Antiphon

Specifications, had grown unexpectedly into something capable of regarding him as its father. The notion of it staggered him, though if he were completely honest, there were also days he still doubted it despite his own experience.

“Good afternoon, Isaak,” he said, inclining his head toward the metal man. He’d told him many times that he could call him Charles or even Brother Charles if he preferred. Each time, Isaak had suggested that his preference was to call him Father.

For a moment, Isaak stood still and the awkwardness of the moment played out. Finally, his amber eyes flashed again. “May I speak with you?”

Charles motioned for him to come in. “I’m nearly finished with our little friend.”

Isaak entered and waited while Charles closed the door behind him. Then, he followed the arch-engineer back to the workbench and watched over his shoulder while he took up the magnifying glass once again. The bellows filled, and Isaak’s reedy voice resonated in the room. “Were you able to learn anything about its point of origin or the message it bears?”

Charles shook his head. “I’m. unauthorized for those things.” The word felt distasteful in his mouth. “But Lady Tam is correct: Its message is for you.” He looked back to Isaak.

The mechoservitor blinked, turning its head slowly to the left and right. Charles had noticed that Isaak did that when he was accessing deeper lines within his memory scrolls. “There was a matter of authorization prior to your arrival in the Churning Wastes,” Isaak said. “At the bridge where we encountered the mechoservitor that later ended his operational effectiveness.”

“This is the instance where the boy, Nebios, was authorized access but you and the Waste guide were not?”

“Yes, Father.”

Charles moved the magnifying glass, shifting so that the metal man could see him but also so that the towering figure did not block his light. “More of the mystery,” he said. “But we’ve had a triple helping of mystery. Do you want to hear your message, instead?”

Amazing, he thought, how easy it was to see the mechanical as a child of sorts. He heard a child’s hesitation now in the whine of the mouth flaps as they opened and closed. He waited until Isaak finally spoke. “I would like to ask you a question first.”

Charles put the bird down and turned to face the metal man. “Ask, Isaak.”

“What level of malfunction would be necessary for a mechoservitor to practice active deception, and can it be corrected?”

The spell again. Rudolfo had briefed him early on about it, of course, and Charles understood why. The spell trapped inside of this device could, in the wrong hands, bring down the world around them. It had razed Windwir. Two thousand years earlier, Xhum Y’Zir’s death choir of similar mechanicals had sung the spell and brought about the Age of Laughing Madness and the end of the Old World. And as much as he understood why Rudolfo had made him the third person-the fourth if they counted Isaak-to know that the spell had survived, he also understood why Rudolfo had warned him to let Isaak bring the knowledge to him in the metal man’s own time.

Charles sighed and wondered if real children had better-timed curiosity than their mechanical counterparts. “I think it depends upon the deception. Not all deceptions are a result of malfunction. Some may be a highly analytical outgrowth of careful thought regarding the better choice when no choice is truly optimal.”

He watched Isaak now while the metal man thought about this. “But wouldn’t that contradict a mechanical’s scripting?”

Charles shrugged. “It could. But other scripting could call for that contradiction-or untested circumstances could alter the scripting in some way.” He paused. “And I know it seems incorrect on the surface, but sometimes deceptions are carried out for love, for safety, for any number of noble purposes.”

“I can see logic in that,” Isaak said, his tinny voice taking on a matter-of-fact tone. “Still, it perplexes me.”

Tell me. He bent his will toward the metal man. He would not ask the reason why. But in the end, he did. “What brings this question about, Isaak?”

Now watch, Charles told himself.

A gout of steam shot from Isaak’s exhaust grate. Deep in his chest cavity, gears whined and springs clacked with enough violence that his metal plating shook for a moment. A low whine built, noticeable, but quieter than the last time Charles had heard him lie. “I was simply curious.”

Charles bit his tongue and turned his gaze back to the moon sparrow. He attached first one wing, then the other. “Well, I hope your curiosity is satisfied.”

The next sound from Isaak made Charles jump. It sounded unnatural, but it was obvious. Isaak had chuckled. “I doubt my curiosity shall ever be satisfied, Father.”

Now it was Charles’s turn to chuckle. “I think you may be right.” Then his thumb found the switch beneath that out-of-place feather. “But for now, let’s bend our curiosity towards your message.”

The bird fluttered to its feet. Its small beak opened, and the tinny voice of a faraway mechoservitor echoed into the workroom. “Addressee,” it said, “Mechoservitor Three, Ninefold Forest Houses, Seventh Forest Manor, Library.”

Charles looked to Isaak. “I am Mechoservitor Three, also called Isaak,” the metal man said in a quiet voice. “Chief Officer of the Forest Library.”

The tiny bird twitched slightly in his cupped hand, and when the stream of numbers hissed out they were too fast for Charles to identify them. Their pitch and tone warbled, and the old arch-engineer was impressed with what that told him. Numeric code with inflection markers to show emphasis and vary definition. When he was younger, if he’d had the luxury of months, he might’ve parsed out the code with a forest of paper and an ocean of ink. And yet, he watched Isaak’s flashing eyes and saw his fingers spasm as he deciphered the code as it was given.

It was a mighty thing, Charles decided, to watch something he had made with his own two hands do something in seconds that he would need most of a season to accomplish.

Isaak looked to the bird and then to Charles, his mouth flap opening and closing as if he meant to say something.

Then, the metal man snatched the moon sparrow from Charles’s fingers and fled. In his haste, he tipped over a chair and forgot to close the door behind him. All the while, he whispered to the bird, cupping it near his mouth.

Charles leapt to his feet and ran into the hall, his heart hammering in his temples. The last mechanical he’d seen move this fast was the one he’d scripted to escape from Erlund and bear his message to the Order. Both times, he tasted fear at the daunting machinery he had constructed. “Stop him,” he cried.

But before anyone could react, Isaak had thrown open the doors and flung his silver messenger into the sky.

Then, Isaak turned to Charles, bellows chugging with grief and surprise.

“I’m sorry, Father,” his metal child said.

Neb

Neb ran though the rest of the day and long into the night before he made camp to give his body at least a few hours of sleep away from the black root that fueled it. As he ran beneath the moon, he heard the crescent’s song increase in volume, and he bent his mind to that cipher. As he slept beneath that same moon, he cradled the sliver of silver to his ear to dream music and numbers and light.

At one point, in his deepest dreaming, he thought he heard his father’s voice calling to him beneath the melody of the canticle. He stirred, cast about for some memory of Winters with her long, dirty brown hair, her muddy face with its big brown eyes. But when he found nothing, he let the song enfold him and carry him back down into sleep.

By noon on his second day alone, he skirted the ruins of Y’leris, a scattering of mounded wreckage and glass that had melted and then cooled in twisted, razor-edged hills.

He would have kept south if it weren’t for the commotion.