"Gray!" I stagger through the entrance of my tent, deposit my burden on the bedroll, and scramble for the bag that contains my few possessions. I nearly tear it in my haste to get my hand on the skull. ""

  i can hear a beetle's footstep, he says. you don't have to shout.

  "Mercy got hurt!"

  i can see that.

  "So her!"

  I shove the skull at Mercy's unresponsive body. I'd removed the harpoon, leaving a bloodless hole all the way through her. Her eyes are open, but still and dead, with no sign of their usual glow. Her limbs dangle as limply as any other corpse's.

  "She's your golem --"

  epigolem.

  "-- and she got broken, so her."

  I mouth silently. deadI

  she has entered a terminal low-essence state.

  "If that means 'dead' then please just fucking say so --"

  she was never alive, the skull corrects pedantically. I can sense his annoyance at my urgency, and it makes me want to smash him with a hammer. in attempting to self-repair from critical damage, her system drained its essence reserve below the level needed to maintain basic functions.

  " use words I can understand."

  she has run out of fuel, Gray says in a sepulchral singsong.

  "" Relief rushes into me like a breath of fresh air. "So we just need to get her some more."

  her core system has begun cannibalizing other components to sustain itself. over the next five to seven days, her body will lose cohesion and deliquesce. Apparently noting my incomprehension, he adds, melt.

  "So we need to get her fuel ."

  i judge it unlikely there is any sufficiently concentrated essence in any location accessible to us in the available time.

  "What?" I look down at the skull helplessly. "So what do I do?"

  place her body in some sort of cask or barrel.

  "That will help her?"

  no. but her raw material will be useful when we reach the weapon.

  "You're joking."

  only rarely.

  "No." I stare at Mercy's slack features, willing sparks to ignite in those eyes again. "I'm not going to give up on her and … and store her body in a . No way."

  she is a tool. she served her purpose helping you escape from the ruins and survive this long. now she is broken. when a tool breaks in your hand, do you mourn, or do you discard it for another?

  This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.

  "Shut up."

  she is not , kalsis.

  "She learned new words." There are tears in my eyes. "She was ."

  part of her design. to better perform her function.

  "Shut and !"

  that statement is a contradiction. by definition, i can only do one or the --

  "What the is essence? Where do I get it?"

  There's a pause. Finally, Gray gives one of those drafty-tomb sighs.

  essence is the fundamental power of the world. humans typically extract it from deep mines in a liquid solution.

  "Rockwater?" I feel my heart lifting again. "She just needs rockwater?"

  Rockwater isn't exactly , but the clan appears to have plenty of it. They call it roachwater here, because they produce it via the bodily fluids of their livestock through some process I haven't investigated too closely. Regardless, it seems to be much the same stuff that people up and down the Divide pull from their mines. Theo, Agni, and I have all benefited from its healing properties. If that's all it takes to save Mercy --

  no, Gray says, puncturing my hope like an iron spear. an epigolem of mercy's complexity requires essence, distilled into a solution many times more powerful. i believe your people call it --

  "…water-of-life." I sink down beside the bedroll, letting the skull drop from my fingers. Nothing else needs to be said, because Mercy's as good as deliquesced already.

  ***

  If you grew up in the City, as I did, you might be forgiven for thinking that water-of-life isn't hard to come by. Nobles of the courts like to wear little vials of it as jewelry in their ears or at their belts, its soft blue-white glow outshining gems or precious metal. The townhouses of the great families have jars of it in the windows, as though offering the stuff for sale.

  Any enterprising thief, however, will find that those window-jars are better protected than your average bank vault. For court families, stature is everything, and there's no better way to display your stature than that gentle blue glow. To say that it's is misleading; in fact it's almost never sold at all, because it's far too precious to trade for mere money. Water-of-life is rationed out by the Princeps himself, distributed to his Exemplars and other favored servants who in turn distribute it to their own networks of supporters. It is produced only in hidden facilities buried inside the Deep Well, the Princeps' fortress-mine under Mount Zigur, more secure than the Palace of Eyes itself.

  When imbibed, it's supposed to be able to heal any wound and cure any illness, restoring health to anyone who isn't actually dead. More importantly to the great families, regular doses arrest . All their favored children get enough to draw their lifespans out by decades, and some of the family heads have already lived for centuries.

  It is not, in other words, the sort of thing a clan of rustic desert nomads is likely to have on hand.

  "There has to be another way," I mutter. "She's been doing fine up till now."

  she had some reserves when we found her, sufficient for her basic operation. her system uses essence quite efficiently under normal circumstances. repairing damage, however, is extremely costly. i mentioned she was running low when she lost her arm.

  "Can we … make some of our own? Just keep boiling some rockwater, maybe, until it's concentrated enough? Or do know how the Princeps makes it?"

  the artificial concentration of essence is new to me. when i last ventured into the world, concentrated essence could still be extracted from the earth in some locations, so this process was unnecessary. i do know that simply boiling large quantities of 'rockwater' is likely to result in an explosion of considerable force, however.

  "So … what? There's ?"

  as i said in the beginning. The skull's empty eyesockets regard me coldly. i do not understand your reaction. does it have something to do with your moth--

  I shake my head and try to block him out of my thoughts. Not because I don't like what he's saying, though I don't, but because an idea -- another of ideas -- has come to me like a white-hot arc of lightning across the brain. That fluttery feeling that marks a really, really bad plan in the making is back, stronger than I've ever felt it, like someone's dropped me off the edge of the world and I'm falling toward infinity.

  That's where we'd been headed in the first place, before my escape and 's destruction at the hands of the raiders. The Edge Mine, so-called because it literally sticks out over the side to dig back in lower down and save a lot of tedious tunneling. The only facility of its kind, a place of enormous value to the Princeps, though no one outside the Utmost Eye knows why. Whatever it produces is precious enough to be worth maintaining it here in the Sinister Waste, far from any outpost of civilization and at constant risk of raider attack.

  The Edge Mine has a commandant. And for a post so important, that commandant will be a noble of the Outer Court from one of the important families. That noble, sure as the suns rise, will have a supply of water-of-life. Probably a supply, since the cargo runs are infrequent and no child of privilege would want to risk accumulating a few years of age unnecessarily.

  was nearing the end of its journey. We're not far from the mine, the commandant, and his precious stash.

  To save Mercy, all I need to do is go there and take it.