The Interrupted Verse

Sella had reached the first step when Kaelen pulled the terminal from inside his robe.

The congregation sang around him. Their voices rose together through the old hymn, each note steady from years of practice. At the altar, the moss trembled against the metal as something beneath it began to wake.

Orr stood beside Sella in his white ash robe, one hand lifted to conduct the final verse. He saw the terminal in Kaelen’s hand and lowered his own.

“Put it away,” he said.

Kaelen could still do that. Slip the device back beneath his robe. Let Sella climb the steps. Later, he could tell her what it did, or tell himself he had been waiting for a safer moment. His thumb found the terminal’s worn control.

“Sella,” he called.

Her gaze flicked to him. She looked afraid, but she kept one hand on the rail for her younger brothers, who stood behind her in the crowd.

“Will it hurt?” she had asked him before the ceremony. He had left her with no answer.

“Yes,” Kaelen said now. “It will.”

The singing faltered. Sella stopped on the step.

Orr’s raised hand closed. “The offering is given freely.”

“No,” Kaelen said. “You gave her no choice.”

A murmur traveled through the people. Orr’s guards moved from the edge of the congregation, but Orr held up two fingers. For a moment, he wanted the crowd to hear him. Kaelen knew the old priest’s timing; he had watched Orr settle a dry-season dispute by waiting until every thirsty person had looked to him for an answer.

Kaelen pressed play.

A synthetic woman’s voice came from the small speaker, flat and clear beneath the hymn.

“Biomass Energy Converter. Organic input processed into electrical and chemical reserves. Condenser water recovery enabled.”

The words landed without ceremony. The old machine’s voice did not sound angry or pleased. It sounded like a tool reporting its function.

Someone near the back said, “What is that?”

“It’s the god speaking,” Orr replied. “The god has always answered through the altar.”

Kaelen turned the terminal so the people nearest him could see its cracked screen. They could not read the lines from where they stood, but the voice had reached them.

“It breaks down living bodies,” he said. “The water is what it recovers. The hymn tells it to take someone.”

Orr’s expression barely changed. He watched the crowd, not Kaelen. “You have heard scraps of a dead language. You have mistaken a function for a judgment.”