“I assume some of the notes still exist, since you’ve mentioned them,” Jebi said.
“Indeed,” Vei said. “I’ll show you your quarters, and then the studio where you’ll be doing most of your work. You might find a demonstration of how the automata are given their instructional grammars edifying.”
Jebi nodded their assent.
The dormitory was distressingly close to the dragon’s cavern, to the point where Jebi could hear the faint echoes of its movements when they concentrated. Each door displayed a simple paper sign with its inhabitant’s name, and someone had already put one up for them. The room itself, while austere, had good lighting—Vei showed Jebi the switch for turning the lights on and off, and demonstrated its use—and a luxurious amount of space to recommend it. It already sported a sleeping mat and quilts, two small tables of lacquered wood and tasseled floor cushions, and a small bookshelf with three books crowded up against the left side. Jebi itched to investigate the books, but Vei had already led them back out of the room and toward the studio.
To Jebi’s relief, the studio looked normal, with screens dividing it into separate workspaces. There were closets and cabinets in the back for supplies, and some shelves for reference materials as well. They caught sight of some of the other artists, but none emerged to greet them, not yet. “They’re busy,” Vei said. “You’ll see them at lunch.”
Issemi’s old workspace had been tidied recently, the piles of notebooks and papers neatly arranged. Jebi spotted their rucksack and its supplies set next to the table. They bet it had been searched, not that the Razanei would have found anything more incriminating than the occasional halfhearted caricature.
Most interestingly, the wall contained a display of masks hanging by their ribbons, all of them intended for human-type automata. Both the markings and their colors varied. Jebi wondered if any prototypes remained of the dragon’s mask, and asked Vei.
“They were destroyed as a safety precaution,” Vei replied. “Not my decision, and done before I could protest.”
The more they learned, the more Jebi’s qualms about their unwanted new job multiplied. They pointed to the small jars of pigments. “What are those?”
“Paints,” Vei said. Jebi’s relief at a mundane, straightforward answer evaporated as Vei continued speaking. “The secret to the automata’s animation. The paints imbue them with the illusion of life, and the particular qualities we want them to display—loyalty, courage, that sort of thing.” She raised her voice. “Shon, our new painter is here. I need you to give a demonstration.”
A balding Razanei man emerged from behind one of the screens. Dust covered his smock. “Come this way,” he said to Jebi, then gave Vei a jerky nod.
Curious now, Jebi drifted after Shon to his workspace. Several mortars and pestles of different sizes rested on his bench, along with a number of jars sporting cryptic labels. A pile of paintings rested to the side, haphazardly stacked. Jebi longed to snatch the paintings up and put them away more carefully.
Shon removed the topmost painting and squinted at it. “This one will do,” he said. “Probably test out as Dragon’s Labyrinth. We can always use more of that.”
Test out as? Jebi wondered. Dragon’s Labyrinth? But they might as well watch the demonstration before asking their questions.
“Wait a second,” Jebi burst out when they got a better look at the painting. “That looks like South Gate of the Tiger-Sage’s Temple.” One of the most famous works from the dynasty before the Azalea Throne, by the artist Nyang, and one that Jebi admired tremendously. Their favorite part was the tiger partly camouflaged in the shrubs just to the side of the gate. They’d made copies of copies of the piece during their studies, though never one this fine.
“Who’s the copy by?” Jebi asked. Hwaguk must be awash in renditions of the thing. This one had masterful brushwork, despite the badly faded paints, almost as though...
“It’s the original,” Shon said, his face creasing in a broad smile. “That Fourteener Hak came through for us again.”
Before Jebi had time to register the significance of this—it wasn’t as though Hak’s dealings were a surprise, after all—Shon took the priceless painting, almost a thousand years old, and ripped it in half. Jebi let out a cry and lunged, only to be restrained by Vei.
“Watch,” Vei said, and her grip tightened just enough to warn Jebi not to struggle.
Jebi watched, sick with horror, as Shon shredded the painting, then grabbed an indiscriminate handful of the pieces and dumped them into one of the mortars. Grinding paper shouldn’t have worked like this, except the mortar and pestle gave off a faint grayish glow, and the incoherent sound of distant voices. Magic.
When Shon finished grinding, nothing remained of the paper but a fine yellowy sediment. Jebi fought back nausea as he continued the process. He mixed a vehicle consisting of gum arabic, honey, and water, plus some other ingredients that they didn’t recognize, and then added the sediment—pigment, presumably. Looking at the resulting paint made Jebi’s eyes water.
“Hard to look at, isn’t it?” Shon asked, as casual as if he hadn’t just destroyed one of Hwaguk’s most famous architectural paintings. “I was right.”
“You always are,” Vei said, inclining her head. “Different artworks produce pigments with different magical properties.” She still hadn’t let go of Jebi. “Shon’s expertise in identifying which ones are suitable for Ministry use is why he has this job.”
That’s it, Jebi thought morosely. Now that I’ve witnessed this, they’ll never let me leave, not without a guard at my back.
For the first time, they wondered if they’d failed the Ministry of Art exam after all, or if the whole thing had been set up by Armor so Hafanden could pressure them into this position. Maybe they’d done too well, convinced the Razanei of their suitability for the work. Betrayed by their own talent.
“What you’re doing here is monstrous,” Jebi whispered before they could help themself. They thought of the antiquities collectors and dealers that Hak had hosted at her party, gathering around Hwagugin vases and paintings like vultures. Thought of the hours they’d spent studying copies of masterpieces. How many paintings now existed only as copies, if at all?
Vei let them go, and faced them. “Your job will be to use these pigments and the existing mystical symbols to write a new grammar for the dragon, one that allows us to use it in combat without it going berserk.”
Jebi recognized the continued warning and shut up. They finally understood why their supervisor was the Ministry’s duelist prime. Because her job was to cut them down if they tried to escape like Issemi’s assistant had. And Jebi had no doubts that, if they ran, Vei would chase them to the world’s end and slice them head to toe.
FIVE
I’M LIVING UNDER the Old Palace, Jebi thought, with a sense of unreality. They wondered if Bongsunga or Hak had missed them yet; kept wondering, in the days to come. Would Armor tell Jebi’s family and friends what had happened, or make excuses?
One of the first things they learned about life in a secret underground complex, especially one where no one ever turned off the lights in the hallways and shared areas, was how time crystallized around them. The studio and their room both included clocks, the former on the wall and the latter tucked away on top of the shelf. The studio also featured a large wall calendar with cryptic abbreviations, presumably reminders. Also doodles of gears, sprockets, and malformed genitalia, because artists were artists.