Congregation. The Ebrians must have organized in the Capital. Rakel had said before that her task was to send out news fromthe Capital to other parts of the world. Now Emere knew she hadn’t been alone in that.
“There’s a guest from the north,” she went on, “who wants to join us in an alliance against the Empire. I want you to help us with our negotiation.”
Emere blinked. “Why is that dangerous? And why would I be the one for the task?”
“Have you forgotten you’re a wanted man? You even setting foot outside is a dangerous proposition,” Rakel tutted. “But this is someone you know.”
He took a deep breath. “Who is it?” He already knew. There was only one person who would be planning such a thing.
“King Loran of Arland.”
26
ARIENNE
“Thisis Grand Inquisitor Lysandros?” came Noam’s incredulous voice in her mind.
“That’s what he said.”
In that tent erected in Fractica’s mind, Arienne looked over the skinny man who had introduced himself as Lysandros. The Lysandros she had once met had looked nothing like this—his body had been entirely machine, and his eyes had glowed like Powered streetlamps. But here was an ordinary young man, his body covered in a motion frame.
“But it can’t be. The Grand Inquisitor is not some… young man,” Noam muttered.
Making a soft whirring sound, the young man walked to the bedding and sat down. Arienne was accustomed to the device he used to walk—the Empire often bestowed them on soldiers who had lost a limb during their service. She had once read that the Powered armor legion elites were privileged to wear had evolvedfrom this type of prosthetic frame. Arienne noticed the thin arms and legs underneath the motion frame.
“So his machine body wasn’t just to prolong his life. He was always like this, from youth,” Arienne murmured to herself.
Because this really had to be Lysandros as a young man. Instead of a room, Fractica’s mind had a tent inside it, and the memory of Lysandros lived there. A ghost inside a ghost.
But then, Arienne’s mind also had a ghost…
“Noam, I’m going to open the door, and you’re going to step out.”
“… Is that even possible?” Noam asked nervously.
“As you can see, there’s already a ghost in here, so yes, probably.”
“Probably?” Noam whined.
Arienne laughed. “All right, definitely, then. I don’t know how Fractica has created it, but this is the same kind of mind-space as the room you’re in right now. I am sure of it. Maybe it—she—knew the same sorcery as Eldred, in life.”
This couldn’t be the Lysandros who had died on Finvera Pass, though. Instead, it was just a trace of him that remained, somehow, inside this machine. Perhaps it was simply Fractica’s memory of Lysandros.
Arienne chanted a spell and drew an ellipse in the air. Violet ripples instantly appeared inside it; as she expected, opening a door between mind-spaces was easier than between a mind-space and an actual space.
“It’ll be all right. Come out here and look at him with me,” Arienne encouraged.
Finally, Noam stepped out. He stared intently at Lysandrossitting on his bedding before saying, “He does look very much like him.”
“You didn’t bring Tychon with you?”
Maybe if she brought Tychon out, she could get this ghost of Lysandros to talk. But Noam didn’t answer, continuing to stare at Lysandros. “You hear all sorts of things working as a sorcerer-engineer. About rain compromising output levels, or the output being fine for chariots but lanterns always being dimmer than they should be, or sobbing noises when nobody is around… Some sorcerer-engineers end up treating Power generators like people.”
“Eldred was doing all sorts of things when he was a Power generator. He talked to me, even under seal.”
“I don’t know anything about abominations like him.” Noam winced. “But I did always think there must be something of the person they used to be left inside the generators. Fractica used to Power the Grand Inquisitor’s body before Tychon was commissioned. Maybe that’s why it dreams of him?”
Arienne suddenly realized that there was no Fractica here—to imagine a dream where the dreamer was absent seemed strange to Arienne. Perhaps the sorcerer Fractica, whoever she was, didn’t exist anymore, not beyond the husk forever generating Power for the Empire, nothing remaining of her mind other than a space where memories without self could reside.
