The room beyond the screen was not a hall of prayer. It was a laboratory.
It was circular, lit by cold, magical "Spark" lights that buzzed with an unpleasant, insect-like sound. The light was a sterile, blue-white, casting sharp, ugly shadows. The walls were not pearlescent wood; they were cold, hard, grey stone, lined with shelves. But the shelves didn't hold holy texts. They held vials, beakers, sharp-looking tools of bronze and obsidian, and coils of thick, metallic-looking wire.
The center of the room was dominated by a row of five heavy, ornate chairs. They looked like thrones, carved from dark, near-black wood. But they were not thrones of honor. Thick, leather straps were bolted to the armrests and footrests.
Four of the chairs were occupied.
Mal's mind, which had been taught to see beauty and divinity, could not at first process the image.
The occupants were Blooms. He recognized two of them. One, Lyra, had been known for her hair of spun gold. The other, Seraphine, for her fiery crimson locks.
They were all... bald.
Their scalps were not just shorn; they were raw. Red, puckered, and weeping, as if they had been skinned. They sat strapped into the chairs, their heads lolling on their chests. Their eyes—the eyes that Drones like Kael and Jev dreamed of—were open. And they were vacant. Utterly, horribly hollow. Drool trickled from the slack-jawed, open mouth of Lyra. She was breathing, a shallow, rattling sound.
They were catatonic. They were empty.
In the center of the room, standing before the fifth, empty chair, was Matron Flora.
Her silver hair was coiled perfectly on her head, not a single strand out of place. Her face, usually a mask of serene piety for the hymns, was cold, sharp, and focused. She looked like a butcher inspecting a cut of meat. She was not praying. She was directing.
"Be careful with this one," she snapped, her voice no longer silken, but a sharp, frigid command. "Her follicles are deep. I want a clean root-harvest. Understood?"
"Yes, Matron," grunted a Reaper.
Two Reapers, their bald heads gleaming in the blue light, were dragging a struggling, weeping figure toward the fifth chair.
It was Lilia.
Mal's breath stopped. The world dissolved. There was no sound, no air, just the image of her, his one light, his one kindness, being half-carried, half-dragged, her feet scuffing on the stone. Her midnight-black hair was unbound, spilling over the Reapers' arms, a river of darkness in the sterile room.
She was crying, her body convulsing with terror. "No... please... Matron, I'm not ready... The Weaving isn't... I don't feel it! Please!"
"The Weaving has chosen you for a great honor, child," Matron Flora said, her voice dripping with impatience. "Your gift will be magnificent."
The Reapers slammed Lilia into the chair. The sound of the impact, her small body hitting the heavy wood, echoed in the room. They began strapping her down. The leather straps were cinched tight around her wrists, her ankles, her waist. A final strap was brought over her forehead, pressing her head back against the chair.
Lilia was shrieking now, a high, terrified, animal sound that clawed at Mal's insides. "No! No, please! I gave! I gave a strand last month! I TITHED! PLEASE!"
"Hush, child," Matron Flora said. She stepped forward and, with a strange, almost tender gesture, stroked Lilia's hair. "You Tith-ed, yes. A single, lovely strand for the Great Weaving." She smiled, a cold, thin smile that did not reach her eyes. "But your Harvest... this is for the Hegemony."
Mal's mind broke.
Hegemony?
The word didn't belong. The Hegemony was the enemy. The Hegemony was the reason for the Great Weaving. The Hegemony was the brutal, godless empire of the Shorn world, the "bald and broken" who lived in filth, the ones from whom the Garden protected them.
"The Hegemony will pay dearly for a Prime Weft of midnight black," the Matron continued, almost to herself. "Their Tress-Blades are running low, and this... this is pure. Untouched."
A Reaper, Theron—the same one who had accosted Mal in the hall—stepped forward. He was not carrying a truncheon. He was carrying a tray of tools. Razors. Hooks. A set of long, thin, curved needles.
Lilia saw the tools. Her shriek died in her throat, replaced by a choked, desperate gasping. "You lied... you lied... It's all a lie... The Great Weaving..."
"The Great Weaving," Matron Flora said, her voice bored, "is a tapestry, child. A very beautiful, very old tapestry. It does nothing. It hasn't done anything in centuries. This," she said, gesturing to the shelves of vials, "This is what protects us. This is what keeps the walls strong. Our trade with the Hegemony. We give them this," she grabbed a fistful of Lilia's hair, "and they give us the gold and the steel to keep the other Shorn rabble out."
She was a farmer. This was a farm.
The Gilded Garden was a lie. A hair farm.
"Begin," the Matron commanded.
Theron stepped forward. He put a thick, leather-gloved hand on Lilia's head, clamping it still. With the other, he brought, not a razor, but one of the long, hooked needles.
They weren't just shearing her. They were harvesting her. Root and all.
Lilia let out one last, soul-shattering shriek of agony and terror as the tool touched her scalp. It was a sound Mal would hear in his nightmares for the rest of his life, if he lived that long.
And it was that sound that broke his paralysis.
He stumbled back, his body acting without his mind. His gangly, disproportionate elbow slammed into a stack of empty wooden crates piled in the antechamber.
The crash of splintering wood was like a thunderclap in the horrific, sterile quiet of the Root chamber.
Every sound stopped. The buzzing of the lights. Lilia's muffled sobs. The clink of tools.
Every head in that room—Matron Flora's, Reaper Theron's, the other Reapers'—snapped toward the service door, toward the carved wooden screen.
Mal was staring, frozen, through the slats of the screen.
He made eye contact with Matron Flora.
Her cold, blue eyes widened, not in fear, but in pure, unadulterated fury.
"A rat," she hissed. "A rat."
Theron dropped his tool. It clattered to the floor.
"Seize it," the Matron commanded, her voice a low, deadly viper's strike. "Do not let it leave the corridor. Alive."
Mal didn't think. He didn't plan. He didn't even breathe. He just turned.
He turned and ran.
He burst from the antechamber, leaving the small silver tureen of broth forgotten on the floor. He ran, his sandals slipping, his arms windmilling. He was not fast. He was not strong. He was not brave. He was a creature of pure, undiluted, animal terror.
"HE'S IN THE WEST CORRIDOR!" a voice, the voice of Theron, boomed behind him. It was a sound of fury. "SEAL THE EXITS! IT'S THE SMUDGE!"
They knew him. Of course they knew him. The ugly, useless Drone. The Smudge.
Footsteps. Heavy. Fast. The sound of multiple, heavy-booted Reapers, echoing off the stone walls. They were right behind him.
He ran, his lungs burning. He didn't know where he was going. He was just running away. Away from the chairs, away from the needles, away from the lie.
He burst from the service tunnels into one of the main cloisters. It was empty. The Tithe Feast was happening. Everyone was in the Great Hall.
No. Not everyone.
A Reaper, one he didn't recognize, stepped out from behind a column ahead of him, cutting him off. A big, bald, brutal-looking man with a cruel smile and a heavy, weighted truncheon in his hand.
"Nowhere to run, little rat," the Reaper grunted. "Matron wants you. And she wants you quiet."
Mal skidded to a halt, his heels smoking on the polished stone. He was trapped. The Reaper advanced from the front. He could hear at least two more thundering down the corridor from behind.
He was going to die. No, worse. He was going to be taken. He was going to be strapped into that chair, and... what? He was a Drone. He had nothing to harvest.
They'll just kill me.
The Reaper ahead lunged, his truncheon swinging in a low, bone-breaking arc.
Mal shrieked and threw himself to the side. The truncheon whistled past his head, so close he felt the wind of it, and shattered the stone column he'd been standing near.
He scrambled to his feet. The other two Reapers were rounding the corner. Theron was with them.
"Don't damage him too much!" Theron roared at the first Reaper. "He dies, the Matron will have your hide!"
"Just grab him!"
The first Reaper smiled again. "Alive. But she said nothing about... whole." He advanced again, more slowly this time, enjoying it.
Mal was pressed against the wall. There was nowhere to go. His eyes darted around, looking for an exit, a weapon, anything. There was nothing. Just stone, and the beautiful, living, woven branches that decorated the arches.
His hands, in his panic, flew to his head. To his sparse, stringy, useless hair.
He had nothing. He had nothing.
But he did.
He had one, last, pathetic patch of hair over his left ear. A stringy, dishwater-blonde tuft. It was perhaps a dozen strands. It was all he had.
It's all I have.
He didn't make a decision. His body made it for him. His terror, his rage, his grief for Lilia... it all coalesced into one, final, desperate act.
He grabbed the tuft. And he tore it from his scalp.
The pain was excruciating. It was not the small sting of a single-strand "Spark." It was a fistful of his own flesh, ripped from his head. Blood, warm and thick, streamed down the side of his face.
The Reapers paused, momentarily confused by the act of self-mutilation.
Mal held the pathetic, bloody tuft of hair in his fist. He put every ounce of his will, his fear, his despair, his life into that one, final, useless offering.
He screamed, his voice cracking, "SPARK!"
It wasn't a spark.
It was the sun.
A brilliant, blinding, searing white light erupted from his fist. It was not the guttering ember of a candle-lighter. It was a flash-bang, a miniature, concentrated explosion of pure, raw, desperate magic.
The three Reapers roared in unison, dropping their weapons to claw at their faces.
"AAAARGH! MY EYES! MY EYES!" Theron shrieked, his voice no longer a boom, but a high, pained wail.
The cloister was plunged into an echoing, smoky darkness, the Reapers' retinas seared.
Mal didn't wait. He was crying, his scalp on fire, blood and tears streaming down his face. He ducked under the first Reaper's flailing, disoriented arm and ran.
He ran for the Garden's main gate.