They take Kelenli away in the morning.

It is unexpected, at least by us. It also isn’t really about us, we realize fairly quickly. Conductor Gallat arrives first, although I see several other high-ranking conductors talking in the house above the garden. He does not look displeased as he calls Kelenli outside and speaks to her in a quiet but intent voice. We all get up, vibrating guilt though we have done nothing wrong, just spent a night lying on a hard floor and listening to the strange sound of others’ breath and occasional movement. I watch Kelenli, fearing for her, wanting to protect her, though this is inchoate; I don’t know what the danger is. She stands straight and tall, like one of them, as she speaks to Gallat. I sess her tension, like a fault line poised to slip.

They are outside of the little garden house, fifteen feet away, but I hear Gallat’s voice rise for a moment. “How much longer do you mean to keep up this foolishness? Sleeping in the shed?”

Kelenli says, calmly, “Is there a problem?”

Gallat is the highest ranked of the conductors. He is also the cruelest. We don’t think he means it. It’s just that he does not seem to understand that cruelty is possible, with us. We are the machine’s tuners; we ourselves must be attuned for the good of the project. That this process sometimes causes pain or fear or decommissioning to the briar patch is… incidental.

We have wondered if Gallat has feelings himself. He does, I see when he draws back now, expression all a-ripple with hurt, as if Kelenli’s words have struck him some sort of blow. “I’ve been good to you,” he says. His voice wavers.

“And I’m grateful.” Kelenli hasn’t shifted the inflection of her voice at all, or a muscle of her face. She looks and sounds, for the first time, like one of us. And as we so often do, she and he are having a conversation that has nothing to do with the words coming from their mouths. I check; there’s nothing in the ambient, save the fading vibrations of their voices. And yet.

Gallat stares at her. Then the hurt and anger fade from his expression, replaced by weariness. He turns away and snaps, “I need you back at the lab today. There are fluctuations in the subgrid again.”

Kelenli’s face finally moves, her brows drawing down. “I was told I had three days.”

“Geoarcanity takes precedence over your leisure plans, Kelenli.” He glances toward the little house where I and the others cluster, and catches me staring at him. I don’t look away, mostly because I’m so fascinated by his anguish that I don’t think to. He looks fleetingly embarrassed, then irritated. He says to her, with his usual air of impatience, “Biomagestry can only do distance scans outside of the compound, but they say they’re actually detecting some interesting flow clarification in the tuners’ network. Whatever you’ve been doing with them obviously isn’t a complete waste of time. I’ll take them, then, to wherever you were planning to go today. Then you can go back to the compound.”

She glances around at us. At me. My thinker.

“It should be an easy enough trip,” she says to him, while looking at me. “They need to see the local engine fragment.”

“The amethyst?” Gallat stares at her. “They live in its shadow. They see it constantly. How does that help?”

“They haven’t seen the socket. They need to fully understand its growth process – more than theoretically.” All at once she turns away from me, and from him, and begins walking toward the big house. “Just show them that, and then you can drop them off at the compound and be done with them.”

I understand precisely why Kelenli has spoken in this dismissive tone, and why she hasn’t bothered to say farewell before leaving. It’s no more than any of us do, when we must watch or sess another of our network punished; we pretend not to care. (Tetlewha. Your song is toneless, but not silent. From where do you sing?) That shortens the punishment for all, and prevents the conductors from focusing on another, in their anger. Understanding this, and feeling nothing as she walks away, are two very different things, however.

Conductor Gallat is in a terrible mood after this. He orders us to get our things so we can go. We have nothing, though some of us need to eliminate waste before we leave, and all of us need food and water. He lets the ones who need it use Kelenli’s small toilet or a pile of leaves out back (I am one of these; it is very strange to squat, but also a profoundly enriching experience), then tells us to ignore our hunger and thirst and come on, so we do. He walks us very fast, even though our legs are shorter than his and still aching from the day before. We are relieved to see the vehimal he’s summoned, when it comes, so that we can sit and be carried back toward the center of town.

The other conductors ride along with us and Gallat. They keep speaking to him and ignoring us; he answers in terse, one-word replies. They ask him mostly about Kelenli – whether she is always so intransigent, whether he believes this is an unforeseen genegineering defect, why he even bothers to allow her input on the project when she is, for all intents and purposes, just an obsolete prototype.

“Because she’s been right in every suggestion she’s made thus far,” he snaps, after the third such question. “Which is the very reason we developed the tuners, after all. The Plutonic Engine would need another seventy years of priming before even a test-firing could be attempted, without them. When a machine’s sensors are capable of telling you exactly what’s wrong and exactly how to make the whole thing work more efficiently, it’s stupid not to pay heed.”

That seems to mollify them, so they leave him alone and resume talking – though to each other, not to him. I am sitting near Conductor Gallat. I notice how the other conductors’ disdain actually increases his tension, making anger radiate off his skin like the residual heat of sunlight from a rock, long after night has fallen. There have always been odd dynamics to the conductors’ relationships; we’ve puzzled them out as best we could, while not really understanding. Now, however, thanks to Kelenli’s explanation, I remember that Gallat has undesirable ancestry. We were made this way, but he was simply born with pale skin and icewhite eyes – traits common among the Niess. He isn’t Niess; the Niess are gone. There are other races, Sylanagistine races, with pale skin. The eyes suggest, however, that somewhere in his family’s history – distant, or he would not have been permitted schooling and medical care and his prestigious current position – someone made children with a Niesperson. Or not; the trait could be a random mutation or happenstance of pigment expression. Apparently no one thinks it is, though.

This is why, though Gallat works harder and spends more hours at the compound than anyone, and is in charge, the other conductors treat him as if he is less than what he is. If he did not pass on the favor in his dealings with us, I would pity him. As it is, I am afraid of him. I always have been afraid of him. But for Kelenli, I decide to be brave.

“Why are you angry with her?” I ask. My voice is soft, and hard to hear over the humming metabolic cycle of the vehimal. Few of the other conductors notice my comment. None of them care. I have timed the asking well.

Gallat starts, then stares at me as if he has never seen me before. “What?”

“Kelenli.” I turn my eyes to meet his, although we have learned over time that the conductors do not like this. They find eye contact challenging. But they also dismiss us more easily when we do not look at them, and I don’t want to be dismissed in this moment. I want him to feel this conversation, even if his weak, primitive sessapinae cannot tell him that my jealousy and resentment have raised the temperature of the city’s water table by two degrees.

He glares at me. I gaze impassively back. I sense tension in the network. The others, who of course have noticed what the conductors ignore, are suddenly afraid for me… but I am almost distracted from their concern by the difference I suddenly perceive in us. Gallat is right: We are changing, complexifying, our ambient influence strengthening, as a result of the things Kelenli has shown us. Is this an improvement? I’m not certain yet. For now, we are confused where before, we were mostly unified. Remwha and Gaewha are angry at me for taking this risk without seeking consensus first – and this recklessness, I suppose, is my own symptom of change. Bimniwha and Salewha are, irrationally, angry at Kelenli for the strange way she is affecting me. Dushwha is done with all of us and just wants to go home. Beneath her anger, Gaewha is afraid for me but she also pities me, because I think she understands that my recklessness is a symptom of something else. I have decided that I am in love, but love is a painful hotspot roil beneath the surface of me in a place where once there was stability, and I do not like it. Once, after all, I believed I was the finest tool ever created by a great civilization. Now, I have learned that I am a mistake cobbled together by paranoid thieves who were terrified of their own mediocrity. I don’t know how to feel, except reckless.

None of them are angry at Gallat for being too dangerous to have a simple conversation with, though. There’s something very wrong with that.

Finally, Gallat says, “What makes you think I’m angry with Kelenli?” I open my mouth to point out the tension in his body, his vocal stress, the look on his face, and he makes an irritated sound. “Never mind. I know how you process information.” He sighs. “And I suppose you’re right.”

I am definitely right, but I know better than to remind him of what he doesn’t want to know. “You want her to live in your house.” I was unsure that it was Gallat’s house until the morning’s conversation. I should have guessed, though; it smelled like him. None of us is good at using senses other than sesuna.

“It’s her house,” he snaps. “She grew up there, same as me.”

Kelenli has told me this. Raised alongside Gallat, thinking she was normal, until someone finally told her why her parents did not love her. “She was part of the project.”

He nods once, tightly, his mouth twisted in bitterness. “So was I. A human child was a necessary control, and I had… useful characteristics for comparison. I thought of her as my sister until we both reached the age of fifteen. Then they told us.”

Such a long time. And yet Kelenli must have suspected that she was different. The silver glimmer of magic flows around us, through us, like water. Everyone can sess it, but we tuners, we live it. It lives in us. She cannot have ever thought herself normal.

Gallat, however, had been completely surprised. Perhaps his view of the world had been as thoroughly upended as mine has been now. Perhaps he floundered – flounders – in the same way, struggling to resolve his feelings with reality. I feel a sudden sympathy for him.

“I never mistreated her.” Gallat’s voice has gone soft, and I’m not certain he’s still speaking to me. He has folded his arms and crossed his legs, closing in on himself as he gazes steadily through one of the vehimal’s windows, seeing nothing. “Never treated her like…” Suddenly he blinks and darts a hooded glance at me. I start to nod to show that I understand, but some instinct warns me against doing this. I just look back at him. He relaxes. I don’t know why.

He doesn’t want you to hear him say “like one of you,”Remwha signals, humming with irritation at my obtuseness. And he doesn’t want you to know what it means, if he says it. He reassures himself that he is not like the people who made his own life harder. It’s a lie, but he needs it, and he needs us to support that lie. She should not have told us that we were Niess.

Wearen’t Niess, I gravitic-pulse back. Mostly I’m annoyed that he had to point this out. Gallat’s behavior is obvious, now that Remwha has explained.

To them we are.Gaewha sends this as a single microshake whose reverberations she kills, so that we sess only cold silence afterward. We stop arguing because she’s right.

Gallat continues, oblivious to our identity crisis, “I’ve given her as much freedom as I can. Everyone knows what she is, but I’ve allowed her the same privileges that any normal woman would have. Of course there are restrictions, limitations, but that’s reasonable. I can’t be seen to be lax, if…” He trails off, into his own thoughts. Muscles along his jaw flex in frustration. “She acts as if she can’t understand that. As if I’m the problem, not the world. I’m trying to help her!” And then he lets out a heavy breath of frustration.

We have heard enough, however. Later, when we process all this, I will tell the others, She wants to be a person.

She wants the impossible,Dushwha will say. Gallat thinks it better to own her himself, rather than allow Syl Anagist to do the same. But for her to be a person, she must stop being… ownable. By anyone.

Then Syl Anagist must stop being Syl Anagist, Gaewha will add sadly.

Yes. They will all be right, too, my fellow tuners… but that does not mean Kelenli’s desire to be free is wrong. Or that something is impossible just because it is very, very hard.

The vehimal stops in a part of town that, amazingly, looks familiar. I have seen this area only once and yet I recognize the pattern of the streets, and the vineflowers on one greenstrate wall. The quality of the light through the amethyst, as the sun slants toward setting, stirs a feeling of longing and relief in me that I will one day learn is called homesickness.

The other conductors leave and head back to the compound. Gallat beckons to us. He’s still angry, and wants this over with. So we follow, and fall slowly behind because our legs are shorter and the muscles burn, until finally he notices that we and our guards are ten feet behind him. He stops to let us catch up, but his jaw is tight and one hand taps a brisk pattern on his folded arms.

“Hurry up,” he says. “I want to do start-up trials tonight.”

We know better than to complain. Distraction is often useful, however. Gaewha says, “What are we hurrying to see?”

Gallat shakes his head impatiently, but answers. As Gaewha planned, he walks slower so that he can speak to us, which allows us to walk slower as well. We desperately catch our breath. “The socket where this fragment was grown. You’ve been told the basics. For the time being each fragment serves as the power plant for a node of Syl Anagist – taking in magic, catalyzing it, returning some to the city and storing the surplus. Until the Engine is activated, of course.”

Abruptly he stops, distracted by our surroundings. We have reached the restricted zone around the base of the fragment – a three-tiered park with some administrative buildings and a stop on the vehimal line that (we are told) does a weekly run to Corepoint. It’s all very utilitarian, and a little boring.

Still. Above us, filling the sky for nearly as high as the eye can see, is the amethyst fragment. Despite Gallat’s impatience, all of us stop and stare up at it in awe. We live in its colored shadow, and were made to respond to its needs and control its output. It is us; we are it. Yet rarely do we get to see it like this, directly. The windows in our cells all point away from it. (Connectivity, harmony, lines of sight and waveform efficiency; the conductors want to risk no accidental activation.) It is a magnificent thing, I think, both in its physical state and its magical superposition. It glows in the latter state, crystalline lattice nearly completely charged with the stored magic power that we will soon use to ignite Geoarcanity. When we have shunted the world’s power systems over from the limited storage-and-generation of the obelisks to the unlimited streams within the earth, and when Corepoint has gone fully online to regulate it, and when the world has finally achieved the dream of Syl Anagist’s greatest leaders and thinkers —

— well. Then I, and the others, will no longer be needed. We hear so many things about what will happen once the world has been freed from scarcity and want. People living forever. Travel to other worlds, far beyond our star. The conductors have assured us that we won’t be killed. We will be celebrated, in fact, as the pinnacle of magestry, and as living representations of what humanity can achieve. Is that not a thing to look forward to, our veneration? Should we not be proud?

But for the first time, I think of what life I might want for myself, if I could have a choice. I think of the house that Gallat lives in: huge, beautiful, cold. I think of Kelenli’s house in the garden, which is small and surrounded by small growing magics. I think of living with Kelenli. Sitting at her feet every night, speaking with her as much as I want, in every language that I know, without fear. I think of her smiling without bitterness and this thought gives me incredible pleasure. Then I feel shame, as if I have no right to imagine these things.

“Waste of time,” Gallat mutters, staring at the obelisk. I flinch, but he does not notice. “Well. Here it is. I’ve no idea why Kelenli wanted you to see it, but now you see it.”

We admire it as bidden. “Can we… go closer?” Gaewha asks. Several of us groan through the earth; our legs hurt and we are hungry. But she replies with frustration. While we’re here, we might as well get the most out of it.

As if in agreement, Gallat sighs and starts forward, walking down the sloping road toward the base of the amethyst, where it has been firmly lodged in its socket since the first growth-medium infusion. I have seen the top of the amethyst fragment, lost amid scuds of cloud and sometimes framed by the white light of the Moon, but this part of it is new to me. About its base are the transformer pylons, I know from what I have been taught, which siphon off some of the magic from the generative furnace at the amethyst’s core. This magic – a tiny fraction of the incredible amount that the Plutonic Engine is capable of producing – is redistributed via countless conduits to houses and buildings and machinery and vehimal feeding stations throughout the city-node. It is the same in every city-node of Syl Anagist, all over the world – two hundred and fifty-six fragments in total.

My attention is suddenly caught by an odd sensation – the strangest thing I have ever sessed. Something diffuse… something nearby generates a force that… I shake my head and stop walking. “What is that?” I ask, before I consider whether it is wise to speak again, with Gallat in this mood.

He stops, glowers at me, then apparently understands the confusion in my face. “Oh, I suppose you’re close enough to detect it here. That’s just sinkline feedback.”

“And what is a sinkline?” asks Remwha, now that I have broken the ice. This causes Gallat to glare at him in fractionally increased annoyance. We all tense.

“Evil Death,” Gallat sighs at last. “Fine, easier to show than to explain. Come on.”

He speeds up again, and this time none of us dares complain even though we are pushing our aching legs on low blood sugar and some dehydration. Following Gallat, we reach the bottommost tier, cross the vehimal track, and pass between two of the huge, humming pylons.

And there… we are destroyed.

Beyond the pylons, Conductor Gallat explains to us in a tone of unconcealed impatience, is the start-up and translation system for the fragment. He slips into a detailed technical explanation that we absorb but do not really hear. Our network, the nigh-constant system of connections through which we six communicate and assess each other’s health and rumble warnings or reassure with songs of comfort, has gone utterly silent and still. This is shock. This is horror.

The gist of Gallat’s explanation is this: The fragments could not have begun the generation of magic on their own, decades ago when they were first grown. Nonliving, inorganic things like crystal are inert to magic. Therefore, in order to help the fragments initiate the generative cycle, raw magic must be used as a catalyst. Every engine needs a starter. Enter the sinklines: They look like vines, thick and gnarled, twisting and curling to form a lifelike thicket around the fragment’s base. And ensnared in these vines —

We’re going to see them, Kelenli told me, when I asked her where the Niess were.

They are still alive, I know at once. Though they sprawl motionless amid the thicket of vines (lying atop the vines, twisted among them, wrapped up in them, speared by them where the vines grow through flesh), it is impossible not to sess the delicate threads of silver darting between the cells of this one’s hand, or dancing along the hairs of that one’s back. Some of them we can see breathing, though the motion is so very slow. Many wear tattered rags for clothes, dry-rotted with years; a few are naked. Their hair and nails have not grown, and their bodies have not produced waste that we can see. Nor can they feel pain, I sense instinctively; this, at least, is a kindness. That is because the sinklines take all the magic of life from them save the bare trickle needed to keep them alive. Keeping them alive keeps them generating more.

It is the briar patch. Back when we were newly decanted, still learning how to use the language that had been written into our brains during the growth phase, one of the conductors told us a story about where we would be sent if we became unable to work for some reason. That was when there were fourteen of us. We would be retired, she said, to a place where we could still serve the project indirectly. “It’s peaceful there,” the conductor said. I remember it clearly. She smiled as she said it. “You’ll see.”

The briar patch’s victims have been here for years. Decades. There are hundreds of them in view, and thousands more out of sight if the sinkline thicket extends all the way around the amethyst’s base. Millions, when multiplied by two hundred and fifty-six. We cannot see Tetlewha, or the others, but we know that they, too, are here somewhere. Still alive, and yet not.

Gallat finishes up as we stare in silence. “So after system priming, once the generative cycle is established, there’s only an occasional need to reprime.” He sighs, bored with his own voice. We stare in silence. “Sinklines store magic against any possible need. On Launch Day, each sink reservoir should have approximately thirty-seven lammotyrs stored, which is three times…”

He stops. Sighs. Pinches the bridge of his nose. “There’s no point to this. She’s playing you, fool.” It is as if he does not see what we’re seeing. As if these stored, componentized lives mean nothing to him. “Enough. It’s time we got all of you back to the compound.”

So we go home.

And we begin, at last, to plan.

***