backfire?
Would it flatten the city it had been made to protect, so the High Harvester would have nothing left to conquer?
No. What a despicable thought. Matteo would’ve never done such a thing.
“I could tell you how to deactivate it,” the revenant said.
“What?” both Seraphina and Idris said at the same time. They exchanged a glance.
“You’re not here to free me, though, are you?”
No matter how hard Seraphina tried to read him, she couldn’t. His face was stitched together, and he’d only been wearing it for two years, since his creation. He didn’t inhabit it well enough to show his intentions or emotions – granted he had any.
“No,” she said.
He smiled, displaying two perfect rows of teeth, the incisors slightly lengthened.
“I appreciate your honesty. What do you want to do with me? For what purposes do you want to use me?”
It took her aback. The way he was negotiating his status as a slave.
Because it dawned on her: that was his designation.
What he’d done to those villagers… Had it been his choice?
He’d massacred hundreds, maybe thousands of people.
Everyone in this village, for sure, before the army made camp here.
He was a weapon, nothing more. When he wasn’t deployed, he was kept here, in a box, away from the soldiers, because they were terrified of him.
“I want to take you from him,” she said. “From the High Harvester. So you won’t kill in his name anymore.”
“Anything else?”
She swallowed and threw a glance at Idris, hoping he might help. His expression was blank, which told Seraphina this situation was beyond him.
“Be honest with me, as you’ve been so far,” the revenant said.
She sighed. “Do you have a name?”
“Sentinel Nine. Nine, for short.”
“That’s a number. A number is not a name.”
“Do you need a name to tell me that you intend to kill me?”
She crossed her arms over her chest, realizing too late it was a defensive gesture. No going back now. She tapped her foot, frustrated that she didn’t know how to navigate this disturbing conversation.
“You can’t be killed,” she said. “I saw it with my own eyes today. Yes, I was there when you tore apart every man, woman, and child in that village. I saw the extent of your depravity. You didn’t have to do it like that.
I know that you were ordered to kill, but…
You didn’t have to do it like that. I saw you get shot countless times.
In the face! You didn’t flinch, let alone fall.
And now I can’t even see where the musket balls penetrated your skull. ”
He didn’t say anything, just held her gaze, and for a second, she thought she saw something in his eyes. It was gone before she could guess what it was.
“You’re not the first of your kind that I’ve met,” she continued. “I know you’re immortal.”
“What happened to the others you’ve met?”
She pursed her lips. He waited, then nodded when he understood she wasn’t going to answer.
“Will you try, at least?”
Seraphina blinked. “Try what?”
“To kill me. Will you?”
Her eyebrows shot up and her mouth fell open. She must’ve looked a spectacle.
“You want…” Idris started, not quite able to finish the thought.
“He’s a surgeon,” Seraphina said. “The plan was…”
It was cruel of her to say it out loud. She closed her eyes and conjured the images she’d seen earlier that day. Sentinel Nine breaking down doors and splitting people in two with his bare hands, bathing himself in their blood.
“The plan was to dissect you. Open you up and learn how you were made. What gives you life. What makes you heal so fast.”
Heart hammering after having confessed to a strategy so atrocious, she opened her eyes and looked at him. This time, what she caught flashing in his golden orbs was hope.
“It’s an Obedience Lattice,” he said. “You’re right, it can’t be removed or destroyed safely. It would be a disaster, in fact, though of what proportions, I can’t say. Unless you want to kill everyone in this village and yourselves, I wouldn’t touch it.”
Seraphina couldn’t believe her ears. Nor her eyes.
She stared at the dark piece of wool, trying to absorb the fact that Falk Kühner had created the pattern while he was studying at Kr?henstein Academy, years before he became the High Harvester.
The pattern had been rejected and forbidden by the board.
“You must be using an apex relic,” he continued. “The Obedience Lattice is stronger than it.”
That only stood to prove how much of a genius Kühner was.
“There is a way, however. To activate the obedience field, the lattice requires blood. The keybone is sharp enough to cut, and the one who gives it his blood becomes its master. To deactivate the lattice without consequences, you must kill the master. It’s how the Constructs who were held at Schloss Ewigheim escaped.
I was kept there after my creation, along with the others.
Then the Sentinels were moved for training, while the functioning Constructs remained.
Each dungeon cell had an Obedience Lattice inside one of the walls.
I expect they’re still there, since few people knew about them.
Only the scientists who worked at the schloss, and they all died, I heard.
Among them were the masters of the lattices.
Once they burned to ashes, the fields dropped and the Constructs could leave. ”
Seraphina hadn’t noticed when she’d leaned in so far that her head was practically inside the crate. She touched her hand to her chest, reaching for the crucifix that wasn’t there.
Nine was aware of how close she was. If he’d wanted to, he could’ve grabbed her by the throat ten times already. He made no move in her direction.
Now she knew how Rune had gained his freedom. It was another piece of his history, of what he’d been through, and she tucked it away like a precious thing.
“The captain is the master of this particular Obedience Lattice,” he said. “In case you wanted to know.”
“Kill him, the field drops, you’re free,” Seraphina murmured.
“Not free. Yours.” He looked at Idris. “And yours to dissect, master surgeon.”
Idris had been called many things, but never a master.
“Don’t…” He choked on the word and turned away, running a hand over his face. “We’re not killing anyone, Seraphina.”
She scrunched up her nose. “Why not? One of the Harvester’s captains? We’d do the world a favor.”
He stared at her in disbelief. “Who are you? What have you become?”
“Oh, don’t give me that. I’m exactly who this war made me into. Do you think the Seraphina you knew back in school would’ve survived?”
“You have no idea how grateful I am that you did, and you’re here, and we found each other again. But don’t be like them. Don’t stoop to their level.”
“It would be impossible to stoop to their level, Idris. I don’t rape, I just kill. I don’t mutilate, either. I make it quick and merciful, if you think about it.”
He opened his mouth, but he was speechless, staring at her as if he were seeing her for the first time. Seraphina cocked an eyebrow. Well, that argument was easily won. Because she was right, of course.
That didn’t make him wrong, though. She understood his stance and respected it. What wouldn’t she have given to be able to adopt it. It was too late for her.
Four names: Viktor Eisengrau, Otto Krause, Leopold Holzer, Thomas Mayer.
Add to that Georg Hartmann. Five, then. They had made Seraphina into a murderer.
Two had gotten what had been coming for them.
She wouldn’t rest until the other three met her blades as well.
No remorse – not now, and not on her death bed. They didn’t deserve it.
A line from some sermon she’d once heard in church came to her - Forgiveness is not for them, my children. It is for you.
That was all right. Seraphina didn’t deserve it either.
She turned to the soldier who’d been waiting patiently, in silence, and stepped into his line of sight.
“You, go get your captain. Tell him there’s something wrong with the revenant but say no more.”
The man headed out of the barn and in the direction of the village. His walk was stiff, not too slow, nor too quick. The rhythmic sound of his boots faded after a minute. It had started snowing again.
Seraphina took out her daggers and inspected them, then looked around the barn trying to decide what position to take in preparation for the captain’s arrival.
She didn’t have to do it here, she supposed.
She could meet him and the sentry before they reached the barn, and spare Idris the scene.
The fact that she was going to kill someone in only a few minutes didn’t upset her.
She noticed this with detachment. It had to be done, so there was no point in digging for feelings that weren’t there, and if they were and she discovered them, they wouldn’t matter.
They needed to free the revenant from the latticed crate, and this was the only way.
“Seraphina, let’s think about it,” Idris tried.
“I have, and the only other option I see is to leave empty-handed.”
He shook his head.
“That’s what I thought,” she said.
When he shot her an annoyed glance, she sighed and walked up to him, put a hand on his arm and squeezed reassuringly.
“Leave this to me, all right? You don’t even have to be here. Or I’ll go outside and do it, behind the barn.”
“Do you hear yourself? You’re talking about ending a man’s life in such a cold, indifferent manner.”
“A man who ordered the slaughter of hundreds, maybe thousands of innocent people. You’re right, I shouldn’t be cold and indifferent. I should be raging.”
He brushed a hand over his dark hair. It was cut too short to thread his fingers through it.
Seraphina had the impression that if he could, he would’ve pulled his hair out by now.
He started pacing, and for the next half hour, he vastly ignored both her and Nine, who was watching them with slight amusement in his eyes.
Nine.
She’d told him they were going to cut him open and study his insides, and he’d gladly offered them the key to his cage.
She couldn’t begin to understand what he was thinking or feeling.
He could’ve been lying. Once the deed was done and the lattice deactivated, she had to be alert and use the thrall relic on him.
He hadn’t attempted to hurt her when she’d been within his reach, but that could as well have been because he needed her to escape.
She couldn’t trust Nine. He wasn’t Rune.
She’d said it herself, and she truly believed it: Constructs and Sentinels were different.
The sound of crunching footsteps snapped her back to the present. She moved to the right side of the open barn door, back pressed to the wall. Idris did the same on the left side.
“I swear, if you brought me out here for nothing…”
“Something is wrong with the revenant,” she heard the sentry say in a deadpan voice.
“You keep saying that!”
The captain raised his tone, and now that Seraphina heard him better, she felt her stomach tighten. A knot formed in her throat, and her eyes went wide.
She knew that voice.
It was one of them, it had to be. But Mayer had said that Eisengrau was in Munich, and Krause and Holzer had been sent to Neuburg.
Daggers at the ready, she felt resolution and apprehension course through her. She hadn’t expected to run into one of them so soon.
From across the open space between them, Idris shot her a concerned look. He’d noticed her changed expression, and if he’d been worried before, now he seemed terrified. Of what was about happen? Of her?
Seraphina pursed her lips. So be it. She’d do this first and seek his understanding later.