other similar endeavors that required something more reliable than an organic bird or a person. The birds were small, fast and—until now—had not encountered anything that could successfully stop them.
Charles heard the heavy footfalls outside his door, heard the slightest wheeze of bellows and hum of gears from where the mechoservitor waited. He put down the small mechanical and stood from his stool, stretching the muscles that threatened to knot his shoulders and neck.
He was opening the door just as the robed mechoservitor raised a metal hand to knock. “Good afternoon, Isaak.”
Isaak’s eye shutters flashed open and closed. Steam slipped out from the back of his robe, where he’d carefully cut away the fabric around his exhaust grate. “Good afternoon, Father.”
Father. Until recently, Charles had never considered himself truly a parent. Certainly, he’d joked often enough about his mechanical creations and re-creations being his children, but he’d come to the Order as a young zealot from the Emerald Coasts. At that age, with the precepts and gospels of P’Andro Whym so near his tongue and matters of the flesh so far out of mind, he couldn’t even comprehend the act that might lead to fatherhood. And throughout his tenure in the Order, he’d stayed that course.
Now, however, a machine he had built, assembled based on Rufello’s Book of Specifications, had grown unexpectedly into something capable of regarding him as its father. The notion of it staggered him, though if he were completely honest, there were also days he still doubted it despite his own experience.
“Good afternoon, Isaak,” he said, inclining his head toward the metal man. He’d told him many times that he could call him Charles or even Brother Charles if he preferred. Each time, Isaak had suggested that his preference was to call him Father.
For a moment, Isaak stood still and the awkwardness of the moment played out. Finally, his amber eyes flashed again. “May I speak with you?”
Charles motioned for him to come in. “I’m nearly finished with our little friend.”
Isaak entered and waited while Charles closed the door behind him. Then, he followed the arch-engineer back to the workbench and watched over his shoulder while he took up the magnifying glass once again. The bellows filled, and Isaak’s reedy voice resonated in the room. “Were you able to learn anything about its point of origin or the message it bears?”
Charles shook his head. “I’m . . . unauthorized for those things.” The word felt distasteful in his mouth. “But Lady Tam is correct: Its message is for you.” He looked back to Isaak.
The mechoservitor blinked, turning its head slowly to the left and right. Charles had noticed that Isaak did that when he was accessing deeper lines within his memory scrolls. “There was a matter of authorization prior to your arrival in the Churning Wastes,” Isaak said. “At the bridge where we encountered the mechoservitor that later ended his operational effectiveness.”
“This is the instance where the boy, Nebios, was authorized access but you and the Waste guide were not?”
“Yes, Father.”
Charles moved the magnifying glass, shifting so that the metal man could see him but also so that the towering figure did not block his light. “More of the mystery,” he said. “But we’ve had a triple helping of mystery. Do you want to hear your message, instead?”
Amazing, he thought, how easy it was to see the mechanical as a child of sorts. He heard a child’s hesitation now in the whine of the mouth flaps as they opened and closed. He waited until Isaak finally spoke. “I would like to ask you a question first.”
Charles put the bird down and turned to face the metal man. “Ask, Isaak.”
“What level of malfunction would be necessary for a mechoservitor to practice active deception, and can it be corrected?”
The spell again. Rudolfo had briefed him early on about it, of course, and Charles understood why. The spell trapped inside of this device could, in the wrong hands, bring down the world around them. It had razed Windwir. Two thousand years earlier, Xhum Y’Zir’s death choir of similar mechanicals had sung the spell and brought about the Age of Laughing Madness and the end of the Old World. And as much as he understood why Rudolfo had made him the third person—the fourth if they counted Isaak—to know that the spell had survived, he also understood why Rudolfo had warned him to let Isaak bring the knowledge to him in the metal man’s own time.