Suri stood against the wall, leaning into it, hands hidden, the mild embossed ridge of the concrete on his palm and on his shoulder blade. “Here they come,” said Cimetierre, looking through the door.
Three men—Coster, Blevy, and Rimshannon—manhandled a very large handcart through the door. Fettered onto it was a Talosian of gleaming yellow bronze. It said nothing as they strapped the handcart upright. But you could hear its pupils clacking around, looking every direction. And you could see the the minute plates making its eyelids and brows alternately shift up and down, as if it were hateful and fearful by odd and even clock-ticks.
“Have you seen a Khalkite before?” Cimetierre asked Suri. He shook his head. The embossing was keen. He had his left leg up with the sole upon the wall. If he should stay against it, it was tensed to keep him balanced, and if he should be called closer, it was tensed to send him off the wall with what would probably amount to clumsy alacrity.
“They are pretty amazing things,” Cimetierre mused.
The thing then spoke. “I am not a ‘thing,’ villain, captor.”
“It speaks Sardic!” exclaimed Cimetierre.
“A bit spittingly,” Coster offered.
“Suri, come here.” Having jogged over, seeing the scuff marks on the bright plates of the Khalkite’s legs and torso. Saw the smaller scales over the fingers rhythmically slide over one another as it flexed and extended its fingers. Still speaking Sardic. “It understands us, but that is fine. It’s imperative it understand our purposes for it to be useful. And whether it is a ’thing,‘ such as it says, is a sophistical question. But I will grant it something: it appears to have things like sensibility, horror, pain, and dread. This may be merely an appearance. So our experiment begins.”
First they brought a large pair of bolt cutters out and set them upon its big toe. Coster and Blevy took each handle and strained themselves to meet in the middle. They slowly yielded, and then clunked together over the sound of a profound crunch and screech. The Khalkite, not allowed more than a centimeter of slack in all its bindings, stretched them an extra five millimeters. A grimace of sublime pain arranged upon its brazen face. But it screamed not.
“One cannot count on outward appearances belying the same internal state,” Cimetierre said. “They could very well have been designed to emit the seeming of pain and despair, which could be as useful or more than to be completely unfazed by bodily injury, if it is not thrown into such internal turmoil as is a man.” Turning to the Khalkite: “How many of you comprise a unit?”
The brows slowly descended in clicks and the eyes opened with the sound of shutters. The rest of its face came to rest. It looked at Cimetierre. “I tell you nothing but that you are an aggressor, a destroyer, and fit for destruction yourself.”
The bolt cutters were not big enough for the calf. A clamp was brought in and bolted slapdash to the handcart. They crushed the right leg at the knee. The plates flew off like shrapnel. Underneath, a thin foil skin was crumpled beyond recognition. Within it twisted rods and cables.
Suri watched the Khalkite’s face throughout. Its face of pain was different each time in small ways. A brow not quite as high, or the frown deeper, the mouth open a little wider. But it was hard to think, watching the little plates and scales move about, slide about over a soft whir, but that some clockwork merely made them do so, as sure as the cuckoo peeked out for different songs at different times of day at Suri’s ancestral home, the big clock in the foyer that delighted him so when younger.
At length they found the rivets and popped them off. The limbs merely came away. The actuator rods were snapped neatly with pliers. The Khalkite watched each limb come off with increasingly distressing looks. The right thigh and the left leg, then the left arm and the the right arm. They went after its tongue next, and wrenched it out. Cimetierre put it in Suri’s hands, dry except for a sheen of oil. The segments slid past each other with minimal effort.
While investigating the back they found the vein. Three nails held it closed. Prying them out, they first heard the thing moan. The vein opened and a yellowish, clear liquid ran out steady on the floor. The moaning had stopped. The neck went limp. There was no whirring, no clock-ticks anymore.
“Extraordinary,” Cimetierre said.
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