Dancing on Strings

Clockwork Boy

"But then who are all those people below the palace?" Mai said, "In the banquet hall. They're not dolls."

"No, they are. They can break from that state for periods. The meals are one of their moments of freedom."

"But is it safe? Letting them mingle like that. They can't be just content to sit down there and gossip about nothing. What about Billion? He was so angry, what if he got the idea of a rebellion in his head?"

"You think he hasn't already? But what can they do? They're ghosts. Almost everyone down there is dead. They don't exist in the waking world anymore. They can only move when Reve allows it. And most people down there are just humans. Or minor powered people of enchantment. There are odd ones down there like, yes, Billion."

"And Kazimir?"

"And Kazimir, who could cause mayhem but what can one fey and one merman do when they can't even leave the lower halls. Most of them won't have even seen Reve. I would have been their last point of contact before it was all over."

Mai looked at him for a moment. "If..." she said slowly, "If you were their last point of contact and most of them are dead... did you kill most of the people down there?"

"No," Griffin said firmly, before hesitating. "Well... not these people."

"You mean... when you were a solider, I assume?"

"Comes with the job," Griffin said, looking out over the forests, towards the mountains.

They sat in silence for a time, a warm breeze rippling through the night air around them.

"Why do you have those mechanical parts?" Mai finally asked, not looking his way.

"Again, from my time as a solider."

"Can I ask how it happened?"

He gave the world before them a disdainful smile. "I went to war when I was eighteen. Rose quickly through the rank by the age of twenty. I was captured at twenty-one. Escaped at twenty-three. At twenty-four I saved a comrade from his own damned stupidity and, in the process, was caught in enemy fire and half my head was blown away."

Mai blinked, then snapped her head around to look at him. He continued to avoid her gaze.

"I was killed instantly. Bad luck, I guess."

"So... when you talked about how your family couldn't take you back after the army..."

"It wasn't that I wouldn't be welcomed back. It's that I literally couldn't go home to them. Obviously they couldn't bring my body home since it would rot, so I was buried in a mass grave with all the rest and friends in my regiment returned my belongings to my family and I watched them bury 'me'. By the time I was out and about and doing what I do now, too much time had passed and my family had grieved and moved on. And I don't know what Reve would have done if I had approached them. He may never have allowed me outside again or he may have trapped my family in here."

"But... if you were killed instantly, how did Reve find you?"

"I had dreamt of him, only a couple of times, when I was younger. He looked different then. All I remember was lying in complete darkness before he brought he to the dream world. He knew about my talents for creating little mechanical creatures, he said the mechanics would suit me. Another one of his little amusements. Just reminds me that I'm dead and, even if that door was somehow opened and we could escape, there's no guarantee I'll walk out alive since—"

"Wait, what?" Mai interrupted. "You could possibly get out alive? But you're already dead. I thought if you were dead,. That was it?"

"It is, usually. Reve has hinted at times to me that Angelique and I could possibly walk away before we're part of the upper castle... but at the same time, I think it's just another of his little amusements."