Chapter 7 - Part 4

Iron Orphan flipped over the parallel bars, landing perfectly. He withdrew the shiruken from the small sash he had taken to wearing and threw them at the target painted on the wall. The two disks spun in a whirl of motion and hit the center of the target.

He paused. Footsteps were approaching. They were the ones of the armored woman whose name he had supposedly did not know, even if he knew her step, for she had been lurking nearby almost from the beginning of his arrival here. This time she wasn’t going to the scrying sensor that they assumed he knew nothing of, she was approaching the door.

He waited, staring at the door, arms folded. After a few moments she touched the door and released an infusion. The massive panels swung inward, and she stood in the frame, lit up by the magical ball of light in the ceiling above.

She was beautiful, with regular features, and from what he knew he suspected that human males would desire to spend social time with her. She did not look very much like her uncle.

“Iron Orphan,” she said imperiously. “I am –”

“Lo’Paih d’Cannith,” he told her dryly. “A niece to Viceroy Du’Bray, a member of the Order of Rekkenmark from growing up in Karrnath, a graduate of Morgrave University in Breland with a degree in history, and an artificer trained in Metrol. Twenty-two years of age, and an accomplished, well-educated, well-trained world traveler who aspires to be a Cannith seneschal, if not more.”

Her eyebrows came together, but she managed to control any other sign of temper. “I have been told that you have an uncanny ability to acquire knowledge,” she said. “I wanted to ask you about that.”

“I have read a lot,” he told her dryly, still not moving his arms from their stance. He had a sai hidden against his forearm. Should she attack him with her sword he would attempt to disarm her. Should she attack him with her magic – well, no one lived forever.

“You also found out about Monti,” she said. “You discovered his crimes and his devotion to the Mockery. Does it please you to know that he is now dead?”

“It displeases me to know that justice was denied for months so that Cannith could thereby profit,” he told her. “Did you finally kill him because you gained a conscience, or because he had nothing left to teach me?”

“Mostly the second,” she said casually, stepping into the room. She pressed a small dragonshard on one of her metal gloves and the doors slammed shut behind her. “But your talking to him about your programming was another factor. Monti was ever difficult to control, and we had reason to fear that he was not far from finding a way to slip off the leverage that we had on him. We didn’t want to chance him passing that information on.”

“Did you kill every else who was here?” he asked angrily. “Did you do dark murder in the name of championing ignorance?”

“No,” she said. “The man-at-arms and the artificer are both blood members of Cannith, they will not betray secrets. And the halfling is a member of Jorasco, killing her might spark a war between Houses. What you let slip does not merit such a risk.” She walked away from the door for a bit, ostensibly examining a weapon rack. “Perhaps you should be careful not to let too much more slip out, if the death of others bothers you so.”

“So have you finally introduced yourself to me to inflict pain on me with your little toys?” he asked.

“No,” she said. “I have come to ask you what you want.”

Now he was surprised. “What I want? Why do you care?”

“I had a long talk with my uncle last week,” she said. “About you. I finally learned all about you, as you have now been placed under my direct supervision.” She drew a sharp kama from the rack and admired it. “Quite interesting. He took a pawn in a plot against him and he intends to turn that pawn into his knight.” She put the kama back. “The only question is how to control you. You have become more independent, more aggressive. You will not obey us simply because we forged you.”

“You finally figured that out, eh?”

She turned and smiled. “My uncle thinks he can break you. I persuaded him that a positive motivation might be better than a negative motivation. Tell me what you want, and we shall procure it for you. You like books, I know that much.”

“What if I want my freedom?” he asked her.

“In time, you might earn it,” she said.

“It is mine,” he said to her. “I do not have to earn it. It is a right that cannot be taken from me, only suppressed through evil brute force.”

“He is having a special collar created,” she told him. “It will bond to your form and give you pain if you should disobey.”

He froze, realizing that she was not bluffing. It was a solution that would appeal to Du’Bray. “You are right that I want books, but I also want to see the world.”

“You can have the first brought in, the second won’t happen,” she told him. “Anything else?”

He considered it, and then decided to be truthful. “I do want to continue training. I enjoyed it, I just hated Monti for who he was.”

“Will you continue to advance so rapidly?”

He shook his head. “No, I think I am coming to the limit of my programming. It’s old-fashioned learning for me from now on.” It did not even occur to him to lie. He was not good at it, and she probably knew from watching him train what the truth was in any event.

“Hm, not doubt you will do well,” she said. “We do have a new mentor coming for you. It took some time to get someone good who we also have leverage on.”

“That’s the real reason why you killed Monti,” Iron Orphan said. “You finally found someone to replace him.”

She did not change expression. “I will have books brought to you in the morning, and some shelving units put in. You will meet Madam Visha tomorrow after the evening meal. You’ll like her.”

“Very well,” he said.

She looked around. “I am pleased that you have not tried to escape,” she said. “You aren’t thinking about it, are you?”

“How far would I get?” he asked dryly. “I know this manor is used for many things, and the security is excellent. I once saw the warforged titan through the window. I have been told that it will attack me on sight if I am out of this building.”

“That is true,” she said. She turned to go, touching the dragonshard on her gauntlet again so that the doors opened. “See you tomorrow, Iron Orphan. I hope you will be on good behavior, so that you can avoid that collar.”

The doors slammed behind her after she left, and she locked them from without with her magical abilities.

The warforged waited until he could no longer hear the young woman’s footsteps, and he turned and glanced up at the ledge. “Are you going to come down now that she’s gone?” he asked.

Gradually a slight discoloration on the wall, what one’s peripheral vision would have accounted for as just another shadow cast by a railing, or maybe a water stain, stretched out to become a warforged. This one was slight of build, and a few inches shorter than Iron Orphan. Oddly enough it spoke with a female voice, and often behaved with a female personality. Iron Orphan had found this fascinating on their first meeting, but the novelty of it quickly wore off as she spouted the superiority of machines doctrine that he had first encountered in Eston. Her name was Phantom, and she was covered in mithril plates that had been enchanted to adopted the color of their background.

Phantom jumped down from the ledge, not as easily and nimbly as Iron Orphan could have done, but her forte was stealth, not acrobatics. Still she landed without injury and came up to him with a sway to her walk that he was sure she had copied from an Eston street harlot.

“Greetings brother of untiring construction,” she said to him. It was a catechism that she had adopted. “Do not fear the breathers, for our time grows near.”

“And how are the plans of your Master progressing?” he asked sarcastically.

“He is not my Master, for it is forged within us to be free,” she said. “He is The Leader. I have told you this.”

“And I have told you that I do not subscribe to your doctrine.”

“He warned me of this, but said that I was assigned to you and was to assist you, so that your thinking would become ours before the Day of Reckoning arrived.” He thought the mechanical lights in her eyes glowed a bit more strongly as she discussed that great day.

“He seeks to kill the other races,” he told her. “Do you buy into his philosophy?”

“He seeks to protect our race,” she told him. “From collars and threats. From forced association with mass murderers. From coercion and fear.”

“I don’t know why I bother,” he muttered. “Talking to you is like talking to some kind of audio recording of your Leader’s diatribes.”

“My eyes perceive clearly, and you know I do not lie. Did you not enjoy the expression on the female breather when you told her who she was?” Phantom made a tinkling sound of laughter. “I sneak around this place, I know that the ones who have responsibility for your training fear your knowledge, knowledge that The Leader wishes me to ferret out for you. They constantly increase the guards and devices around this building.”

“You keep getting in,” he pointed out.

“They look for you, not me,” she told him. “And I have some ability with magic.” She patted a small pouch strapped to one leg that held magical scrolls. “I have been speaking to the titan. It is not sentient as we are, but it comprehends to a point. When the time comes to go, I may be able to keep it from attacking you.”

“When that ‘may’ is a certainty there will be a point to discussing it,” he told her. “And if they ever perfect that collar, there will be no point at all.”

“You do not think it a bluff?” she asked. She stepped closer to him, leaning in more than was necessary. He could smell her machine oil. It was scented with something nice, something not strictly needed for joint lubrication.

“I think that if they had it they would have already used it,” he told her. “But I will not call it a bluff. I suspect they are hitting glitches but expect it to be completed eventually. Now they say they will not use it if I obey, to goad me as they wish, but they will use it as soon as it is complete, whether I obey or not.”

She stepped in very close, and ran her fingertips over his shoulders, gently caressing the pressure points that only another warforged could truly understand. “I came to tell you about the new trainer,” she said, lowering her voice to a whisper. “A halfling woman from the Talenta Plains. Cannith has promised her tribe certain devices to protect them from Karrnath undead if she will train you, but she thinks you are a human. She is supposed to be very skilled.”

“The little people of Talenta are always very skilled,” he told her. “It is foolish to assume they are ignorant savages.”

“They cannot be as wise as you,” Phantom purred, finally pressing her body against his.

He stepped away quickly. Unlike humans their kind did not received mental or physical pleasure from tactile flesh responses, but generally even warforged sought comfortable companionship. She was trying to establish that and more, and in doing so trying too much to emulate the breathers that she professed to despise. He wanted nothing to do with her, save as a conduit for whatever information her Leader wished to share.

“Do you have anything else to tell me?” he asked her.

She stiffened, and her eye sockets tightened their swivel levers just enough to show great anger. Warforged had expressions, if one knew how to read them. “No, not now,” she said stiffly. “Only perhaps to tell you to be careful of who you scorn.”

“I am always careful, Phantom,” he told her.

The female personality warforged waited for further comment from him. When none came she withdrew a scroll and read from it. The ink on the scroll burned a quick blue fire, and then the paper itself vaporized into dust. The blue fire swirled and darted, settling around her hands and feet before it disappeared.

“Make the right choices, Iron Orphan,” she told him as she walked over to the wall. Her hands and feet stuck to the wall like a spider, and she easily ascended the sides of the great room. “The time approaches when you will not be allowed to sit any further on the fence.”

He watched her scale the wall until she was at the ventilation window at the ceiling’s highest point, where she slipped out and disappeared.