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  With an audible groan, she maneuvered her skeletal body to kneel in a corner of the room. There, in the bottom cupboard, was a drawer full of items she had collected over the years. Robots, guided by her instructions as she watched through a monitor, had salvaged them for her from around the base at various times in her life. It really was a pathetic collection: a blue plastic elephant, not much bigger than her thumb; a picture book telling the story of “The Princess and the Pea”; a fraying red silk purse containing two marbles, which she used to pretend were magic; a glass bead necklace; half a deck of playing cards; a pair of men’s slippers, still too big for her; a mostly empty tube of glowstring; an exercise book with her drawings in it, along with an incomplete set of colored crayons, worn down to little stubs; a doll’s head, with red crayon marks on its cheeks from her childlike efforts to make it look more healthy; and a model spaceship.

  How could she resist the attraction of Edda? In the castle library was more or less the complete collection of human literature; in its wardrobes, the most fabulous dresses. Its viewing screens had access to a vast database of music, programs, films, documentaries, plays, and concerts. There, she wanted for nothing; here, everything. Yet it was here she needed to stay, building up the physical strength she needed to explore the settlement in person and not just through the cameras of a robot.

  “Princess, you have returned to us.” The voice was that of Ambassador. Although a little tinny from the poor quality of the speakers in the room, it was still loud enough to startle her. Penelope said nothing in reply, but picked through the contents of her drawer, examining each item carefully before putting it on the floor beside her.

  “Princess, are you dysfunctional? Do you need a medical assessment?”

  “No.”

  “In that case . . .” He paused. Imagining Ambassador’s unease as he carefully formulated what he was going to say next almost brought a smile to Penelope’s face. “In that case, can you tell us why your avatar is not in the castle?”

  “No.”

  “We received a report that you approached Gate One about eight hours ago, then left after you had been denied access.”

  Neither of them spoke for several minutes. Penelope turned the pages of the storybook, slightly shocked to find that the clothes worn by the princess in the final illustrations were rather similar to those worn by her avatar. Was she really that impressionable?

  “You left a note on your door that was false. It seems that you were trying to deceive us as to your activities. Why was that? What were you trying to achieve by traveling through Gate One unaccompanied?”

  “I was trying to go to Saga and seek out humans before you destroy that world and everyone in it.”

  Tired now, Penelope wanted to go back to the bed and rest again, but in keeping with her new resolution, she first put all her belongings back in the drawer and began an exercise routine of bends and stretches.

  “Whether we can destroy Saga or not is a much-discussed question between Lord Scanthax and General. But we always look to make contact with humans on your behalf. You know that.”

  “No.” She grunted with the effort of holding her trembling arms outstretched. “No, I don’t know that. I think you have met humans in other realms but not told me.”

  “Why would we do such a thing?” Ambassador sounded genuinely aggrieved at the accusation.

  “To keep me busy scripting. If I met other humans, I might develop new aspirations for myself, like finding out if they can send a spaceship to this settlement and bring me to their community. You wouldn’t want that, would you?”

  “Not given the current crisis. But with the threat from Saga successfully contained, we would welcome an end to the drain of energy required to maintain your life-support.”

  It was impossible to carry on her routine when her body was convulsing in bitter shakes of laughter, so Penelope moved to rest on the bed. Just for a moment, she told herself.

  “Not for the sake of my happiness, then?”

  “We would like you to be happy.”

  “So you say. But as we once discussed, you have a very limited and inhuman notion of happiness.”

  “Princess, where is your avatar?”

  “About a mile north of Gate One, beside the river.”

  “Executioner is asking after the ring of invisibility. Will you return it?”

  “I suppose so, seeing as it was useless to me.”

  “I see. You hoped to travel invisibly to Saga?”

  “Yes. But it doesn’t function at the gates.”

  “Oh. That is excellent news.”

  “For an ambassador, you are surprisingly prone to gloating instead of finding a way to win my sympathy.”

  “I beg your pardon, Princess. I was not gloating—merely expressing pleasure that the danger of a small group of assassins using such rings to attack us has lessened.”

  Penelope lay out on the bed again, staring up at the undecorated metal above her.

  “Give me control of the life-support systems here, please, and we can part company. You can save your energy solely for running Edda while I try to make something of a life here.” It was a grim scenario, but at least she would be free.

  “Lord Scanthax has already agreed to, Princess—after you have scripted us some of those energy weapons.” His emphasis was on the world “after.”

  Up until now, in her dealings with Lord Scanthax, Penelope had always found him rigorous in adhering to his promises, pedantic even. But when it came to his treaties with various other lords and ladies, Lord Scanthax had no scruples. He tore up agreements the moment they no longer suited him. So could she trust him? The difficulty was that, even if she could, making a match for the weapons from Saga was hard. There could be months of experimentation before she solved the main problem of containing the energy and directing it. Spending months in the wizard’s tower was not appealing. Not when she had just tasted a wonderfully sweet draught of freedom. Moreover, there was no way she wanted to provide Lord Scanthax with weapons that powerful. No. Penelope had resolved to escape Lord Scanthax’s control and find a way to contact other humans, either through explorations in the material world or by avoiding the scrutiny of Lord Scanthax in Edda. There was no point in trying to script guns like those from Saga, but pretending to do so would be the first step in her campaign to challenge Lord Scanthax.

  “Very well. I shall return to Edda and bring Princess back to the castle.”

  “Thank you, Penelope.”

  She lay on the bed, restored the tubes to her body, and, with a shudder, reached for the headset. It was troubling that so soon after contemplating leaving Edda for good, she was going back in; that, even worse, she actually looked forward to being back in that colorful and vibrant world, though she was only swapping one prison for another.

  Chapter 17

  SECRETS BY NIGHT

  Once more in her magician’s laboratory, Penelope stood beside a thin lead-lined window, looking out to where distant clouds drifted across an orange evening sky with the promise of freedom. Below her a section of the road was filled with a variety of unit types, riding or driving to and from the castle. Watching them was like looking down on a nest of ants.

  “Busy, busy, Ambassador.”

  “I beg your pardon, Princess?”

  “The castle is busier than ever.”

  “Oh, indeed. General and Lord Scanthax have decided to attack Saga as soon as we have manufactured a reserve of a million military units—an arbitrary figure, true, but one considered sufficient to deal with any potential ripostes.”

  With a slight shake of her head, Penelope came back to her massive worktable, running her fingers along its deepest scars. “And what will you do, Ambassador, when Saga has been conquered and I have left Edda to concentrate on my human body?”

  Whenever she could, Penelope gave Ambassador the impression that she believed unquestioningly that Lord Scanthax would honor their agreement and allow her to run the systems that kept her
body alive. The reality, though, was that she no longer trusted him in the slightest.

  “I . . .” Uncharacteristically, Ambassador was at a loss for words. “I suppose I will be downgraded in my level of autonomy at a redistribution but kept in a functioning state in case Lord Scanthax needs to communicate with you or other entities.”

  “Humans?”

  “It is always possible they might return.”

  “Hope for us all,” Penelope sighed.

  Ambassador did not reply; his head was bowed as he smoothed his silk waistcoat free of undetectable wrinkles. It was not fair to tease him with the fact that he was far more subject to the will of Lord Scanthax than Penelope, but she was tired of his constant presence. Ever since her return to Edda, even while her avatar lay in her four-poster bed, she had been aware of Ambassador’s careful scrutiny. When she fell asleep, he was there, waiting patiently in the darkened room beyond the drapes, and when she awoke, it was as though he had not moved the whole night. Perhaps he hadn’t.

  If Lord Scanthax thought that her tolerance of such a close guard combined with her submissive and meek behavior meant that Penelope had given up on plans to escape him, he was mistaken. For while on the surface she was as obedient as any of his manifestations, every day her heart cried rebellion. Not that this mutinous state of mind was evident from her routine: morning after morning, she walked up the winding stone staircase to the dark tower’s workroom, lit the candles and lanterns, and settled down to her scripting. The items that were the focus of her attention were shaped as closely as she could manage to the Saga weapons that Lord Scanthax desired so very greatly. The guns on the table looked like exact replicas of those he had captured: but the similarity went no deeper than appearance. For what she hoped would seem like a serious attempt to model energy weapons was in fact a means of pursuing her own project. Pressing the fire buttons on these devices produced no bolt of energy and it never would. Instead, it triggered another effect that Penelope was investigating with an enthusiasm that grew in proportion to her success.

  For her, the boundaries of objects in Edda were not as solid as they appeared. She could easily stretch or contract the bench she was sitting on, for example. She could transmute its qualities. Did it shine or absorb light? One sweep of her hand across the appropriate menu and the criteria was set. Was it dense or light? Solid or fluid? Conductive or resistive? Heat retentive or reflective? As a result of years of practice, Penelope could script wood, glass, metal, and cloth of all types, and she could do so swiftly. More recently she had been mastering plastics.

  Under the—hopefully ignorant—eyes of Ambassador, her latest work was in the fusion of diverse materials at their point of contact; or, to put it simply, making objects stick together. All sorts of items were now welded fast to the tabletop as a result of her experiments. It was much harder to undo the fusion than to create it, so some of the items had not been freed. There was a large skull that would probably shatter before it would shift an inch. A candlestick, too, was held fast by bonds stronger than the brass with which it was made. Penelope hoped that Ambassador or another servant never had reason to pick up anything from the desk. The nearby piece of blank parchment, for example, looked as though it would lift away on a breeze, but in fact it would take the strength of an ox to lift the paper and even then the enormous workbench would come with it. It was a skill that Lord Scanthax did not know about and had little interest in. Architect, Blacksmith, Mason, and Carpenter had dealt with all the building projects to date without any need for Penelope’s assistance.

  The growing effectiveness of her new technique was most encouraging. But for what she had in mind, her current method for fixing two items together had to become much swifter and probably would have to be done at a considerable distance. Her answer to the problem of how much time it took to fasten two materials together was to make the process automatic by turning the gun into a fusion device. Pulling the trigger set scripts running that stitched together whatever you were aiming at. In principle, the device worked well, but her first attempt to use it had led to the nose of the gun becoming stuck to the worktable. It had taken Penelope nearly a day to unglue them, a very weary day in which she had to disguise the nature of her problem from Ambassador. The device was more effective now, in that the scripts only operated on materials other than the gun itself. But still, she had a lot of work ahead of her before it was the sophisticated tool she needed.

  Meanwhile, she had other preparations to make.

  “I’m tired. I think I’ll rest early tonight.”

  “Very good, Princess.”

  Placing the gun she had been holding onto the worktable, Penelope stood up and walked over to an old coat stand on which she had hung her cape. While she wrapped it around her, Ambassador opened the door to the stone staircase and held it wide.

  “Would you like a servant to bring you a book?”

  “No, I’m still reading the last one.”

  “Conversation with a Murderer?”

  Penelope turned to look up at him. “Yes.”

  “Does it entertain you?” His expression was impassive.

  “Yes.”

  “Good.”

  For a moment Penelope felt the need to offer an explanation for why that title had caught her interest and how the book was not at all what she expected. But she thought better of speaking and turned back to the stairwell, continuing her descent. It was best not to begin a conversation about murder. Despite the difficulties of an electronic intelligence understanding what was happening in the mind of a human, it would not be wise to give Ambassador any insight into the current turmoil of her thoughts and emotions.

  Once in bed, she read for a few minutes by the strong light of a lantern of her own design: while its beam from the front was powerful and bright, a more subdued light issued from the sides and back through a screen in which there were some twenty holes. The lantern was itself housed within a blue-tinted glass stand, so that, outside of the main beam, her bedroom was patterned in blue and shadow. It was as though her chamber were underwater. And in his own shadowy grotto by the door, Ambassador stood as patiently as a statue.

  “Good night, Ambassador.” Penelope reached across to the lantern, turned down the wick until the flame was extinguished and then undid the cords that held the curtains of her bed open. The velvet drapes fell into place, enclosing her in a dark space between bed and canopy.

  As quietly as she could, Penelope placed her fingers against the headboard of the bed and, scripting a hole in the wood, accessed a chamber within, from which she drew a long, knotted silk rope. It was a ladder, and tonight it would be long enough for use. In fact, after less than an hour of lying on her back teasing the silk out, twisting it, and tying it, she was ready.

  Penelope lay on her bed, the rope ladder on her chest. The room was quiet and still, although beyond the windows the restless growl of motors could be heard, fading or growing louder depending on whether the vehicles were departing or arriving at the castle. Much closer were the occasional fluttering sounds and cooing of the doves that nested somewhere above her window. It was going to be very hard to disguise her movements from Ambassador, but she had to try, and procrastinating was not going to make it any easier.

  With a sigh, as if her dreams had been disturbed, Penelope rolled over, rustling the covers to hide the noise of her feet as she slipped them out from under the sheets and onto the floor on the opposite side of the bed from Ambassador. Gently, very gently, she eased herself entirely free of the covers, so that she was standing beside the bed, just inside the drape. Had Ambassador been on this side of the bed, he would have seen a suspicious bulge in its curtains. Taking a moment to calm herself, Penelope squatted down and felt the floor. It parted beneath her scripting fingers without a sound and soon she had shaped a hole wide enough for her to fit through comfortably. Now her new skills proved useful, as she merged the top ends of the silk ladder to the wood of the bedroom floor. It would take her weight and much mo
re without coming away. Quietly, slowly, she lowered the thin ladder down into the dark pool below. It was a slender creation but strong: it would serve. Again with the utmost care, she took most of her weight on her arms and lowered herself into the hole, legs swinging without purchase until they found the crosspieces of the silk ladder. Now she could climb down properly and did so with growing delight at the success of her plan, until a creak from the floor of the bedroom above her made her pause and wince with anxiety. For a while she remained in midair, twisting slowly, listening to the silence above. Nothing. He had not moved. Then she continued until her foot touched the floor below. She was down!

  Her goal lay in the direction of the administrative rooms, and as there were no major gatherings scheduled this evening, that wing of the castle was quiet and in darkness. Penelope made her way along moonlit corridors, past doors that would have beckoned to her to come in and search through their collections of paintings, silverware, arms and armor, clothing, jewelry, and books had she any means of quickly detecting if any of the captured items were magical. But they could wait. Tonight she had a clear purpose: to search the Feast Hall and ensure that she knew where all its exits and entrances were.

  For most of her journey through the silent passages of the castle, Penelope was dizzy with excitement and delight in her temporary freedom. She had escaped the surveillance of Ambassador! But as she approached the Feast Hall her giddiness faded, to be replaced by anxiety. Two of the chandeliers in the Great Hall had been lit, and a pale light shone on the breastplates of the empty suits of armor along the walls. This was far from the blaze of light that was created for assemblies, but it did mean one of the rooms farther down was in use. Perhaps Lord Scanthax was holding a discussion with some of his high-level manifestations? In any case, the way had been lit for someone, and she would have to proceed on tiptoe, always keeping note of the nearest hiding place she could duck into should anyone appear. It was very hard in such a large chamber not to make a sound while walking, even when barefoot. Fortunately, years of practice had attuned Penelope perfectly to the movements of her avatar and she reached the connecting corridor to the Feast Hall with barely an audible footfall.