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the hall, their metal feet reverberating on the hollow floor of the sepulcher. They carried bottled wine and honeyed water, trays with fruit and bread and sweets, stacks of dishes and utensils. They moved in unison, their movements measured and devoid of any indication of free will. She had seen such servant automatons before, the mindless drudges that allowed for the leisure of the city’s inhabitants. And every time she saw them she felt deep unease, a pervading sense of wrong—how could they make them like that? she thought. If they were to have a mind, they would’ve been miserable with their lives of servitude—Mattie remembered the dark sense of injustice when she was little but a maid—but at the same time they would have the choice of misery. Making them without minds removed a potential conflict, and Mattie thought of the slaughterhouses in the outskirts, the dank places that smelled of rust and iron and rot. She ventured there to buy offal that was used in some of her ointments, but sometimes she watched the animals. It was like that, she thought, remembering the panic in sheep’s eyes; it was as if they managed to create a sheep that didn’t mind being slaughtered after it was led into a dark steel barrel of a room where steaming blood stood knee-deep.
    Loharri touched her hand. “What are you thinking about?” He traced the direction of her gaze and spoke softly, solicitously.
    Mattie looked away. “Thank you for not making me like them.” And added, before he had a chance to respond, “You should eat something. You look pale.”
    “I always look pale,” he said but didn’t smile as he normally would. “It really bothers you, doesn’t it?”
    She nodded. “They never had a chance. You removed the possibility of them even questioning if it was wrong.”
    He frowned a bit. “We’ll talk about it later, if you don’t mind.”
    She didn’t; the mechanics continued to mingle, most of them carrying plates now, and to speak in their sedate voices. Mattie followed Loharri, listening for any mention of the gargoyles, but everyone seemed rather preoccupied with solving the transportation problem. Mattie listened just enough to conclude that the alleged problem was not a problem at all, but rather the way things had always been—the mechanics never tired of improving upon what was not broken. They felt that produce was slow to arrive from the farms, and that during the harvest the roads could barely sustain the crawling traffic of produce carts and the six-legged lizards that dragged them at a leisurely pace. It interfered with the deliveries from the mines, and during harvest the production of the factories often dropped. The mechanics, of course, thought that it called for automation of the lizards, the carts, or both. Mattie wondered if they would ever think of automation of the peasants.
    “We would also need a bigger road,” Bergen suggested.
    “Or merely a better one,” Loharri said.
    Mattie grew bored of the conversation centering on roads and whether it was worthwhile designing a road that would move and carry stationary produce to the city, and wandered through the crowd, whirring and clicking, listening. She stopped by a small cluster of mechanics who spoke in low voices, often glancing over their hunched shoulders with a palpable air of secrecy. Mattie stopped a few steps away, far enough not to arouse suspicion but close enough to catch their whispers with her exceptional hearing.
    “I know that they are up to something,” said the rotund man that she recognized from earlier, and glanced around furtively. “Mark my words—exiles never go away peacefully; they always want to get back in. Always.”
    “Suppose you’re right,” said a young man, whose pimples and straight back testified that he was fresh out of the Lyceum. “What can we do about it?”
    “Build fortifications,” the rotund man said.
    The rest of the group snickered.
    “Isn’t it a bit premature?” said one of