Her father ascended the dais. He looked proud and powerful standing alone up there. Like the figurehead of a ship, facing off against an ocean of Automae.
“Organization, System, Family,” said Hesod, his voice booming and echoing around the room. Instantly, the low rumble of a thousand conversations gave way to a hushed silence. The few guests Crier could see all turned to look at Hesod in unison, a ripple of simultaneous movement. “The beauty and symmetry of such values should not merely be wasted on human life,” he continued, quoting from his own manifesto, “but studied and applied for the benefit of all Automakind. Organization, System, Family. Tonight we honor those values. Tonight we honor two lives that will soon be inextricably bound, but we also honor that which a binding symbolizes: The perpetuation of our culture. The unification of our people. The continued success of a civilization built on tradition. A civilization that because of tradition has grown more powerful and magnificent than every civilization that rose and fell before us.”
Carved into the back of the dais, right in front of Crier’s face, was the body of a naked human woman. Her limbs were long and broken, intertwined with the bodies around her; her hair was a cloud of gold around her golden head. Like all the other bodies on the dais, her face was turned upward as if she, too, was watching Hesod speak. But unlike Crier and Kinok, unlike all the Automa guests, her face was twisted into an expression of pure anguish. A wide and wrenching mouth, eyes that were huge and grotesque and almost frog-like. One of her hands was visible, the fingers stiff and pointed like the claws of a vulture. Other bodies were grabbing on to her—hands on her hips, her thighs, her ankles—as if trying desperately to climb up and over her, using her body as a ladder. A means of escape.
“Unity—of politics, of thought, of family—is written into our Design,” Hesod was saying. “Tonight, Lady Crier of Rabu and Scyre Kinok of the Western Mountains will pledge themselves to each other and, above all else, to the core tenets of our glorious society. My daughter. Honorable Scyre. The time has come to ascend.”
For a second, Crier did not move. Then Kinok brushed past her on his way to climb the dais, and she shook the ice off her limbs and followed him.
The steps built into the side of the dais were shaped like cupped human hands. Crier climbed up slowly, placing her feet carefully into their golden palms.
After that, time slid into itself. The ceremony came to Crier in fragments: her father’s voice booming through the grand hall as he recited old, half-human words; Kinok’s eyes fixed on the side of Crier’s face; the crowd, motionless as a sea of statues, staring up at Crier with a thousand empty eyes. Was that her own heart in her ears? She could hear the pounding, the tiny clicks of her workings. Was it going too fast?
Was she breathing?
She kept forgetting to breathe.
Four breaths per minute.
She didn’t surface until it was time, it was time. Kinok raised the ceremonial knife. Its blade caught the light of all four hundred candles, and Crier thought hazily of stars, or fireflies.
Then Kinok said, “We shall be bound, body to body, blood to blood,” and she rested her forearm on the edge of the dais, and he slid the blade almost gently across her skin from elbow to wrist.
Blood welled up immediately, a deep violet. Hesod’s grip tightened on Crier’s shoulders—reassurance? pride?—as they watched the blood spill down her arm, down her fingers. It dripped from her fingertips and spattered the golden floor of the dais, ran in tiny rivulets down the outer wall, down the faces and bodies of the naked golden humans, not a single drop landing on Crier’s dress. Kinok set the knife aside. With long, steady fingers, he untied the armband that Crier had worn for the past few months. He set it beside the knife, a coil of red, a snake.
As with all things, the wound came first and then the pain. Crier’s arm ached terribly, even though she knew logically that the long, neat slice in her skin (the cut of a surgeon, she thought distantly) had already begun to heal. It took everything in her to stand still and keep her expression blank and let herself bleed. She was given only a few moments to