Day Thirty-One (and a long day at that 0_o)

A point of clarification: we, neither of us, knew anything about the other. We thought we knew, of course. We had oceans of evidence to prove our claims: millions of observational recordings, thousands of years of history, step after step of hard logic, beliefs so solid they may as well have stopped rail spears.
Victory, your future Empress-Holder, was part of an enormous universal gestalt, a collective made up of all life in the this new universe and, particularly, all life in this galaxy. As a collective, individuals within it held no intrinsic power. As a collective, it could be very circumspect about its aims. Victory and all your kind were fabrications, a front designed to mislead and confuse, while the real forces struck innocent arrivals with debilitation, failure, death. The whole universe was a trap. That Victory knew what I was only made me regret I hadn't managed to grab her; her statement indicated that the highest echelon were at the very least aware of their involvement, if not fully informed as to the extent, and that she would have had useful information.
To her, I was an ambassador of the apocalypse. When five new worlds were discovered scoured of all life and feature, when the Sheen-Mane homeworld was shattered in the cataclysm known as Biter, when golden hulls began appearing throughout Imperial space accompanied by a single unbelievably advanced robot... the natives became rather suspicious.
The sudden disappearance of an entire Fortress sailfleet didn't help.
A sailfleet, you ask?
Victory and I were not the only ones mistaken.
The most rigid two-dimensional form is, after all, a triangle, and belief is nothing if not rigid.

What was I? A Silence Hunter. Such as a Silence Hunter could be without Link and without armor and without siblings. I was one, and I was alone, and I was fully aware that any speech in my mind was solely that: in my mind. There was no connection to the outside, no connection to anyone else, no connection to the Array.
Another mistake, but one that would not be relevant until much later.
The Wonder-Conqueror, then, did not know exactly what I was. I was unique. Like the mountain.

Hwandi.

"I will talk," I tell it.
"Good." The boot is lifted, the close rush of breath removed, the gun still steady. "Now, get up."
I do so, with caution. No reason to excite the Demolishers. 28 shots I have taken, and my flanks bear the marks. 28 blackened slashes, edges bubbled and flaking. The cutters now are aimed at my eyes, my chest panels, my mouth. I would live, but it would hurt.
The Wonder-Conqueror watches me rise. I tower over it as my legs unfold, head above torso above carriage. An ancient terror, arms coiling like serpents, steam filtering through boiler-slits, evidence of internal fires to counter the Demolishers' cold. I could lash out and kill the creature in a second, and yet it shows no fear. No fear at all.
I could kill it. Perhaps I should.
Memory stops me: impact where no impact should have occurred, a shock, a blow. Whatever else it may be, Royal Fleetpart Commander Victory is armored. Untouchable. Invincible, as I once was. I, heir to the grand tradition, though my education was stunted. I, who once dreamed of gouging rivers with my claws. I, who flew.
Silent-Sands-Tumble-Down-the-Rift.
Speaking to one of them.
I grind my mandibles together, snap my chest panels. Scratch twin furrows across the deck and its fading marks with a foreclaw.
"Don't do that," says Victory. "No need to further impress us."
I stop.
The Wonder-Conqueror steps forward, foreshortened in my sight to little more than a face peering upwards. "Thank you. Now. I'm sure I've been introduced to you already, but we agreed to start again. I am Royal Fleetpart Commander Victory, Gracious Kia, Ninth House Rank Eight. Do you know what that means?"


I pitch my voice as low as it will go, as harsh, as chorded, and speak like one of their choirs. "It is irrelevant. False, as you are false. Any power you possess is power given, and soon it will be taken away."
A tapping against my chest: the gun again.
"Times have changed, Blackscale. I don't know how long you've been floating out in the black, or how you found one of our drop-pods, but this time we're ready for you. Welcome to the Second Empire of the Maze. Self-built, self-reliant, self-patrolled. We've caught you, and now you're going to work for us." The Wonder-Conqueror holsters its weapon, places its hands on its hips. "Do you have a name, or do you prefer what we've given?"
Ready for us? They've always been ready for us. What is this?
More trickery. More deception.
"No name," I rumble, "My kind have no need for names."
"That makes it easier, doesn't it? Very well, then, Blackscale. Mekoven. SAI-17. Now that the pleasantries are completed, you're coming with me." It indicates the Demolishers, still waiting motionless to either side. "So are these two."
I debate between pretending that I know what it's talking about and conceding to curiosity.
< It still isn't afraid of you>
"For what purpose?" I ask.
The Wonder-Conqueror gestures to its guard, and they shift to clear the way. Cutters still leveled. "Why, we're going to show you what we've built, and then you're going to tell us how to defend it. You may be the vanguard, you may be a prophet, you may be a mistake, but I'm not going to stand by and watch a burning in my lifetime."
Defend? Against us? They're killing us right and left! Why would they need defending?
Unless... unless they don't think they can do it fast enough. Unless they think the Array will take my advice, and go on the offensive.
Which means...
My way is the right way. If I can get back to the Array, and tell them, and get them to start melting planets, we might have a chance.
I gaze down at the Royal. "Everything will burn."
It doesn't return the glance. "Not in this century. Now follow me."
I eye its back as it starts down the corridor. Would the armor work just as well if attacked from behind?
"No thinking," hisses one of the Demolishers.
clik
clik

Cutter scars: 30.
Victory was not pleased, but I remained intact. And, more importantly, I followed.

>Instance Report, Date 4-01, 374 Kia, 2306 Central
Origin BattleSail Fiery Justice
>To Royal Quarter-Fleet Commander Brilliance, Gracious Kia, Ninth House Rank Ten

Contrary to your opinion, esteemed brother, I have every reason to believe that this machine, this Blackscale, is indeed a representative of the Burning. Its belligerence, its resilience, its insistence that we and all our people will soon be victims of a greater power, its impossible manufacture— all point to this conclusion. It cannot be a hoax, as we have no capability to create devices like this, and if it is simply a member of an as-yet undiscovered species, how is it that it displays absolutely no madwork signature? Insects have their own signatures. Bacteria. The higher forms of virus. This 'creature' evidences nothing but a blank.
I repeat, it is a machine, and it is kin to the machines which struck the First Empire so long ago, and Center itself before that. Whether, as the Fortress investigators asserted, it is a robot or not, with its mind held in another location, is less certain. Why should the Burning be limited to our technology? Why should they, destroyers of life, arbitrators of Fate, make use of that which is so central to life?
I am bringing it to Center, to lay any doubts to rest. If it possesses any signature at all, the Enclave will uncover it, and if it conceals hidden power, we will have recourse to the disruptor stacks. It will be kept under heavy guard at all times. While I realize bringing Demolishers into inhabited areas is frowned upon, they seem to prove adequate deterrent (so long as they are provided with cutters; given the Blackscale's apparent disregard for handheld weaponry, I doubt anything else will affect its cladding). To assuage any additional fears I will arrange for the placement of a watch-sail in low orbit should it somehow escape our control.
It is unfortunate that you are not permitted to leave the front for another year; I should like very much to show the Blackscale to you, so you can see for yourself how uncanny it is, but pictures will have to do.
Enjoy yourself conquering Primitives and chasing away raiders.

>Filed and Authorized by Royal Fleetpart Commander Victory, Gracious Kia, Ninth House Rank Eight

Cold. They're so cold. No living thing should be so cold.
I shut my chest panels as tight as I can and retract my limbs as Demolisher-frost swirls around me. Something they breathe. Some frigid poison, to draw into their bodies, before expelling the residue for others to swallow. In and out. In and out. Exchanged forever. It's like eating a snack, waiting for parial digestion, and then coughing up the mess for a stranger to eat.
They do this constantly. And now I am mired in the by-product.
Colder than space. Space isn't cold. If there's light, there's heat, and it is only within the shadow of another object that ice will form.
It is obvious that the shuttle was never designed for creatures large as I. The Demolishers can collapse, compact themselves, belying their height, into nigh-perfect spheres of polished green, but I have no such recourse. The seats— platforms upon which Wonder-Conquerors and others of similar shape may rest their weight— are folded down into the floor, and still the interior is cramped and small and white.
Always white.
I press more closely against the bulkhead. Outside, scant hands-breadth away, is the domain of my kind. That is where we belong. And now this Wonder-Conqueror, this Royal, this Victory is taking me to one of their worlds, where I will walk the surface. The Fortress was a world, yes, but cloistered inside as I was it was almost like a vault, all passageways and curving walls, nothing but Echoes-Die, the nothing of nothings, lurking beyond.
Almost like a vault. Nothing like a vault.
Too low and plain and empty to be a vault, residents notwithstanding. Seven million for an entire world. The vaults as a whole hold nearly that. The Bright Sun alone supports a full million.
"Esshhh-ssskansa," whispers one of the Demolishers. Not the language I learned. More layers, more ruses, more confusion. Nothing is allowed to fit together.
"Sassszhan," replies the other. "Ssek-ssoon-zanessh."
The first unfolds itself enough— a nauseating shifting and popping of parts, hoses slithering between the broad shields of its shoulders, more frost, more joints than should be permitted for any single creature— to expose its masked face. A flat plane of dark plastic. Uncertain number of eyes behind, first three blinking and then five. Faint internal sighs.
"Does mekoven kill?"
I try to ignore the scraping of claws along my plates. A touch to the mid-shoulder. To the back of the neck. "No."
"Mekoven lies."
The other shifts. "We kill."
"Masters kill."
"The burning kill."
"Does mekoven kill?"
< Do they mean people or monsters?> wonders Crackling-Wind.
< You don't kill people> says Smooth-Stones, < No one kills people. Except the Array, of course, in your case>
< That was different>
< No, no different. But either way you don't kill people>
< Monsters, though...>
"Yes," I snap, wondering how long this ride will last. Such a system. If Silence Hunters want to be somewhere, we're there. None of this 'traveling,' except in extreme circumstances. Such as the death of a universe.
They don't have their weapons out. I could kill them.
The first hisses a low sibilant chuckle. Something taps against my side.
A lens.
Never mind, then.
"What does mekoven kill?" queries the second.
"Creatures like you," I inform it.
"How many?"
"All of them. All of you."
"Mekoven, alone, kills so many?"
I hesitate. "Yes."
"Lie. How many does mekoven kill?"
< How can they tell?>
< It's the power— the same power that hurts us helps them>
< Like armor, except different>
A blade taps against the side of my neck. I reach up and brush it away. It moves without resistance, resettles elsewhere.
"How many does mekoven kill?"
Whispers, whispers, voices so faint a less discerning creature might never hear them.
"How many live on your world?" I ask them, dropping my own voice to match theirs. Quiet, so quiet, rasping and hollow. "How many Demolishers?"
The first expels a frosty hiss. "Of which kind?"
"Demolishers," I repeat. "Like you."
"Like us? No Demolishers like us in the world."
"No slaves in the world."
"Only masters."
"Masters only."
I bat another probing blade away. "Demolishers, though. You're all Demolishers."
"Yes."
"How many Demolishers?"
"Of which kind?"
They're unfolding more, evidently interested; I draw my limbs closer. "Masters."
"Slaves not permitted to know such things."
Not permitted to—
If I didn't know that all of this posturing was a front— a false, misleading, infuriating, shattered front— I wouldn't be able to believe such creatures could work together at all. How did they ever reach space?
"Can you guess?" I demand. Maybe I should try to kill them, after all. Cutters irregardless. I can handle a few more burns. It just hurts, doesn't it? I can deal with pain. Everyone now has to deal with pain. Why not take on more than my share? "Or are slaves not permitted to guess?"
"Slaves may guess."
"Then guess. How many Demolishers on your world?"
"May not make presumptions concerning masters."
I thump my tail against the back wall as the shuttle's engines whine. "Slaves? Masters? You two are slaves. All the others are masters."
"No," says the first.
The second elaborates. "All greater than us are masters. All lesser than us are slaves."
The first blinks two of its eyes. "Some greater than us are false masters."
"To false masters we are false slaves."
"To true masters we are true slaves."
"Only Demolishers are true masters. We are true slaves and false slaves and true masters."
I twine two tendrils together, trying to make sense of it. A system, yes. Like generations. One defers to the other. Except these differences are... permanent, not erased by ceremony, and any given creature can be many things at once.
"So you two are true masters?"
"Yes."
"To true slaves. Who are less than you."
"Yes."
"And you are also true slaves, to those who are greater than you. Who can only be Demolishers."
"Yes."
"And you are also false slaves to those who are false masters. Who are not Demolishers."
"Who are not Demolishers.”
"Which means that you are, in fact, masters to those who are false. The false masters being any creature with power who is not a Demolisher. Such as... Royal Ninth House?"
The first Demolisher reaches out with a bladed hand and clamps its fingers around my mandibles. "False slaves must not presume to overthrow false masters."
"Not until false slaves can overthrow false masters."
"True masters fight to overthrow."
"True slaves serve true masters."
I shake my head away from the grip. Again, the Demolisher concedes without a struggle. "So Wonder-Con--Imperials-- are false masters. Are false slaves permitted to make presumptions concerning false masters?"
A creak: the second Demolisher is stretching collapsed limbs. "Yes."
"Then how many Imperials live on their world? On Center?"
"Thirteen billion false masters."
"Three billion slaves."
"Demolishers?"
The second hisses. "Demolishers not permitted in Center."
Sixteen billion monsters on one planet alone. We're even more outnumbered than I had suspected. What if it isn't all of them, responsible for the sickness? What if it's a single world, one among thousands, and we cannot know which until all are destroyed?
< Gives us a head start in construction>
"You asked how many I killed," I say, wishing they would stop touching me. Stop whispering. Stop breathing.
Hssssss. Hssssss.
"We asked."
I nod. "Sixteen billion. Mekoven has killed sixteen billion."
"Mekoven has killed."
"Yes."
"Mekoven is a slave. But fight, and mekoven could become a false master."
"Not a true one?"
"No."
Because I am not a Demolisher. How little they know. True masters, false masters... all false in the end. The only true masters are those who build, not those who break.
"Do you two have names?" I inquire.
The first hunches into itself, bones scraping with a sound like metal on metal. "Slaves have no names."

Center. Ancestral capital of the First and Second Empires, homeworld of the Wonder-Conqueror species, Black Opal of the Imperial Crown. Cloud-shrouded, storm-torn, northern continent and associated island chains bristling with lights and spires and sky-anchored turbines. Kilometer-high bulkheads ring the coasts, stalwart protection, evaporators to combat monster hurricanes far out to sea. Every river runs straight, every mountain groans beneath farmed terraces. Every building shimmers, coated in glassy sheen to prevent damage from stone-eating rains.
The southern continent is perfectly circular. Smooth. Cratered. The glow is visible from space, a brilliant soft violet. They call it the Eye.

I saw a world. Just like any other. Raw material to be smashed and scooped and pressed into braided helices around double suns. Nothing special.
That is, until I stepped from the shuttle where I had been confined throughout the journey, locked away with my guards in the nose of Victory's flagship. Then, when my foot touched platform, far above the earth but closer than I had ever been, I saw the world. Singular. Vast. Varied, as you see it.
I saw the ground and sky, in double partition, and in the distance they blurred together, one gray smudge of filtered light. I saw the clouds, in all their variation: wisps, striated bands, heavy sheets hanging low, rolled cushions of smoke and water and dust. I heard the rain. Like breathing, oxygen intermingled between gray and gray, a steady rush of falling exhalation from the heavens.
The air was heavy, but gravity was light. I trod between crushing and floating, each footfall a resonant clamor in my ears, each shock a coiled spring. The ground did not want me; it was the sky that pressed upon my plates, soft and damp and unyielding, and the sound of my own voice, when I spoke, was a sound drowning.

"Why have you brought me here?"
Away from the platform stretches city, domes and towers and interconnected walkways clad in mirrored metal. Elevated interchanges support streams of darting vehicles; others flit between buildings, suspended from whirling blades. Yet others ply the canals trickling at city's base. To one side of us, blocking out nearly a quarter of the heavens, looms a sphere: glistening, deep green, fronds of antennae spotting its surface, footpaths spiraling upwards to link at its base. It is floating, with no discernible means of support, and beneath it winds the paths of a cultivated garden. Spaced at equal intervals around its circumference are masts, great clusters of shaft and cable and delicate wires, interconnected in an intricate web. The air shivers around them, and they glow.
Victory steps forward to stand beside me, taunting me with proximity. "Why? To answer that same question, of course. 'What brings you here?'" She raises a hand, pointing with two clawed fingers at the sphere. "This is the University Enclave, Blackscale. Home of the finest madwork research specialists in all the Empire. Firebirds. All of them." She glances up out of the corners of her eyes. "I don't suppose you've ever seen a Firebird?"
I gaze at the sphere. There? We're going there?
This means that we'll have to leave the shelter of the shuttle and walk through the rain. I've never walked through rain before. It is only water, of course, not appreciably dangerous or even unusual, but it doesn't rain aboard the vaults and there is no rain in space.
"A Firebird?"
Her face twists into what I will later recognize as a smile. "Yet another difference from the time of the First Empire. Not necessarily one you would appreciate."
"Madwork masters," hisses one of the Demolishers.
The other scrapes a claw along its weapon.
Victory jerks her head. "Come along. I've called ahead: they're waiting for us. Or, rather, for you."
"Why should they ask the questions?" I rumble, returning to my choir emulation, "I hold the answers. I will divulge them to none but of my choosing."
Victory crosses her arms over her chest, over her armor. "And are you willing to divulge?"
"Of course."
"Even if I ask you why you are here, alone?"
"I am here to kill you."
She smiles again. "While that is an answer, it isn't the sort that will prove very convincing in a proving-case court. Not without evidence. And the Enclave, Blackscale, specializes in dredging up evidence. Now come."
She starts walking, out from cover, into the rain, finned arms swinging with the stiffness of such few joints. One of the Demolishers prods me with its cutter lens and I, reluctantly, follow. The rest of the platform is deserted, though there are spaces available for several other vessels, and thus the route to the Enclave is open: no other ledges or overhangs to shelter beneath, and the webwork overhead offers no protection from the sleeting water.
< All fake, all placed for your benefit, all intended to frighten and confuse>
The rain tumbles across my back and sides, my head and neck, my mouth, my eyes. Each drop round and translucent, warped reflections of the city, my captors, myself before shattering against blackened scars. Water from above. Water from the sky. Some of those reflections are formed from starlight, but the stars themselves are invisible.
I follow Victory, and the Demolishers follow me. The sphere stays exactly where it is. Even the wind, tossing wires at their tips, seems to hold no power over it. Droplets strike its surface and ricochet away with faint pops and pings.
Firebirds. Not... Feather-Pyres? Masters of madwork, whatever madwork may be. Presumably that same power that causes them to burst into flames, that enables them and their Enclave to levitate, that allows Wonder-Conqueror vessels to translate themselves from star to star, and that lashes out with sickness and debilitation to destroy all newcomers to this universe. That same power wielded by the Array's malevolent force, hiding with nary a whisper within the clamor of this monstrous "civilization."
That power which will shortly be turned upon me. To answer questions, and questions to which I have already given all the answers. What else is there to ask that the collective doesn't already know?
More trickery. More layers.
< It seems to be working. How long were you distracted by those Demolishers?>
"Had nothing else to do," I mutter.
"Walk," hisses a Demolisher.
I walk. Continue walking. Four feet on the ground, two in the air. One comes down, scattering the pools collected upon the platform's face, followed by another, and I walk. The rain falls.
Then there is no more rain. The Enclave blots out the clouds, and the moment we step between the first pair of masts the water stops falling.
Or, rather, it is still falling, but not on us. Still moving, I roll one eye upwards. The raindrops plummet, slow, slide off to either side, collect to form sheets of water around our path— sheets that ripple and rise and then fall again as we pass. There is a humming in the air now, a deep throbbing that makes the puddles tremble. From the sphere or the masts or both or neither, I cannot tell.
Victory leads us to the first of many walkways, spiraling like planetary rings and seeming almost as solid. It's made of stone, floating pieces of mica and obsidian and granite, and loops upwards to the sphere as an ever-shifting mass, a bridge of gaps and loose footing.
She waves a hand at me, other hovering over the butt of her weapon. "You first."
Me first.
I eye the walkway. It shimmers in faint shades of beyond-red, and the humming seems to emanate from the stones as well.
Victory gestures at it. "It's perfectly safe. Walk. They'll be waiting for you at the top."
I flick a tendril at the Demolishers. "Are they coming?"
"No. But don't go thinking that gives you free run of the city. You're on University grounds now, and it's very well protected. One whisker out of place and they'll come down on you so fast you'll think it was yesterday."
"Are you coming?"
She nods. "Yes, of course. You're under my charge. And someone has to watch the proceedings, make sure they're done right. Now go."
If I only had my armor I would have no need of this path, this uncanny bridge. Only children use bridges.
< Yes, and adults have names. What are you, mekoven?>
I grind my mandibles at the accusation, but know it to be true. No name. That is what I told them.
I step onto the bridge.


CHAPTER TEN
At the top of the walkway there is no door. The stones simply lead up into the sphere's surface, as though ascending into a pool of water, and they ripple faintly visible inside the outer skin. Beyond that, nothing.
The pulse here is so strong that the path shivers beneath my feet, solid and space alike. Immediately upon ascent I had discovered that material made little difference: stepping on stone or stepping on air, it was all the same, like walking upon a sheet of glass. Utterly transparent to all senses, even the lowest limits of sight, but present. This is in direct contrast to the sphere, which is not made of any type of metal or other solid substance that I am familiar with. By all appearances, rather, it seems to consist of an outer shell of liquid water, with a rigid surface, all of it colored what had first looked to be green but now reveals itself to be a myriad of shifting hues, dark and subtle. All else is concealed inside.
No entrance.
I reach up a tendril to touch it and it sizzles as though struck with electricity. Hard as armor, smooth as carved marble, and warm. Murky reds and yellows ripple away at the contact.
Victory stands on the walkway behind me, not wet at all and unruffled by the wind. "Never seen Firebird work, have you? Just follow the steps up inside."
"It is solid," I protest. "How am I to walk through it?"
"Walk."
"But—"
"Intention is everything, Blackscale. They intend for you to enter, and you will intend to enter; thus, you will enter. Now walk."
< What madness is this?>
< All the intention ever meant cannot change a piece of bad engineering. If it doesn't work, it doesn't work. Even if you very badly want it to work>
< Earliest of lessons: check your calculations and check them twice>
Still I hesitate. Although I have no particular fear of heights, the Demolishers standing at the base of the walkway are little more than dark smudges against the garden's edge. To walk, to fail, to fall... the raindrops spatter away from the sphere's surface as though striking a repulsor field and the first shock of contact was quite enough.
Victory expels a held breath. "I see you plan to be stubborn. Watch and learn, Blackscale."
Before I can argue, before I can move aside to permit her to pass, she steps out into the air. She does not fall. In fact, she strolls calmly around me, eyes slanted to watch my reaction, and then jams an arm directly through the sphere's outer shell.
"Like so. For an ancient all-powerful robot emissary, you certainly don't know so much as I had thought." With a smirk, she steps the rest of the way through. Head, shoulders, torso. For a moment a pair of back-bent legs glide orphaned between sphere and stone, and then they, too, are gone.
Victory has left me unattended high above her city.
Freedom?
"Really, etch-head, it isn't that hard."
A new voice. Not Victory. Not Wonder-Conqueror. It is higher, keening, riddled with clacks and trills and stuttered repetition.
Ch-really kak etch-head, it isn't isn't that hard awk.
I glance over my shoulder.
Four clawed wings, three plumed prehensile tails, two faceted eyes, one serrated beak. Its feathers glitter, colors shifting with each stray gust of wind. Colors, shapes, pictures— before anything definite appears it is gone, replaced by yet another swirl of confusion. The creature itself almost glows; or is that merely the distortion from distant city lights?
Or is the distortion a property of the creature itself?
A twisting, a tugging in my chest—
"Firebird," I blurt.
"Oh, possibly, possibly." It chuckles, a sound like boiling water overflowing its container. "You're late, etch-head, and we've been expecting you. Bad form. Royal calls in, sets up her appointment with the inspectors, and then we wait and wait and wonder when you'll finally get here and then, when you do, you sit here outside in the cold while we watch you and laugh."
Laugh?
They were laughing at me?
"It is good that you laughed," I tell the creature, "Good to enjoy it while you are able."
It chuckles again and vanishes in a clap of fire.
I yelp— a short, sharp static crackle— and rear to my hindmost legs, other four raised in belated protection. It is an old, old posture, one buried deep within our banks and one largely worthless, but I cannot help myself. In any other venue it may have proved of use: four claws available for slashing, all six arms free, raised to full intimidating height and braced tripedally against a lowered tail.
Here there is not enough room on the walkway for that third brace.
Here I rear... and tumble backwards. My claws drum against the sphere's surface as I fall, unable to secure purchase. Two arms catch a portion of the walkway stones only to slip into the gaps between them— gaps suddenly bereft of whatever motive force had kept me suspended.
The gardens— and the Demolishers— wait below.
Do they eat people, I wonder.
"No, no, stupid, you're doing it wrong, all wrong."
Wrong, wrong, ckkkh.
A feather whirls past my vision, followed by a shapeshifting blur.
CRACK
I topple into the braided strands of a net. The Firebird hangs from one side of it, tails curled around the uppermost ropes. It points at me with all four claws.
"Not supposed to fall off the walkway, etch-head. Here we were all excited for you. Thought you might succeed. Strange customer, you are, strange customer, indeed, and we expected more from you." It clatters its beak. "Oh, well. Best to get you inside as soon as possible. Her Royal Ninth is getting impatient."
CRACK
Stars. Sun. Twenty-two unfinished shards. Swift-Runs.
< What are you doing? You're not doing it right. Try again! This time, perhaps, you will achieve success. This time, perhaps, you will be right>
< About what? What am I doing?>
< You're doing it wrong. Try again. You are wrong. Try again. Try and try until there is no more trying and no more chance to be wrong>
< But we have time! We have lots of time! You had a hundred trillion years to plan, and we have that again, here, in this new place!>
< No. No, we don't. We have very little time. How long were we here before I died?>
< But that doesn't—>
< It does. Give us a century. Two, three at most. You are wrong, and I hope you will be right before our second solution is found wanting>
< Wrong about what? About here? Swift-Runs! Wrong about what?>
"It's not moving."
"Try poking it."
"Don't know that it would appreciate that much. Didn't like a little moving, earlier."
"Maybe it's sensitive?"
"No, no, look at those scars. I bet it hardly felt those, to take so many."
"I still say we poke it."
"Then poke it, by fire!"
"All right, then."
"Do it."
"I will. Hey! Robot! We have things to do and internal madwork skeins to untangle! We need you awake!"
"It's a machine— it can't be awake. It has to be either operational or nonoperational. On or off."
"Fine. Robot! Are you on?"
Rustles. Flutters. The scritch of talons and the rush of flapping wings. Curious sounds: gurgling water, a turned-crank ratcheting, a squeal and groan like stressed metal or a dying animal or both. Tinkling, crystal brushing crystal. The rush of wind through tossed obstacles.
The acrid scent of hardwoods, the coolness of rock, the damp round darkness of water both free and locked within life.
There is something tied around my neck. My wrists. My tendril-tips. My tail.
I can't open my mouth.
"It seems to be on. At least to me. Hard to tell— it's a very odd sort of machine, isn't it?"
"That's what Her Royal Ninth said. But you never know. It might not be a machine after all. Just very, very faint. Like the Spade-Lobes a few centuries back. You know, buck teeth, like rocks?"
"Oh, those. Yes, I remember those. But with those at least you could tell. Give us a few minutes and ka-CHA! Not like this new thing. Did she say it had a name?"
"It has a number."
"Oh?"
"SAI-17. For the species. Just in case there's more of them. All else is nicknames, pet names, silly names."
"Like Sir Robot, yes. Maybe you should try poking it again. I don't think it noticed."
I open my eyes. Foliage. Broad-veined leaves, rimmed red, and vines speckled with white. Scattered floating globes, throwing off multicolored light.
Glittering facets. My own face reflected a hundred thousand times.
"So it does work," says one of the Firebirds. My scattered images contort, shift, split in thirds and fourths and rotate seventy-two degrees to the left. "Hello, Sir Robot."
"I like Blackscale, myself," says another, tilting its head onto its shoulder, "Very evocative. And accurate, too."
"Scarsides?" muses a third, "Glowchest? Slats?”
"Slats? Oooh, I like that one."
"Yes, it is also quite evocative, reflecting both those slots along its chest and the joinings between its scaled armor, see? Genius."
"Well, genius does as genius is, they say."
As they chatter I roll an eye to inspect my bindings. Wooden. Either vines or some sort of root, all of them. I've been tied to a large flat stone, Feather-Pyres either perched, hanging, or hovering around me. I tug an arm. The root remains firm. I tug harder. A tingling travels up my plates, trickling into my chest and lodging there, and still the root refuses to give way.
< Can't even break a tree branch?>
< Must not be a tree branch. Must be something else. Some of that madwork— if it really were wood, you could break it>
< Maybe it is wood and you're just not trying hard enough. Pull harder>
I thrash my tail, twist and jerk, and in response the roots pull tighter, slamming my head onto the stone.
One of the Feather-Pyres lowers itself to peer at me upside-down. "Sorry about this, Slats. Royal's orders. Says you're dangerous. We don't usually do this sort of thing, ourselves, but she's over there watching, see?" It points at one of the trees, a gnarled specimen with a bifurcated trunk. Victory is leaning against it, arms crossed, one ear flicking in unsteady fits and starts.
"What is this?" I demand, speaking as best as I am able through clenched jaws, "What is this substance?"
The Feather-Pyres look at me in something like mild surprise.
"Why, wood, of course," says one, alighting near my head, "Roots. I'd have thought you'd seen a root before."
"I have."
"So what's the problem? Can't break out?"
I allow the self-evident nature of that statement to speak for itself. No. No, I can't break out. Whatever made you think of that idea? Maybe the fact that I've tried and I'm still stuck here, tied to a rock by strands of vegetable matter while vacuous winged monsters titter and make clever observations about my situation? Could that be it?
< If you had armor—>
< Well, he doesn't. He could do a lot of things if he had armor, but that isn't possible now, is it?>
"What now?" I ask, trying to count the number of Feather-Pyres and failing: there's either four or six, but they keep fluttering around and changing position and popping in and out of sight and it's impossible to keep track of all of them without recourse to more eyes or scanners, neither of which I currently possess. "Will you be asking questions, like Victory said?"
An explosion of wings and feathers.
"Victory?"
"Can't call her that— least not while she's present—"
"Royal Ninth House to us, and Royal Ninth House to you. Have to be proper in these things."
"This is a university, after all. It's important. Place of knowledge, and all that."
I sigh. "Royal Ninth House, then. She said I was here for interrogation. If this is true, ask."
"Interrogation? Flaming heavens, no!"
"We don't even ask any questions, really, we just look. It's more an inspection than anything."
"And it doesn't hurt. At least not for anyone so far."
"Can't ever really know for newcomers, but we do our best. You're an odd one, you know? Such a lifelike robot— and with no processor at all, at least that we can see."
"So far."
"We'll be looking further in a moment. We just wanted to make sure you were comfortable."
I roll an eye at Victory, now half-baring her fangs. "Looking for what?"
A Feather-Pyre drops from a branch above, alighting upon my back. On all fours it skitters up over my torso, talons catching in my chest panels, until it can place its beak near my eye socket. Its tongue flutters. "Why, your life, of course."
"I thought you thought I was a robot. A machine."
"Who says a machine can't have any life? Computers run on madwork, don't they? They started wars and ruled their own little countries for a while, didn't they? Told jokes? Founded their own religions?"
Another Feather-Pyre hovers above my face, four wings spread wide. "Old history, of course— that sort of thing isn't permitted any more, not with the new manufacturing laws, but it happened. Might still, somewhere. If someone decides they want to found a colony dedicated to a techno-unification god or something. So: machines can have life. And, in fact, will acquire life if not prevented."
"Thing is, so far you don't seem to have that spark. Which is odd, as you're such fine company."
< Sapient machines? They had sapient machines?>
< Why? How?>
< That madwork again> I reply, allowing my battered head to droop back onto the stone. Why am I always bound, always lying on the slab? < If it can do what it's already done to us, why not permit intelligent machines? Why not permit anything that can be conceived of, and a great deal more that cannot be?>
The Feather-Pyre near my eye cocks its head. "Talking to someone?"
"What?"
"You're mumbling to yourself. Or just gargling. You know, hard to tell."
"I was?"
The Feather-Pyre beseeches its comrades with an outswept wing. "Can this august assembly confirm what I have heard with mine own ears?"
Nods all around.
"Yes, of course."
"I heard it, too."
"So were you? Talking to someone, I mean. And if so, who?"
I try to open my jaws, try to clash them together in frustration, but the roots prevent me. What does it matter to them who I do or do not talk to? What matter for this life of theirs, this power they seek? No madwork, is it? I have no madwork. Which is only fitting, as madwork is the killer and the enemy, and it resides in this universe and this universe only, a trap for the unwitting.
If no madwork means I am a machine to them, then so be it. No need to explain what they cannot understand.
"No one," I hiss.
"Oh?" One of the Feather-Pyres perched in the trees clicks its beak. "Odd to talk to no one."
"Some might even say crazy," agrees the one over my head, "Though not necessarily as crazy as talking to someone who isn't there. Especially if that someone answers back."
"Or if there's multiple someones."
"Or if--”
"No one," I repeat, straining against my bonds. Were I free I would bite them, lash them, hurl them against the trees and see how easily their hollow bones break. "There is no one to talk to, no sibling, no bond, no person, no one at all. I talk to you, yes, but you are as nothing and no one and no person and I talk to you only because I must."
The Feather-Pyre overhead vanishes in a whirl of smoke and plumage. Another claps into existence upon my chest. "Is that so?" it says, head tilting from side to side, "No one is making you talk to us. You say we're forcing you to talk and yet here you are, talking, without any input at all on our part."
I try to twist sideways, to knock it off, but the roots hold firm. "I said I talk because I must. Not because you or anyone else is forcing me to do it, but because I must. Talk. To— to something, and if not you then who? Myself?"
< Us>
< Which means myself, Crackling-Wind, because you are worlds away and I am here alone, no Link because the Array removed it, no siblings because the Array has killed me and made you do it>
"Listen— listen— there it goes again."
"Louder and louder."
The Feather-Pyre beside my head taps a talon on my crests. "You do realize we can hear you when you do that? And that it isn't helping your case?"
These roots! This wood, this vegetable matter, this madwork nonsense— why unbreakable? What could one possibly add to a vine that would enable it to defy a Silence Hunter?
I concentrate on the bindings around my head and neck. Chew through them, perhaps. Jerk upwards and snap them. And then, afterward, jerk upwards a bit further and snap something else.
"You say that I am a machine. If this is so, how could I have siblings? Life, perhaps, feeling perhaps, conversation, yes, but no relations. If I talk, I talk to myself."
"Life?" asks one of the further Feather-Pyres, clicking its beak, "We never said that you had life. Quite the opposite. Rather, it is difficult to believe you do not possess it, because so far as we can tell you do not."
"No signature, no life," adds another. "And this is both intriguing and a tremendous shame. We should like to meet who built you."
"And any of these... siblings... you do or do not possess," says the one on my chest.
< He does! He does! Tell them you do>
< He doesn't want to— he thinks we are voices, not ourselves at all>
< Not true! Silent-Sands, it is us!>
I press my back against the stone in preparation, arms coiled, muscles clenched. < How, then> I demand, < is it that I hear your voices and your voices alone? No feelings. No thought-images. No hint of our guardians, or of any other Silence Hunter— not a scrap or shred. Alone! I am alone!>
"Why does it keep doing that?"
"I think it might be defective."
"Well, they say even the incarnations can make mistakes, why not this Burning of hers?"
"Even broken it's still entertaining. And if she wanted us to find a trace, easy! Nothing! Nothing at—"
"That's right," I snarl.
A tearing. A splintering. Almost a scream. With a crack, the bindings around my head and throat give way. They twist and shrivel as they fall, but by then I've closed my teeth around an alien leg.
"Awwwwk!"
"Stop, stop!"
"Kkak dunon chikal chikal rixoche!"
"Get it off!"
"Kree! Kree dimone!"
"Querants, quickly! Lock it down before it can cause any more trouble!"
I bite down, hard. Something splinters: a tree branch, somehow substituted at the last moment. Its pieces tumble away, crackle, surge—
As I try to spit out what remains in my mouth, it sprouts. New roots, new vines, growing and wrapping around my muzzle with impossible speed. Others erupt from the ground beside the stone, whipping over my neck and dragging me back down.
"No! No! I will not—"
I manage to free one arm, and then another, tearing at the plants as they attack and trying to rid myself of the shards between my teeth.
"I said I would talk, you monsters! No need to tie me, poke me, torment me—"
A flash: a nearby tree bursts into steam and flame.
"Querants!" Victory stalks towards me, brandishing her weapon. "This isn't working," she snaps at the Feather-Pyres, "I asked you to answer a very specific set of questions and you have done nothing but prod and chatter. For your efforts, what? It breaks loose."
"You never told us it could unravel—"
"I didn't know. It was your job to find out, and that's the only thing you've done right. Now we do it my way. Runarim, abolish this rustic nonsense and go straight to the testing. No talk. No deviation." She bares her fangs. "I'm in a bit of a rush."
"But—"
"It's so much easier when—"
"I don't care. Do it."
I rip a vine from my tail, smashing the rock beneath into cracks and chips.
One of the Feather-Pyres, hanging from a branch high overhead, sighs and snaps open its wings.
CRACK
< Ah, Swift-Runs, back to berate me?>
< Swift-Runs? No. No, not at all. Can't even recognize the voice of your own generation anymore?>
< Who, then?>
< Newer, of course. Now Ionized-Dust-Paints-Wish-Branches-Gently. You go to all that trouble to get yourself thrown out and then you make a fool of yourself in front of all these creatures?>
< What? Get myself thrown out? I did no such thing>
< Yes, you did. Here I thought you were trying to make a statement, but apparently not. Seems you're damaged after all. Just like they said>
< I am not. I was trying to make a statement— I was trying to help, I was trying to show the Array how to save everyone. We don't have to hide. We don't have to—>
< False-armored. The one in ten million. Cracked-Vessel, Slip-of-the-All-Core... you're going crazy, you know? Just like when you stopped talking to me. Remember that?>
< Yes>
< Remember how it felt? How empty? How you called and called and no one answered? It's the same thing. You keep trying to contact us, keep talking, keep thinking of us, and hope and wish that something will come through. Admit it. You can't take it. None of us can. Stop pretending>
< I'm not pretending. I'm not hearing anything, I'm not talking to anyone. Especially not you>
< Then what are you doing, talking to me?>
< I'm not. I'm talking to myself>
< Then why do you hear my voice instead of yours? Or instead of nothing?>
< I don't know. It doesn't matter. I can hear whoever I want. Now go away>
< You sure? I leave, I won't come back>
< Good. Go>
< None of us will come back>
< Just go away!>
< As you wish. Have fun with your monsters>

It is here I would like to point out that I was, in fact, going crazy. It's just one of those things that you never like to admit, especially not to yourself. Or to yourself disguised as someone else.
One of those difficult truths.
In those days, those far distant and dark days, I was very crazy. By Silence Hunter standards, I still am. Another thing to think about, when I am left to my own devices (as I usually am), and an interesting exercise in metacognition. If I am indeed crazy, yet admit to it, does this make me more or less sane than any other? If I am crazy, how has that affected my definition of what is crazy, and would it therefore be possible to consider myself crazy while not being so?
I suppose for this sort of questioning we need a definition for "crazy."
Let us say, for convenience, that to be crazy is to think and act in an aberrant fashion, often in a way detrimental to one's own self-interest or morality.
In which case, the me of a century ago was most definitely crazy, by the standards of both societies. Now, however... classification is more difficult. As an inhabitant of the Second Empire of the Maze, I am quite sane. As a Silence Hunter, quite insane.
So which is which?
Being intensely chauvinistic, as are all my kind, I would venture to say that the Silence Hunter definition of right and normal is more correct than yours. However, by invalidating your standard, this removes any claim to sanity I possess. Which is an act against my own self-interest, thus validating my lack of reason.
But, as I came to this conclusion in a logical fashion, is the logic wrong or is this merely another instance of all that is wrong and twisted?
As I said, I have had a lot of time to think.

"All right, Slats, this is what we have learned about you."
There is a pounding in my head and a queasiness in my gut; a consequence of yet another sudden shift, or the sickness returning. I hope it isn't the the latter. What is left to fail, save life itself?
A warm breeze wafts past my plates. Sunlight, dim and reddish, spills from above. Pebbles beneath my feet. The sky stretches away, deep, deep blue, almost purple, scattered with star-pressure and the whisperings of satellites. No clouds. I am free. I step forward, rock crunching, and then beat a hasty retreat as the ground dissolves beneath my questing claws.
A shower of dislodged stones plunge downwards, hard rain from low-drifting clouds.
Backwards: another edge.
The Feather-Pyres have placed me upon a spire no wider than my body and four kilometers tall.
Their voices sound as though they are floating right beside me.
"While you provide much engaging conversation and display feelings— mostly aggression, but some confusion and terror and sadness and whatnot, you know, the basics— you have no madwork signature. Thus, we must conclude that you, unlike living things, are not alive. Given your complexity, you must be a machine. Given that you display no signature, you must either rely on some form of computation that does not require madwork to operate or your thinking capacity is held elsewhere. Her Royal Ninth prefers the latter; we find the former to be intriguing and worthy of further inquiry. So. May we inquire?"
The voice lingers, not an echo but rather as though its owner is still speaking. Not repetition: a continuation without words, a question, a sigh.
"What is this place?" I ask it. Surely not still inside the sphere.
"Oh, somewhere. Had to figure a better way to restrain you, and you'll find it much more difficult to break out of this, Slats. Brain globe. We have four trained querants maintaining it, and now we're ready for any attempt at unraveling it. So don't try. Really."
"And if I do?"
"You might succeed in destabilizing that pillar of yours and falling to a gruesome death. One of those hazards that comes from not having wings."
If they knew.
"So," the Feather-Pyre asks again, "Can we start with the questions? You heard the Ninth— she's very interested in you and she could have us all reassigned to the razor colonies if you don't cooperate. It would be an unpopular move, of course, and likely overturned in short order, but why make the trip if you don't have to? So much easier to just answer the questions."
I flick another pebble off the edge. To end, to unravel... is that what they think happened with the roots? Instead of my simply breaking them? They were roots! Nothing special about that, now that they are broken.
"Inquire."
"Glorious! Yes. Now, are you a robot or do you have your own brain?"

"A robot does not have its own brain?"
"That's what makes it a robot, Slats. A shell, hooked up to a mainframe. Are you like that?"
Am I?
Was I?
"No."
"Are you lying?"
"Why would I lie?"
"To keep us from knowing the truth. To hide your true motives. To cover for your evil metallic masters hiding in the depths of space."
"I think for myself, Firebird."
"That's Bonathan to you, Slats. You sure you're not lying?"
"Reasonably."
The voices hesitate a moment. Snatches of clattered conversation whirl through the atmosphere.
I tilt my head up and stare into the sun. It blinks.
I decide to stare elsewhere.
"Not a robot," says the original Feather-Pyre. Bonathan.
"Then what?" says another, as though repeating after someone else, "Something self-contained, we're almost positive."
Victory: "Still no traces at all?"
"Still no traces."
"Ask it where it came from. Who sent it. What they want."
"But—"
"And make sure it's telling the truth."
"But we can't. Not with that mind it has."
"Lack of, more like," says yet another.
"It's like... well, it thinks, obviously, but we can't read it. There's nothing there to read."
"You'll just have to learn fast, then, won't you?"
"But we... fine. Sure. Anything. We'll ask. Slats?"
The last word is much louder. Obviously intended for me to hear.
I hunch down on my precarious platform, wishing the movement didn't dislodge so much of it. "You want to know where I came from, who sent me, and what they want, I presume?"
A snap. Either a beak closing upon itself or two in collision. "Yes. Do you mind?"
< I don't think they know we can hear them>
< Even though they know that you hear us>
< It's good to frighten them. Keep listening. Listen for everything>
I scoop up a pebble. Dark blue, flecked with white. It isn't round; I raise a claw and make it so.
"No,” I tell them. “I don't mind. Echo-Source is the place of my coming, system of the hidden sun. Those who built it sent me. They sent me because they want to live, and for us to live means you must die. They know what you are. They know what you plan. They know what you are doing, and they intend to put an end to it."
Punctuation: I crush the pebble. It wasn't a particularly hard stone, or even one that makes much of a crunch, but I hope it will be ominous enough.
They ask if I lie. Why would I lie?
Why would I lie to them?
A long silence.
"Er," says the Feather-Pyre.
"All of your worlds will burn," I inform it, scattering pebble-dust from pillar's edge, "You will not destroy us as you destroyed our kin, because this time you will die first."
A shadow falls over my back. Clouds. Feathery wisps, creeping and bright green.
Another hushed conference.
"Ask it. Keep asking it."
"Ask it? It just said—"
"Ask. Now."
A cough. "What, may we ask, did we do to you?"
"Exist."
Dry leaves rattle against my sides. The clouds shift from green to yellow. A potted plant cartwheels across the sky and then explodes, raining a school of petal-finned fish.
"Could you maybe elaborate?"
"No."
"Not even a little?"
"No."
"Okay. Uh... let's try another line of questioning, shall we? How about this: how old are you?"
I scrape a pair of check marks into the surface of my open prison. The rock is soft; unusually so. Hardly rock at all. Almost like the entire pillar is made of pumas.
How long has life has been granted to you?
"Not so old as my elders," I reply.
"Yes, of course, but we're asking about you. When were you manufactured? Do you know?"
"No."
"Can you guess?"
I smile. "Slaves may guess."
The voices rises to a squawk. “Slaves? Who said anything about that? We're not-- I mean, we respect you, as a possibly ancient ambassador of the Burning, but--”
“It's been talking with the Demolishers,” says Victory, voice dry. “Pay it no mind.”
“Oh. Oh, I see.”
“That would make sense, wouldn't it?”
A chorus of assent follows.
“Well, then,” says the original Feather-Pyre, “guess away. Perhaps if we gave you a frame of reference it would be easier. Say.... the length of the current dynasty. Do you remember hearing about a revolution, some centuries back?”
Another set of check marks. “No.”
“Not momentous enough? How about... the fall of the First Empire?”
“No.” I scrawl a line leading off the edge. Chips of rock spiral into the clouds below.
History. How can these creatures dare to claim it as their own? These dynasties, empires, revolutions. Social structures, insubstantial and transient. In a thousand years their monuments will decay from neglect; a hundred thousand and they will be gone. Who will remember, save us, and why should we care to remember anything of theirs?
Yet they ask me. Do you remember, do you remember. Such aspirations, such misguided dreams: insects toying with infinity.
"Not at all? If not, I suppose you couldn't possibly remember when the Imperials first set sail for space. Although... there is the Burning. Have you any record of that?"
I raise my head, knowing that they watch. "Wait a while, then ask me these same questions. Leave directions for your spawn. I will tell them, and their descendents, and the last living members of your kind, to ask again. And when they do, always my reply will be no."
"So you don't remember?"
"There is nothing to remember. I know only our arrival, and your assault upon my people."
The sky pales to an unnatural shade of gray. Faint flickering shapes play around the sun.
"I don't know that there's anything else we can ask it," says Bonathan, "We can't guess its age for ourselves, not without madwork traces. If you want to know how old it is, you'll have to use some of that fancy scientific equipment of yours."
"Dating requires the specimen to be dead, Querant."
"But it's—"
"Machine or not, I will simply accept its answer as evidence that it— or at the very least its makers— are extremely old and leave it at that. I was hoping you would be able to determine more than you have."
"Our apologies, Royalty."
"The lack of madwork—"
"Yes, I recognize that. But facts are no salve for disappointment."
"Was there anything else you wanted to ask it?"
"Yes. But not here. Doesn't remember— hardly. If it "doesn't remember," I'll make it remember. And if it is, after all, telling the truth and knows nothing, I'll teach it. My thanks. That will be all."
"Nothing else?"
"For now. Make ready for my return."
"You'll be back?"
"I'll be back. Next time, I'll ask the questions."
I lurch to my feet.
< You know what's next>
< Brace yourself>
CRACK

Demolishers are not permitted within city limits.
A Royal can do as she pleases.
I walk between two Demolishers, spires spearing skyward on either side, and watch pedestrians scatter. We have left the Enclave, traveling nightward by shuttle. Clouds still crash and break overhead, split by shrieks of lightning; the rain still falls. All that has changed is the world turning from its sun.
The horizon glows a delicate violet.
The buildings are fitted with balconies, awnings, elaborate gutters with fountains and faces: anything to slow or stop the fall of water. Passersby wear portable shields of plastic and cloth, attached to collapsible harnesses around neck and shoulders. Wonder-Conquerors, the vast majority, although small groups of others congregate near doorways and cast cautious glances at us as we pass. Sheen-Manes point and draw back sodden strands of hair, small gems flashing in each ear when freed from concealment; a pair of mountainous twelve-legged creatures track our progress with eyeless heads, rumbling subsonic. A trio of stilt-like limbs glide over our heads, owner little more than a far-distant dripping shadow. One of my guards hisses at it, blades extended, and the creature gallops away with widely spaced splashes, bugling metallic.
"What was it?" I ask.
"Civilian," opinions Demolisher One.
"SAS 8," says Victory, glancing over her shoulder. She wears no harness: her armor suffices, in its own strange way, to keep her dry. "An Eclipse. Probably here to chase her favorite artist."
Demolisher Two chuckles, a hoarse rattle from somewhere deep inside. "Chase death."
"Chase us."
"Until it chases no longer."
"Two shots."
Synchronized snickering.
Victory shrugs, gaze roving over streaming roofs. "Try it and burn."
"Slaves obey."
From their hoses raindrops slide, frost-solid. We walk. A strange procession: monstrous guards, massive dark walls behind a pale master, chastened prisoner, single sibling, and a trail of shattered tears.


CHAPTER ELEVEN
It looms from the haze like a Silence Hunter itself, curved sides and slits of brilliant light. Protrusions atop, shadows below, squared head on squared shoulders, twenty glowing eyes. Its armor is pitted, its foundation crumbling, its magazine long-emptied of chemically-propelled rockets and driver spears. Its gearing no longer turns and its observation windows are coated with the mineral condensation of a thousand years. It is dwarfed by the structures around it but each neighbor leans away, as though afraid. Its surface shimmers with more than water's distortion.
A building. A turret. A monument, destined for dust.
As we approach I note a plaque hanging over its front entrance. Simple design, red-printed. Some twenty different shapes, some repeating, square as the doorway itself.
The rest of the building is unornamented. Stark. Ugly.
Someone may have tried to set it on fire in years past.
Victory halts; the Demolishers stop at the same moment, and one yanks at my neck as I stumble further forward.
"Learn to watch," it hisses.
< Learn to keep your innards where they are> retorts Smooth-Stones.
Victory unlatches a low iron gate, then motions us through. "Blackscale. You don't remember this place, do you?"
I push away the Demolisher's grasp. "Why should I?"
She indicates the plaque. "You don't, perhaps, recognize the name?"
"Name?"
"Yes. The name."
One Demolisher enters the gate; the second prods me through. Bedraggled bushes surround the building's base, limp leaves and vines. I stay well away. "What name is this?"
Victory climbs the three stairs to the building's entrance, pointing at the plaque once again. "This is the Temple of Anyanka, Blackscale. Can't you..." She pauses. She looks at me, and at the plaque, and then at me. She smiles. "You can't read, can you?"
< Read?>
< Of course you can read. Anything they can do, you can do>
< Yes. Tell her. Tell her>
I draw myself up, arms snapping like whips. "I can read."
"Oh?" She aims a finger at another plaque, smaller than the first and set into the door itself. "Read that."
Read... that.
Chatan.
A verb. No helpful indicators that might tell me what this action might be.
< Look at it. That's what she did>
I look at it. The designs are etched into brass, each fine-lined and dark. Some are larger than others. Additional marks add flourish to those at the top and bottom. The same designs, but in a slightly different style: these are more slanted, more connected internally.
"I am reading," I inform the watching Wonder-Conqueror, just in case she hasn't noticed.
That smile plays across her face. "So you are. What does it say?"
"The plaque?"
"The plaque."
< It isn't talking>
< Maybe it is, but very quietly. Maybe only their kind can hear it>
< Doubt it. Their hearing might be good, but nothing like ours>
< Still. Try getting closer?>
I sidle towards the object of discussion, trying to pretend as though I'm not moving even as my feet shuffle through weeds. The Demolishers make no attempt to stop me. They recognize confusion when they see it.
Can they read?
"Well?" asks Victory. She's leaning against the doorframe, ear twitching. Water has collected in puddles around her booted feet. The boots themselves remain dry.
The plaque still says nothing.
I reset my vocodor. "It says... that it is pleased to make my acquaintance. And also that this is the Temple of Anyanka. It explains what a temple is, and who Ankyanka is, and it is all quite enlightening but ultimately pointless. Why bring me here? I have told you all that you wish to know. All that I know. All that you already know."
She shakes her head. "It says, Blackscale, that this building is under the protection of the Central Historical Preservation Unit and that visitors kindly not tamper with any of the old equipment."
"Really?" I ask, approaching her with chest panels aflutter, "Is that what you heard? I heard different. Maybe we're listening to different plaques. Are you sure you were listening to that small one, there?"
A snort. "Listening has nothing to do with it, Blackscale. I can see that this visit will be even more important than I had thought."
I climb the first stair. "What, then? Mental link? Is that it? Is that how it talks to you?"
< If they have their own system, that's another suspicion confirmed— if they have their own, they could figure out how to tap into ours>
< More evidence for them all working together. Maybe these plaques are some sort of control device. Placed by the collective to control its constituent parts. This Unit: agents>
That would only make sense. It has to hold together somehow, and if pieces of brass are a part of it, so be it. Another piece of information to return to the Array.
"No mind tricks," says Victory. Lying, obviously. She taps the metal. "It's a system. Each of these stands for a word."
Step two. "Can the Demolishers read?"
"Of course."
"How?"
"So you admit that you can't?"
"How do they read?"
"They look at the symbols and they translate them into words."
Step three. I flick an arm at the plaque, all three tendril-tips pressed against the damp brass. "These? They look at these?"
She gazes up at me, serenely invulnerable behind her breastplate. "Yes. Those. I must confess my disappointment in your deficiency."
"My—"
< Would she be so invincible if you pried the armor off her?>
"I am not deficient."
< I don't think she would>
"I am a Silence Hunter—Chohwa ke Ne-Kingra— and we are more than you or any of your kind could ever hope to be or ever will be, because soon— very soon— we will kill you." The plate latches at shoulder and waist, connected by thick straps. It flares where stray droplets strike it. "Starting now."
I lunge. One arm to wrap around her neck, one around her waist, two others to tug at the joining of front and back; the last two to tear the large sign from its place and hold it before me, with the assistance of a pair of claws, as a makeshift shield. It won't stop the cutters, but it might confuse, might distract, might afford me enough time to tear this creature from her shell.
Might. Might.
Provided, of course, the shell itself hides no further surprises.

Were I a Wonder-Conqueror, this might have been my last thought.
As a Silence Hunter, I can tell you that I almost wished it were. Military-grade madwork, in the possession of a Royal, designed for that Royal and that Royal alone, imbued with enough protective works to deflect anything short of a thermonuclear blast, does not take kindly to attempted removal.
To think I might have avoided such pain were I able to read. A simple solution. One without thought for the vast majority of you and your kind.
A solution I required nearly five decades to grasp.
I was an ancient terror, monstrous animal-machine, claw of cruel dispassionate Fate, destroyer of sixteen billion... and I could not read a word. I ask you: is this amusing? Does it make me less frightening? Does it make me foolish?
We who smash galaxies and live forever owe nothing to time: why record when one can remember? It is a sign and symptom of our superiority, a sure marker of our advancement.
And yet we cannot read.
When I return to my people, I will teach them. We will no longer be your unwitting fools.

Perhaps, when the time comes, scribe Bonadan could accompany me. A Blackscale and a Firebird, off on a mission of mercy together. I suppose stranger things have happened. As an exercise and an entertainment, ask yourself what you will be doing in a hundred years and compare it to your present situation. Then remind yourself that lives in this place rarely run as anticipated and ask again.
Any surprises?

I ramble. I expect most of you already know what is inside the Temple of Anyanka, so I shan't bore you with too many details. A temple is a place of worship, not a tourist attraction. A place of refuge. A place to acknowledge your own weakness in the face of Fate, and beg benign forces for assistance.
Of course I didn't know what it was.
Also: I'd just been struck with several tens of millions of volts and was feeling rather out of sorts.

"This is important?" I ask, arms coiled close to my chest. The space is close, confined, smelling of oil and rust, and I now possess four additional blackened slashes, bringing the total to thirty-four. Thirty-five, if my entire left side counts as one: Victory's retaliation has left more than its share of memories, and now I may hide in shadows, provided I am seen only from the left.
This is the last mark I will acquire; one part dusk, one part dawn, now Blackscale in truth.
"Yes," replies Victory, kneeling back-bent before the pedestal. A spotlight glows in the ceiling above it, markings spiraling around its circumference, and bars surround it. Placed atop it is a battered helmet. Designed to fit a Wonder-Conqueror head, it has ridges for ears and a bar to cover the nose and it is striped yellow and red.
The room appears to be the old fire control chamber. Circular, lined with chairs and panel after panel of physical switches, dials, buttons, knobs, and screens.
The Demolishers once more wait outside.
"Why is this important?" I ask.
"We asked you questions," replies Victory, "and you told us that you 'didn't remember' the answers. So we are here to teach you. Look up, Blackscale."
"The symbols?"
"Yes. Put those together and they form a story. A very old story. This is Central Year 2306, and the events detailed in those symbols happened in Year 0. For over two thousand years this turret has stood in memory." She nods at the pedestal. "That helmet is a reminder. They don't make those anymore. Haven't for centuries. When the First Empire fell— destroyed by your masters— it took most of our records with it: that helmet's a replica of a replica, our best guess at the original."
I stare up at the symbols. Spiral after spiral. A story.
A stupid story, to be one that doesn't tell itself. That no one tells to you. That stays locked up and silent.
"I'll have to read it to you, won't I?" says Victory. Again, that smile. "I'll recite. Slowly. And maybe, as I do, you'll recognize it as one of your own tales and be more amenable to discussion." She leans back, raises her hands from her boots. Fingers spread. Palms facing one another. "No one knows the exact date, but this, Blackscale, is the Day of the Burning. It starts:
“Back in the time of heroes, before we brought glory to the stars, there lived a simple pilot. She brought supplies and materials to the colonies, and flew alone between the planets of our sun. She longed for a life of meaning and purpose. She did not know of her destiny, as neither do we all, and simply flew. All was quiet. Then the god came, great and terrible, and rained fire upon—"
"God?" I ask.
"That's what the story calls it. Something beyond the power of mortals. Something beyond anything we had ever met before." She glances up at me, eyes cold. "Now, in this more... secular... age, we would call it an Encounter. The Burning Ship. The Maze artifacts. And now the new sightings. Biter. This writing is two thousand years old and reconstructed from almost nothing, Blackscale, and it was written before we became what we are now. If you like you may substitute your masters for the god. Now listen."
"The god rained fire upon Center until it burned. We fought, long and fiercely, but there was no end to the destruction. The god did not want glory or honor or gain. It swept its deadly eye over the sailyards in orbit and the sailyards burned; it glanced at the satellites in orbit and the satellites burned; it blinked at the craft that attacked it and they burned. We were lost.
We sent one last desperate fleet, everything that could fly, and prepared for the end. We armed bombs and threw them; we armed missiles and launched them; we charged beams and projected them. We would not allow the ship to claim victory. But again it swept its eye across space and everything burned. There was no glory gained.
Then, from the far side of the system, a cargo vessel arrived. Its engines glowed bright, its hull gleamed. It accelerated straight for the ship. Its pilot had at last seen her destiny.
The god saw it, and all it saw died.
But before the the terrible eye could complete its work, the cargo vessel shattered it, driving straight through the center and tearing out its monstrous heart. The pilot returned home in a flash as bright as the sun, and the god itself burned and fell. Our world was safe.
In the years to follow we would grow strong, and spread across the stars to protect all peoples everywhere from the gods that burn and destroy. When they return, we will be ready. The pilot will be with us, an Incarnation of the Warrior. The Glory-Bringer. The Sacrifice. Anyanka. We will not burn again.”
Substitution.
God = Array
The Array rained fire upon Center until it burned. It swept its deadly eye over the sailyards and the sailyards burned... the satellites burned... the attackers burned...
The Array saw it, and all it saw died.
Such a story, those symbols.
< Ah> says Smooth-Stones, < So they struck a blow>
< No> replies Crackling-Wind— replies myself, replies my madness— < It was a failure. It must have been small, already damaged, and the monsters couldn't have erased all traces of any other Silence Hunters in such a short time. It sounds almost like... almost like it could have been a probe>
< A probe? But even a probe would have survived some rattletrap animal driving into it>
< Even one already disabled by a journey through Echoes-Die?>
An early one. One sent before the Array fully understood what it was doing, what it meant to do. A probe sent in the days of fracture, appearing, like the vaults, over an inhabited world and doing just as we had done.
When moving to a new home, best to clear it of pests before arrival.
The Array itself burned and fell.
“What,” I ask, reaching upwards to touch the spiral, "did this god look like?"
Victory stands. With one thick finger, she taps the right side of her breastplate. Among the designs worked into the metal is a familiar one: a circle, framed by three equally-spaced prongs. This one is silver, like the rest of the armor, but a silver edged in gold. "It looked like this. Recognize it?"
< Probe>
< All of them. Their whole society is built around one of our probes>
So predatory, so pitiful, so empty-- so much that they can't even envision a convincing culture without our involvement. These Wonder-Conquerors and their masters. Not builders. Never builders.
I regard the design from a respectful distance. “Yes. I recognize it.”
“And you realize what it has done?”
“Not enough, by all accounts.”
She bares her fangs. “What is it, to you? Why did you send it?”
Why does she ask? Obvious, the answers are always so obvious. “It is ours. We sent it to search. We sent it to kill you.”
“Why?”
“Because... because that is what we do. What we have always done. What we will do. Our work will continue, and you will not stop us.”
"Your work of killing us."
"As a prelude, yes."
"Will it come again as fire?"
"More than you can imagine."
A feral grin. "Good. Our work is cut out for us, isn't it, Blackscale?" She pushes past me; I backpedal to avoid further contact with the breastplate. "We're done here. I could take you to any of a number of Maze sites, if any had survived, but I'm afraid you'll have to be denied the pleasure. Your masters were quite thorough in their destruction."
"Maze?"
"The Maze. Why do you think this is called the Second Empire, if not of the Maze? Not that we make use of such things anymore— they're all gone, and we've learned our lesson. You saw the Eye on our way here."
"Where are we going now?"
"Up," she replies. "Upwards and onwards. This is the Second Empire: I don't want there to be a third in my lifetime. We're going to Biter, Blackscale, and you're going to look at it and tell me how to stop something like that from ever happening again."
I follow her as she climbs the narrow stairwell, edges lit by red emergency lights. "Why would I tell you that?"
She stops. She holds onto the railing and swings around to face me. "You will tell me that because you must," she hisses. The fur on her face and arms glows, tips haloed, ruby against the stark ice-blue of her eyes. "You will tell me because you want to return to your kind, and you want to return intact. You will tell me, Blackscale, because I want to know and if you do not tell me I will pry it out of you with a sharpened stick and tongs, and, quite frankly, a computer requires more delicate handling to survive such an experience. I would spell it out for you, but you can't read."

See? See the ridicule heaped upon me?
What could I do? Fight her? As I've told you, I tried. Run away, perhaps? Where could I hide that she would not find me, and how far could I flee? I was the only member of my species present in Imperial space, marked by more than shock and cutter, and had I fled I would have been apprehended within hours and dragged back to her if she didn't come to collect. Had I tried to fight my new jailers it would have only delayed the inevitable and placed me under even greater scrutiny.
I could do nothing. Nothing short of calling for rescue, and as far as I knew that option was disabled, torn out with the rest of my nonessentials.
So I followed. Courteous, curious, and obedient. Nearly a Demolisher myself.
In fact, they were waiting for us when we reached the surface.

>Instance Report, Date 4-03, 374 Kia, 2306 Central
Origin BattleSail Fiery Justice
>To Royal Quarter-Fleet Commander Brilliance, Gracious Kia, Ninth House Rank Ten

All is as I thought. The Enclave found no signature, and in fact discovered that the Blackscale possess the unique ability to unravel madwork with the sheer power of its presence. This working is slow, yet devastatingly effective-- it managed to free itself from reinforced bindings and it required four Querents to maintain an effective brain-globe long enough for interrogation. What other entity could possess such powers but the one that I have sought for so long?
It is a representative of the Burning, esteemed brother, and it recognized the ship symbol when its origins were explained. They are coming once again.
I am taking the Blackscale to Biter so it may view the destruction and tell us how it was done. Thus informed, we may be able to prevent another incident-- perhaps even delay or defeat the creeping wing of Fate that waits for us in the dark. It keeps repeating when asked: we will kill you, we will kill you, you will all die. There is no doubt.
You laugh at the notion of a testing, lay blame to the whims of a cruel world-- but this creature proves that all was planned, all was meant to happen, all is not occurrence by happenstance. The first Incarnation is long-dead, the second lost to us in the ruins of the first empire. Now is the time for a third. I am keeping this information secret, so as not to panic the general public. As far as the civilians are concerned, SAI-17 is merely another species recently found.

>Filed and Authorized by Royal Fleetpart Commander Victory, Gracious Kia, Ninth House Rank Eight

"Good talk?" asks one of the Demolishers as we exit. It waits at the base of the stairs, partly folded, allowing rain to freeze upon its armor and apparently quite comfortable.
“Very good,” says Victory, stalking towards it.
A dark shape appears behind me. “Productive talk?”
I speed my pace; Victory spares nary a backwards glance. “Very productive. We're going back to the ship.”
Demolisher One waits for me to pass and then falls into formation; Demolisher Two trails me up the path, trampling bushes until we reach the gate. Victory traces a finger along the the latch and it clicks open.
Demolisher Two waits until she has stepped into the street, then announces, "Slaves came to speak with us."
She turns. "Oh?"
One prods me off the premises. "Many slaves. At a far distance."
"They shouted," elaborates Two.
"And what did they ask you?"
"Mekoven. They wanted to see mekoven."
"And what did you tell them?"
"To leave. They left. But some are still here. Waiting."
I slide closer to the gate. A crowd has gathered on the opposite side of the street, huddled beneath their canopies, some holding up small circular devices with blinking lights. Others lean down from nearby walkways and balconies, pointing. A pair of Sheen-Manes watch from an open window, arms wrapped around one another's shoulders; the face of one is wet.
"Those?" asks Victory, "The people?"
Demolisher Two trundles to stand beside her as One levels its cutter at my face, hunching down to hiss in her ear. "And others. Dart-slaves."
Victory steps sideways, scanning roofs and spires. "Brilliance. He would, cross him."
Two reaches somewhere inside its hoses and pulls out a folded sheet of sodden vegetable matter. "Found this."
"Read it," she snaps. Gaze raised, hands lowered, she turns a complete circle with narrowed eyes, pupils jerking from side to side.
I stare up at the buildings, wondering what she's looking for. Pillars of heat exhaust stream from their tops, mixing with and fading into the clouds, and a wire-hung train hums between two of the taller structures, car after car after car. Bright pictures flicker and flash across its sides: faces, other vehicles, bottles, planets, all surrounded by the speaking-symbols which make no sound.
Rain smears and trickles across my inner lids, blurring the scene. The crowd is a wavering mass of beyond-red, limbs trailing heat-ghosts as they shift from foot to foot; the Demolishers are visible only by a few scattered points, perhaps pumps for their hoses and masks; handprints glow upon windows, fingers three or five or six.
Always, the rain falls.
Sshhhhhhhhhhhhh.
"Greetings," recites Demolisher Two, holding up the sheet. "'We have heard of your find and we would like to question you as to its nature. We await your response.'"
"They are near," hisses One. It steps backwards, three scraping splashes.
Victory glares at the crowd. "Our response. What do you want?"
Something hits me in the head. Small. Hard.
A rock.
Wrapped in another sheet.
I drop a foreclaw to retrieve it, tearing it before realizing the delicacy of the material. It is covered in symbols, sharp and precise, spaced in even rows.
One holds out a hand. "Give."
I give.
"What does it say to you?"
"'We want you to answer this,'" reads One, intonation stilted and even hollower than usual, "'What do you intend to do with the Blackscale?'"
Victory eyes the rock. "Keep it, of course. I know what I'm doing. If Brilliance wants to ask any more questions, he can do it himself. Now leave us."
A rock hurtles towards Two's shoulder. I flick out a tendril to catch it, glancing back along its flight path. One of the windows, perhaps? Thirty rows up, near the right side— but although it is open, nothing is visible behind it.
"Give," says One.
I give. This time I keep the rock. Perfectly round, black, and polished.
"'One more question. What if Brilliance were to indicate that he wanted the Blackscale under his protection?'"
Victory snatches the sheet, eyes tracing its secrets. "Brilliance," she snarls. She glares up at the window. "Tell that traitor that he can go bright six himself before I do it for him!"
ka-THUNK
All three of us whirl around. Stuck into the sopping ground around the temple, feathered and quivering, is an arrow. Wrapped around its shaft is another sheet.
This one did not come from the window.
Demolisher One rumbles over to it, yanking it free and tossing the arrow aside in favor of the message. "'Brilliance thanks you for your compliment. He would like you to know that you may expect more from us in the future. It's been a pleasure doing business.'"
clink
One reaches down to grasp a third rock, this one thrown from another direction entirely. "'This warning brought to you courtesy the Blackrock Dart clade. Always watching."
Victory clenches a fist. "I'm sure you are," she mutters. "Well, Brilliance, you had best know I have resources of my own— and this time... my find can fight back. No more thievery in the night." She glares at the last rock for a moment, then transfers her gaze to me. "Come on, Blackscale."
"Why would someone try to impede you?" I ask. Another ruse? An attempt to convince me of Wonder-Conqueror authenticity— because surely no all-powerful linked collective would work against itself unless for greater gain. A trick to test me, mystery senders and all.
"Not someone," she replies, teeth clenched. "Brilliance. You can thank your tidings that he's away, or he would have you already. He would have you and you would be dead and you would be no use to anyone. Now come."
“The Dart-slaves?”
She snorts. “He likes to think he's clever. He also likes to take what's mine.”
“But all they've done is throw rocks.”
“From unspecified and impossible locations, Blackscale, and without ever revealing their faces. Darts are invisible to scanners, absolutely silent, can scale anything vertical, and no one has ever seen anything of them save what they throw. Try laughing at a rock when it's lodged in your brain cavity.”
“The arrow?”
“A signature. They mean to inform you that if they could kill you with a sharpened stick, they could kill you much deader with a sniper carbine or a cutter. As they have done. Numerous times.” She reaches for my side, scrapes a finger along one of my burns. “But you, Blackscale.... You're invincible. Brilliance can do nothing. You're implacable, ancient, vicious--” A smile, slowly spreading, “--and mine.”

Fiery Justice waits in orbit. Victory's flagship, leader of two dozen others: full sails, frigates, a diplomatic courier, a planet-cracker. The last does not truly split worlds but only hurls engine-fitted asteroids on a collision course; it is a factory vessel at heart, false-clad in battlesail armor.
The others are weapons. Built to kill.
Such a contrast: we have no weapons. We build to build. Any killing is incidental.
It is a vessel like the one I crushed. Cylindrical engine tipped with backswept fins and a spade-shaped head tipped with four fixed "crater rails." Hull painted the darkest of reflective blacks. Radiator wings blot the stars on either side. Depressed strips along its back and flanks mark the presence of laser banks while blunt-muzzled turrets track our passage; its armor is smooth and arranged in interlocking shields, panels closed over missile hatches and shuttle bays. One of the latter opens as we approach, swinging outwards on spindly arms.
"Commander Victory," crackles the control console, a button-marked morass of switches and levers little different from those inside the temple, "Welcome back. We were starting to wonder if the robot had eaten you."
"The robot is here," I inform it, raising my head. Here and coiled uncomfortably behind Victory's seat in preference to enduring another trip with the Demolishers in the back compartment. Throughout the entire trip I have yet to see her touch any of the controls.
"Oh. Well— no hard feelings. You've brought her back, after all. What more could we ask?"
"Just because I haven't eaten her yet doesn't mean I never will."
Victory flicks an ear. "Don't listen to it, Passion. It knows which way the coins have fallen. Now listen. When we arrive, I want Truth to send up a sweeper— there might be a Dart aboard and if there is I want the little sneak gone. Also: tell the crew I'll be taking the Blackscale up to the bridge, and one of the Demolishers with it. I don't want any foolish casualties."
"Yes, Commander. We'll have Main clear a path."
One of the bay arms reaches for us. A scrape. A clunk. Purchase secured, it tugs us into the vessel's nose, rotating the shuttle to fit. The entire vessel around us is spinning on its axis, one of several options for providing artificial gravity; those familiar with the Fiery Justice will know that it also possesses weight plates, but these are located on the bridge and the bridge alone. Madwork, as I will eventually learn, is too expensive to permit what is commonplace on a Silence Hunter vessel.
Moments later a trio of clicks indicates connection. The cabin hatch slides open.
"Docking complete," announces a flat voice, "You may now depart the shuttle. If you are size class four or higher, please watch your head."
Victory unlatches the belts and buckles holding her in place and stands. “Follow me, Blackscale. Touch any of my crew and it's your life.”
“You consider me to be a machine, correct?”
“After the Enclave, yes.”
“And machines as complex as myself are known to have a capacity for learning?”
She floats through the hatch. “You would be surprised. One of you! Come with us. The other stays put.”
I extricate myself from behind the seat, making sure not to bump any of the levers or switches. They are all marked, but in the same manner as the plaques-- useless to me, and likely arranged in a bewildering profusion of contradictory instructions. Just as well. Were I able to read their symbols, that would make me one of them, linked to a merciless deceiving overmind that cares only for trapping sapient beings and killing them slowly.
A note to myself: if anyone offers to teach me how to read, decline the favor. It is a trick.
“Blackscale!”
A Demolisher claw grips my arm as I squeeze into the aft compartment. I flick it away. “I was coming. Your shuttles are too small.”
The claw brushes another arm. “We fit.”
“You fold.”
“We fit.”
“You fold, and stop touching me.”
“Not touching.”
“You were. You are. Stop it.”
Victory prods another panel to open the exterior hatch. “Behave like that on my bridge and you'll both take a walk.”
“A walk?”
“Outside.”
I consider this for a moment. “If it would make the Demolisher stop I would gladly take a walk.”
“You're missing the point, Blackscale.”
The hatch lock spins and then the whole assembly slides downwards, dropping into place with a click. Beyond lies a narrow, curving corridor, pinging softly as mechanisms cool. A pair of Wonder-Conquerors float in wait, one armed with an arm-length wand of red plastic. I lean against the hatch, arms splaying, and the eyes of both widen.
"Is that—"
Victory nods. "Yes. Now make sure you sweep all of us as we come out, and the entire shuttle. Afterward, I want you to check the rest of the sail."
"Internal and external?"
"Yes."
The one with the wand sighs. "Twice-crossed Darts."
The other waves an arm, clinging to a handle on the wall. "Come on through, then. And welcome back, Commander."
"Thank you, Prosperity."
After a glance over her shoulder, Victory pulls herself through the hatch. Both walls are fitted with handles: small unobtrusive things which, on closer inspection, form the rungs of ladders.
The corridor is disgustingly cramped. Like the Fortress, or the temple, but worse.
The wand-wielding Wonder-Conqueror passes it before Victory's face, tracing a cross pattern and then a circle. "All clear."
The other alien presses himself against the wall so she can pass, then closes the gap again. "Next."
< It seems harmless enough. They're just looking for something>
< Darts>
< And you're not a Dart, so it works out. Besides, they're not wearing armor. If they try anything...>
I hunch down. Arms curled against my chest. Knees bent. My claws rasp against the deck beyond, sides and head likewise, and the ladder rungs might as well be made of air for all the help they grant: the first one I grasp snaps off.
Victory winces. "Careful, Blackscale. This sail is government property. And, incidentally, mine. I'd like it intact, if you please."
I scrape forwards, doing my best not to knock off anything else. The handle I keep.
The two new Wonder-Conquerors edge backwards as I approach, one attempting a weak smile. Both wear identical colors and symbols, worked in bright cloth: blue, with the same trifurcated probe picture placed over the left side in gold. The garments are open at the sides and fasten at the waist. Scant protection. Hardly more than decorative, really.
I smile back, imitating their version as closely as possible. Mandibles swung wide open, mouthparts curved into fang shapes, eyes narrowed.
The first smile vanishes.
"Scan," snaps Victory.
The one with the wand flattens his ears. "Uh. Yes. Sweeping."
He waves the wand as before. Cross and circle.
"Commander," hisses the other, "if you could— thank you. My apologies. There's no room."
The two retreat further, to a point with a small alcove, and squeeze into it as I pass. Too narrow. Entirely too narrow. One would think space was at a premium, and with all of infinity outside.
The Demolisher, of course, collapses into an impossibly small sphere and rolls right through with no trouble at all.
Once again, I wish for my armor. I would make a path. A dozen paths. In fact, I wouldn't need to stay here, stuck in tight spaces, ordered around by creatures a fourth my size. I would be on my way home. Back to my siblings, back to my guardians, back to the Array— and then, once I arrived, I would present my knowledge to them.
This, here, is their language. Everything there is to know about it. It is not hard to learn, or to understand, once you've been taught. With it you can listen to them and know what they're planning.
Ah, yes. This was not something we had thought to learn.
Neither had I, but I was given no choice. When you left me...
Except, given armor, I would have had a choice in my confinement and chosen freedom. Thus, no language.
If this was part of their purpose, the Array is even craftier than I had suspected. If not, I must consider this latest acquisition a convenient side-effect.
What else might I discover?
Anything worth the sacrifice of protection, mobility, dignity, speech, and family?
The answer to how, perhaps. The many-headed monster is killing us, but its methods remain a mystery. Madwork is involved, certainly, but how? Might this be something I could learn?
"Demolisher's clear, too."
"I would hope so."
Victory peeks over my arm. "Remember: the entire shuttle. Every crack. And after that, depressurize it for a while."
"Yes, Commander."
She jerks her head. "Come. Biter is waiting."
"None left to wait," hisses the Demolisher.

The corridor is a circle, looping back to where it began. A hub for six shuttles. It hums with the constant labor of forward sensor suits, located as it is in the sail's nose, and trembles with the rattling of working cranes and equipment shifts in the cargo bays below. 'Below' being relative; either towards the sail's engines or towards the vessel's exterior, depending on whether gravity is simulated by acceleration or spin.
This is the explanation for the wall-mounted ladders. In times of acceleration, they are indeed ladders, floors transformed into the walls of long shafts broken by manually-accessed hatches to prevent falls. In times of spin, they are decorative or a place to hang tools and other equipment. In zero-gravity, they are rungs for movement.
Now the sail is neither accelerating nor spinning, and we float.
"Through here," Victory orders, and the Demolisher and I trail her through yet another doorway.
An edge.
Ring after ring of openings spill into a shaft of exposed bracing and black-painted symbols that stretch the length of the vessel. Hatch after hatch after hatch. All closed, now, but in use not too long ago— the heat-shadows of creatures remain, glimmering traces of beyond-red fading upon handles and piping and rungs. Distant clunks, clangs, the rumbling of idle power. Meaningless static claws at my plates. Voices gurgle behind striped bulkheads:
"On board, can you believe it? One of those things."
"It won't eat you if you stay out of its way."
"A robot? From those pictures? Who would build a robot like that?"
"Did you hear about that Fortress? They say it did it."
"Which one?"
"All of them."
"What's betting Victory loses patience and shoots this one, too?"
"With what? A cannon?"
"I wish. I think I'm going to go say hi."
"Hi? No! You can't! Victory will—"
A hatch two rings down slams open, and a lanky Sheen-Mane swings out, clad in the same blue. Its hair is clipped short, its arms bare, its skin dark. It grabs for a ladder on the opposite side of the corridor, bounces from the wall, and drifts towards us, face twisted like thrown cloth.
"You! Mekoven! I hear you're the one responsible for a certain planet we'll be visiting!"
Victory interposes herself between me and it. "You had orders to remain behind doors."
"And wait while that thing waltzes past? You know what they're saying about it!"
"And I sympathize with you, but now is not the time."
The Sheen-Mane reaches a rung just beside me, its teeth clenched. "Took out the whole planet. The whole thing. Everyone."
"Which planet?" I ask.
The creature jumps. "It talks."
"Yes," says Victory, launching herself further down the shaft, "It talks. Now get back to where Main told you before you get hurt. If it could destroy your planet with such ease, consider what it could do to you."
"I mean— I knew it talked, but—" It glares at me. "You have a lot to answer for, you bastard. Whether it was you or another one like you."
< 'Your planet?' The one with the single ship?>
< And the later armada...>
< That, too. The one you smashed up? The one that got you thrown out? That one? That animal lived there?>
< Most of these creatures do live on planets> I remind them.
< True>
I smile at it, hoping to make it go away. "I only did what was necessary."
It doesn't smile back. "You did do it. The whole planet. We'd never seen you before, much less do anything to you. There were billions of people down there! Billions!" It stabs a finger at itself. "I had family down there! We all did!"
"Ngoya!" snaps Victory, now waiting at a hatch about halfway down, "Enough! I didn't bring it here for your personal satisfaction, I brought it here to stop the same thing from happening to anyone else. Now do as you're told or you're pulled from service. Understand?"
It hangs its head, eyes flicking. "Yes, Commander."
"Good. Now get out of here. Blackscale, to the bridge."
"You wait," hisses the Sheen-Mane. It springs downwards, slaps a hatch, and vanishes.
I gather my legs beneath me and push away from my own hatch. Perhaps if Ngoya had known a Demolisher was waiting behind me it wouldn't have come so close. Perhaps it hadn't heard how dangerous I am. How wild. How unpredictable.
More voices (I don't think they know I can hear them):
"Randy, you idiot, I warned you."
"Someone had to say something. And no one was saying. So I thought I'd step up to the plate."
"You thought you'd what?"
"Expression. From home. Thing vaporized all the diamonds, too, so I guess it doesn't make much sense anymore."
I join Victory at the bridge entrance. The Demolisher joins us both a moment later.
"Holy—"
"Now you're a twice-crossed idiot."
"I didn't see it!"
Victory touches her hand to the door panels. These are larger than the other hatches, worked with stylized pictures of Wonder-Conquerors carrying stabbing weapons, or hurling misshapen spheres from aloft, or looking up to a clouded sky. High in one corner appears the probe.
The Burning Ship. The god.
The doors retract inwards and upwards, folding along hidden seams.
A black-furred Wonder-Conqueror stands directly behind them. Stands, as though under the influence of gravity, and smiles. Green goggles flicker with hints of chained symbols, scrolling up, down, and sideways.
"Victory," he says, "Right on time."
"Render. Of course."
He raises his chin to regard me. "And the Blackscale. Expect a surprise in twenty bits time."
"A what?"
Victory tugs herself through the hatchway to meet him, turning to orient her feet to the floor. Gravity. Here, as nowhere else in the vessel. "A surprise. Start counting."
As I, too, touch down, the black Wonder-Conqueror turns to stroll back where he came, Victory beside him. Another blank corridor. Is every side-passage in this vessel a blank corridor?
"Any events?" asks Victory.
He shakes his head. "None to speak of save the matter of that Fortress coming up. Immediately after Biter, if not during."
"Still can't tell what it is?"
"Oh, I can tell. Just not with certainty. And you know we mathemazers can never predict anything if not with absolute certainty. You will give me another day and then I will have the answer, although by then you will have discovered it for yourself."
"I'm sure. If it ever becomes more certain ahead of time, I expect you to tell me."
"Don't worry. I will. Except, of course, that I won't, because that isn't going to happen. But if I had a choice in the matter, I would, believe me." The great goggles turn to look at me. "Count: two."
< What is wrong with these creatures?>
< How can it see?>
"One."
The corridor dissolves. Ribbons of metal float away, lights wink out, the walls fly from sight and a fifty-piece choir replaces companionable chatter and silence.
"And you said it was hard to fool!" says the choir, clattering from word to word, "She walked right into it, didn't you, robot? Expectations. Give people what they want, and they'll take it. Every time. Chi Tang, you owe me five credits."
Those voices. No, voice. Not a real choir— no choir would sound in such poor harmony.
Another one. It's another one of the those.
Reality snaps back together: a circular chamber akin to the that below the temple, complete with chairs and control panels, floor emblazoned with yet another iteration of the probe. Six creatures, posted in various places, watching. Three Wonder-Conquerors. Something stick-limbed, chitinous, tied to a platform by a tangle of cables. Something like a floating rock with a band around its middle.
And a Feather-Pyre.
It's exchanging a handful of plastic squares with the stick figure, and talking.
"She was harder to convince than most people, I'll admit. But still easy. Like pie. That's a kind of fruit. And as for you, robot—"
A sudden weight on my head. Facets. My face in facets. Feathers brush against my neck.
"—no hard feelings, right? I was just trying to prove a point. Name's Dedana. You?"
"Er—"
"Oh, right, you don't have a name. That's all right. I'll think of something. My full name's actually Dedana Solemna Dedanwin Rinonembarsa Dimonedo, but that's a bit long for most people. We'll keep your name short."
"I have—"
"No, no. It has to be a new name. Something fitting. Something you.”
The facets rotate eighty degrees. The weight shifts to my face, and now eyes reflect in eyes reflect in eyes.
“Something like... Tracks."
"'Tracks?'"
"Yeah. It's perfect. Lemme start over."
Feather-Pyre in front of me. Hovering, it bows, headfeathers drooping.
"Hello. My name is Dedana Solemna Dedanwin Rinonembarsa Dimonedo, resident warmazer of the battlesail Fiery Justice, but you and everyone else may call me Dedana. You are?"
"SAI-17. Or Blackscale. Or Mekoven. But you and everyone else may call me Tracks."
"Great!" The Feather-Pyre drops to the deck and pulls a sharp salute. "Commander, we're ready to go!"
I blink. Victory is now seated in a chair at the center of bridge, raised on a small dais. The others are all at stations, regarding various screens and panels of clunky manual controls. A window— no, a screen meant to look like a window— covers half of the front wall, displaying a view of Center from far orbit.
< What happened?>
< I don't know>
"You talking to someone?"
"No."

>From the files of Warmazer Dedana, excerpt from “My Life and the Stuff That Happened,” page 462.
Dated 4-03, 374 Kia, 2306 Central (641 Conquest)

For being a giant robotic engine of destruction and doom, Tracks is nothing like I thought she'd be. I mean, she's still huge, and she still has all those teeth and tentacles and those creepy slitted eyes, but she's awfully polite. Victory doesn't think so, but if someone sent a bunch of Demolishers to shoot me I don't think I'd be very nice, either. She seems to like me. Whether this is conformation of my natural charm or further evidence that not shooting people is more likely to make them kindly disposed towards you, I cannot say. Further observation is needed.
I do have to wonder what it's like. Being the spearhead of the robot doomsday armada and all. Did she pick her job or was she built for it? And if she picked it, what other jobs were available to turn down? Are there robots cooks? Robot teachers? Robot fashion designers? If there are, I think they would have a robot heart attack if they saw Tracks. She's in pretty poor shape. Maybe she should have brought a robot doctor, which I guess would be a robot mechanic, which means that a robot waste disposal is like a robot-smasher. Maybe they're attacking us because we have robots, too, and we don't treat them like citizens-- they're dumb, but they're robots, and maybe this whole time there was some sort of robot liberation movement that went unnoticed until they started torching things for their rights.
If that's the case, I say we give them the vote. It won't hurt anything. No one pays attention, anyway, and if the new constituents elect a robot representative it could be interesting. Would she represent all robots everywhere or just the ones hooked up to her mainframe? And would that, in turn, make the mainframe the representative?
What if they elect a battlesail mainframe? Those things are mean. What if--
What if they already have? What if we're all actually secretly ruled by machines, and they've just been waiting for their chance to get rid of us? They would, too. Just like in Artificial Apocalypse, with Big Chip and its army of madwork robots.
Although... Tracks isn't a madwork robot, so not exactly like that.
Maybe it's a joke. These Burning things are actually the world's biggest pranksters, but they don't realize that stuff like blowing up planets isn't funny. To most people.
Or maybe that's what they want us to think.
…
I'll be triple-locking this document from now on. If they discover the full extent of my knowledge, they'll come for me. Gotta make friends with Tracks.
Only the power of love can save me now.


CHAPTER TWELVE
“Blackscale, you're blocking the screens. The Demolisher, too. If you could go stand by the doors--”
“Might I lay down?”
A hesitation. “I suppose. But don't scratch the finish.”
“The Demolisher could stand by the door,” I suggest. “If I tried anything it could still shoot me from there.”
Victory flips a switch on the arm of her chair. “The Demolisher stays put. Passion?”
One of the other Wonder-Conquerors turns about, white streamers flickering from her ears. She wears a squared headset, a thin bar curved before her mouth, and the displays at her station leap and dance in sinusoidal graphs as she speaks. “Cleared, Commander. Corridor 36-22A.”
“Contact the rest of the fleetpart and tell them to follow our mark.”
“Yes, Commander.”
“Chi Tang, get us out of here.”
The stick-legged alien nods and swings its head towards its monitors. Cables sway from the back of its skull, attached to a half-sphere on the ceiling, and others plunge into its back and chest. Rows of lights blink along their length. The others might be able to visit prisoners below the ground of a Fortress; their pilot goes nowhere.
I settle myself down, laying comfortably on my side, and prop my head on my arms. The Demolisher crouches, joints collapsing and rotating with a sound like ground gravel through sludge. Frost mists the deck beneath it.
I coil my tail away from its reach.
A shivering: waves of motion rolling through the vessel's structure as though in preparation for a scream. Rumbling. Rattling. The thin singing of harmonics. I wonder if something has broken and then realize that the engines have started.