What, Talithan wondered as he watched Tosuli hurry unsteadily from the lab, had he just been doing?

“You reset me again,” the doll accused the Ascendant standing a few feet away from him with a stern look on her face. Itisa’s brow furrowed subtly and Talithan knew he’d managed to get under her skin, which pleased him. His memory was an absolute shambles, thanks in no small part to this woman— and while he couldn’t recall what he’d done yesterday, or even the last time he’d been active at all, Talithan did remember that he loathed Itisa Litari with every fiber of his manufactured body.

Some things just couldn’t be forgotten.

“I have new orders for you,” the Ascendant said flatly, managing to school away her irritation, no doubt in an attempt to deprive Talithan the pleasure of getting to her.

“Oh? Do tell,” Talithan drawled and assumed a more casual pose, one knee raised to support his elbow, chin on hand. It irritated her to see him so cavalier despite knowing he was still compelled to follow her every whim.

Still, if there was one thing Itisa had managed to learn over the years, it was that allowing Talithan a minor nuisance was far easier than compelling him to stop and suffering whatever more creative mischief he came up with instead.

“You will accompany me on a journey past the Wall and into the sphere of Madhyze disguised as one of my asaric assistants for the Centennial Exchange. Once we are there, at my discretion, or my brother’s, you will kill one of their diplomats.”

“Didn’t you learn your lesson last time?” Talithan asked with a smile that didn’t reach his glassy green eyes.

The question cut like a knife and the doll was quite satisfied when Itisa blanched, dark skin briefly going ashen as her eyes went wide and she snapped, “What do you remember? I command you to speak the truth!”

“Nothing at all,” Talithan confessed blithely. It was true, too. While the doll remembered being put to such a purpose by Itisa herself in the past, he recalled none of the details. What few memories he retained every time the Ascendant reset him were fragmented and chaotic— like overhearing a muffled conversation in another room and catching only every other word.

Itisa fixed Talithan with a scathing look but seemed to trust the work she’d done to place him back under her thumb to doubt his word. “Do not speak of it again,” she commanded rather than belabor the point. Itisa held out a hand to one side, then, and her personal doll attendant stepped forward and placed a sheaf of paper in her hand. The Ascendant glanced over it, then passed it to Talithan.

“Read this and take the commands there as my own. We leave tomorrow.”

Talithan accepted the papers, one brow crooked as he flipped through them. “All this for the mission?”

Itisa scoffed. “The last few pages are for the mission— the rest is to curtail the worst of your eccentricities.”

The doll barked a bitter laugh as he read the first page and understood her meaning.

1. You will refrain from asking unnecessary questions unrelated to the task currently assigned.

A) Pertinence of questions should be judged by…

“And here I thought you didn’t care— you really do know me, don’t you?”

“Unfortunately,” Itisa admitted, disgust flickering briefly across her features before she turned and left the room, attendant on her heels.

A little over a day later, Talithan stood aboard one of the Council’s own skycraft dressed in fine clothes nursing a glass of exotic, glittering alcohol he couldn’t actually drink and looking the perfect picture of a high-class asaric. While he passed for living from the neck up there hadn’t been time to custom fit the doll with any additional artificial skin— but this was easily masked with conservatively cut clothing and a pair of gloves.

While travel by skycraft was a relatively mundane affair for Ascendants, it was a rare opportunity indeed for the asaric accompanying the diplomats for the Centennial Exchange. Talithan was far from the only one lingering on the observation deck at the front of the ship as it glided effortlessly towards their destination, though he was one of the few standing alone.

Shaped roughly the same as a boat, the skycraft was fully enclosed by reinforced glass at the front end while the rest was constructed with some sort of lightweight thaumaturgically produced alloy. The stuff was, Talithan had learned, quite difficult and expensive to produce, which explained why most of the craft Asarahil possessed were technically owned and regulated by the council at large, rather than private citizens.

There were exceptions, of course. For once, however, Itisa wasn’t one of them and Talithan suspected it grated on her, however she pretended otherwise. It wasn’t often the Litari family didn’t own the best and latest in thaumic devices, after all.

Talithan tapped one finger absently against the glass in his hand while he stared out at the horizon, but stopped almost immediately as, even with gloves on, the sound was far too loud to have possibly been made by living flesh. The doll glanced surreptitiously around him and was relieved to see no one seemed to have noted the incongruence.

Of more immediate interest to him, however, was the young woman that had just arrived on deck.

She was a petite thing at just shy of five and a half feet tall and despite being built to common asaric standards, Talithan stood a good head or more taller than her. She was quite pretty in a sweet, doe-eyed sort of way, the doll observed indifferently while he feigned taking a sip from his drink. He wasn’t the only one to notice that fact, apparently, as a few of the other asaric on deck approached the young woman who rebuffed them with a polite smile and a vague wave of a hand to suggest she was expected elsewhere.

Talithan waited until she found a place near the edge of the deck where she could take in the view, then approached.

Tosuli observed one of the skycraft’s long, insect-like wings, and tried to discern the mechanics of it in an attempt to distract herself. There were three such wings on either side of the ship and they beat at a rate that left them nearly a blur to the naked eye.

The moment they’d taken off the woman had found herself feeling unexpectedly claustrophobic, though part of her wondered if it wasn’t the enclosed (though well appointed) space so much as the nerve-wracking company to be found below deck. Not only was her employer, Ascendant Itisa, there, but so were several other Ascendent— including the Hierarch of Asarahil. The man was not only the highest authority in the church, but an Ascendant and Itisa’s older brother.

Having the wide vista of the open sky ahead put Tosuli at ease, even if she’d had to dodge several other asaric looking to make connections with Ascendant Itisa’s personal assistant. Making connections in high places was everything if one was aiming to become an Ascendant themselves one day, but Tosuli wasn’t interested in being a rung on someone else’s ladder unless they had something to offer in turn.

“First time flying?” a familiar, dreaded voice asked practically in Tosuli’s ear. It came so close and so unexpectedly that the woman jumped— though she did at least manage to refrain from screaming.

The theorician hadn’t even heard Talithan approach but there he loomed beside her, striking in his well tailored, if conservative clothes with his slightly wavy, rough-cut hair brushed back from his handsome face.

The doll smiled at her, but it did not reach his green eyes and Tosuli wondered if it even could, given his nature.

He looked at her unblinking, clearly expecting a response, and Tosuli realized he’d asked her a question. “No,” she confessed, mouth dry as she dragged her eyes from the unnerving doll and turned her attention back to the skyline. “This is the largest skycraft I’ve ridden, though— and certainly the furthest I’ve gone. I expect we’ll be able to see the Wall, soon, and I’ve not seen that before.” Nerves were making her babble and Tosuli tried to save herself from embarrassment by turning the question back on the doll. “And you? Have you flown before?”

Talithan crooked a brow at her, something dangerously close to a sneer pulling at his full lips so Tosuli wanted to kick herself for asking. She’d helped remove the doll’s wings and packed them away for the trip herself, after all. “I don’t recall,” he mused, as if to push her nose in it.

Gazing into his deep, glassy green eyes, Tosuli suddenly remembered the way Talithan’s hand had felt wrapped around her neck and grit her teeth. Her throat was still sore and, to be honest, she remained so shaken after the experience that the theorician had been jumpy around her own dolls at home before she left— the same ones she had built with her own two hands.

She didn’t like it when things acted so far outside standard operating boundaries. For a doll to lay hands on a person like that…

Talithan moved suddenly and Tosuli jerked away reflexively but the doll caught her by the arm with one gloved hand and kept her firmly in place.

“Don’t cause a scene and take it,” the doll said quietly with a smile that could only be labeled charming by an outside observer.

Embarrassed to find herself shaking, Tosuli looked down and realized the doll’s only move had been to offer her the beverage he’d been pretending to drink. Back of her neck burning, the theorician accepted it with a barely trembling hand and knocked back half of in one go in hopes that the alcohol therein might calm her nerves.

“Thank you,” she said automatically and Talithan smiled again— this time she could almost be fooled into thinking he meant it.

“We’re going to be working together— let's try and get along.”

The doll thrust a gloved hand towards her, palm up, and after a moment’s hesitation, Tosuli reached out and allowed him to take her hand. Talithan surprised the theorician when he bowed at the waist and brought her hand towards his brow in a traditional salute of one towards their superior then threw Tosuli further off her guard by winking when he straightened.

“You’re very odd,” she blurted, all her usual (not inconsiderable) social grace completely sundered by the peculiar situation she’d found herself in.

“Am I?” Talithan asked and released her hand. He looked out the window while more people began to gather around them to share in the view of the horizon. “I’ll take your word for it— I’m not in a position to know myself.” Tosuli found herself staring at him again, but before she could even begin to think of a reply, the doll said, “Oh look, there it is now.”

The woman turned automatically when Talithan pointed out the window and, sure enough, a pale, hazy line on the horizon had started creeping into view as they drew closer to their destination.

The Wall.