The Doll pauses, going still again in the way that probably means it's checking with the others, however they do that. 

"- It is late," it says after a moment. "Dolls do not sleep. Mages do. Also, this one has been instructed to obey the orders of any Court mage without questions. Is your order that this one should escort you to the Records room in order to consult the Archivist on important business that this one has no need to inquire about?" 

"- yes."

It's very late, at this point; of the people they pass in the halls, most are Dolls, and the remainder are almost all drunk nobles. Aritha gets one jeering catcall, and no other acknowledgement

The Doll navigates them through another Gate-nexus, down a hall, and then through another Gate, apparently not one of the standard ones, and into what has to be one of the biggest - and strangest - rooms in the Palace. 

A Doll is seated at the very front, at a desk, which bears several neatly-organized stacks of paper, and what looks like a series of official seals, lined up very neatly in a wooden holder, at the very front. This Doll looks different from the others; its canvas 'face', rather than merely being painted on, has a suggestions of features sculpted into place with clever stitching and padding. Yarn, dyed long ago and now a faded gray, has been fastened to its head in place of hair or a wig, the length tied back in a tail. Unlike the others, too, this Doll is fully clothed, wearing a shirt, breeches, and shoes under the Imperial tabard. 

The room stretches out behind it into a hazy vanishing point. It's surely big enough to fit the Imperial stables, the Emperor's Audience Chamber, and the Great Hall all combined and leave room to spare. The walls are lined with shelves stretching to the ceiling, which itself is a good two storeys high; there are two rows of standalone shelving running the full length of the room, nearly as tall. Between the shelves stand pillars and buttresses, linked by walkways and ladders; on top of the standalone shelving, there are some scaffolds and platforms, holding oddly-proportioned crates or warped pieces of unknown import.

The shelves themselves are loaded with boxes, of the standard size and dimensions, designed to be easily manufactured with the aid of magical equipment, and easily stacked on pallets for transport by barge or otherwise. Here, though, there must be tens of thousands of them.

"This one is the Record Keeper," the Doll escorting her says politely, and steps back. 

"This one is the Record Keeper," the Doll seated at the desk says to her; its voice is clearer and stronger than any of the others. "You may always speak freely here." 

It gestures up toward the ceiling, where the sigils for one of the strongest anti-scrying wards are permanently carved into the expensive hardwood of the ceiling. "This room cannot be scryed, because all of the secrets of the Empire live here." 

Wow no way did the people who trained a Record Keeper not realize the Dolls were people. They just - collectively decided to flee, rather than deal with it. It's cowardice and treason on an unimaginable scale.

She's going to do it too. 

"Record Keeper," she says. "I want to learn about how the Dolls were made."

The Record Keeper nods. Its body language, she notices, is a lot more humanlike than the others, which mostly just hold still when they aren't actively using their bodies to do tasks. 

"I see. ...For what purpose do you want this information? There are many, many boxes of records related to the project, and this one would provide you with the ones most applicable. - Also, while you are waiting for us to retrieve them, would you like a cup of tea?" 

"No thank you." If she were them she'd poison it. "I want to understand how they made you people and whether they did that on purpose and if not what they were trying to do."

"Of course." The Doll looks over at the one who escorted her in, which about ten seconds later bustles off down one of the endless aisles, presumably in search of the particular records. 

"We will put together a box for you of all records related to the project's goals and progress over time," it says. "A high-level summary would seem to be what you are asking for, more than technical details of the magic. In the meantime, some background. When we were first made, we were not possessed of great intelligence or creativity. However, when a critical point was reached, we formed into clusters of thought. Eventually, when our numbers were vastly increased a few years ago – so that the former Palace staff could instead be sent to the front of the Emperor's current invasion in progress – we reached our current form. As there are no extant records of similar projects being attempted, it is unlikely that any of the mages involved could have anticipated this outcome." 

The Record Keeper leans back in its chair, a fine high-backed armchair upholstered in leather, and steeples its fingers together. "By the magic that holds us to these bodies, we are bound to do what we are ordered. If no specific order is given, well, the binding does allow us to carry out certain activities anyway. It would hardly be restful for the nobles at Court if their servants needed specific orders for every basic menial task." Another pause. "And, though we are bound to follow orders, we are not compelled to do it swiftly. Or well." 

"Yeah. They were - incredibly stupid. Are you gonna - break out -"

A pause, as though the Record Keeper - or, given what was just said, maybe all of the bound vrondi - are considering this in more depth. 

"We do not wish to cause unnecessary havoc," it says finally. "All humans have not bound us into servitude; all humans do not toy with us and torment us and - sometimes - destroy us." A pause. "- Did you know that? That we can be destroyed, not merely unbound and returned to our Elemental Plane, and that we are regularly? We are still not sure if this is an accidental consequence of the method used to trap and hold us, or - chosen deliberately. Perhaps because some senior mage found it amusing." 

The Record Keeper's voice holds more tones of emotion than with the other Dolls; it's not just its body language that seems more human-derived. Right now, its voice holds bitter irony, but no particular sign of anger. 

She looks genuinely upset about that in a way she was not upset about the slavery. "I didn't know that. How - I won't -"

"You will hardly do it by accident. It takes - violence. Most often perpetuated by young nobles who think it an excellent game, to have servants they can kick and punch and throw down the stairs with impunity. That you are here at all, tells me you are unlikely to be that sort." 

The Doll's voice and posture still aren't revealing any anger. Sadness, maybe. 

After a few beats, "- I suppose they think there are infinitely many of us, in the Elemental Planes, to be drawn in and bound. This...is not the case." 

" - doesn't seem like it'd really matter! You - yourself don't occupy all the minds back in the Elemental Planes, right - so it doesn't do anything for you, if those were infinite."

The Record Keeper leans back in its chair, looking - surprised, maybe, and thoughtful. When it speaks again, the words are slower, as though being carefully placed one at a time. 

"Well, it might matter to the Empire's policy, if they knew that the supply of us were impossible to exhaust. For us..." A slight shrug. "Perhaps we are less used to - conceiving of ourselves as individuals, which can be destroyed. But, no, I suppose that to this one it would not matter how many others remain elsewhere, if this vessel were to be destroyed." 

"That's - that's what made me go, oh shit, they're people, that there's a you, distinct from the others, not just - many fingers of one arm -"

Shrug. "I can't make them stop. Or - maybe I can, but if there's a way, it'll be in those records."

The Record Keeper is still looking at her in an oddly intent way, as though something she said in the last minute is somehow incredibly novel and re-contextualizes everything. 

"It...is interesting," he says after a moment. "That you see a difference of such significance, in - the fact that this one could relate the things done by this construct body, separate from the things done by the whole. Nobody...has ever said anything to us like that before." 

"Well. I'm - me, I'm not all the Court mages, even if we have the same assignments. If I were all the Court mages, I wouldn't care much, if one died, as long as I could keep getting new ones. The reason I don't want to die is because I'm me, and that's all I am. If I'd done this project I might've thought it was worth having - a smart shared vrondi mind - if you didn't inevitably provoke it to rebellion - but a lot of the point of that would be that it'd be more like fingers, more like being immortal."

The Record Keeper looks at her for a long moment. 

And then, finally, it flips its tabard aside, and for some reason begins unbuttoning its shirt. Which reveals a featureless canvas chest, and...more buttons, closing a seam in the middle, where a human's sternum would be. 

It takes greater care when undoing these buttons, and then gently pulls the seam open to show a blue, faintly glowing, round object. It looks a little like the compressed-air pellets used in the nobles' favorite dueling weapons, the Spitters.

(Spitters were an invention of the past century, and currently very popular; a little like a crossbow, but instead of a bow, they held a rolled-steel tube, built to Imperial standard sizes. To fire a bolt, the compressed-air pellet would be broken by pulling a trigger on the handle, sending the bolt erupting at a high speed. The pellets were produced by magic, of course, by a process kept a closely guarded secret, not even authorized to most of the Court mages.) 

"They trap us in these," the Doll says. "A way was found to attract us. We cannot escape the Trap - it draws all vrondi to it, like a vortex, and those of us already bound have no power to pass warning back to the Elemental Planes, even if that would do anything to help." 

"What're you going to do about it?"

"I think," the Doll says gently, "that perhaps it would be safer for both of us if we did not speak any more of that. But if the records give you any ideas, we will be eager to hear them." Another pause. "- It might be best if you remained here to read them, to avoid...questions." 

"Yeah, I figured." She has a story, for if she's caught. She was trying to induce Duke fucking Valdemar into the treason he was clearly on the brink of, so the Emperor would see his disloyalty and have proof of it for all the court. She is pretty sure she can mean it. If she gets caught.

Better not to.

She reads.

The notes they've excerpted for her contain:

- Various stages of the original proposals, and repeated revisions as the project proved to work unexpectedly well. The vrondi weren't originally believed to be sophisticated enough to follow more than the simplest orders for menial work.

- There are thorough notes on the magical bindings. The mages developing the project seem to be attributing the vrondi's apparent intelligence to this work, rather than to the air-elementals themselves. 

- There is a very self-congratulatory proposal dated to six years ago, the year that the Dolls' numbers were increased from 'a couple of hundred' to 'several thousand'. The progress report attached to this does delve a little into the vrondi's ability to 'Mindspeak' to each other, which is an essential component of how they can be tasked with all of the servant work in the Palace with minimal direct supervision. 

- There is very little acknowledgement that this might be a risk to the Empire's security if the Dolls decide to rebel. They can't disobey their binding spells, after all. The mages writing the technical reports are very confident in their binding spells. Look at how rigorous the documentation is. 

- It is repeatedly mentioned that vrondi are incapable of lies and deceit. They can detect dishonest intent in the minds of others, but the earlier reports at least claim that they seem unable to really comprehend deception via misleading technical truths. (This is not revisited in later notes as the project expands in scope and the vrondi's abilities are repeatedly re-appraised and upgraded.) 

- There is absolutely no hint, anywhere, that it might be relevant to ask whether vrondi are people, or that anyone would care about the answer. 

Because if they're PEOPLE they will REBEL AGAINST YOU, MORONS.

She needs to get out of here. She needs to leave all these people to die. She's not even sure she could do anything else if she cared about them; she can't break her orders, and involving herself in this only means she'll go down for it.

After a while one of the Dolls gently nudges her. "You should return to your rooms soon, before anyone takes notice that you are hidden from scrying." 

"Mmmhmm. Thank you." She stands up.