Merrin eyed his own baggage, loaded aboard four sturdy mules. “But you didn’t bring any pack animals . . . .”
Kordas shrugged. “A little exercise is good for the soul.”
Merrin looked appalled, as if that was no attitude for a noble to have.
The Land-Gate perched on a flat stone circle atop a rocky hill beside the road that led through the manor-village. As the Gate through which the representatives of the Empire would come and go, it was not the strictly utilitarian structure of stone pillars gently curving toward each other at the top that the Canal-Gates were. Instead it was a fanciful creation of metal swirls which currently framed only sky, and was just big enough for a horse and rider to pass through.
The Gatekeeper lived in a comfortable little building at the bottom of the hill. He was not a native of the Duchy, and took none of his needs from the Duchy. In fact, Gatekeepers were rotated out weekly—most likely to prevent them from making local friends. Not once had Kordas ever seen the same Gatekeeper here twice, or at least, not that he knew of. The Gatekeepers always wore the plain red uniform of the Imperial City Guard, which made as much sense as any other origin. They were not mages, which also made sense—that would keep them from tampering with the Gates they guarded.
Kordas dismounted from his horse and approached the Keeper, who had come out of his building and waited on the threshold for Kordas to present orders. Kordas handed him the Imperial directive; he read it without so much as a twitch of expression, handed it back, and said, “Thank you, milord Duke. Please wait here until you see the Gate open, and then you and your party may proceed through. Please do not touch the sides of the Gate itself, and be prepared for changes in altitude and temperature.”
Which was pretty much what every Gatekeeper said.
The Gatekeeper approached the Gate, the Gate sensed his presence and the air between the uprights shimmered and rippled and suddenly looked like a pool of water—if the water was held upright like a mirror.
Now the Gate was receptive.
Kordas mounted his False Gold again, and confidently approached. As the Gate sensed the magic embedded in his orders, the surface between the uprights shimmered again, and to his mingled consternation and relief, their destination appeared, framed as if it was a gigantic picture, by the ornamented metal. A gigantic version of the same sort of sugar-sculpture fantasy as the manor was based on, but much, much bigger, and hundreds of years older.
The Imperial Palace.
They were going straight through.
Kordas could not remember a single time when he—or anyone else from the Duchy—had been given a straight through pass. So far as he was aware, the only people who ever had been were the Gatekeepers and the Imperial Messengers. Or Merrin, the little sneak.
“Merrin, would you like to go first?” he asked.
Merrin smirked, and gave his palfrey the heel, scooting the horse in under the False Gold’s nose. Kordas hadn’t paid any attention to how many people Merrin had with him until this point, but between all the servants on horseback and the four mules loaded with baggage, he must have had a dozen beasts in his packtrain. Seven servants! Does he have someone to wipe his bum for him?
When they’d all gone through, Kordas heaved a sigh of relief, and turned his attention to his own people. “I’ll go through first, then send the Fleetfoot train, the Sweetfoot train, the Chargers, and Beltran, you bring up the rear.” He nudged his False Gold with his heel, and the patient horse went through the Gate as if he’d been doing so all his life.
Crossing a Gate was always disorienting, at least for him. There was a moment that seemed to drag on forever, when he was suspended in utter darkness, a darkness that seemed to be empty, and yet . . .
He sensed things out there, even if he couldn’t see them. Vast armies of things. Some he thought were humans—possibly ones passing through Gates elsewhere. Most were not. Most of these things paid him about as much heed as he’d pay a bird in the sky, or a snail on a leaf. But some . . . he got the distinct impression that, if they were aware he was there, he’d have been of some interest to them. And that these were not things he wanted to take an interest in him.
So in that time when he was suspended between here and there, he did his best to think nothing, be nothing, and attract no attention at all.
Then he was through, and he immediately moved to the side to make way for the rest of his group, looking about to see where they’d been dropped.
Well, this is new.
Looming immediately before them was the Imperial Palace, wreathed in smoke. Well, that was the same; the Imperial City was always full of smoke. His nose wrinkled, and he felt a slight headache coming on. That was the same, too. They were in a vast courtyard with a half dozen of the Imperial Gates, all active, though none of the others seemed to have large parties going through them. The courtyard was paved—at least, he thought it was pavement, though the surface was textured and pebbly, and he had no idea what material it could have been made from. As the strings of horses came through, he found himself looking for the servants who should have been here to take the horses, but he couldn’t spot anyone in the distinctive red-and-purple tabards he remembered from when he’d been here as a boy.
Merrin noticed his confusion. “What are you looking for, Valdemar?” the nobleman asked, with a kind of smirk that suggested he was in on some sort of privileged information that no one had bothered to impart to Kordas.
“The attendants,” he replied.
“Oh, the Emperor did away with those ages ago,” Merrin replied, the smirk growing more pronounced. “Ah, look, over there—that’s what you’re waiting for.”
Kordas looked where Merrin was pointing, and felt his jaw dropping.
From an entranceway that he vaguely remembered as leading to the stables came a procession of—well, they weren’t human.
8
The . . . things . . . wore the distinct red tabards with the purple wolf’s-head of the Imperial servants. And they walked on two legs, and had two arms. But—
“Oh, I forgot, Valdemar. You haven’t been here in over a decade, have you?” Merrin said, the smirk apparent even in his voice. “We haven’t had human servants in the Imperial City for . . . well, years!”
“What exactly are those things?” Kordas asked cautiously.
“Constructs,” Merrin replied casually. “We call them ‘Dolls.’ Ever so much more efficient than humans. They don’t need rest, they don’t need food, they can’t be hurt, and if one is broken, you can just burn it and replace it.”
“Dolls” seemed an apt description for the things. They were more or less human shaped, better constructed than a scarecrow since they had jointed limbs and actually moved with a fair amount of grace, but there was no way they could ever be mistaken for anything but what they were. They seemed to be sewn out of canvas, with a suggestion of eyes, a nose, and a mouth, but nothing like a real face. Their heads were without any sort of ornamentation. As they neared, Kordas thought there was some sort of jointed skeleton inside the padded, sexless bodies.