Salo isn’t distracted by the attempt to obscure the atmech revelation, because now that he knows, Tuksaad makes a lot more sense to him. “You’re a machine, aren’t you? A vessel powered by a mind stone.”
Tuk’s jaw clenches just the slightest bit. “No,” he says, “I am an atmech. A machine can’t ever be alive, and I am alive.”
This is obviously a sensitive subject, but Salo ignores the cues. “Your bones are metal.”
“My bones contain metal, and even so, the rest of me is flesh and blood. Cut me and I feel pain just like everyone else. I can feel joy; I can fall in love. I have a heart. Does that not make me alive?”
Tuk stares back like he wants an answer to his question, but Salo doesn’t know what to say. What is there to say? It hurts no one to commandeer animal spirits for machines, but dealing with human spirits? Now that’s necromancy: otherwise known as that dirty art forbidden to all Yerezi mystics. How would one even trap a human spirit in a mind stone?
“And what about you?” Tuk says indignantly, clearly upset now.
Salo lifts an eyebrow. “Me?”
“Yes, you. You question my humanity because of what I’m made of when your own eyes are synthetic. Do they make you less human?”
At the mention of his eyes, Salo grits his teeth. “What are you on about?”
“You keep them hidden, but those eyes of yours were made for an atmech, albeit an old-fashioned one.” Tuk tilts his head to one side. “Why do you think I first noticed you? I felt the resonance and recognized it for what it was. I can still feel it. Imagine my surprise.”
Ilapara stares at Salo, and her probing gaze heats up the side of his face almost as intensely as the fire. He doesn’t look at her.
He’s never known where his eyes came from, and he’s never wanted to know. He’d rather forget the whole issue and never have it mentioned again. But to find out that someone else—or something else—might have worn them before him?
A knot of black emotions twists his soul. One of his fists clenches around the folds of his cloak.
Tuk’s anger melts from his expression, and his voice softens. “They’re faulty, aren’t they? There’s something off with the resonance. That’s why you need charmed glasses to see.” When Salo fails to respond, Tuk looks down at his feet and sighs. “Look, I’m sorry for attacking you like that, all right? I guess I’m not . . . as over . . . my past as I thought. I clearly have insecurities I need to work on, but I want you—no, I need you to feel free to ask questions about me. I have to learn to talk about who I am without getting upset.”
Tension hangs over the campfire as thickly as smoke.
“So a heretic mystic made you in the Empire,” Ilapara says. “Why?”
Despite his professed desire not to get upset, Tuk’s eyes gleam darkly. “Heretic creations are technically illegal in the Empire, but the elites there like to keep my kind for all sorts of purposes. Servants mostly. Expensive pets sometimes. Toys.”
“Are there many heretics in the Empire?” Ilapara asks.
Shaking his head, Salo blows out a cloud of smoke. “I don’t like that word.”
“Me neither,” Tuk says. “Do you know what they call the moon?”
“What?”
“It translates to ‘the Vice.’ They call their suns ‘Valor’ and ‘Verity’—pretty much what you call them—but Ama Vaziishe isn’t ‘Mother of Sovereigns’; she’s ‘the Vice.’ That alone should give you an idea of what they think of Red magic and those who practice it.”
By the scornful look in his eye, he clearly finds the name ridiculous. “To answer your question, Ilapara, worship of the moon—and Red magic in general—isn’t popular in the Empire. You could even say it is proscribed. You’ll only ever find Red magic in underground cults or highly guarded temples and academies, the latter so it doesn’t corrupt the rest of society.” Tuk curls his lips almost unnoticeably. “Hypocrites. Imperial elites will openly shun Red magic, but the bulk of them certainly don’t mind indulging in its creations. I know this from personal experience.”
By now Salo’s earlier discomfort has ebbed away into curiosity. “Why do they fear us so?” he asks.
Tuk seems to think about it, then exhales deeply, like the day’s journey is finally catching up to him. “Take your pick: ignorance, misinformation, religious propaganda. But I’d be lying if I said the fear isn’t a little well founded. Red magic is notoriously difficult to wield, but those of you smart enough to figure it out can do some pretty horrific things.”
Salo’s thoughts drift back to Seresa, to the terrible serpents, the burning wagon, the stench of rotting flesh swirling around him. Did he hear cries? Maybe he didn’t, but he can certainly imagine them.
“And then, of course, there were the Hegemons,” Tuk says. “Ever heard of them?”
Both Salo and Ilapara shake their heads, which makes Tuk smile for some reason. “Only in the Redlands,” he says. “Anyway, the Hegemons were a succession of horrendously powerful lunar mystics who ruled over an empire they called the Ascendancy. At its height it nearly spanned the entire world beyond the Redlands. That’s six continents, if you’ll believe it.”
“Six continents?” Salo finds the scale astonishing. What are the Yerezi Plains compared to such a monster?
Tuk nods with a solemn look. “Unfortunately, as is often the case with people of unequaled power, these Hegemons were extremely destructive people. They had a penchant for bloody conquest and liked to enslave entire populations. It took a united front of solar magic and centuries of war to finally bring them down, and when the last Hegemon fell, what remained of the Ascendancy became the fragmented world powers that exist today. The biggest one, the newly formed Empire of Light, vowed that the world would never see another Hegemon, and so far they’ve managed to keep their promise.”
An entire history Salo has never heard of, a shock because he’s never given much thought to what happens beyond the Redlands. He certainly didn’t think the history could be so momentous. “How did you end up in the Enclave, then?” he says. “What is the Enclave, anyway? I know it as that strange place beyond the northern desert with strange people we don’t talk to.”
Ilapara snorts. “That’s as much as I know myself.”
“You shouldn’t feel too bad about it,” Tuk says, clearly amused. “The people there are as ignorant of the Redlands as you are of them.” His smile weakens as he prods an ember in the fire. “I ended up there after my maker learned of my . . . living circumstances back in the Empire. She arranged for my escape and put me on a windcraft to the Enclave’s capital.”
“A windcraft?” Salo and Ilapara say at the same time.
“A ship that flies on magically generated currents of wind.” Tuk’s eyes twinkle at their amazed expressions. “Windcrafts are how most people cross the oceans, though you folk don’t know of them, given how they all circumvent the Redlands—deliberately so, I should add.”
Salo and Ilapara glance at each other, and he sees his worry in her eyes; if the people beyond the Redlands can fly across oceans, then they must be mighty indeed.