The deep corridors of the terminal swallowed Vashante whole, their ribbed walls of fused metal and calcified bone rising high above her as she moved with measured, forceful strides. The sound of her plated feet against the ancient flooring echoed in the vast emptiness, swallowed only by the ceaseless hum of the biomechanical machinery that had long since abandoned the need for oversight. Here, where the great arterial lines of the terminal wove together, she was alone—or so she thought.

  Frustration burned within her, a cold and smouldering fire. The dismissal. The betrayal of expectation. She had stood before Bee with nothing but her faith and prayed it would be enough. Yet her own past actions threatened to destroy all of that. Now, cast adrift, she prowled through the terminal’s abandoned veins, her breath shallow with restraint. She would not scream. She would not curse. Instead, she sought purpose, something to set her hands upon before the fury in her chest consumed her.

  She came upon a control station, its braced doorway warped with time, a forgotten node of the endless, living mechanism of the terminal. Without hesitation, she raised a foot, drove it into the old composite barrier, and sent the doorway shuddering inward. The impact cracked through the chamber, sending dust and old flakes of biomachinery spiraling into the dim light. The smell of decayed oils and rusted marrow filled her lungs.

  As the dust settled, Vashante heard the fabric shift and the slow, deliberate footsteps of another. Vashante turned sharply, her actuators and pneumatic hoses tensing, but the figure that emerged was no threat.

  Yonmar Free stood in the settling haze, the aged bone monk regarding her with patience honed by years in cloister. His robes, woven with threads of ossein fibre and dusted with the years of pilgrimage, draped loosely over his gaunt frame. The lines of his mask, marked with the weight of uncounted years, held no judgment. The eyes beneath it held only understanding. His hands, folded before him in a quiet, unreadable gesture, spoke of restraint, of kindness. He had followed her.

  For what purpose? To assist her? To temper the storm raging within her?

  The old monk’s voice, when it came, was quiet but steady. “There is always something left to break, Vashante. And always something left to mend.”

  She exhaled slowly, the tension in her jaw tight as she turned fully to face him. The chamber around them, its long-dead controls blinking with intermittent pulses, felt suddenly too small to contain both her wrath and his quiet knowing. He had not come to rebuke her—he never had. He had come for something else.

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  And she did not yet know if she would let him offer it.

  Vashante turned from him, stepping toward the ancient console. Her fingers, half-mechanical, moved over the controls, dust cascading from the panel as dormant circuits flickered to an uncertain life. A distant tremor echoed through the terminal, biomachinery rousing from its slumber as vast braces, skeletal and silverline in their structure, began their slow ascent.

  Yonmar Free watched her in silence for a time before speaking again. “I have seen the way you regard the Lady Bhaeryn,” he murmured. “You hold her in the highest esteem.”

  Vashante’s fingers twitched at the console, but she did not turn to face him. “She is my charge,” she said, her voice clipped. “I owe her my loyalty. That is all.”

  The bone monk exhaled, a sound more thoughtful than chastising. “She is an intelligent woman,” he said gently. “If she does not understand now, she will in time. You need not fear her judgement.”

  Vashante scoffed softly, her half-formed pressing into a thin line. “I fear nothing,” she said, her words mechanical, practised. “And I seek no absolution.”

  She lied to him. She lied to herself. Vashante was a woman with the power to do anything and damn the consequences. But she didn’t want to do anything anymore. Not since meeting her. Not since meeting Bee.

  Yonmar tilted his head, observing her carefully. “Truly?”

  The question hung between them, unanswered, as another shudder rolled through the terminal. Vashante adjusted a dial, her movements precise and controlled. She did not look at him.

  “We are on the same side, Vashante,” Yonmar continued, stepping closer. “You know this. So does she.”

  “She is a Lady, one of lineage,” Vashante said. “She must think as a leader does. I am merely an instrument to be wielded by her.”

  “And yet,” Yonmar mused, “You burn for her judgment. You wish for her to see you as more than a weapon. As more than your erstwhile Lords and Ladies saw you.”

  The console hummed, responding to Vashante’s inputs. With a great groaning of metal and tendon, the braces of the Gzolthit Terminal surged upward, vast constructs designed to catch and hold the leviathans that thundered down the City’s endless railways. The chamber vibrated with the force of it, but neither Vashante nor Yonmar moved.

  She finally turned, the gaze of the cameras embedded in her eyesockets sharp, cold. “What I wish for is irrelevant.”

  Yonmar regarded her for a long moment, then inclined his head slightly. “Then I shall not waste my breath speaking of it.”

  The terminal trembled around them, the machines coming to life, and Vashante returned to her work as if the conversation had never happened. But the words had settled within her as much as she wished to cast them aside.