Even through her mask, I felt her gaze steady on mine. Afraid, certainly. But not looking away. I wonder what color her irises are. I’ve never seen the eyes of the dayfolk, not yet altered by the Diakópsei’spower, but I’ve heard stories. Blue like an Earthside sky. Green like the last surviving plant life of Pagomènos. Brown like untouched earth. In my mind’s eye, the colors all blur together, a kaleidoscope iris framed by dark lashes, looking straight through me, daring me to look back.
Zalel waits outside my quarters. His breath, emerging in quick, nervous pants, sends little bouts of blue flame from his nostrils. I push past him before he can say a word. Quickly dropping to all fours, I fumble for the other box beneath my bed, the other souvenir of my first encounter with a dayfolk girl.
The mech’s leg remains wrecked, connected to its torso by a single stubborn wire, frayed almost to breaking. Its feet were already in a state, anyway, sparking and smoking even after I turned the entire system off. Internally, its voice box is a crumpled husk, and externally, its head remains at that dysfunctional bent angle. Its optical processors are dim in shutdown, but the ridiculous expression on its metallic face remains. Two eyes, almost but not quite the same size. A smile wide enough to invoke revulsion.
“Do the dayfolk really take you seriously?” I mutter to myself. If I had a face like that, I wouldn’t even blame the insurgents for wanting to blow it clean off. “Was all … this … really necessary?”
I’ve never fiddled with a dayfolk mech before. I’ve never even seen one, but I know something of their technology. After all, my own fortress has sections of radiation-forged Pagonian plate, better designed for dayfolk prisoners than where I’m currently keeping Kori. They’ve been abandoned for ages. We never thought we’d see another dayfolk trespasser in my lifetime.
“My lord?” Zalel’s voice cracks like static at the end. He’s still at my doorway, eager to be of use.
I’ve treated him as less than even a servant, and he’s become something of a friend. I let loose a long breath. “Zalel. Can you bring me a comms tablet repair kit from storage? And some spare parts, if you can find them?” We may not have full, proper replacements for the ruinedknee, but the mech will need something to walk on—alongside several new gears in the voice box, a head realignment, and something for those half-burnt feet.
“Of course!” Zalel shouts, thrilled to have a mission. But then, after an instant of hesitation: “What for?”
“Our prisoner may be with us for quite some time before we can contact the Daylands for her ransom.” I trace the mech’s obnoxious smile with my claw. “It would be a shame if she were lonely.”
Kori is asleep when I arrive. I suppose for a creature unaccustomed to the Shadowlands, the eternal night makes sleep a perpetually enticing option, so I shouldn’t be surprised, but it’s not her unconsciousness that strikes me—it’s the peacefulness of it.
The radiation mask still conceals her face, warping it into strict lines and protective angles, but the arch of her spine has gone from a coiled spring to a delicate curve. Her gloved hands, once fists, have opened like flowers, reaching for the light on Pagomènos’s other side. The mask regulates her breathing, whether she’s sleeping or awake, but in sleep, it’s the gentlest whisper, the exhale more like a sun-kissed breeze than a mechanical rasp, steady and soft.
For a brief moment, I don’t want to disturb her supine form. I stand with all four limbs locked to the floor, afraid that if I turn away and depart too quickly, the thudding of my steps will startle her awake.
Unfortunately, the mech’s haphazardly assembled personality persists, despite one leg having been reduced to an unbending rod. It talked the entire way to Kori’s cell, oddly preoccupied with Earthside methods of time tracking that have been long abandoned on Pagomènos. By the mech’s rough estimate, after drilling me about how many torch lightings I’ve lived through, I am “seventeen years” old—which means nothing to me but seemed to please the robot well enough.
Reuniting with Kori pleases Aspect even more than useless measures of time. “KORI!” the mech wails, launching itself into the freezing wall of her cell. I’m already beginning to regret realigning its head and retooling its voice box, once again enabling speech with utterly unnecessary volume and projection. The concentrated cold makes the mech’s every joint audibly rattle. It steps back, shuddering violently. “Pain. Not fun for Aspect. Not recommended—by Aspect.” But as soon as the shock subsides, the mech shrieks her name again and catapults back into the wall.
Kori jolts awake. “Aspect?” she mumbles, groggy; then, coming back to herself at the sight of her mech doing its damn best to self-destruct, she says, “Aspect, stop it before you hurt yourself!”
The mech curls into a contrite ball on the floor, one knee pulled to its chest, the other leg now an unflexing peg. “Aspect is—very sorry.”
Kori’s mask pivots. I know her eyes are fixed on me. I wonder if they’re glaring or brimming with tears, or both. “What do you want?”
“Must every action I take be out of want?” My rib cage feels hollow, every heartbeat’s echo reverberating. “I already fulfilled my intent here. Your life will earn a handsome ransom for my regime. But, in the meantime, it won’t do to have you rotting in that cell. I need you suitably healthy for when the dayfolk retrieve you, or your mother may be displeased, even revoke the ransom.”
Kori points at her mech. “What does that have to do with Aspect?”
“It’s a precaution, if you will.”
“They have a name.”
“What sort of dayfolk citizen grants her machinery a name?”
Kori hesitates. I imagine her biting her lip behind the mask. “They’re more than a machine. Maybe less than a person, so far. But surely you’ve seen it. Those glimmers of personality, flickers of near-organic choice.”
“Why are you telling me this?”
“Because you telling the dayfolk would only compound my crimes, thereby decreasing my ransom. And I think you want to be paid exorbitantly for the time spent suffering my presence.”
I smile a bit despite myself. This absurd rebel of a girl, utterly unafraid of even the Shadowlands’ own monster princess, is beginning to amuse me.
“Oh, I wouldn’t call it suffering.” I gesture to the mech. “So how did you program them?”
“Memories,” Kori says, without missing a beat.
I blink, stunned. “From what I understand of the Daylands, that’s not what mechs are meant for.”
“And dayfolk girls aren’t meant to spend their lives dutifully isolated from meaningful human interaction. But when you’re the Daylands’ heiress, daughter of the monarch, the rules change. I decided I might as well change them for my own creation, too.”
