So in that time when he was suspended between here and there, he did his best to think nothing, be nothing, and attract no attention at all.

Then he was through, and he immediately moved to the side to make way for the rest of his group, looking about to see where they’d been dropped.

Well, this is new.

Looming immediately before them was the Imperial Palace, wreathed in smoke. Well, that was the same; the Imperial City was always full of smoke. His nose wrinkled, and he felt a slight headache coming on. That was the same, too. They were in a vast courtyard with a half dozen of the Imperial Gates, all active, though none of the others seemed to have large parties going through them. The courtyard was paved—at least, he thought it was pavement, though the surface was textured and pebbly, and he had no idea what material it could have been made from. As the strings of horses came through, he found himself looking for the servants who should have been here to take the horses, but he couldn’t spot anyone in the distinctive red-and-purple tabards he remembered from when he’d been here as a boy.

Merrin noticed his confusion. “What are you looking for, Valdemar?” the nobleman asked, with a kind of smirk that suggested he was in on some sort of privileged information that no one had bothered to impart to Kordas.

“The attendants,” he replied.

“Oh, the Emperor did away with those ages ago,” Merrin replied, the smirk growing more pronounced. “Ah, look, over there—that’s what you’re waiting for.”

Kordas looked where Merrin was pointing, and felt his jaw dropping.

From an entranceway that he vaguely remembered as leading to the stables came a procession of—well, they weren’t human.

8

The . . . things . . . wore the distinct red tabards with the purple wolf’s-head of the Imperial servants. And they walked on two legs, and had two arms. But—

“Oh, I forgot, Valdemar. You haven’t been here in over a decade, have you?” Merrin said, the smirk apparent even in his voice. “We haven’t had human servants in the Imperial City for . . . well, years!”

“What exactly are those things?” Kordas asked cautiously.

“Constructs,” Merrin replied casually. “We call them ‘Dolls.’ Ever so much more efficient than humans. They don’t need rest, they don’t need food, they can’t be hurt, and if one is broken, you can just burn it and replace it.”

“Dolls” seemed an apt description for the things. They were more or less human shaped, better constructed than a scarecrow since they had jointed limbs and actually moved with a fair amount of grace, but there was no way they could ever be mistaken for anything but what they were. They seemed to be sewn out of canvas, with a suggestion of eyes, a nose, and a mouth, but nothing like a real face. Their heads were without any sort of ornamentation. As they neared, Kordas thought there was some sort of jointed skeleton inside the padded, sexless bodies.