Ksenia watched them for a few seconds longer before turning her back on them. She rolled the tray table with its line of tools and vials over to the lab table, where she set about drawing some of Nathaniel’s blood.
“We’ll take his vitals and find a baseline for what he is now. A pity we don’t have a control record from before he was changed,” Ksenia said.
Caris stopped fighting against Blaine’s grip, and he let her go after a moment. The three of them watched in silence, Delani guarding them, as the pair of wardens worked on Nathaniel’s unconscious form. Machines were rolled out of large storage cabinets and winched down from the ceiling.
Ksenia was in charge as the master alchemist, but Blaine didn’t miss the wand hooked to her belt. She was a magician as well, blending science and magic together, which was the cornerstone of alchemy on Maricol, one the wardens understood better than any academic in any university.
“You said all the clockwork metal hearts you’ve had before have broken. How will you keep his intact?” Blaine asked.
“We’ve mapped bits of the spells and have researched several foundations that could possibly build them, but we’ve never had an active version within our laboratories to study,” Ksenia said, not looking up from the second blood draw she was performing on Nathaniel. “We know about the self-destruct aspect of the control mechanism and are prepared to work around it.”
“You’ll need someone well versed in mind magic. Whoever does this to people, their control goes deep,” Honovi warned.
“We know.” Ksenia withdrew the needle from Nathaniel’s arm and inserted it into a vial that contained a substance at the bottom. She emptied the syringe before capping the vial and setting it aside. “Our initial examination will take a while. You can find something else to do.”
“I’m not leaving him alone with you,” Caris said.
Blaine sighed, sharing a glance with Honovi. If Caris was allowed to stay, then he would remain as well. Whether or not Nathaniel was unconscious and strapped to a lab table, he wouldn’t risk Caris being in the same room as the other man, not when he was arionetka.
“Will they be in the way?” Delani asked.
“Not if they stay quiet and stay where they are.”
“Very well. I’m needed above. Radio me when you’ve some information.”
Delani left, marching off to handle her duties as governor, whatever those might entail. Blaine, Caris, and Honovi remained in the laboratory, pressed up against the wall, watching as Ksenia and her assistant worked diligently for several hours. They moved between Nathaniel’s unconscious body to machines and microscopes set up on counters around them.
The sound of the machines was a hum that came and went, pressed into purpose for exams that Blaine couldn’t follow. He knew better than to ask their purpose, keeping quiet as Ksenia worked.
Blaine noticed when she must have found something. The way her shoulders went tight and how she waved her assistant over to confirm some result was impossible to miss. Caris picked herself up off the floor, brushing off her trousers. “What have you found?”
“What did I say about being quiet?” Ksenia said. She stood over Nathaniel, stethoscope still in one hand, wand in the other.
“But you’ve found something, haven’t you?”
Blaine held out his arm when Caris would’ve stepped closer. She flashed him an annoyed look but settled back against the wall. Ksenia didn’t answer, merely put down her tools and went to pick up the radio. “Governor, I need you back down here. Can you tell me if Petra is on the island still?”
The radio crackled after a moment, Delani’s voice coming through a little broken due to depth. “She’s not fully recovered and hasn’t been assigned a border for the season.”
“Good. Tell Petra to bring her cat with her.”
“I’ll locate her and bring them down.”
Ksenia set aside the radio and returned to Nathaniel’s side. She picked up her wand, the clarion crystal at the tip pulsing with a soft green-blue hue of magic. She kept it resting against Nathaniel’s chest, right over where the scars crossed, rising and falling with every breath he took in unconsciousness.
Eventually, Delani returned, though she didn’t arrive alone. On her heels was another warden, who walked with an obvious limp, a metal brace screwed in place around her right knee for extra support. But it was what came in behind both of them that had Blaine tensing.
When Ksenia had mentioned a cat, he thought it would be a living creature, like the sort noble-born women had as pets, long-haired and demanding. This, though, was no living creature that padded into the laboratory.
The clockwork cat was made of gears and metal plates, no wind-up mechanism in sight. Its bottle-green crystal eyes shone with an eerie light, strange head swinging their way, metal eyelids half closing as it seemed to stare at them. Blaine thought perhaps it was steam-driven, but it moved with a fluidity that not even automatons had. Flickering at its center was the illuminating presence of magic that gave life to its form in a disconcerting way.
“Since when do we perform autopsies on revenants?” the new warden, who must be Petra, asked.
“He’s not a revenant,” Ksenia said, eyeing the newcomers from across Nathaniel’s bare, scarred chest. “He’s arionetka.”
“A what?”
“Something enslaved,” Delani said, proving to Blaine that the existence ofrionetkasmust not be well-known through the general ranks of wardens. “Have you found a control mechanism?”
