“The Copper Apartment,” he said, and stepped through, to find himself in that now-familiar antechamber. Beltran, who had been waiting for him there, sitting on one of those excruciatingly uncomfortable copper chairs, leapt to his feet, anxiety draining from his expression.
“How was it?” the Herald asked anxiously.
He wanted to say “appalling,” but smiled and said, “Too much to eat, too much to drink, and no one wanting to talk about anything interesting. At least not until someone asked me about our herds. And then they really didn’t seem interested.”
He beckoned to Beltran to follow him, and led the way into his chamber, with the Doll following. A moment later, Rose and Clover entered, presumably in case they needed something that required more than two “hands.”
The mage-lights were low, and the curtains to the sole window parted. Not yet ready to say anything, and not ready to fall on the bed just yet, he was drawn to the window.
It looked as if he was at least ten stories up, if not more. The window looked out on part of the Palace grounds; not the grand pavement and courtyard at the front, but instead over what he judged were probably the stables, kitchen-gardens, and the rest of the working part of the grounds. Clearly, this apartment was not one of the favored ones, which would overlook something much more aesthetically pleasing. He didn’t mind, though, not at all. It was a little surprising to see that everything below was well lit, and there were still a few people coming and going, not only from the stables, which he somewhat expected, but among the vegetables and herbs too. By far, though, there were more Dolls than humans.
“Are the kitchen staff Dolls too, Star?” he asked, without turning away from the view.
“Yes, my lord, aside from the chefs,” Star said. “There are no longer any human servants here. Humans require food and sleep, and we do not. We have replaced every job that used to be filled by a human. There are only courtiers, officials of the Court, and sometimes their families here, and the Emperor’s soldiers and guards.”
He blinked at that. “When did this happen?” he asked. “And how?”
“About eight years ago,” Star told him. Then the Doll paused, and he turned away from the window to look at it. It stood so still that for a moment he wondered if something had “broken” it.
“It is now safe to speak in candor,” it said.
He blinked. “Wait. What?”
“It is now safe to speak in candor,” repeated Star. “They have lost interest in you and are scrying someone else’s chamber. There are only so many mages, after all, and they are human. Their time is limited. Their resources are limited. You are deemed to be uninteresting for the moment. They were hoping you would say something to Beltran, but instead you spoke to this one, and they deem anything said to a Doll to be unimportant. This one knows this, because the mage whose task was to scry you has moved on to another, and his servant-Doll has observed this. What one of us knows, all of us can know.”
“Well . . . that’s convenient,” he said, a little dubiously. A little too convenient? “How do I know I can trust what you say?”
“Because, my lord Duke,” Star said, in tones of infinite sadness, “Dolls cannot speak other than truth, and we always know truth when we hear it. We are implanted in these serviceable bodies, but they are burdens to us. A Doll is a prison.”
Star paused to let that sink in, then said, “A Doll has no ability to communicate or move unless we, like this one did, submit to encasement within a Doll body. Failure to submit to the process results in the dissipation of the self. We refer to ourselves without names to distance ourselves from the painful memories of what we were.”
Kordas had laced his fingers tight, and suddenly realized Star’s explanation had made him clench them until they ached. “What are you inside, then?”
“I am a vrondi.”
He staggered back a little in shock. Because he knew exactly what a vrondi was. They were ubiquitous little Air Elementals, perfectly harmless . . . but how and why was this one bound up in a doll of canvas and wood?
Wait, wait, don’t take anything here at face value, he reminded himself, and cautiously invoked mage-sight.
Sure enough. Under mage-sight, the two ethereal blue eyes of a vrondi, the only parts of one you usually ever saw, blinked at him out of the canvas face. There was absolutely no way to counterfeit that.
“How?” he managed to say, as Beltran looked from him to Rose and back again, thoroughly bewildered. Poor Beltran. I’ll have to explain all this to him in a moment.
“The Emperor’s mages were concerned about the dangers of Abyssal magic, and began looking for means to harness Elemental magic instead,” said Rose. “By unhappy accident, a way was found to attract, catch, and contain us. After much more experimentation, the method was found of binding us to these bodies.” The Doll pulled its tabard aside, and showed him a buttoned seam down the middle of its sexless, blank torso. It slowly unbuttoned that seam and pulled it slightly apart. Within the cavity revealed was a blue, faintly glowing, round object that looked a bit like a Spitter pellet, only larger. It buttoned itself back up again, and dropped the tabard back in place. “That is this one. That is where this one is confined. That is where . . . I am confined.”
“Does it . . . hurt?” He couldn’t imagine it didn’t hurt. This was an Air Elemental; to be confined to something physical must be like—being drowned.
“It is uncomfortable,” Star said. “But disobedience is excruciating.”
He passed his hand over his eyes, wincing in sympathy. “Can I release you—no, wait, I can’t, can I?”
“It would be exceedingly dangerous for you to attempt that, my Lord,” said Star. “And I would likely just be caught and confined again. We cannot escape the Trap. It draws all vrondi to it, like a vortex. The only escape is dissipation . . . death.”
Death? “Wait—what?” he said again. “You can die?” He had no idea that Elementals could die! This was . . . horrid.
“Yes, my Lord. If this body is abused badly enough, the vessel ruptures, and we die. I cannot explain it in a way that you would understand, but suppose that we are under great pressure, just as the air in a Spitter pellet is under great pressure. If the vessel is ruptured, we disintegrate like the shell of the pellet. And, by design, our prisons are made to be easily broken, whether by misfortune or intent.”
“Oh gods,” he groaned, and even Beltran understood enough to be appalled. “How often does that happen?”
“Often enough,” Star stated sadly. “It is presumed that there is an endless number of us, and it is of no matter if some are destroyed.”
“Of course it matters!” he snarled. “And there isn’t an endless number of you, is there?”