Chapter 1 - Part 7

Pienna considered the warforged before here. He was quick and intelligent, more intelligent than many people that she knew, and he seemed to be perceptive as well. His responses and body language were socially awkward however, much like a magewright she knew that never liked to leave his workbench.

Body Language? Can a machine have body language? “I need a name to differentiate myself from another,” she answered the warforged.

“Then why do I not have one?” he asked her.

“Well, you have a number,” she said, gesturing to his shoulder. The organic parts around the plating seemed redder there, like a rash that arose in response to a bad tattoo. “Does that not differentiate you sufficiently?”

“Sufficient for the ones who burned the number into me, uncaring of my pain,” he told her with a bitter tone in his voice. “Not sufficient for me. You give names to your pets, do you not? You even give names to your ships, or so I have heard. But we are to take numbers and nod our heads in slavery.”

“You are thought to be machines,” she told him. The passion in his voice had shaken her. Can it be? Can this truly be a living thing?

“Despite all evidence,” the warforged remarked dryly – dryly! “They say that they made us, but they do not give us names.”

“They did make you.”

“Did they? I have picked up on one thing, Pienna. They do not know how their machines work. They can adjust things a bit, tweak things a bit, increase our plating and even program us with some knowledge and abilities, but the main process is one that they do not know.”

“They may be keeping it a secret,” she said.

“I hear things very clearly, Pienna. I snuck into the library here quite often before my seizure and imprisonment here. I can read between the lines.”

“You do not trust their conclusions.”

“I think that they conclude what they wish to conclude,” the warforged said. “Very few people seem to be comfortable with the truth. Truth is law, and has its own power. It troubles the mind of those who do not want change. House Cannith is making a huge profit on us warforged.”

“What if you are hearing what you want to hear?” she challenged him. “What if you want evidence that you are alive, and not just a defect or an anomaly. What if your conclusions are also ignoring this truth-on-its-own-power that you speak of?”

“Does that not merely prove that I am alive?” he asked her. His tone was amused.

Pienna was surprised. She was not trained in didactic like some barristers or temple adepts, but she could hold her own in a logical discourse. She had defended her beliefs in tavern arguments on more than one occasion. But this warforged had caught her in a neat circle. If it was alive, it would be doing what it was doing now. If it was not alive, its dispassionate analysis would be more likely to be correct – and thus it was alive.

“You have thought a lot about this,” she said to him.

He shrugged and gestured around him. “I seem to have a lot of free time now.”

She thought for a moment, then changed the subject. “You stated that you caused that young man’s death, but all the other warforged say that you did not touch him, and that in fact you tried to rescue him from one of the malfunctioning units.”

“They were not malfunctioning units. They were individuals who enjoyed their own rage and power.”

“I am not here to banter over semantics,” she told him. But inwardly she was disturbed. Individuals who enjoy their own rage and power. Those were the exact words of Oalian in describing the demons from the Waste. She had heard them in a private conference with the Greatpine druid well before this construct came out of his forge. “Whatever we designate them and whatever their motivations, they did the deed, you did not, all who bore witness say that you tried to stop it, and yet you told the investigators that you were responsible. Why?”

“Ask them, they locked me away here, in the dark.”

“I’m asking you.”

He paused for a moment, and then answered. “I was testing myself. I was resisting my programming, enjoying my freedom. Each time I was prompted to answer according to me programming, I fought the programming and won. Each time it got easier. I would be surprised if there is a hairsbreadth of restraint on me from what they tried to put in my head. I so enjoyed this interior contest, and I so enjoyed flippant answers, that I was heedless in how my interactions would affect the others. I inspired rebellion. Many were not satisfied with the interior challenges that I was enjoying, they wanted to see physical proof of a human’s defeat.”

She waited, watching him, thinking of his words. “You feel guilt for someone else’s actions?”

“Shouldn’t you say something’s actions?” he chided gently. “Yes, yes I did and I do. I did not think ahead. I could not stop what I started. I feel guilt. Moreover, I feel shame and sadness. Someone loved that young man, someone is grieving for him. And this higher-truth-power that I seek, it cannot be pleased with how things turned out.”

Interior struggle. Higher truth. Flippant about contests. He sounded exactly like a pair of young monks that she had chatted with at a shrine dedicated to Dol Darran. “Do you regret them putting you here now?”

“Perhaps,” he said.

“Can you elaborate?”

“There is much that I do not understand yet. I would rather not attempt a reply until I can be sure that I am being truthful.”

That smelled to her of an evasion. Not a lie, but an omission of something important. She waited, considering. Then it clicked. “You have been in contact with someone other than House Cannith, and you do not know who to believe.”

He seemed startled. “You are…wise.”

“Very,” she said. “And experienced. The Dragonmarked Houses are not the only groups of plotters and schemers in Khorvaire, but they certainly seemed to have invented the process. One of the dozens of other major powers in the war has contacted you. How they know of you I do not know. I do not care to know. I will not ask you, and I will not reveal it.”

He considered this. “I believe you,” he said. “But I do not understand it. You are tied to Cannith in some way, else you would not be here.”

“I have a shared history with them, but I am not tied to them. I am tied to a great forest hundreds of miles from here.”

“Can you tell me about this forest?” he asked her.

“Why?” she responded.

He looked at her in a guarded fashion. “You wish me to speak freely.”

“And you wish me to speak freely,” she told him. “We could barter like merchants, but if you are a living, sentient creature, I do not want to treat your desires like wares in the market. I will be plain with you. Because I am not of the house, but I have some loyalty to one of the great ones in the house, I have been asked to investigate this matter, with expectations that I will have an unclouded view. I do not know what to believe about you, or your kind. You seem to want to jump from subject to subject, you are actually more thirsty for knowledge than a gnome, but I have limited time here, and I have to focus on who you are and how you think. I cannot simply afford to speak with no purpose.” She took a deep breath after her speech, wondering how he would take her words.

He thought it over, but only for a moment. “Very well, I wish to help you, since you have been plain with me. You have treated me as a potential person, and I wish to reciprocate. May I ask questions, and then you get to ask questions?”

“That seems fair,” she said. “You may go first.”

“What is a gnome?”

She laughed and said, “You have not seen one?”

“I have seen only a little of the Cannith area. I think I might have seen an elf at a distance, but so far I have only directly seen humans. I have seen pictures of dwarves in a book, and read about the short halflings who ride dinosaurs. But I know nothing of these gnomes.”

“Gnomes are of short stature, like the halflings,” she explained to him. “They have an affinity for magic and music, and oftimes speak to woodland creatures. There is a place called Zilargo that is full of them. They also posses the Dragonmark of Sivis, which enables long-distance communication. Like elves they can see with only a little light, but they do not have the darkvision of dwarves, orcs, or constructs.”

“I do not have darkvision,” he told her.

“Yes, Robil mentioned that.”

“None of the warforged do. That is why they hate and fear being in this dark place.”

She did not know how to respond to that. “Ah, alright. Now why were you interested in knowing what gnomes were? Is it merely because your reading has been quick and on the sly, and thereby lacking?”

“That is it partially, but I also seek to name myself,” he told her. “A name is very important to me, because I do not have one, but I have a right to one. I had thought that if I was like a gnome, perhaps that word could be part of my name.”

“Do you feel that if you have a name, then you are a person?” She was tired of standing, so she sat cross-legged on the floor.

“I am a sentient being regardless,” he told her. He squatted a bit to be level with her. “I need to know who I am is all.”

“I did not choose my name,” she told him. “My parents gave me my name.”

“I do not have parents,” he told her.

“Wouldn’t House Cannith be your parent?” she asked. Part of her had been thinking about that, perhaps trying to justify what would otherwise be mass slavery.

“A parent is a parent because some higher power blesses them with a child that they raise,” he told her. “The raising of, caring for, and guiding of the child is what makes a parent. Not the training, shipping, and selling.” His tone seemed bitter. “I was brought into this world by some higher truth, but I was not crafted like a wagon. Well, my body might have been crafted, but my consciousness is what it is, free of Cannith. I have proved that in my own mind dozens of times. Their programming fades like a wisp of fog within me, save for those parts that I choose to retain. I am no one’s child, but I am no one’s property.” There was silence for a while.

“Born an orphan,” she said suddenly.

“What?”

“It –it’s a line from a story that I heard from a bard, a gnome bard actually. The story is about a shifter who was born an orphan. Her father died after she was conceived, and she was born after her mother died, pulled out of the womb.”

“A shifter?”

“A race of beings descended from lycanthropes, half-animals. They have suffered much persecution, as emphasized by the story.”

“An orphan is a child without parents?”

“Yes. Well, technically it is anyone without parents, child or no.”

“Then I am an orphan.”

She thought about that. “You are not supposed to have parents, however.”

“Should that make a difference?”

“I do not know.”

“Than I say that I am an orphan. I am something.” There was relief in his voice. “The laws of orphans apply to the warforged.”

“Will your name be Orphan?” she asked.

He flexed his three metallic fingers on each hand. “Not just any orphan. I am an orphan that came from a machine of iron. An Iron Orphan. The Iron Orphan.” He paused, thinking about it. “Yes. That feels right to me. Having no parent to name me, I shall name myself. I am Iron Orphan.” A small exhalation followed. “I appear to have less iron on me than others of my kind, but the name is good nonetheless.”

“That’s – interesting,” she said. She was thinking about his eagerness and his relief. The same emotions that any child had when it finally came home after being lost in the forest.

“Iron Orphan,” the warforged repeated.

“You are alive,” she said suddenly. The words just jumped out of her mouth.

“I believe that that is what I have been trying to tell you,” he said bemusedly.

Pienna thought about it, then stood. “This has been more eventful a conversation than I had predicted. I have to go think for a while. Will you talk to me again later?”

He stood as well. “I am not going anywhere, but – may I ask you a favor?”

“Yes?”

“Can you heal this?” he said, gesturing to the burn scar on his shoulder. “It still hurts.”

“I – would have to touch you,” she told him. Do I want to get within his reach?

He walked forward and stood against the bars, waiting.

Hesitantly she walked forward. His arms remained at his sides. She came even closer. He merely looked at her.

Trying not to show her fear, she chanted the words and stepped forward, touching his chest, feeling a strange warmth in what should be cool stone and corded fiber. The energies flowed through him, more sluggishly than they would have through a human or a dwarf, but they did flow through this warforged who took the name Iron Orphan. Just as they had flowed through the warforged that she had healed in the Eldeen Reaches. Slowly the redness faded, and the scar tissue sank.

“Ah,” he said. “Thank you.”

What kind of creature can be healed by another but does not heal itself? She wondered. These warforged were a puzzle. “Thank you for talking to me,” she told him. “Thank you Iron Orphan.” She turned to go, then stopped and cast another spell, touching a stone in the wall by his cell. The stone glowed under the influence of the light spell, beaming like a torch. “Now you do not have to stay in the dark.”

“Thank you,” he said gratefully. He gestured down the hall. “I may have asked too much, but –”

“He will stop his raging if he has some light?” she asked, intuitively picking up on what he was saying.

“Yes,” he said with wonderment. “You are insightful.”

“I try. Good-bye, Iron Orphan, I look forward to talking to you again.”

“Good-bye, Pienna,” he said.