“I was distracted.”
“So let’s go back to your State,” she said. “I could probably stomach the singing trees and the elves long enough to get laid.”
“I’m not leaving,” I said, still running down the steps. “He’ll tear the city apart to find me.”
“Why? What on earth did you do to him?”
I looked back at her. “I’m not sure.”
“What?”
“Come on. I’ll explain what I know as we walk down the steps. Remember how I’d visited that Border State? Well, I went into the village to meet him. . . .”
6
I went into the village to meet him, and a steel man walked from one of the huts.
I’d created golems from the bones of the dead before, animating them with power from the Aurora. Metal, however, had proven useless as a material for me. So I was very interested as this being strode out into the sunlight. The natives leveled spears at it nervously. Chief Let-mere had warned me that the first time this creature had come to the valley, it had killed dozens of people from another village before retreating.
It had no eyes or mouth, just a flat burnished face of bronze, almost like a mask. The rest of it was human shaped, but made of pure silvery steel.
It turned an eyeless gaze upon me. “Ah,” it said. The voice was a metallic buzz, distinctly inhuman. “You are the one I am to fight for this place¸ then?”
“Who are you?” I asked, motioning for Shale to stand down. The bodyguard had drawn his weapon and stepped forward. “You are a being of metal?”
“I am Liveborn like you,” Melhi said, looking me up and down. “This is merely one of the forms I use. You are from a Fantasy State? Do they really expect this to be a challenge? My robotic legions would barely require a few hours to annihilate the—”
I turned and started walking away.
I can’t say for certain what made me do it, but more and more, I think it was the sheer convenience of it all. A perfect location for a war, where my State wouldn’t be in danger? A place with ideal tactical positions spelled out for me? Resources to help whoever managed to seize the State first, but three—instead of two—Liveborn involved, to encourage alliances?
The fakeness of it all was like a slap to my face. There we were—two absolute lords of entire worlds—and we’d been maneuvered to stand facing one another so we could mouth off? Like warriors boasting of past accomplishments to impress a tavern wench?
In that brief moment, my excitement for sparring another of my kind vanished, though it would return as Melhi later made attempts to invade my State. We’d go on to battle in other Border States, and I must admit I found those contests interesting.
But that day, I finally saw how things really were. This was an arena, and we were a pair of dogs thrown in to see which would blood the other first. I wanted nothing to do with it.
So I walked away.
“What is this?” Chief Let-mere asked me as I passed.
“You’ll have to make an alliance with the metal being, chief,” I said, waving my hand. “I’m not interested.”
“But—”
“Afraid, little emperor?” the metal being called after me.
“Yes,” I said, turning back, though it wasn’t him I was afraid of. It was the frailty of my ego, perhaps. I could pretend, I had to pretend, so long as I was in my own State. Traveling to another, particularly one as contrived as this . . . no, that I could not do. Not yet.
“It’s yours,” I said. “Unless the third Liveborn has already been alerted. You can fight them. Dance for the Wode. Be their little puppet. Not me.”
“I’m no puppet!” the robotic shell shouted. “Hear me, fantasy man? I am no puppet!”
7
“I’m pretty sure,” I said, puffing as I descended to the next landing, “that he was offended I wouldn’t fight him. I let him have the Border State, and he just pillaged it—stole their resources, murdered most of the people there. I had to reopen my side and send aid to recover the remaining natives.
“About ten years later, he attacked another Border State near me, and that time my conscience wouldn’t let me ignore him. We’ve been sparring off and on ever since. Twenty years now, thirty since our first meeting. Lately he’s even started to invade my State, though his robots never work properly there.”
“Huh,” Sophie said. We were nearly to the bottom of the stairs. “You realize that fighting him here is madness.”
I said nothing.
“His robots will work in this State,” she said, voice echoing in the stairwell. “Maltese has wristwatch phones and things that the real world didn’t have during the equivalent era. Those science fiction seeds will be something your friend can expand upon, fool the program into letting his machines function. I’d bet anything that that machine will be dangerous, truly dangerous. The Wode’s fail-safes won’t apply to it.”
I nodded, reaching the third floor. Only a little ways to go.
“So tell me why we’re still planning to fight?” Sophie demanded from just behind. “Let’s get out of here.”
“Look,” I said, spinning on her. “I’m doing this because I have to know, all right? If what we’ve been talking about is true, and if everything before now has been done with a safety net set up . . . then I don’t know, can’t know, who I am. Facing another Liveborn here is a way that I can.”
She paused in the stairwell, water pooling on the step at her feet. “You’re serious, aren’t you?”
“I sure as hell am. Wait here. I’ll lead him someplace less populated.”
“Wait here?” she asked, following me as I turned back down the steps. “Wait here? I’m not one of your soft-headed fantasy maidens with the chain mail undies, Mr. Emperor. I’ve ruled a world too, I’ll have you know, and I didn’t need absolute dictatorial power to do it. I—”
“Fine. Can you fight?”
“Not well.”
“Then what are you going to do?”
“Hack.”
That would be useful. “What can you do?”
“I can make guns work here. Obviously.”
“We need something more,” I said. “Can you make my magic function?”
“That’s a big-time hack, kiddo,” she said. “This is a very non-magical State. Like I said, even the robot is far more natural than magic would be.”
“Yes, but can you do it?”
“I can try, I suppose. Let’s get to where the robot first entered the State.”
“Why does that matter?”
“It shouldn’t,” she said, rounding a banister behind me, our shoes snapping on the uncovered stone. “Technically, this is all code, and there’s no such thing as proximity. But the nature of the system is such that if we’re close to the entry point, we’re ‘close’ to where your friend broke through the State’s defenses. The fabric will be weak there, and odds are that he didn’t cover his tracks very well. Sloppy coding will make it easier for me to piggyback a few other hacks.”
“Okay.”
“I might as well be speaking to a caveman, eh?”
“Fantastical does not mean primitive.”
“Uh-huh. And have you ever actually seen a computer?”
I could imagine them. Glowing light, energy—like lightning—flashing as it gave power to the machine.
“I’ll keep this simple,” she said. “If I can get your magic to work, it will have to happen where the robot broke in. Then you can summon your talking horse or whatever and fly over to blast that overcompensatory machine with your magical rainbows.”
We finally reached the ground floor, and I pushed out onto the rain-slicked street. Sophie followed. I started jogging toward the robot, but she dashed to the side, heading to one of the self-driving vehicles. There were a lot of them parked and unoccupied there.