They didn’t know what they would have done if the dragon had kept pacing, because their skills didn’t include wrestling giant war machines into submission. Something they should have thought of earlier.
Arazi slowed, and came to a halt before Jebi, and lowered its head, as gracious as any aristocrat. The beauty of its design struck them all over again. What would it be like to see something this glorious come to end your life?
Stop that.
“This is for you,” Jebi said. “So we can talk. And I do mean ‘we.’” They held the mask up.
Arazi craned its head forward.
Jebi unfastened the previous mask and placed it carefully on the ground. Then they placed the new one on the dragon’s head. The mask fit perfectly—thank goodness for Tia’s skill—and clicked almost imperceptibly as it settled into place.
Jebi screwed the mask in. A soft murmuration filled Jebi’s ears, as of the far-off sea.
“Arazi?” Jebi asked, uncertain.
Through the mask’s eye holes, Jebi saw the dragon’s eyes glow sea-blue, sea-black. Arazi stared back. For a terrible moment, Jebi thought they had done all of this for nothing; that they’d have to return to their room empty-handed, and submit to Hafanden’s questions, and maybe Vei’s too.
Then the dragon spoke in their head. It had a mind-voice like softly ringing metal, with overtones of sea-crash and wind-cry. {You must have given me a voice for a reason. Ask your questions.}
Jebi’s heart sang. The grammar had worked, at least as far as giving the dragon the ability to speak. They had indeed mastered the glyphs and pigments.
Could they reply in the halls of their mind, too? They hesitated. {My name is Gyen Jebi.} Not Tesserao Tsennan, not with the questions they were about to ask. {I have heard several conflicting stories about what happened at Ppalgan-Namu, the massacre. But you were there. You know what happened. And you’re the only one I haven’t heard from.}
The dragon’s unblinking gaze held them fast. {Of course you haven’t heard the truth,} Arazi said. {There was a massacre at Ppalgan-Namu.} Its pronunciation of the Hwagugin name was flawless. {But it wasn’t my doing.}
That wasn’t news, given Issemi’s sabotage. “Tell me,” they whispered, forgetting and speaking aloud.
{The deputy minister and his soldiers took me to the village to test my capabilities,} Arazi said. {But I had no desire to kill, especially not for a war I never agreed to. What harm had the villagers ever done me?}
{Then—?}
{First Hafanden asked Issemi, who was the one who made me, why she had failed him.} Arazi’s voice was quiet, controlled; but the dragon’s eyes burned more brightly, more darkly. {He had her killed first. She, too, was not interested in murdering people, or making tools for murder; and so she had to die. Since she was no longer useful to him, he planned on using her art for the next supply of Phoenix Extravagant.}
Word choice mattered. Murder, it said. Jebi had preserved the part of Issemi’s grammar that suggested seek peaceful solutions, but they hadn’t ruled out violence entirely. Nevertheless, the dragon clearly had a memory; perhaps, once woken, it retained opinions and an intelligence of its own, despite the restrictions placed by the change in masks.
Jebi had opened their mouth to ask what had happened next, but the dragon beat them to it. {Hafanden did not want his superiors to know just how the experiment}—had they imagined its sarcasm?—{failed, or the local population, either. So he ordered all the witnesses killed.}
Jebi’s mouth went dry. {How many?}
{A few hundred,} Arazi said. {He had other automata under his control, along with the human soldiers. They could not say no; their grammars were not designed for it. But even one death would have been too many.}
{We have to get you out of here before Hafanden forces another mask on you and uses you against my people,} Jebi said softly. {But how?} They looked at the chains wrapped around the dragon’s limbs. If it could have escaped before, it would have done so by now.
Arazi shook itself with a light clattering of metal against metal. {Where would we go?}
As far away as possible, was Jebi’s first thought. And what could be farther than the moon? {I know where we can go,} they said instead. {If we can get out. Go back to your pacing—are you willing to wait, while I work on a plan?}
{Yes,} Arazi said. {But hurry.}
Jebi hesitated at the threshold of the great chamber, wondering if the new mask would be discovered, but shook their head and hurried out. No-one had noticed Issemi’s deception, after all.
When had they gone from artist-candidate to revolutionary? Jebi wasn’t sure. But they knew they couldn’t stand by and let Hafanden massacre more people.
NINE
AT THE NEXT meal, Jebi lingered after everyone else had dispersed back to their work or projects of their own. One of the servants, a thin woman with a smallpox-scarred face, crept in to clear the dishes and wipe down the tables. Jebi beckoned her closer.
The servant didn’t look them in the eye. “What do you need?” she asked in awkward, accented Razanei.
Jebi lowered their voice and spoke in Hwamal. “The guard named Zakan. Does she have any vices?”
The servant blanched. “I wouldn’t know about that.”
“I just want to slip the leash a bit,” Jebi said. They disliked confiding in the woman, even if they were both Hwagugin. They didn’t have any illusions that she would cover for them if questioned, and for that matter, Jebi didn’t want to get her in trouble. Carefully, they grasped the woman’s hand and slipped a generous sum into it. “It’s a simple enough question.”
The woman’s face went blank. Then: “I’ve heard that Zakan likes music. Sometimes she talks about going to performances in the Virgins’ District.”
“Where?”
The woman listed several bars.
“Thank you,” Jebi said.
When they signed out that evening, they requested Zakan. The guards looked at each other, then shrugged. “There’s a fee for special requests,” one of them said.
Of course there was. Jebi haggled, not because they cared but because it would have looked suspicious if they hadn’t.
“Where are we going this time?” Zakan asked.
Jebi chose one of the bars at random, the Lucky Cat. “I haven’t had much chance for entertainment,” they said, which had the benefit of being true.
Zakan brightened. “Oh, I know that place! I can show you the best items on the menu.”
{Are you planning on getting her drunk?} said a curious voice in Jebi’s head: the dragon.
Jebi nearly jumped. {Can you... hear through my ears?} they asked tentatively.
{Yes,} said Arazi. {Sorry, am I being rude?}
{No, it was... just a surprise.}
{So, are you?} the dragon asked. {Going to get her drunk, I mean.}
{If necessary, yes,} they said.
{I have never seen anyone drunk, although the guards talk about it,} Arazi said. {It’s not permitted down here, and Hafanden’s people are very strict. This will be exciting!}
‘Exciting’ wasn’t the word Jebi would have chosen, but then, maybe ordinary human drunkenness offered some entertainment to an imprisoned automaton.
Jebi was impatient to reach the Lucky Cat, but the Virgins’ District wasn’t far, only about an hour’s walk. Besides, even though their legs ached from all the stairs, they wanted to savor the outside world. Zakan seemed content to walk at their elbow, so Jebi occupied themself describing their surroundings to Arazi. Bare-limbed sycamores and maples with a few last leaves clinging to their twigs, the slush underfoot, the magpies arguing over fallen snacks in the streets. The way that Jebi’s fellow Hwagugin gave them a wide berth, since they were accompanied by a uniformed watcher.