This Golden Flame Read online

  A gentle touch comes to rest on my shoulder, so surprising that I jerk away. Karis jumps back, clutching her hand to her chest. I stare at her, an imprint of warmth still in my skin. Besides my father, no one has ever tried to comfort me.

  No one has ever gotten close enough to try.

  I look down at my clothes, hanging in tatters from my body, destroyed not by violence but from age. Perhaps that’s why the style of Karis’s clothes looks different, because the ones I’m used to are centuries old. I don’t want to believe it, but the logical part left inside of me tells me it’s possible. That’s enough to let all of the doubt come flooding in. Two hundred years gone as I slept in this cave. If what she’s saying is true, my father is nothing but bones and dust now. He’s not here anymore.

  He’s not anywhere anymore.

  “You know his name, at least, even now,” I finally manage. “That means he died a hero, right?”

  Karis fiddles with her belt, not looking at me. “I wouldn’t say hero is a word most people attach to Master Theodis.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “He did some pretty terrible things.”

  I stiffen. “What things?”

  “He sabotaged the Scriptorium. Destroyed the power of the automatons.”

  The Scriptorium is my enemy. I may not remember much, but I remember that. “You.” I point at her. “You’re one of them.”

  She glares at me. “Not willingly.”

  “And yet you repeat their words and believe their lies,” I growl, advancing a step. For the first time, a flash of temper flares in my chest. Perhaps I’m glad about that, because anger has to be better than the sadness smearing me away.

  Fear flashes through her eyes, bright and sudden. I stop. What am I doing? This isn’t me.

  I stare down at the ground. “Sorry.”

  Silence stretches between us and I’m too much of a coward to meet her eyes.

  “Look,” she finally says, “I have no lost love for the Scriptorium. And if you’re really Master Theodis’s...child, and if you were really there...maybe there’s more to the story. All I’m telling you is what history has taught me.”

  History. His life can’t already be history. “Then history is full of lies.” I can’t listen to this anymore. It hurts too much. I turn to leave.

  Karis grabs my arm. “Wait, where do you think you’re going?”

  I shake her off, trembling. “I can’t stand here as the Scriptorium spreads lies about my father.” I need to fix these things they’re saying about him, because they’re wrong. My father is not—was not—what they claim.

  “Alix,” she says, “you can’t go out there. I don’t know what Tallis was like when you first came here, but it’s full of Scriptmasters and scholars now. People who would do anything to control you.”

  Control me. The sickening finality of those words stops me. Karis might have given me my tome back, but a Scriptmaster wouldn’t. My father said they wouldn’t. He made me promise I would never risk going anywhere near another Scriptmaster.

  Karis looks at her bracelet again. This close, I can see that I was right. The metal is covered by runes. It seems like such a strange thing to create. What would something like that even be used for?

  “Listen,” Karis says. “I need to go before somebody finds me missing. But I promise I’ll come back. Just stay here until then. I can help you. You can’t go out dressed like that. I’ll bring you some clothes. And if you need to find a way off this island, I know one.”

  Everything she told me swirls around my head in a jumble. Karis is Scriptorium. Yet, she gave me back my tome. She said she was sorry about what happened. She tried to comfort me. If what she’s saying is true, my father is gone. I don’t know how to navigate the world without him.

  I finger my tome. “I’ll stay. For now.”

  * * *

  Karis leaves, taking the lamp with her. The only light that remains comes from my burning eyes and the glow of my seal. It’s barely enough to cast a dim glow on the cave wall before me.

  I press my fingers against the broken runes on my arm. Even though I can barely see them, I can still feel them, destroyed by an act of violence that I can’t remember any more than I can remember anything else that happened. I probe my memories again, trying to push past the pounding of my head. I remember waking up for the first time, my father’s kind face hovering over me. The time I spent with him in his villa, hidden away because we both knew what the other Scriptmasters would do if they found out about me. The quiet years of learning and simply being with him.

  I can tell there are gaps, though, as if the memories are wall hangings that have had holes burned into them. The closer I try to get to whatever happened right before I reached this cave, the more I feel this empty blankness yawning in my mind. I remember a night... I went with my father somewhere... I remember a blaze like the sun, but in darkness. My palms pressed against a scalding heat. I remember running.

  I ran and my father died.

  The darkness pushes against me, bringing back the panic. I told Karis I would stay here, but if I have to spend another moment in the dark, trapped with my half memories, I’ll drown in them. I lurch forward into the dark tunnel, banging against walls I only see as I hit them. I don’t know Karis. She could have lied to me. How am I supposed to figure out what might make someone lie? She could be heading back here right now with Scriptorium soldiers. I need to see for myself.

  I step out of the cave and for the first time in two hundred years, moonlight and fresh air touch my skin. It feels alive. Above me the night sky is dark, with only a few stars shining out between the thick masses of clouds. The dark waves pounding at the cliffs below me stretch on to an empty horizon, though I know there must still be other islands out there, shrouded by the night. Even if everything else has changed, that couldn’t. The sight of the waves brings back another memory: trudging down into the murky depths between islands, looking for a hiding spot that wasn’t meant to last centuries.

  I turn away, before the memories have a chance to engulf me again and launch myself straight up, slamming my hands into the rock face as I land. The movement helps. It lets me focus on the climb, on reaching for the next hold rather than on anything else. I have no lungs to demand more air and no muscles to demand a rest. For once I’m glad because then I can keep climbing and I don’t have to give myself time to think.

  At the lip of the cliff face I pause, listening for any noise from up above. I remember this island: Tallis. The southernmost point of Eratia, which held only a small guard post.

  I haul myself over the edge, hoping to see an island that’s as empty as the night I came. I land in a crouch on the grass and I see it: an automaton. Standing not even ten feet away. A flash of memory comes back to me, of that exact automaton, darkened by the rain. Of backing away from it. Of falling.

  Only this automaton isn’t the same. The one I glimpse in my memory was whole, its metal burnished clear. This one is missing half of its left arm. Its metal is tarnished and cracked, undeniably old.

  No, not old. Ancient.

  I stare at this thing, standing over me in the dark. Back before, I was never allowed to be this close to one. I could only see them from afar, when one would lumber past my father’s villa, its bronze shining blindingly beneath the sun. I hated seeing them then.

  Standing here now, I hate it, too. Its brokenness doesn’t hide how large and destructive it looks, as if it’s a nightmare come to life. It doesn’t hide how much, in the end, it looks like me.

  I’m taking a staggering step away when I realize something is missing. I’ve always been able to feel automatons, as if they radiated this buzzing energy. I’ve never understood why I’m the way I am, and they’re the way they are, but even they still had this fire inside of them. Only this one doesn’t. It’s as if it truly is dead.

  I hesitate, the
n reach out to touch it.

  Voices drift toward me. I duck behind one of the automaton’s legs, halfway buried in the ground. A man and a woman walk toward the automaton, their bronze lamp illuminating the dirt path they follow.

  Scriptorium soldiers.

  A rush of anger swells inside of me, so quickly I don’t have a hope of tamping it down. My father is dead because of Scriptorium soldiers. They killed him and then they lied. I want to destroy them. I want to make them pay for every bit of pain engulfing me right now.

  I slam myself back against the automaton’s leg. As quickly as the rage comes on, it disappears. I sink to the ground, pressing my hands to my eyes. No. I’m not some mindless weapon like the other automatons. This isn’t me. This isn’t who my father raised me to be.

  I am not a monster.

  The voices disappear and still I sit there, shaking at what I almost did. Suddenly I wish Karis was here, even though I don’t really know her. I’m scared of being on my own if those are the thoughts I’m going to have.

  I’m not sure how long I sit there. Long enough that by the time I crack open my eyes again the sky has begun to pale. I get up, still shaky, and climb back down to my cave, to wait for a girl I’m not even sure I can trust, who might be my only chance.

  4

  * * *

  KARIS

  The archival room is quiet, with only the scratch of quills against parchment. There are no windows and the sole light comes from the bronze lamps perched on the edges of the desks, the smoke snaking around the space and making my eyes water. I transfer the details from the rune rubbings I made that day to the ledger laid out in front of me. Height and depth and condition. All to be pored over by the masters here, in the hopes that one day they’ll be able to reanimate an automaton. Never knowing I just did, and he was nothing like what I expected.

  Benches scrape against the stone floor and I look up to find the rest of my group packing their things. I shove my own tools into my bag and leave, wanting to be ahead of the crowd because I never know when my group mates are going to choose to see me and get nasty.

  By the time the middle of the night comes, I haven’t slept at all. I keep telling myself I won’t go. That whatever could have happened with the automaton—with Alix—began and ended last night. But then the ninth watch rings out and I find myself pulling on my pack. Slipping down the halls and out the window, trying to ignore what I’m actually doing. Willingly going back to an automaton. An automaton that can somehow think, even though that should be impossible.

  That was made by Master Theodis.

  I don’t know much about the man, but it’s said he singlehandedly discovered over a dozen runes and created a dozen more. That he ascended to master status when he was nothing more than a young man. And that in the end, none of it was ever enough. In his greed he triggered the Great Lapse and ended the golden age of the Scriptorium’s power. Eural and Anderra invaded, bringing with them decades of war. By the time we managed to climb our way back to any sort of peace, so much had been destroyed and lost, and no one remembered how to bring the automatons back to life. It’s taken us two hundred years and we still haven’t fully recovered.

  What if this automaton is the same as the man?

  That’s when I see Alix. I thought he’d stay in his cave, that an automaton wouldn’t care whether he was down there in the dark. Instead he sits on the edge of the bluff, in the moon-laced shadow cast by the much larger automaton above him. His legs dangle over the cliff edge as he stares out at the ocean, his hands resting on the satchel in his lap. There’s a slight breeze, stirring the grasses around him, that smells like the sea.

  And he doesn’t look like a weapon or a monster. He just looks...lonely. I don’t understand that. How an automaton can look lonely. How an automaton can look anything.

  I almost turn to go. Going would be the smart thing to do. But standing here, I can feel my future back in the Scriptorium winding out in front of me, always the same, always like this, and it makes me feel like I can’t breathe.

  “Alix?” I say quietly.

  He glances over his shoulder. His skin might be metal, but that doesn’t hide the exhaustion.

  I make myself step closer. “You shouldn’t be up here. Someone could see you.”

  He looks away, back across the water, the waves glinting beneath the moon. “I couldn’t stay in that cave. It was too...” He cuts off, dropping his head. “I didn’t like it.”

  His voice is strained. Actually strained. And I have to admit, it sounds real.

  I reach into my pack and pull out my spare chiton and himation. “Here, I brought you something. With any luck, if anyone sees you wearing this, they’ll just think you’re an acolyte. I have a himation for you, too.”

  There’s the smallest hesitation before Alix gets up and comes over. He takes the chiton and drapes it in front of his body, frowning.

  I can’t get over how expressive his face is, the bronze discs so smooth and crafted so delicately they shape just like skin would. It’s unnerving. Unnerving and yet... Being on Tallis taught me to always disguise what I felt, to never show it. But Alix’s face doesn’t hide anything, each emotion bright and raw like an open flame. I feel a jealous pang that whatever he might be, he never had to learn to hide like I did.

  “I’m sorry,” I say. “I’m sure you don’t want to wear Scriptorium clothes but they’re all I have and—”

  “No, it’s fine. I’m just...not quite sure how to wear this. It’s different from what I’m used to.”

  “Oh, right.” I step up to him and help him wrap the cloth around his body, pinning it at the hips and shoulders and looping the belt around his waist before arranging the himation around his head and shoulders. Once he’s dressed, he pulls the rags he has on underneath away.

  I step back to take a look. His skin is still slightly the wrong color, and there’s a strange pale sheen to his runes, not quite the glow of an activated rune, but not the dark of an unactivated rune either. Still, from far off, it should be mostly convincing.

  Hopefully.

  Alix smooths his hands over the material. “Thank you.”

  “Of course.” My fingers curl around the medallion that’s also now in my pack. And for a moment I want to keep it, in case it’s valuable. In case I need it.

  As soon as I have the thought, I hate myself for it. Alix is grieving, and I found this medallion in his cave. When my brother was taken away, when my life was taken away, I didn’t get to keep anything. I won’t do that to someone else, no matter what he is. “I also brought this.”

  As soon as he sees it, pain lights his eyes. He reaches out, and for all that I know how strong he must be, how strong all automatons are, his touch is gentle as he takes the medallion.

  “What is it?” I ask quietly.

  “My father gave it to me. It’s the sigil of his house.”

  The sigil of Master Theodis’s house. The greatest villain of the ages. I don’t know how to reconcile the idea of a man like that with this lonely, gentle automaton in front of me now.

  So I just won’t think about that right now.

  “Here,” I say briskly. I pull out the piece of twine I’d packed and carefully thread it through the hole in the medallion, before looping the entire thing around his neck. His skin is surprisingly warm, tingling beneath my palms, as if it’s somehow heated from the inside. Is this what an animated automaton feels like? The warmth is actually kind of...nice. “There we go.”

  Alix tugs on the medallion, then looks up, studying my face. We’re close, as close as we’ve gotten so far, our faces only a few hand’s breadths apart. I still can’t get over the way his eyes look, the flames undulating in them. There’s intelligence in that gaze. I can’t deny it.

  “Why did you give me my tome back?” he asks, so soft that even at this close distance I barely hear the words.


  I wonder if every selfish thought I’ve had about using him flashes over my face at that question. I rub my fingers over my bracelet.

  “I know what it’s like for your life to belong to someone else,” I finally say. If I had controlled Alix, forced his will to bend to mine, I would have become just like the Scriptorium. They’ve taken so much from me already. I refuse to let them take who I am.

  Alix looks down at the bracelet. “What is that?”

  I hesitate, then hold my wrist out to him. “It’s my acolyte bracelet. I meant what I said before. I’m not loyal to the Scriptorium. I was sent here when I was a child and that’s when they put this thing on me. It lets them track me and stops me from leaving this island.” I drop my hand. “I’m trapped here because of it.”

  Alix studies the runes on it. “Would you like me to take it off?”

  My head snaps up. “What?”

  “You woke me. It’s the least I can do in return.”

  I stare at him, baffled, and then thrust the bracelet into his face. “You can remove this? This bracelet? You can take it off?”

  My voice is getting higher, louder, but I don’t care.

  Alix takes a timid step back. “Er, I should be able to undo the runes on it.”

  Alix can undo runes. These things that have trapped me on this island. That have kept me from Matthias. Could it really be that simple? “What about lock runes? Could you open one of them?”

  “Umm...yes?”

  In all the time I’ve been on this island, I’ve never heard of automatons being able to do anything like that, to work the Script, to undo its runes. But Alix isn’t like those other automatons. He’s something more.

  “I need your help,” I say.

  Alix takes another tiny step back, looking intimidated. I don’t understand how someone who can probably punch straight through rock could have that sort of expression. He glances over his shoulder, as if debating whether he should leave, and the thought of that happening is so painful I step forward and take his arm, as if I can stop him.