Hear the Whisper of Your Betrayal

(5:1:2)

The winds he was named for fluttered at his tunic, flowing over his skin, rushing in his ears as he leapt and landed silently on the flat roof, the moons his only company.

“That damned boy and his damned little followers.” Hafest’s eyes flashed as he paced, aura back to its stormcloud cloak. “He’s a little upstart, isn’t he? Thinks he should turn over centuries of tradition and influence because he hasn’t lived long enough to understand the consequences. He’ll turn us all into slaves, paupers at the beck and call of Petrah, or worse, Arathnea! They’ve always had their eye on Firemount—those twisted spiders and their soul-sucking queen.”

The man spun, a dark glitter in his gaze. “I’m curious, Winds. You’re always so quiet. Nothing to say, no objections to make?”

His feet raced over dark stone, herbs on the rooftop gardens swaying in his wake. Calls rang out in the street below, farewells and singing from revellers at someone’s celebration. None of them heard or saw him, his silhouette melting into the shadows, flashing across the gap to another rooftop over the street.

The gaps grew tighter as he neared his destination, all but merging together into crowded stacks and narrow alleys as it pushed up against the valley wall, beneath more villas perched among the woods rising into the foothills. The rich overlooking the poor, grudgingly sharing the clear waters from their streams.

“You’ve become more free with your opinion, lately. I wonder, would you actually dare to disobey me?” The man loomed above him, his aura oppressive.

“...No, my master.”

“Good.” His voice dropped to a murmur against Winds’ ear as he bent down. “Because I want to send him a message, and you will be my messenger.”

A gust of wind tousled his hair, an almost translucent black from the light absorption he employed to stay unnoticed. It was strange to feel it this free, to draw the cool night into his mouth—laced with the scents of flowers that only bloomed in the darkness and the tang of garden herbs—and hiss it out again.

He leapt to the arm of a crane suspending the cable for a gondolier, springing impossibly high and swinging up onto the line. The air flowed around him, pulling soft fingers across his skin as the soles of his feet met with the intricately braided metal.

“It is time for you to do what you were designed for.”

Deceit. Trickery. Secrecy. He dashed along the cable, its song thrumming in his ears to the light, perfectly balanced touch of his footfalls. A dark song, chasing him with a low, mournful twang.

“You shouldn’t have to,” Brei said. She didn’t know what she was saying. I am a Divination. I am a servant. I serve my master. He was made for nothing else, designed for nothing else. Imbued with life for... nothing else.

Why?

“But... their water will be cut off. They will suffer.”

Hafest’s eyes narrowed. “Not for long. They can draw water from the main pipeline, just like they used to.”

He dropped impossibly lightly to the ground, dirt that should have dented beneath his weight barely marking his presence with the light spring of grass blades. Relentless, he pressed forward, peaceful trees and foliage blurring past. Kicking up over a log sent him hurtling lengths past it, night creatures scattering with alarmed calls as he scattered the lightest scuff of leaf litter.

Why?

Why give him life?

Surely a soulless construct could do just as good a job. Surely a constructor who could design his complex frame could make it mimic life without true sapience.

He found the river, tracing the burbling waters, narrow but deep, as they widened into a pool large enough to supply a relatively small, crowded district, the finished dam restricting its flow.

“Domini Seih requested permission for its construction because of persistent contamination issues—”

“Are you questioning your command?”

“No.”

The quiet sound of his own voice shattered the gentle calm of the rippling waters, and he breathed a long sigh to the ignorant breeze twining through his fingers. Such a thing was a human gesture, one that no soul would ever hear.

He passed the dam, dropping down to the waterhouse and the complex machinations of its systems. It wasn’t necessary to go inside. Instead, he paced further down to where the main pipe exited, burnished stone carved by Earth-movers continuing down towards the city, away from where the river bent back around. With one coiled leap, he stood upon the top.

For a long moment, he regarded it, hearing the soft click of crickets in the grasses, a nightbird fluting distantly. This was his command, this was what he was meant to do.

Blades slid from his wrists, glinting to their full extent, reflecting the moonlight of the Scattered Stones constellation, tufts of hair threatening to grow into a fringe glowing a silvery grey in the monochrome darkness. There was no need to pretend, here. No one was watching from the houses scattered further down where the city’s edge began. No one would see.

If only sapience didn’t come with a conscience. With regret.

He stabbed the blade through the stone, pinpoint Earth scalelets embedded within enabling him to slice through it like flesh, burying deep until he pierced the inner metal casing with a gritting click. Pressurised water hissed through the gap, hissed through each of them as he repeated the action in a methodical line until the stone began to crack, itself.

Stepping back, he could feel the rumble beneath his feet, the groan and crack of stressed metal peeling and tough stone breaking. Droplets of liquid dripped from the tapered points exiting his arms like blood as he watched it split open, a gushing stream pouring over the ground to escape back into the river, churning dirt into foaming mud.

He sheathed the blades and hopped off the pipe, slinking into the shadows again like the furtive, shamed creature he was.