Delicate blue-white bolts of energy arced and danced around the central sphere of the Enforcer, and up and down its spindly, metallic legs, intensifying with the movement of each limb. It amazed Silk that no one else saw it, or at least not anyone he’d ever asked. It was, he thought, like being able to see the soul of the machine.
The Inspector bowed.
“What have you brought me?” Silk asked.
“This Dreg,” the Inspector replied, with obvious distaste, “who has confessed to being here in the Old City last night around two hour.”
“Out for an evening stroll, were you?” Silk asked the man.
When he didn’t supply an immediate answer, the Inspector snapped, “Answer!” A pulse of energy arced down the manacles from the Enforcer, emphasizing the Inspector’s orders.
The Dreg cried out in pain, his knees wobbling. “Y-yes, sir. A walk. I was out for a walk.”
Silk chuckled. “Out looking for a little treasure, I expect.”
“No, sir! Never!”
“Do you have papers sanctioning the seeking of artifacts, Mr . . . ?”
“Calls himself Biggs,” the Inspector supplied.
“Mr. Biggs?”
“No. I mean, I’d never look for treasure, sir, not without the emperor’s permission.”
Silk set his glass aside on a table. A puff of air from the fan wafted through his hair. “I do not suppose that while you were on your evening walk, Mr. Biggs, that you saw anything out of the ordinary?”
Biggs, it turned out, was eager to talk, no doubt hoping his captors would overlook the fact he’d been prowling around the Old City. He’d seen silhouettes up against the summit doing he didn’t-know-what, but figuring they were Silk’s own men, he kept his distance.
“Then the bell rang for two hour, sir,” Biggs continued, “and I heard the blasts and felt the ground shake a little, and those men, they scattered quick as could be.”
“Did you see their faces? Hear names or anything?”
“No, sir. It was dark, and I was too far off.”
“Beyond learning the hour of the attack,” Silk told the Inspector, “this is not useful.”
Biggs glanced nervously at the Inspector.
“He is the only witness we’ve found so far, Dr. Silk.”
“Can you at least tell us how many of the men you saw?” Silk asked Biggs.
Biggs raised his hands as if to scratch his scalp, but the manacles held them down. “Five, six, or so,” he replied.
“You are sure?”
Biggs nodded eagerly, as if encouraging his captors to believe he’d been helpful.
“Enforcer,” Silk said.
The mechanical chirped and seemed to straighten to attention. It was an oddly human response.
“Enforcer,” Silk said once more, “this man in your custody, Biggs, is guilty of unsanctioned artifact hunting and possibly grave robbing.”
Biggs’ eyes widened, and his mouth dropped open. “But—but I’m no Ghoul, sir! I’d never—I’d never dig up the dead. I’d—”
“Then just the artifact hunting. That’s stealing from the emperor, Mr. Biggs.”
The man fell to his knees. “Please, sir, mercy! I’ll pay the emperor back. I’ll give him the things.”
Silk did not listen. Instead, he said, “Enforcer, this man admits his guilt. Render justice.”
The mechanical trundled off, dragging the crying Biggs away to a polite distance, the Inspector trailing behind. Biggs babbled and begged for mercy all the way, but Silk was as indifferent as the mechanical to the pleas of a useless, statusless Dreg.
The Enforcer halted with a puff of steam from its stack. It lifted one of its spidery legs and retracted it. Silk watched in fascination as the arcing energies concentrated around the leg. Then, without warning, the Enforcer punched its leg through Biggs’s chest, penetrating his back.
It was not out of perversity that Silk watched the Dreg’s death. No, he watched to observe the life energy that surrounded Biggs’s form, in this case, the color of rusted iron or old blood. It flickered, then faded out. He saw no separation of body and spirit, no lifting of the soul to the heavens as in the old theology the emperor had outlawed. No, he simply saw life extinguished.
Some of his more philosophical friends debated what came after death. It was difficult to conceive of a life, of a consciousness full of experience and learning, not continuing on, but Silk knew the depressing truth, courtesy of his peculiar vision. He’d watched his mother slowly expire on her deathbed, as well as the results of countless executions. Just as the gods of old were a complete fiction, so was the idea of something beyond death. There was nothing. The life energy went out like a phosphorene lamp permanently switched off. A waste.
Silk did not avert his gaze from the hapless Biggs as the Enforcer yanked its blood-smeared leg from the corpse’s torso. There was nothing to suggest Biggs’s life energy had moved on.
The Inspector gathered a couple of slaves to carry the body to a nearby cart. It would be donated to the university’s College of Mending, as were all executed criminals, no matter the wishes of the family. Let the menders figure out how to prolong life, Silk thought, since it is all we have. This one life.
It made him all the more determined to become a favorite of the emperor, to enter his inner circle and be rewarded with that rare gift of an endless life. Destroying the opposition, and finding the dragonfly device, and any other treasures the royal tombs might contain, were keys to his success.