“I appreciate your honesty. What do you want to do with me? For what purposes do you want to use me?”
It took her aback. The way he was negotiating his status as a slave. Because it dawned on her: that was his designation. What he’d done to those villagers… Had it been his choice? He’d massacred hundreds, maybe thousands of people. Everyone in this village, for sure, before the army made camp here. He was a weapon, nothing more. When he wasn’t deployed, he was kept here, in a box, away from the soldiers, because they were terrified of him.
“I want to take you from him,” she said. “From the High Harvester. So you won’t kill in his name anymore.”
“Anything else?”
She swallowed and threw a glance at Idris, hoping he might help. His expression was blank, which told Seraphina this situation was beyond him.
“Be honest with me, as you’ve been so far,” the revenant said.
She sighed. “Do you have a name?”
“Sentinel Nine. Nine, for short.”
“That’s a number. A number is not a name.”
“Do you need a name to tell me that you intend to kill me?”
She crossed her arms over her chest, realizing too late it was a defensive gesture. No going back now. She tapped her foot, frustrated that she didn’t know how to navigate this disturbing conversation.
“You can’t be killed,” she said. “I saw it with my own eyes today. Yes, I was there when you tore apart every man, woman, and child in that village. I saw the extent of your depravity. You didn’t have to do it like that. I know that you were ordered to kill, but… You didn’t have to do it like that. I saw you get shot countless times. In the face! You didn’t flinch, let alone fall. And now I can’t even see where the musket balls penetrated your skull.”
He didn’t say anything, just held her gaze, and for a second, she thought she saw something in his eyes. It was gone before she could guess what it was.
“You’re not the first of your kind that I’ve met,” she continued. “I know you’re immortal.”
“What happened to the others you’ve met?”
She pursed her lips. He waited, then nodded when he understood she wasn’t going to answer.
“Will you try, at least?”
Seraphina blinked. “Try what?”
“To kill me. Will you?”
Her eyebrows shot up and her mouth fell open. She must’ve looked a spectacle.
“You want…” Idris started, not quite able to finish the thought.
“He’s a surgeon,” Seraphina said. “The plan was…”
It was cruel of her to say it out loud. She closed her eyes and conjured the images she’d seen earlier that day. Sentinel Nine breaking down doors and splitting people in two with his bare hands, bathing himself in their blood.
“The plan was to dissect you. Open you up and learn how you were made. What gives you life. What makes you heal so fast.”
Heart hammering after having confessed to a strategy so atrocious, she opened her eyes and looked at him. This time, what she caught flashing in his golden orbs was hope.
“It’s an Obedience Lattice,” he said. “You’re right, it can’t be removed or destroyed safely. It would be a disaster, in fact, though of what proportions, I can’t say. Unless you want to kill everyone in this village and yourselves, I wouldn’t touch it.”
Seraphina couldn’t believe her ears. Nor her eyes. She stared at the dark piece of wool, trying to absorb the fact that Falk Kühner had created the pattern while he was studying at Krähenstein Academy, years before he became the High Harvester. The pattern had been rejected and forbidden by the board.
“You must be using an apex relic,” he continued. “The Obedience Lattice is stronger than it.”
That only stood to prove how much of a genius Kühner was.
“There is a way, however. To activate the obedience field, the lattice requires blood. The keybone is sharp enough to cut, and the one who gives it his blood becomes its master. To deactivate the lattice without consequences, you must kill the master. It’s how the Constructs who were held at Schloss Ewigheim escaped. I was kept there after my creation, along with the others. Then the Sentinels were moved for training, while the functioning Constructs remained. Each dungeon cell had an Obedience Lattice inside one of the walls. I expect they’re still there, since few people knew about them. Only the scientists who worked at the schloss, and they all died, I heard. Among them were the masters of the lattices. Once they burned to ashes, the fields dropped and the Constructs could leave.”
