She was impressed into silence for a moment, but that didn't last. "What kind of work do the golems do anyways that they can get broken at all? Wouldn't used-up magic just kind of, I don't know, disappear?"
"That wouldn't make sense at all," he said. "See, the way dragon technology works, you use all the basic rules of electronics. Then you power the contraption with magic. We used to pioneer new ways of doing batteries and stuff, but normal electricity was too much of a bother for us. You have to find a way to gather energy, to recharge it, and to dispose of the waste and broken chargers. It's just a headache."
"But," she hesitated, "dragons doing electrical stuff?"
He laughed. "Of course! Our kind has always been like that--magic book in one hand, science text in the other. Haven't you read any books about us?" he teased.
She shook her head no and explained that she'd always been more interested in the books about fairies. "Anyways, show me how some of this works," she said. "I want to progress on my journey of figuring out this strange place." He and handed her a soldering wand, and they set to work on repairing the maid golem's systems. Her speech drive had blown a circuit. But with the magic of, well, magic, it hadn't caused too much harm to the rest of the unit, and it was easy enough for them to redo the circuit and hook it back into the rest of the system.
The unit opened her eyes and blinked at them. "Hello, it is very nice to meet you again." Veronica stood and waved at them. Her movements had become fluid, and if it weren't for her still somewhat strange phrasing, she would have looked exactly like a humanoid. "I am rebooting my system and will be prepared to fully interact with the environment in forty-eight point two minutes. I will now be starting my reboot phase. Thank you for your patience," Veronica said.
The two mechanics looked at each other. "I think Veronica sounds a lot better now that we repaired that speech drive," Alyss said. He had to agree with her. They eventually decided to leave her there to complete her boot-up while they continued on a tour of the palace.
First, he took her through the various grounds. Then they stopped by in the public palace library. He told her he didn't have the clearance to bring her to Aeron's personal library, but she explained she wouldn't have wanted to borrow one of his books anyway; and they let her pick up a few books to read in her quarters. The staff there made it plain that they did not approve of this field trip, though, so they quickly moved on.
Eventually, he brought her back to the beginning to her chamber. "I can't take you out of here very often, not even every day, but I think occasional visits like this might help you not go insane with boredom." The old man shook her hand, and she hugged him back. He blushed when she let him go and cleared his throat. "If you need anything else, Veronica should be in good working order to take care of it for you again; but if that doesn't work, you can ask her to connect the comm directly to me and I'll get you what you need." Then he became stern and shook his finger at her. "Don't forget that you'll get all of us in trouble if you go wandering away from here, though, you hear? I know you might not like staying here, but it's for your own good. Have fun reading," he said as he went out the door.
CHAPTER SIX
Study in Starlight
In another part of the palace, a very different set of people were talking. She walked in the room with a twinkling night sky draped over her shoulder and snaking down across her stomach as her pallu, flames licking harmlessly at her heels from her train. She paused in the entrance to survey the space, then tapped her middle fingers to her thumbs to cause the stone study to burst into flower, with waterfalls cascading from the tops of the bookcases without dampening a single tome. "You realize you have the ability to go anywhere in this dimension. We could have easily met in a place far more aesthetically pleasing."
The king hadn't moved during her handiwork with his decorating, but now he uncurled from his position tucked up on his desk and stretched himself out enough that she could see he gave a shrug. "I like it here. It is my own office; it would be a shame if I didn't," Vovin said. "Don't fret though, I won't hold your efforts to spruce things up against you. It's kind of nice to see you taking an interest in something." He loped across the room to clear some trailing ivy vines away from his cabinet doors and took out a bottle of brimstone brew and two glasses. They clinked as he shuffled them around on his desk.
She sniffed. "I am not completely numbed to the world around me. I cared enough to pass the rule on to someone better equipped to deal with the everyday nonsense." Dark storm clouds started to creep around her top and obscure the stars. "I think it would be wise if you remembered that you have this position purely on my sufferance and do your best to pursue your obsession with needling others with a target who were under your rule." She frowned. "You know, I could have chosen someone else to replace me."
He laughed. "You know that you were sick and tired of the position for millennia before I started pestering you to let me take over. You should be happy someone who has vested in all of this nonsense took it on." They both thought back to that time.
The
