“No, my Lord.” Star fell silent.
“Give me a moment,” he said, so filled with rage that it was very hard to think.
“My lord?” Beltran said quietly. “What’s a vrondi?”
Thinking about how to explain Elemental magic to his Herald allowed him time to let his temper cool. “You know there are four—well, call them ‘worlds,’ right? We mages call them ‘planes of existence.’ Because as complicated as they are, the most plain way to make any sense of it all or chart it is to think of them as flat. They aren’t flat, at all, but that’s the easiest way to make sense of what we can perceive.”
“I have read that, my Lord, yes. One of them is the world in which we live, and it interacts with the other three. But because the other three are different, we can’t see the creatures that live there without specific effort, either on our part or theirs.” Beltran scratched his head. “I can’t say as I understand it, but my ma and pa taught me to believe in Heaven and Hell and I can’t see those either, nor the ones that live there, so there’s no reason why I shouldn’t believe you when you tell me these things exist too.”
“Right,” he said, relieved that he wasn’t going to have to undertake a really basic explanation. “The world we live in is the Material Plane. The others are the Abyssal Plane, where demons come from, the Elemental plane, and the Aetherial Plane, where the gods and their servants are.”
Beltran opened his mouth, probably about to say something about “but demons come from Hell and the gods are in Heaven,” when he realized that those were just different names for the same thing—or maybe Heaven and Hell were like districts on these other planes—and shut his mouth again. “Yes, my Lord. Go on.”
“There are lots of different kinds of Elementals, not just Air, Earth, Fire, and Water. Vrondi are Air Elementals. Mostly—mostly we don’t have much to do with each other. But vrondi have a very peculiar affinity for the truth, so some mages have learned how to get their help in being able to tell truth from falsehood. Very inexperienced or weak mages can call one or more and ask them to reveal the truth. They do that by surrounding a person and glowing blue. If the person lies, they stop glowing. If the person is telling the truth, they keep glowing.”
“The truth is nourishment for us, my Lord,” said Star. “That is why.”
Huh. I had no idea.
“And a powerful mage can give them a sort of extra boost of energy, so they can actually compel the person the mage is questioning to tell the truth.” He looked to Star for confirmation.
The Doll nodded. “It pleases us to do that. The truth is important, and the more truth in the world, the more vrondi there are.”
He passed his hand over his eyes again and said bitterly, “Then this place must be like swimming in a sewer for you. Gods.”
Star answered, “The sewers serve a noble purpose. And, while the amount of deceit here is profound, there is also truth in abundance. Torturers are very sincere in their desire to harm.”
“But why vrondi?” he asked, almost desperately. “Surely there were some other Elementals they could have put in the Dolls—”
“We are imprisoned by an application of the same process by which the pellets are made, my Lord,” said Star. “As to why it was vrondi they chose, and not another Elemental, this one cannot say. Perhaps the others are too powerful to confine. Perhaps the process would not work on them. This one is not a mage, and no mages have ever confided the reason to a vrondi.”
“I can surmise why,” Beltran offered. “A vrondi cannot lie, which would make you ideal servants. None of you could be assassins, spies, traitors, or agents.”
Star nodded. “We do not kill. We do not even harm if we can help it. We cannot lie, but we can choose how to phrase things. We can choose to perform only the minimum commanded of us, but not to refuse entirely. And there is a trick that our jailors are unaware of: even if I, as an individual, am aware of something from another of my kind, I can still say ‘I do not know,’ because knowledge gained from another is technically hearsay. It is by that trick we can live by the truth yet not betray. My truth is that I make my decisions based upon knowledge from others, but that knowledge may be sourced from another’s misunderstanding. Thus, compelled by truth, that knowledge does not qualify as a complete truth. Just a possibility or probability.”
Beltran said slowly, “That wouldn’t show up as a lie, because it is an interpretation, but—yes. That’s clever. So you wound up dismissed as useful spies for intrigues.”
“Just so. And virtually everyone who comes to this Court attempts it. When they are frustrated by it, we tell them, ‘The core of our control states that we must obey, above all others, who wears the Imperial Ring, the Imperial Carcanet, and the Wolf Crown.’”
“That makes sense. An order in perpetuity. Even if an Emperor dies, you are kept loyal to who follows. Tell some power- or deceit-centered courtier that core rule, and they’ll back away fast, for fear of what might be reported by you as suspicious.”
“It is as you say.”
“And the mages don’t know that you can share your experiences with each other?” asked Kordas, beginning to pace. His heartbeat thumped in his ears. “Why would you—all of you, I assume—entrust us with this knowledge?”
Clover spoke for the first time. “We are what you call ‘bored’ for much of the time, as Dolls. When someone new arrives, we take their measure, discuss it between as many of us as may be interested, and we rate you. No offense is intended by that.”
“No, it makes sense,” Kordas replied. “You live or die by truth, and so you want to know who you can trust.” A new understanding of an old phrase occurred to him. “You want to know who is true.”
All three Dolls replied in unison, “It is as you say.”
Kordas pushed further. “Can you read people’s pasts? Forgive their mistakes, their guilt?”
Star replied, “We do not phrase it as forgiveness, but we can tell whether someone is flawed in any untrustworthy ways. And how much. Sir.” Star bent to help Kordas slip off his new boots. “If you mean, if I may, Sir, that you were judged by us and found worthy of trust, that is true. Despite the guilt, anger, and terror you feel, and the incongruent feelings you have about your maneuvering in the Great Game, your reasons are understood and also found to be true. Feelings of fact and worth can be true even if they contradict each other. Humans, especially, are able to function with scores of truths in conflict inside of their minds. Including the truth that there are things you may never understand and that you must accept that as a truth to survive by.”
Kordas was struck silent. Star removed the new boots and set them aside while Kordas rocked back against the wall, trying to process that. I’ve never been—read like that before. They must have done that with everyone in the Court, and the—they must be sick from what they’ve seen, and then I come along, and I’ve made a lot of mistakes and—things I haven’t ever forgiven myself for—and the Elementals just—they just see what I’m made of, they judge—