“How are you feeling today, Houwha?” she asks, smiling and glancing at her noteboard as she comes in. “Up to a medical check?”
“I’m feeling up to a walk,” I say. “Let’s go out to the garden.”
Stahnyn starts, blinking at me. “Houwha, you know that’s not possible.”
They keep such lax security on us, I have noticed. Sensors to monitor our vitals, cameras to monitor our movements, microphones to record our sounds. Some of the sensors monitor our magic usage—and none of them, not one, can measure even a tenth of what we really do. I would be insulted if I had not just been shown how important it is to them that we be lesser. Lesser creatures don’t need better monitoring, do they? Creations of Sylanagistine magestry cannot possibly have abilities that surpass it. Unthinkable! Ridiculous! Don’t be foolish.
Fine, I am insulted. And I no longer have the patience for Stahnyn’s polite patronization.
So I find the lines of magic that run to the cameras, and I entangle them with the lines of magic that run to their own storage crystals, and I loop these together. Now the cameras will display only footage that they filmed over the last few hours—which mostly consists of me looking out the window and brooding. I do the same to the audio equipment, taking care to erase that last exchange between me and Stahnyn. I do all of this with barely a flick of my will, because I was designed to affect machines the size of skyscrapers; cameras are nothing. I use more magic reaching for the others to tell a joke.
The others sess what I am doing, however. Bimniwha gets a taste of my mood and immediately alerts the others—because I am the nice one, usually. I’m the one who, until recently, believed in Geoarcanity. Usually Remwha is the resentful one. But right now Remwha is coldly silent, stewing on what we have learned. Gaewha is quiet, too, in despair, trying to fathom how to demand the impossible. Dushwha is hugging themselves for comfort and Salewha is sleeping too much. Bimniwha’s alert falls on weary, frustrated, self-absorbed ears, and goes ignored.
Meanwhile, Stahnyn’s smile has begun to falter, as she only now realizes I’m serious. She shifts her stance, putting hands on her hips. “Houwha, this isn’t funny. I understand you got the chance to leave the other day—”
I have considered the most efficient way to shut her up. “Does Conductor Gallat know that you find him attractive?”
Stahnyn freezes, eyes going wide and round. Brown eyes in her case, but she likes icewhite. I’ve seen how she looks at Gallat, though I never much cared before. I don’t really care now. But I imagine that finding Niess eyes attractive is a taboo thing in Syl Anagist, and neither Gallat nor Stahnyn can afford to be accused of that particular perversion. Gallat would fire Stahnyn at the first whisper of it—even a whisper from me.
I go over to her. She draws back a little, frowning at my forwardness. We do not assert ourselves, we constructs. We tools. My behavior is anomalous in a way that she should report, but that isn’t what has her so worried. “No one heard me say that,” I tell her, very gently. “No one can see what’s happening in this room right now. Relax.”
Her bottom lip trembles, just a little, before she speaks. I feel bad, just a little, for having disturbed her so. She says, “You can’t get far. Th-there’s a vitamin deficiency … You and the others were built that way. Without special food—the food we serve you—you’ll die in just a few days.”
It only now occurs to me that Stahnyn thinks I mean to run away.
It only now occurs to me to run away.
What the conductor has just told me isn’t an insurmountable hurdle. Easy enough to steal food to take with me, though I would die when it ran out. My life would be short regardless. But the thing that truly troubles me is that I have nowhere to go. All the world is Syl Anagist.
“The garden,” I repeat, at last. This will be my grand adventure, my escape. I consider laughing, but the habit of appearing emotionless keeps me from doing so. I don’t really want to go anywhere, to be honest. I just want to feel like I have some control over my life, if only for a few moments. “I want to see the garden for five minutes. That’s all.”
Stahnyn shifts from foot to foot, visibly miserable. “I could lose my position for this, especially if any of the senior conductors see. I could be imprisoned.”
“Perhaps they will give you a nice window overlooking a garden,” I suggest. She winces.
And then, because I have left her no choice, she leads me out of my cell and downstairs, and outside.
The garden of purple flowers looks strange from this angle, I find, and it is an altogether different thing to smell the star-flowers up close. They smell strange—oddly sweet, almost sugary, with a hint of fermentation underneath where some of the older flowers have wilted or been crushed. Stahnyn is fidgety, looking around too much, while I stroll slowly, wishing I did not need her beside me. But this is fact: I cannot simply wander the grounds of the compound alone. If guards or attendants or other conductors see us, they will think Stahnyn is on official business, and not question me … if she will only be still.
But then I stop abruptly, behind a lilting spider tree. Stahnyn stops as well, frowning and plainly wondering what’s happening—and then she, too, sees what I have seen, and freezes.
Up ahead, Kelenli has come out of the compound to stand between two curling bushes, beneath a white rose arch. Conductor Gallat has followed her out. She stands with her arms folded. He’s behind her, shouting at her back. We aren’t close enough for me to hear what he’s saying, though his angry tone is indisputable. Their bodies, however, are a story as clear as strata.
“Oh, no,” mutters Stahnyn. “No, no, no. We should—”
“Still,” I murmur. I mean to say be still, but she quiets anyway, so at least I got the point across.
And then we stand there, watching Gallat and Kelenli fight. I can’t hear her voice at all, and it occurs to me that she cannot raise her voice to him; it isn’t safe. But when he grabs her arm and yanks her around to face him, she automatically claps a hand over her belly. The hand on the belly is a quick thing. Gallat lets go at once, seemingly surprised by her reaction and his own violence, and she moves the hand smoothly back to her side. I don’t think he noticed. They resume arguing, and this time Gallat spreads his hands as if offering something. There is pleading in his posture, but I notice how stiff his back is. He begs—but he thinks he shouldn’t have to. I can tell that when begging fails, he will resort to other tactics.