Foundryside

9

Gregor Dandolo stood below the Selvo Building and looked up. It was large, dark, and crumbling — in other words, it looked much like the sort of place where a thief’s fence would reside. Each room had a short balcony, though few looked sturdy.

He glanced back at the plume of dust rising from Foundryside. Something bad had happened back there — likely a building had collapsed, if not several. Every instinct of his told him to run to the site and help, but he realized that his previous actions tonight made that unwise. There was now an entire criminal organization that wanted him dead, and this Sark would surely soon catch word that Gregor was looking for him, and go to ground.

The one night I have business in the Commons, he thought to himself, is, of course, the one night the entire place falls apart.

He checked to make sure Whip was working. His weapon seemed to be all in order — he had no idea what that odd bit of business had been about back there. Grimacing, he walked inside the Selvo and found a few residents anxiously wandering the halls, wondering what the crash was.

Sark’s door was easy to find — it was the one with eight locks on it. He listened for a bit but heard nothing inside. He walked down the rooms on Sark’s side of the building and quietly tried all the doorknobs. One was open on the very far end. The room within was empty — for sale or abandoned, he supposed.

Gregor stumbled through the dark room. He fumbled with the door on the far end and walked out onto the balcony that dangled on the side of the building. Then he looked down the face of the building at all the balconies, all lined up close together.

An idea occurred to him. I must try my hardest, he thought, straddling the baluster, not to look down.

With slow, careful movements, Gregor Dandolo vaulted from balcony to balcony toward Sark’s rooms. There wasn’t much of a gap between the balconies, only about three feet or so, so his primary concern was that the balconies might not be able to support his weight. But despite a few creaks and cracks, they held.

Finally he came to Sark’s rooms. The door leading in was locked, but this lock was far weaker than the ones in the front door. He wedged the bottom of Whip’s handle into the crack and tugged at it. The lock popped free easily.

He was about to go in when he paused…He thought for just one moment, just a split second, that he’d seen someone on the rooftop across the alley. But now that he looked there didn’t seem to be anyone. He grunted and slipped inside.

It took a moment for his eyes to adjust. Gregor took out a match, struck it, and lit a candle.

Now. What’s to find here?

What he found made his heart sink: this Sark had at least ten safes, all of them lined up along the walls, all of them locked and, to Gregor, impenetrable.

He sighed. If there is evidence in there, he thought, I can’t get to it. So I must find any evidence outside of the safes, then.

He searched the rooms. The space looked like something adapted for an invalid: lots of canes, lots of handles, lots of low seats. He also found Sark had little in the way of crockery and cutlery and pans. He apparently did not make his own food much at all, which was not terribly unusual. Few Commoners could afford all the materials that went into the preparation of food.

Gregor was about to move past the cooking stove and into the living room when he paused.

“If he doesn’t have plates or spoons,” he said aloud, looking down, “and if he doesn’t eat at home…then why does he have a stove?”

Certainly not for heat — Tevanne had no shortage of that: the city’s two seasons were hot and wet, or unbelievably hot and unbelievably wet.

Gregor squatted before the stove. There was no wood ash inside — which was odd.

Grunting, Gregor reached down and felt the back of the stove, until he found a small switch.

He turned it, and the back of the stove popped open. “Oho,” said Gregor. Inside were four small shelves, and on those shelves were many precious items.

He looked at the safes around him. These are just a distraction, aren’t they? Make any interlopers focus on them, while the real safe sits hidden right in front of you…He suddenly thought this Sark a very clever man.

There was a small bag on the top shelf, and he opened it and carefully looked through it. “My goodness,” he murmured.

Inside were four thousand duvots — paper duvots, no less — and multiple documents, almost certainly forged, that would allow the holder to secure quick passage on any number of ships. One of them even granted the bearer the powers of a minor ambassador from Dandolo Chartered — and even though Gregor had little to do with his family’s house, he couldn’t help but feel insulted by that.

He looked through the rest of the bag, and found a knife, lockpicks, and other unseemly tools. He’s definitely the fence, he thought. And the man was ready to run in a heartbeat.

He searched the rest of the hidden safe. It contained small sacks of gemstones, jewelry, and the like. On the bottom shelf was a small book. Gregor grabbed it and flipped through it, and found it was full of dates, plans, and tactics for Sark’s many jobs.

At first the notes were extremely detailed — methods of entry and escape, tools required for breaking a specific lock or safe — but at one point, about two years ago, the jobs suddenly got a lot more frequent and the payouts a lot higher, but the notes became far sparser. Gregor got the impression that Sark had made a connection with someone good enough that they didn’t need much of his help.

He flipped to the last entry and found Sark’s notes on the waterfront job. He felt a bit pleased to see that his defenses had frustrated this Sark immensely — one scribbled line read: This bastard Dandolo is going to make S work double-time!!

Gregor made a note of that—“S.” He doubted it stood for “Sark.”

That must be the thief — whoever they are.

But there was another note at the end that he found deeply curious — scrawled in the margins of the paper were two words: Dandolo Hyp??

Gregor stared at the words.

He knew that they did not refer to him — they had to be shorthand for “Dandolo Hypatus.” And that was very, very troubling.

A hypatus was a merchant house officer who acted as something akin to a head of research, experimenting with sigillums to dream up new methods, techniques, and tools. Most hypati were madder than a speared striper, mostly because they often didn’t survive long — experimental scrivings had a tendency to inflict gruesome death on anyone involved with them. And then there was the backstabbing the position attracted: since every scriver on a campo wanted to be a hypatus, betrayals and even assassinations were common hazards of the job.

But the Dandolo Chartered hypatus was Orso Ignacio — and Orso Ignacio was notorious, if not legendary, for being an amoral, arrogant, duplicitous, and fiendishly clever campo operator. He’d lasted nearly a decade as hypatus, which had to be a record in Tevanne. And he hadn’t risen from within the ranks of Dandolo Chartered — he’d originally been employed at Company Candiano, though Gregor had heard rumors he’d departed that house under leery terms. It was a known fact that the whole damned merchant house had almost collapsed mere weeks after his departure.

Yet as unsavory as Orso Ignacio’s reputation might be — would he be willing to hire an independent thief to rob Gregor’s waterfront? Since Gregor was the son of Ofelia Dandolo — the head of the entire Dandolo Chartered merchant house — this seemed totally insane. But then, hypati were generally agreed to be insane, or close enough to it.

Gregor considered what he knew. Only one thing had been stolen that night — a box, entered into the safes under the name of “Berenice.” Which could have been a false name, for all Gregor knew.

So — was Orso Ignacio the buyer? Or was he the one being robbed? Or is this small note here just nonsense, a complete coincidence?

He wasn’t sure. But he now intended to find out.

Gregor heard something, and sat up. There were footfalls in the hallway — all heavy boots. And it sounded like there were a lot of them.

He didn’t wait to listen and see if the new arrivals came to Sark’s door. Instead he took Whip out and walked quietly into the bedroom, where he hid behind the open door, peering through the crack in the hinge at the living room beyond.

Could this be Sark? Has he returned?

There was a tremendous crack as someone kicked the door down.

Ah, no, he thought. Probably not Sark.

Gregor watched as two men in dark-brown clothing and black cloth masks walked into Sark’s rooms. But what really caught Gregor’s eye were their weapons.

One bore a stiletto, the other a rapier — and both were scrived. He could see the sigils running along the lengths of the blades, even from where he was.

He sighed inwardly. Well. That’s going to be a problem.

Gregor was familiar with scrived weapons. Scrived armaments, though prohibitively expensive, were the primary reason why the city of Tevanne had been so successful in warfare. But you couldn’t just glance at a scrived weapon and know what it was scrived to do. It could be anything.

For example, the common blades used in the Enlightenment Wars were scrived so that they’d automatically target the weakest part of whatever they were swung at, and then target the weakest part of that weakest part, and then to target the weakest part of that weakest part of the weakest part, and then strike that exact area. Operating off of these commands, the blades would be able to cut through a solid oak beam with little force.

But that was just one possibility. Other scrivings convinced the blades they were hurtling through the air with amplified gravity — this was what Whip’s head was scrived to do, for example. Others had been scrived specifically to break down and destroy other metals, like armor and weapons. And still others burned incredibly hot when whirled through the air, giving them the possibility of setting one’s opponent alight.

All of these possibilities ran through Gregor’s head as the two thugs stalked through Sark’s rooms. So what I need to do, he thought, is make sure they never get to use them.

He watched as the two men examined the open back of the stove. They crouched and peered in, then exchanged a glance, perhaps worried.

They turned and approached the balcony door. One gestured to the other, silently pointing out that the lock had been broken in. Then they started walking toward the bedroom, with the one with the rapier in the lead.

Still hidden behind the door, Gregor waited until the first of his opponents had stepped into the bedroom, with the second one right behind him. Then he kicked the door as hard as he could.

The door hurled shut, smashing the second thug in the face. Gregor could feel the wood resonate with the blow, and felt satisfied with the damage done. The thug with the rapier turned around, raising his weapon, but Gregor snapped Whip forward and cracked him in the face.

But the man did not crumple, whimpering, as Gregor had been expecting. Instead the thug stumbled back, shook himself, and charged forward again.

The man’s mask, thought Gregor. It must be scrived to deflect strikes. Maybe all of his scrumming clothing’s scrived!

Gregor dove to the side as the man’s rapier slashed through the wall like it was made of warm cheese. Though it was dark in the rooms, he could tell that the rapier was, like Whip’s head, scrived to amplify its gravity, crashing through the air like a man ten times as strong had swung it. Which, Gregor knew from experience, was a dangerous weapon to face — but also a dangerous weapon to wield.

Gregor rose and flicked Whip out. The truncheon’s head flew forward and smashed the man on his knee, hard enough to knock him over — but he stayed standing. Not good, thought Gregor. Their outfits must have cost a fortune…

He did not have time to reflect on the cost of their armaments, though, because then the second thug barged in, almost knocking the door off its hinges. The thug with the rapier then pivoted, sword in his hand, trying to pin Gregor into the corner.

Gregor grabbed the mattress on Sark’s bed and flung it at his two assailants. The man with the rapier slashed it in two, sending feathers flying everywhere. Gregor used this momentary distraction to hurl yet more furniture at them — a chair, a small desk — though his goal was not to harm them, but to clutter the room, making it harder to move.

The man with the rapier hacked his way through, cursing. But now the space was too small for them both to confront him — only the one with the rapier could engage.

He led the man back, toward the window of the bedroom, and got in position. His attacker gave a rough shout, and thrust forward with the rapier, aiming for Gregor’s heart.

Gregor fell to the side and sent Whip’s head flying at the man’s feet.

His attacker tripped. And ordinarily this would not have meant much — but Gregor’s attacker had just thrust his rapier forward, expecting to plunge it into Gregor’s chest, and the weapon accelerated as it flew; and now that there was nothing to stop it, it just kept hurtling forward, pulling the man along like someone trying to walk a large dog that’s just seen a rat and bolted after it.

The sword plunged right through the window behind Gregor — and took its owner with it. Gregor stood and watched with grim pleasure as the thug sailed down three floors and crashed onto the wooden sidewalk.

Scrived defenses or not, he thought, the man’s brain is soup now.

“Son of a bitch,” snarled the second attacker. “You…You son of a bitch!” He did something to his stiletto — adjusted some lever or button — and the blade started vibrating hard and fast. This augmentation was new to Gregor, and he did not like it: that blade wouldn’t make a nice puncture hole, but instead would tear him to pieces.

The man advanced on him. Gregor flicked Whip forward, and the man ducked — but the man had not been his target. Rather, Gregor had been aiming at the bedroom door, which was barely hanging on to the doorframe after its ill treatment. The truncheon’s head punched through the door and even part of the wall, and the impact finally severed the door from its frame.

The man glanced back at it, then rose and growled as he started to advance on Gregor.

But then Gregor hit the switch on the side of Whip, and it started to retract the truncheon’s head.

And, as Gregor had hoped, it hauled the bedroom door along with it. The door crashed into the man’s back, and Gregor leapt aside just in time as the sheer momentum carried his attacker forward and into the wall.

Gregor stood, ripped Whip free of the shattered remains of the door, and started bashing the back of the prone man’s head. Gregor was not the sort of person to beat a fallen man to death, but he had to make sure the man stayed down, as his opponent’s defenses likely dulled the impact of anything that hit him.

After seven or so strikes, Gregor paused, chest heaving, and kicked the thug over. He realized he might have inadvertently overwhelmed the scrived defenses of the man’s clothing. A pool of blood was slowly spreading out into a gruesome halo around his head.

Gregor sighed. He did not like killing.

He looked out the window. The man with the rapier was still lying on the broken wooden sidewalk. He hadn’t moved.

This is not how I wanted the evening to go, thought Gregor. He didn’t even know who these men had been coming for. Were they Sark’s men, responding to his break-in? Or had they been looking for Sark? Or was it something else entirely?

“Let’s at least find out who you are,” he said. He knelt and started to pull the man’s mask off.

But before he could, the wall behind him exploded.

The second the wall erupted, two thoughts entered Gregor’s mind.

The first was that he had really been quite stupid: he’d heard the number of footsteps outside Sark’s door, and he’d known there had been more than two men who’d come to the room. He’d just forgotten it in the melee — a very stupid move.

The second thought was: I cannot be hearing this right now. It is impossible.

Because as the wall exploded, sending shattered wood and stone flying through the room, there was a sound over the fracas that was distinct: a high-pitched, wailing shriek. And Gregor had not heard that sound since the Enlightenment Wars.

He dove to the ground as dust and debris showered over him. He looked up just in time to see it — a large, thick, iron arrow hurtling through the far wall of the bedroom, flying just over him, and punching out the other wall as if it were made of paper. The arrow was burning hot, bright and red, leaving a trail of fire in its wake, and he knew that eventually it would erupt into a shower of hot, flaming metal.

He sat up, dust pouring off of him, and watched in horror as the burning-hot missile shrieked out over the Greens before exploding. Bright sparks and flaming shrapnel danced down to the buildings below.

No! he thought. No, no! There are civilians, there are civilians!

Before he could think further on it, the wall erupted again in a different place, and another shrieker punched through the walls of Sark’s bedroom, showering Gregor with stones and smoking splinters and passing just overhead.

Gregor lay on the ground, stunned. How is this happening? How do they have shriekers?

The Tevanni military had always used altered weaponry to terrific results. There were the swords, certainly, but its bolts and arrows were also scrived, much like Whip, to believe that they were not being flung forward but were instead falling down, obeying gravity. Thus they were able to fly perfectly straight, reach a high velocity, and go much farther than conventional ranged weapons could.

There were some downsides, however. The military had to lug around miniature lexicons specifically built to power such scrivings, and once the projectiles reached the limit of that lexicon’s range, the scrivings failed and the bolts began to descend as any normal projectile would.

So the Tevanni scrivers experimented. Their eventual inspiration came from the release scrivings on common bolts — for Tevanni bolts were not just scrived to believe that they were falling, since a bolt traveling the distance of, say, fifty feet at the constant acceleration of a free-falling object would not do much damage at all.

Instead, the release scrivings on the bolts worked so that the instant the bolts were released, they suddenly believed that they had been falling straight down for around seven thousand feet, give or take. This produced an initial release velocity of over six hundred feet per second, which everyone found satisfyingly lethal.

So, when pressed to develop an armament with a longer range, the scrivers had simply upped the distance. A lot. They’d developed a projectile that, when released from its caster, did not simply believe it’d been falling for a few thousand feet, but rather that it’d been plummeting toward the earth for thousands and thousands of miles. The second you released it, it’d suddenly roar forward, plunging through the air at a phenomenal speed like a black bolt of lightning. Usually the projectile would get so hot from sheer friction that it would abruptly explode in midair. Even if it didn’t, the damage it did was nothing short of catastrophic.

The name for this projectile had been easy to choose. Because as the projectile gained heat and boiled the air around it, it tended to create a high-pitched, terrifying roaring sound.

Gasping, Gregor started crawling toward the living room. He blinked blood out of his eyes. A stone or piece of wood had struck him on the head, and the room was now so smoky it was hard to breathe.

He tried not to think of Dantua, with its tattered walls and smoke, its streets echoing with moans, and the sound of the army laying waste to the countryside beyond…

Stay here, he pleaded with his mind. Stay with me…

Another shrieker ripped through the walls of the living room as Gregor crawled forward. Hot ash and smoking debris rained over him once more. He knew now that there was a third man in the hallway, armed with a shrieker, and he must have decided to use it when he heard the fight and his two compatriots did not emerge.

But this should have been impossible. For a shrieker to work, you had to have a nearby lexicon that would permit it. And that was strictly outlawed in Tevanne. A shrieker brought within Tevanne should have been just another piece of dumb metal.

What is going on? How is any of this happening right now?

Gregor finally made it into the living room, exhausted and battered, still crawling forward with Whip in one hand. He crawled to the center and looked out the front door.

At first, the way out was clear. But then a man stepped into the doorway, dressed in black. Balanced on one of his arms was a huge device made of metal and wood, like a monstrous, handheld ballista. Nestled in the pocket of the ballista was a long, slender iron arrow. It seemed to be quivering slightly, like a furious animal on a leash.

The man pointed the shrieker at Gregor. Gregor, coughing and disoriented, stared at him.

In a low, growling voice, the man asked, “Is the thief here?”

Gregor stared back, unsure what to say.

But then something flew in through the open balcony door. It was small and round, and it flew over Gregor’s head and landed just before the man with the shrieker.

Then the world lit up.

It was like someone had turned on a thousand lights at once, a sort of brightness Gregor had not known was even possible — and then there was a tremendous, earsplitting, earth-shattering bang.

Gregor almost lost consciousness from sheer oversensation — or perhaps that was due to the blow to the head he’d taken.

The light and sound faded. Gregor’s ears were still ringing, but his eyesight returned. He could see the man with the shrieker was still in the hallway, but he’d dropped his weapon and was rubbing his eyes, evidently as blinded as Gregor had been.

Gregor rolled over and looked at the balcony door, just in time to see a very short girl dressed in black drop in out of nowhere, stand on the balcony, lift a pipe to her lips, and blow.

A dart flew out of the pipe, zipped across the room, and hit the man with the shrieker in the neck. His eyes went wide. He pawed at his throat, trying to pull it out, but then he turned a dull shade of green and toppled over.

Gregor’s savior put away the pipe and ran over to him. She looked at his Waterwatch sash, sighed, grabbed him by the arm, and hauled him up. Even though his hearing was still scrambled, he could hear what she said: “Come on, asshole! Run! Run!”

Gregor staggered through the alleys of the Greens, one arm thrown on the shoulders of his small but surprisingly strong rescuer. If anyone saw them they’d have assumed it was a friend helping a drunk get home.

Once they were safe, she stopped and shoved him to the ground. Gregor tumbled over and crashed into the mud.

“You,” said the girl, “are scrumming lucky I happened to be watching! What the hell is the matter with you? You and those other fools practically blew up the whole building!”

Gregor blinked and rubbed the side of his head. “Whu…What’s going on? What was that back there?”

“It was a stun bomb,” said the girl. “And it was damned valuable. I’d barely had it for more than an hour too. And a fat lot of good it’s done for me, after you’ve scrummed everything up!” She began pacing around the alley. “Now where am I going to get money? Now how am I going to get out of the city? Now what do I do!”

“Who…Who are you?” asked Gregor. “Why did you save me?”

“I wasn’t even sure I was going to,” she said. “I saw those three bastards watching the room and decided to hold off. Then I see you come and jump from balcony to balcony like a damned fool and break in. And then they see you and try to blow you to smithereens! I think I mostly did it so that one mad bastard would stop shooting up the Greens!”

Gregor frowned. “Wait. What was it you said? Where are you going to get money? You…You mean you came to Sark’s for…”

He stared at the young woman in black, and slowly realized that this person, despite having saved him, was likely one of Sark’s thieves.

And, knowing it was Sark, it was suddenly likely that this young woman was the person who had robbed the Waterwatch and burned down the waterfront.

Without another word, Gregor rose and tried to dive at her — but between her stun bomb and the damage the shrieker had done to him, he could barely walk in a straight line.

The young woman danced aside and kicked his feet out from under him. Gregor tumbled down into the mud, cursing. He tried to stand up, but she put a boot in his back and shoved him down. Again, he was surprised at how strong she was — or maybe he was just that weakened.

“You burned down the waterfront!” he said.

“That was an accident,” she said.

“You robbed my damned safes!”

“Okay, well, that wasn’t. What did you find in Sark’s?”

Gregor said nothing.

“I saw you reading. I know you found something. What?”

He considered what to say — and then he considered her behavior: how she’d acted, and what she’d done, why she was here. And he started to develop an idea of her circumstances.

“What I found,” he said, “is that you have either stolen from, or stolen for, some of the most powerful, merciless people in the city of Tevanne. But I think you knew that. And I think your arrangement has gone quite wrong, and you are now desperate to escape. But you won’t. They will find you, and kill you.”

She pressed harder into his back and crouched down. He couldn’t see her face — yet he could smell her.

And strangely, her smell was…familiar.

I know that scent, he thought. How odd…

He felt something sharp being drawn along the side of his neck. She showed it to him — another dart. “Know what this is?” she asked.

He looked at it, then looked her in the eye. “I am not afraid to die,” he said. “If that is your intent, I suggest you hurry it along.”

She paused at that, clearly surprised. She tried to gather herself. “Goddamn it, tell me what you fo—”

“You are no killer,” said Gregor. “No soldier. That I can see. The wisest course of action here is to surrender now and come with me.”

“What, so you can have me harpered?” asked the girl. “This is some shit negotiation you’re trying.”

“If you surrender,” said Gregor, “I will plead mercy for you personally. And I will do everything I can to prevent your death.”

“You’re lying.”

He looked over his shoulder at her. “I do not lie,” he said quietly.

She squinted at him, surprised by his tone.

“Nor do I kill anymore,” said Gregor, “unless I have to. I have had enough of that for one life. Surrender. Now. I will protect you. And though I will see justice done, I will not allow them to kill you. But if you do not surrender — I will not stop coming for you. And either I will catch you, or they will kill you.”

She seemed to be considering it. “I believe you,” she said. She leaned close. “But I’m still willing to take my chances, Captain.”

There was a sharp pain in his neck. Then everything went dark.

When Gregor Dandolo awoke, he was no longer convinced that consciousness was the best choice for him. It felt as if some foundryman had swung by, opened up his head, and filled it with smelted metals. He groaned and rolled over, and realized he’d been lying facedown in the mud for what must have been hours, since the sun was now out. It was a miracle someone hadn’t cut his throat and robbed him blind.

But then, it did look as if the young woman had covered him in trash and refuse so no one could see him. Which he supposed was a generous gesture — even if it made him smell like a canal.

He sat up, whimpering and rubbing his skull. Then his thoughts turned to the young woman, and he remembered how she’d smelled.

Her odor had been distinct. Because it had smelled like she’d been in a Tevanni foundry, or near a foundry’s smokestacks.

And as Ofelia Dandolo’s child, Gregor knew a great deal about Tevanni foundries.

He laughed to himself in disbelief, and stood and hobbled away.

10

The next morning, Gregor held his head high as he walked through the southern gates of the outermost Dandolo Chartered wall. As he moved from Commons to campo, the change was abrupt, and severe: from muddy pathways to clean cobblestone; from the odor of smoke and dung and rot to the faint aroma of spiced meat being grilled nearby; and then, of course, there were the people in the streets, whose clothing changed to being clean and colorful, whose skin became clear and unblemished, who suddenly walked without any ailment or deformity or drunkenness or exhaustion.

It never failed to amaze him: you walked exactly one dozen feet, and fell out of one civilization and into another. This was the outer campo too, not even one of the nicer parts. Behind each door, he thought, another world waits. And another and another and another…

He counted his steps as he walked across the threshold. “One,” he said. “Two…Three and four…”

The guardhouse door popped open, and a Dandolo house guard in full scrived armor trotted up to keep pace with him. “Morning, sir!” called the guard.

“Good morning,” said Gregor. Four steps — they’re getting slow.

“Going far, Founder?” asked the guard. “Would you like me to call you a carriage?”

“My formal title, lieutenant,” he said, glancing at the guard’s helm for his rank, “is Captain. Not Founder.”

“I see, Foun…I mean, I see, sir.” He coughed nervously. “But the sachet you carry, ah, it notified us tha—”

“Yes,” said Gregor. “I know what my sachet told you. Either way, there’s no need for a carriage, lieutenant. I am content to walk.” He bowed to the man, touching his brow with two fingers. “Good morning!”

The guard, confused, stopped and watched Gregor leave. “Good day, sir…”

Gregor Dandolo walked from the outer campo wall to the second wall gates. And, again, he had to turn down another offer of a carriage — as he did at the third wall, and the fourth, penetrating deeper and deeper into the Dandolo Chartered campo. The guards offered the carriages with a nervous eagerness, because Gregor’s sachet was flagged as founder lineage — and the idea of founderkin just walking around the campo on their own two feet was unthinkable to most Tevannis.

The truth of it was, he would have loved a carriage ride — his head still ached from that poison that girl had put in him, and he’d already walked damn near across Tevanne the night before, looking for Sark. But Gregor ignored all offers. He ignored them just as he ignored the flocks of floating lanterns that coiled above the Dandolo campo streets, and the bubbling fountains, and the tall, white stone towers, and the beautiful women picking their way through the campo parks, adorned in silk robes and sporting faces painted with intricate, curling patterns.

This could have been his — as the son of Ofelia Dandolo, he could have lived in these gleaming streets like the most pampered princeling in all the world. And maybe, once, he would have.

But then Dantua had happened. And Gregor, and perhaps the world, had changed.

Though from the way everyone on the Dandolo campo was acting, maybe the world had changed again, just last night. People looked grave, solemn, and shaken, and they talked quietly, in hushed, anxious tones.

Gregor understood how they felt all too well. Scriving was the foundation of their entire society. After the blackouts last night, they were no doubt worrying their entire way of life could crumble to pieces, much like the Zoagli block, and take them with it.

Finally he came to the campo illustris — the administrative facility, where the elites governed all merchant house duties. It was a massive, white structure, with a huge, vaulted ceiling supported by a curling vanguard of riblike buttresses. Countless officials trotted up and down the clean white steps at the front, gathering in clumps to discuss business in hushed tones. They stared at Gregor as he walked by, tall and only somewhat washed and wearing his leather armor and Waterwatch sash. He gave them no notice, leapt up the steps, and strode into the building.

As Gregor paced through the illustris, he reflected that the whole place felt more like a temple than an administrative building: too many columns, too much stained glass, too many floating lanterns drifting amongst the vaulted ceilings, suggesting a divine light above. But perhaps that was the intended effect: perhaps it made those who worked here believe they worked the very will of God, rather than the will of Gregor’s mother.

It could be worse, he thought. It could be like the Mountain of the Candianos, which is practically its own damn city, if not its own nation.

He trotted up the back spiral staircase until he came to the fourth floor, where he took a winding hallway to a huge, imposing wooden door. Gregor hauled it open and walked in.

The room within was long, ornate, and it ended in a huge, grand desk that sat before an undistinguished door. A man sat at the desk, small and plump and bald, and he looked up as Gregor entered. Even though Gregor was quite far away, he could hear the man’s miserable sigh at the sight of him: “Oh, for God’s sakes…”

Gregor walked across the room to the desk, glancing to either side as he did. The walls were covered with paintings, and he knew most of them by heart, especially the more recent ones. He eyed them as he walked through the room — he’d been so distracted with his case, he’d forgotten to prepare himself for this.

The painting he most dreaded sat at the end of the room, behind the desk. It showed a man, nobly built, nobly arraigned, and nobly positioned, standing behind a chair with his chin and chest thrust out. In the chair sat a tall, handsome, dark-skinned woman with curling black hair. Beside her stood a young boy of about five, dressed in black velvet, and sitting in her lap was a fat infant, wrapped in gold robes.

Gregor stared at the painting — especially at the woman in the chair, and the fat infant. His gaze lingered on the baby. That is how she still thinks of me, he thought. Despite all my deeds and scars and accomplishments, I am still a fat, gurgling infant to her, bouncing in her lap.

His eyes moved to the boy in black velvet — his brother, Domenico. He looked at the face of the painted boy, so earnest and hopeful, and felt a shard of sorrow somewhere within him. The child that had posed for this painting could never have known he’d die in less than ten years alongside his father in a carriage crash.

The bald man at the desk cleared his throat, and said, “I…assume…that…” The words seemed to reluctantly drip out of him, like poison from a wound. “That you wish to…see her.”

Gregor turned to him. “If I could, sir,” he said chipperly.

“Now. You want to see her…now? Of all times?”

“If I could,” said Gregor again. “Sir.”

The bald man considered it. “You are aware,” he said, “that we have had a major scriving incident just last night. One we are still recovering from.”

“I did hear rumor of that, sir.” Gregor smiled at him. He kept smiling, showing all of his large white teeth, while the bald man glowered back.

“Fine,” said the bald man, exasperated. “Fine, fine…” He sat forward and rang a bell. The door behind him opened, and a young man of about twelve dressed in Dandolo house colors popped out.

The bald man opened his mouth, but struggled with what to say. He gestured to Gregor, then at the door, and, seeming to surrender, wearily said, “You see?”

The boy nodded and ducked back into the doorway. They waited.

The bald man glared at Gregor. Gregor smiled back at the bald man. Then, after what felt like hours, the boy popped back out again.

“She will see you, Founder,” he said, his voice low and passive — the tone of someone used to being spoken over.

“Thank you,” said Gregor. He bowed to the man, and followed the boy into the sanctum beyond.

To be the descendant of a merchant house founder was to wield an almost incomprehensible degree of wealth, power, and resources in Tevanne. One of the Morsini sons only took meetings in his private gardens, while mounted atop a giraffe bedecked in a jeweled saddle cover and bridle. Tribuno Candiano’s sister had apparently had a silk dress designed for each day of the year: each gown was labored over by dozens of seamstresses, worn once, and then promptly disposed of.

So it was probably inevitable that Ofelia Dandolo, as not only of founder lineage but also head of the house itself, was a supremely impressive person. But what Gregor found most impressive about his mother was that she actually worked.

She was not like Torino Morsini, head of Morsini House, who was hugely fat and often hugely drunk, and usually spent his time trying to stuff his aged candle into every nubile girl on his campo. Nor was she like Eferizo Michiel, who had retired from the burdensome life of responsibility to pass his days painting portraits, landscapes, and nudes — quite a lot of nudes, actually, Gregor had heard, chiefly of young men.

No — Ofelia Dandolo passed her days, and indeed most of her nights, behind desks: she read and wrote letters behind desks, sat through meetings behind desks, and listened to her countless advisers prattle on and on from behind desks. And since that madness in Foundryside and the Greens last night, Gregor was not at all surprised to find her seated behind her desk in her personal office, reviewing reports.

She did not look up as he walked in. He stood before her, hands clasped behind his back, and waited for her to finish. He eyed her as she read a report: she was wearing evening attire, and her face was painted in an ornate pattern, with a red bar across her eyes and blue curls emanating from her blue lips. Her hair was also done up in an elaborate bun. He suspected she’d received news of the Foundryside blackout during a party of some sort, and had been working ever since.

She was still grand, and beautiful, and strong. But she was also looking her age, he thought. Perhaps it was the job. She’d taken over for the merchant house after Gregor’s father had died in the carriage accident, and that had been, what, twenty-three years ago? Twenty-four? He’d assumed she’d eventually start relinquishing duties, but his mother had not — instead, she’d taken on more and more responsibilities until she practically was Dandolo Chartered, and all of its policies and decisions emanated solely from her person.

Ten years of that would kill a normal person. Ofelia Dandolo had managed two decades — but he wasn’t sure she had a full third in her.

“Your brow is damp,” she said quietly — without looking up.

“Pardon?” he said, surprised.

“Your brow is damp, my dear.” She scratched out a response to the report, and set it aside. “With sweat, I assume. You must have walked a long way. I will assume you refused a carriage from all the house guards? Again?”

“I did.”

She looked at him, and a lesser person would have winced: Ofelia Dandolo’s amber eyes shone bright against her dark skin, and they had the curious power of making her will feel almost palpable. A glare from her felt like a slap. “And I will assume you took smug delight in confusing and disappointing them?”

Gregor opened his mouth, unsure what to say.

“Oh, never mind,” she said, setting her report aside. She looked him over. “I hope, Gregor, that you’ve come to offer aid to your campo. I hope that you heard about the disasters in Foundryside, about how all the scrivings failed in what seems to have been a half-mile radius across the Commons, and came straight here to see how you could assist. I hope these things — but I do not expect these things. Because I doubt if even this disaster could make you come back to us, Gregor.”

“Was Dandolo Chartered really affected by the blackout?”

She laughed lowly. “Was it affected? A foundry lexicon failed in the Spinola site, right next to the Greens. We were lucky we had two others in the region to keep everything running smoothly. Otherwise things would have graduated from disaster to outright catastrophe.”

This was startling. A foundry lexicon was an intricate, bafflingly complicated, and stupendously expensive device that essentially made all scrived devices work on the campo. “Do you suspect sabotage?”

“Possibly,” she said reluctantly. “Yet whatever happened to us also hit the Michiel campo bordering Foundryside. It doesn’t seem to have discriminated much. But you’re not really here to talk about that — are you, Gregor?”

“No, Mother,” he said. “I’m afraid I am not.”

“Then…what are you interrupting me for, at this worst of all moments?”

“The fire.”

At first she looked surprised, then furious. “Really.”

“Really,” he said.

“Our entire civilization has just been gravely threatened,” she said, “and yet you want to talk about your little project? About resuscitating your…municipal militia?”

“City police,” said Gregor quickly.

She sighed. “Ah, Gregor…I know you were worried the fire had ruined your project, but trust me, that’s the last thing on everyone’s minds right now. Everyone’s probably forgotten all about it! I know I did.”

“I wanted to make you aware, Mother,” said Gregor, stung, “that I believe I am mere moments away from catching the saboteur that set the fire. I was in the Commons last night.”

Her mouth fell open. “You were in the Commons? Last night? When—”

“Yes. When all hell broke loose. I was making inquiries at the time — and was quite successful, if I might say so. I have located the thief, and will almost certainly capture them tonight. When I do so, I would like to bring them before the Tevanni council.”

“Ahhh,” she said. “You want a big, showy, public trial — to clear your name.”

“To make it clear that the Waterwatch project is sustainable,” said Gregor. “Yes. So…if you would begin clearing the way for that process…”

She smirked. “I thought, my dear, that you didn’t like using your family access,” she said.

This was true. His mother was one of the major committee chairs for the Council of Tevanne. The council was entirely populated by merchant-house elites, and generally ensured that the houses didn’t excessively sabotage or plagiarize one another — though the definition of “excessively” was getting more nebulous these days. It was the closest thing the city of Tevanne had to a real government, though in Gregor’s opinion, it was not that close at all.

As such, Gregor could have used his mother’s position to press all kinds of advantages — yet he’d always refrained, thus far. But not today.

“If it is to advance the greater good of Tevanne,” said Gregor, “then I will use any means necessary.”

“Yes, yes. Gregor Dandolo, friend of the common man.” She sighed. “Odd that your solution is to start chucking so many common men in jail.”

Gregor’s natural response would have been—It is not just common men that I wish to jail. But he wasn’t so stupid as to come out and say that.

She considered it. A handful of moths flitted down out of the ceiling to rotate around her head in a drunken halo. She waved a hand at them. “Shoo, now. Damn things…We can’t even keep our offices clean.” She glared at Gregor. “Fine. I will initiate the proceedings — but the blackout takes precedence. Once that’s resolved, we will move on to your Waterwatches and your thieves and scoundrels. All right?”

“And…how long will that take?”

“How in the hell should I know, Gregor?” she snapped. “We don’t even know what happened, let alone what to do next!”

“I see,” he said.

“Are you satisfied?” she asked, picking up her quill.

“Almost,” he said. “I had one last request…”

She sighed and put her quill back down.

“Would it be possible for me to consult with the Dandolo hypatus?” he said. “I had some questions I wanted to ask him.”

She stared at him. “With…with Orso?” she said, incredulous. “Whatever do you want to do that for?”

“I had some scriving questions related to the theft.”

“But…but you could go to any scriver for that!”

“I could go to ten different scrivers and get ten different answers,” said Gregor. “Or I could go to the smartest scriver in Tevanne and get the right one.”

“At the moment, I doubt if he could give it to you,” said Ofelia. “Not only is he occupied with the blackout, but I’ve recently come to wonder if he’s even more insane than I’d previously thought.”

That piqued Gregor’s interest. “Oh? Why would that be, Mother?”

She seemed to debate whether to answer, then sighed. “Because he’s screwed up. Considerably. When they found the ruins in Vialto, Orso lobbied me heavily to try to secure some of the items before they were snatched up by our competitors. I consented — reluctantly — and Orso did his utmost to acquire one curious relic. It was an old, cracked stone box, but it had some similarities to a lexicon. Orso spent a fortune getting it — but then, while in transit between Vialto and here, it…vanished.”

“It was lost at sea?” said Gregor. “Or was it stolen?”

“No one can say,” said Ofelia. “But the loss was significant. I have seen the numbers in the balance books. They are large, and not positive. I forbade any future efforts. He didn’t take it well.”

So…Orso Ignacio might have been robbed before, thought Gregor. He made a note of it.

“If you really want to talk to Orso Ignacio,” she said, “you’ll need to go to the Spinola Foundry — the one bordering the Greens. That’s where the lexicon failed — so that, of course, is where Orso is, trying to figure out what the hell happened.” She looked at him sharply. Gregor suppressed a wince at the sight of it. “I know I can’t tell you what to do, Gregor. You’ve always made that clear. But I strongly suggest you consider going elsewhere with your questions. Orso is not someone to trifle with — and after the blackouts, I’ve no doubt he’ll be in the foulest of foul moods.”

He smiled politely. “I have dealt with worse people,” he said. “I believe I can handle myself, Mother.”

She smiled. “I’m sure you think so.”

“Son of a scrumming bitch!” echoed the voice up the stairs. “Son of a worthless, toothless, shitting whore!”

Gregor paused at the top of the Spinola Foundry stairs and glanced at the foundry guard, who gave him a nervous shrug. The voice continued screaming.

“What do you mean, you think the records are accurate? How do you shitting think records are accurate? Accuracy is a binary scrumming state — they either are accurate, or they ARE! NOT!” These last two words were screamed so loud, they genuinely hurt Gregor’s ears, even from here. “Are you married, man? Do you have children? If so, I’m stunned, I’m just flummoxed, because I’d have thought you were so damned stupid you wouldn’t know how to stick your candle in your wife! Maybe check around and see if there are any other slack-jawed idiots about with a strong resemblance to your grubby spawn! I swear to God, if you aren’t back here in one hour with records that are genuinely, unimpeachably, undeniably accurate, I’ll personally paint your balls with fig jelly and toss you stark naked into a hog pit! Now, get out of my goddamn sight!”

There was the sound of frantic footfalls below. Then silence.

“It’s been like that all morning,” said the foundry guard quietly. “I’d have thought his voice would’ve given out by now.”

“I see,” said Gregor. “Thank you.” He started off down the stairs to the lexicon chamber below.

The stairs went down, and down, and down, into the dark.

As Gregor descended, things began to feel…different.

They felt heavier. Slower. Denser. Like he was walking not through dank, musty air but was instead at the bottom of the sea, with miles and miles of water pressing down on him.

How I hate getting near lexicons, thought Gregor.

Like most people, Gregor did not understand the mechanics of scriving. He could not tell one sigillum from another. In fact, he couldn’t even differentiate one house’s scriving language from another, which was even more fundamental. But he knew how scriving worked, in broad terms.

The basic sigillums were symbols that naturally occurred within the world. No one knew exactly where the base sigils came from. Some said the Occidentals had invented them. Others said that the symbols were written into the world by the Creator, by God Himself, that He had defined reality by encoding it with these sigillums, forging the world much as the foundries forged scrived rigs. No one was sure.

Each basic sigillum referenced specific things: there were symbols for stone, wind, air, fire, growth, leaves, and even ones for more abstract phenomena, for “change” or “stop” or “start” or “sharp.” There were millions, if not billions, of them. If you knew these symbols — though few did — then there was nothing stopping you from using them. Even in the most primitive settlement out in the middle of nowhere, if you were trying to carve wood into some intricate shape, you could inscribe it with the base sigil for “clay” or “mud,” and this tiny alteration would make the wood slightly, slightly more malleable.

But despite all the legends around its origins, basic scriving was very restricted. To start with, its effects were minor, no more than a slight nudge. But worse, if you wanted to tell an ax, “You are very durable, very sharp, very light, and you part the wood of the cedar tree as if it were water”—something much more complicated than just “sharp” or “hard,” in other words — such a command would be fifty or sixty sigils long. You’d run out of room on the ax blade — and you’d also have to get the sigil logic just right so the ax blade would understand what it was supposed to be. You had to be specific, and definite — and this was hard.

But then the city of Tevanne had discovered an old cache of Occidental records in a cave down the coast. And in those records they’d discovered something crucial.

The sigil for “meaning.” And then some cunning Tevanni had gotten a brilliant idea.

They’d figured out that you could take a blank slate of iron, write out that extensive, complicated scriving command; but then, you could follow it with the sigil for “meaning,” and next write a completely new sigil, one you yourself just made up. Then that new sigil would essentially mean “You are very durable, very sharp, very light, and you part the wood of the cedar tree as if it were water”—and then you’d just have to write that one sigil on your ax blade.

Or on a dozen blades. Or a thousand. It didn’t matter. Every blade would do the same thing.

After that discovery, much more complicated scriving commands were suddenly possible — yet even this was still quite limited.

For one thing, you had to stay close to whichever slate of iron had the commands written on it. If you walked too far away, then the ax blade essentially forgot what that new sigil was supposed to mean, and it stopped working. It no longer had a reference point, in a way.

The other problem was that if you wrote too many complicated scriving definitions on one slate of metal, it had a tendency to burst into flames. A common object such as an iron plate, it seemed, could only bear so much meaning.

So the city of Tevanne, and its many nascent scriving houses, then had a problem to solve: how were they to house all the definitions and meanings for these complicated scrivings without having everything burst into flames and melt?

Which was why they’d invented lexicons.

Lexicons were huge, complicated, durable machines built to store and maintain thousands and thousands of incredibly complex scriving definitions, and bear the burden of all of that concentrated meaning. With a lexicon, you didn’t have to worry about wandering a dozen feet too far and suddenly having all your scrived devices fail on you: lexicons could amplify and project the meaning of those definitions for great distances in all directions — enough to cover part of a campo, if not more. The closer you were to a lexicon, though, the better your scrivings worked — which was why a lexicon was always the beating heart of any foundry. You wanted all of your biggest, most intricate rigs to work at peak efficiency.

And since lexicons were the beating heart of foundries, they were, in effect, the beating heart of all of Tevanne.

But they were complicated. Incredibly complicated. Astoundingly complicated. Only geniuses and madmen, everyone agreed, could truly understand a lexicon, and the difference between the two was almost nil.

So it probably said something that out of all the hypati in the entire history of Tevanne, Orso Ignacio understood lexicons better than anybody. After all, Orso had been the one to invent the combat lexicon — a smaller version of the regular kind, which ships and teams of oxen could haul around. That device was still quite large, complicated, and improbably expensive, and it could only manage to power a cohort’s armaments — but without that contribution, Tevanne would have never captured the Durazzo Sea, and all the cities around it.

Gregor knew quite a bit about combat lexicons. He’d had one at the siege of Dantua — right up until he didn’t. So he also knew quite a bit about what it was like to lose a lexicon. And he thought he could understand how Orso Ignacio felt right now. Perhaps he would be able to work the man from that angle.

He found himself promptly disabused of these notions when he entered the lexicon chamber and instantly heard the words, “Who the shit are you?”

Gregor blinked in the dim light while his eyes adjusted. The lexicon chamber was wide, dark, and mostly empty. There was a thick glass wall at the back with an open door set in its center, and a tall, thin man stood in the doorway, staring at Gregor. He wore a thick apron, thick gloves, and a pair of thick, dark goggles. He held in his hands a threatening-looking tool, some kind of bendy, looped metal wand with a lot of sharp teeth.

“P-pardon?” said Gregor.

The man tossed the wand away, lifted his goggles, and a pair of pale, deep-set, harsh eyes stared at him. “I said, who. The shit. Are you?” asked Orso Ignacio, this time much louder.

Orso had the look of an artist or sculptor who’d just stepped away from his studio, wearing a stained, beige shirt and off-white hose under his apron, and his beaked shoes — customary for the highest echelons — were ratty and had holes in the toes. His white hair rose up in a wild, unkempt shock, and his once-handsome face was dark and lined and skeletally thin, as if the man had sat for too long in a fish curer’s shed.

Gregor cleared his throat. “I apologize. Good morning, Hypatus. I’m terribly sorry to interrupt you during this most diffic—”

Orso rolled his eyes and looked across the room. “Who is he?”

Gregor peered through the shadows, and saw that there was someone else at the back of the room, someone he’d missed: a tall, rather pretty girl with a still, closed face. She was sitting on the floor before a tray of scriving blocks — an abacus-like device that scrivers used to test scriving strings — and she was popping the blocks in and out with a frightening speed, like a professional scivoli player moving their pieces across the board, creating a steady clackclackclack sound.

The girl paused and glanced at Gregor, her face immaculately inscrutable. “I believe,” she said, in a quiet, even voice, “that that is Captain Gregor Dandolo.”

Gregor frowned at her, surprised. He’d never met this girl in his life. The girl calmly resumed slotting the blocks in and out of the tray.

“Oh,” said Orso. “Ofelia’s boy?” He peered at Gregor. “My God, you’ve gained weight.”

The girl — Gregor suspected she was Orso’s assistant of some kind — cringed ever so slightly.

But Gregor was not insulted. The last time Orso had glimpsed him he’d probably just returned from the wars. “Yes,” said Gregor. “That tends to happen when a person goes from a place that has no food at all to a place that has some.”

“Fascinating,” said Orso. “So. What the hell are you doing down here, Captain?”

“Yes, I—”

“You’re still slumming it down at the waterfront, right?” His eyes suddenly burned with a strange fury. “If there is still a waterfront to slum in, that is.”

“Yes, and in fact I—”

“Well, as you may notice, Captain…” He held his hands out and gestured to the large, dark, empty room. “Our current environs are bereft of waters, as well as fronts of all kinds. Not much for you to do here, it seems. Got plenty of doors, though. Loads of ’em.” Orso turned to examine something behind him. “I advise you scrumming make use of one. Any one, I frankly don’t care.”

Gregor strode forward into the chamber, and said in a slightly louder voice, “I am here to ask you, Hypatus…” Then he stopped, wincing as a headache pulsed through his skull, and rubbed his forehead.

Orso looked at him. “Yes?” he said.

Gregor took a deep breath. “I’m sorry.”

“Take your time.”

He swallowed and tried to collect himself — but the headache persisted. “Does that…does that go away?”

“No.” Orso was smiling unpleasantly. “Never been near a lexicon before?”

“I have, but this one seems very…”

“Big?”

“Yes. Big. The machine is off, isn’t it? I mean — that’s the problem, correct?”

Orso scoffed and turned to stare at the device behind him. “Right now, it is not ‘off,’ as you put it — the more accurate term is reduced. It’s difficult to turn a lexicon just off—it’s not a damned windmill, it’s a collection of assertions about physics and reality. Turning it off would be like, oh, converting a striper into all the carbon and calcium and nitrogen and whatever else makes it up — conceptually feasible? Sure, why not. Practically possible? Not scrumming likely.”

“I…see,” said Gregor. Though in truth he was nowhere close to seeing.

Orso’s assistant exhaled softly, as if to say—Here he goes again.

Orso grinned at Gregor over his shoulder. “Want to come closer? Take a look?”

Gregor knew Orso was goading him — the closer you got to a lexicon, the more uncomfortable it felt. But Gregor wanted to put Orso’s guard down, however he could — and allowing himself to be toyed with was one option.

Squinting in pain, he walked over to the glass wall and looked in at the lexicon. It resembled a huge metal can lying on its side, only the can had been cut into tiny slivers or discs — thousands of them, or maybe even millions. He knew in vague terms that each disc was full of scriving definitions — the instructions or arguments that convinced scrived devices to work the way they ought to — though he was aware that he understood this to about the same degree that he understood that his brain was what did all his thinking for him.

“I’ve never seen one this close before,” said Gregor.

“Almost no one has,” said Orso. “The stress of all that meaning, forcing reality to comply with so many arguments — it makes the thing hot as hell, and damned difficult to be around. And yet, last night this device — all its assertions about reality — went poof, and turned off. Like blowing out a damned candle. Which, as I have just generously described to you, ought to be impossible.”

“How?” asked Gregor.

“Beats the ever-living shit out of me!” said Orso with savage cheer. He joined the girl at the scriving blocks and watched as she plugged in strings one after the other, the tiny metal cubes flying in and out as her fingers danced over the tray with blinding speed. Each time, a tiny glass at the top of the tiles would glow softly. “Now all kinds of goddamn strings work!” he said. “They work perfectly, implacably, and inarguably! How comforting. It’s like the whole thing never happened.”

“I see,” said Gregor. “And, may I ask — who is this, exactly?” He nodded at the girl.

“Her?” Orso seemed surprised by the question. “She’s my fab.”

Gregor did not know what a “fab” was, and the girl seemed uninterested in answering, ignoring them as she tested string after string of sigils. He decided to move on.

“Was it sabotage?” he asked. “Another merchant house?”

“Again — beats the ever-living shit out of me,” said Orso. “I’ve checked all the infrastructural scrivings that keep the thing afloat, and those strings are all working away, cheery as can be. The lexicon itself doesn’t show any damage. It shows no sign of having been properly or improperly reduced. If the dumb piece of shit who’s in charge of maintenance could confirm the thing’s regularly scheduled checkups, I could rule that out. And the tiles are all arranged in some pretty basic, boring, conventional configurations. Right?”

His assistant nodded. “Correct, sir.” She gestured to the walls behind her. “Manufacturing, security, lighting, and transport. That’s the extent of the wall’s load.”

Gregor looked at the walls and slowly realized what she meant. “The wall” was the industry term for a tremendous wall of thousands of white tiles, covered in sigils, which slid up or down on a short track. Each tile represented a scriving definition: if the tile was in the up position, the definition was inactive, and thus did not work; if it was in the down position, then it did.

This sounded simple, but only a scriver with decades of high-level training could look at a wall and tell exactly what was going on. A lexicon’s wall, of course, was carefully watched and maintained: if someone slid the wrong tile up, and deactivated a crucial definition, it could, say, render all the scrived carriages in the Dandolo campo suddenly unable to stop. Which would be bad.

Or, if someone slid several critical tiles down, and activated some extremely complicated definitions, then it could overload the lexicon, and then…

Well. That would be much, much worse.

Because a lexicon was essentially a giant violation of reality — that was why it was so unpleasant to be close to one. The consequences of a lexicon going haywire were too horrific to contemplate. And this was the chief reason that the city of Tevanne, with all of its power, corruption, and fractious merchant houses, had yet to experience much deliberate turmoil: as the entire city was essentially maintained by a system of huge bombs, that tended to make people cautious.

“How troublesome,” said Gregor.

“Yes. Isn’t it?” Orso peered at him suspiciously. “Doesn’t your mother know all this? I thought I’d been a good boy and properly kept her up to date.”

“I cannot speak to my mother’s knowledge regarding your situation here, Hypatus,” said Gregor. “I’m not here about the blackouts. Rather, I had a question for you regarding the waterfront.”

“The waterfront?” said Orso, irritated. “Why the hell would you bother me about that?”

“I wanted to ask you about the theft that took place.”

“What a waste of time! You can’t expect me to…” He paused. “Wait. Theft? You mean the fire.”

“No, no,” said Gregor politely. “I mean the theft. Our investigations suggest that the fire was set as a distraction to allow a thief to get at our safes.”

“How do you know that?” he demanded.

“Because we have looked in our safes,” said Gregor. “And found something missing.”

Orso blinked, very slowly. “Ah,” he said. He was quiet for a moment. “I…had thought the safes burned down along with the Waterwatch headquarters. I thought they were destroyed.”

“That was nearly the case,” said Gregor. “But when it became clear that the fire would spread, I had all of our safes loaded on carts and removed to safety.”

Again, Orso blinked. “Really.”

“Yes,” said Gregor. “And we found something was stolen. A small, plain, wooden box, from safe 23D.”

Orso and his assistant had gone very, very still. Gregor could not help but feel pleased.

It’s nice to be right, sometimes.

“Odd…” said Orso carefully. “But you said you had a question for me — and I’ve yet to hear a question, Captain.”

“Well, I did some follow-ups in the Commons last night, trying to track down the thief. I located their fence — the person who sells the things a thief steals — and found a note in their belongings referencing the Dandolo hypatus, in relation to this theft, and fire. My question, Hypatus, would be — why do you think that is?”

“I’ve no idea.” The man’s face — which had previously been riddled with contempt, impatience, and suspicion — was now perfectly bereft of almost all emotion. “You think I commissioned the theft, Captain?”

“I think little so far, because I know little so far, sir. You could have been the person who was robbed.”

Orso smirked. “You think someone stole scriving definitions from me?”

A diversion. But Gregor was willing to be diverted for a bit. “Well…they are the most valuable thing in Tevanne, usually. And they can be quite small, sir.”

“They can be. That’s true.” Orso stood, walked over to a shelf, pulled out three huge tomes, each about seven inches thick, and walked back over to Gregor. “Do you see these, Captain?”

“I do.”

Orso dropped one on the ground, and it made a large thud. “That is the opening definition for reducing a lexicon.” Then the second — which also made a huge thud. “This is a continuation of that definition.” He dropped the third. “And that is the closing definition for reducing a lexicon. Do you know how I know that?”

“I…”

“Because I wrote them, Captain. I wrote every sigil and every string in those big goddamn books.” He stepped closer. “A scriving definition might have fit in a small box. But not one of mine.”

It was a good performance. Gregor was almost impressed. “I see, sir. And nothing else was stolen from you?”

“Not that I’m aware of.”

“Well, then. I suppose the fence made the note concerning you by accident, perhaps.”

“Or you misread it,” said Orso.

Gregor nodded. “Or that. We shall find out soon, I believe.”

“Soon? Why?”

“Well…I think I am close to catching the thief. And unless my instincts are incorrect, I think that their arrangements to sell what was stolen have gone quite wrong. Which means they might still have what was stolen. So we might soon find it, and get to the bottom of all this.” He smiled broadly at Orso. “Which I’m sure we all find reassuring.”

Orso was perfectly frozen now — the man was barely breathing. Then he said, “Yes. We certainly do, I’m sure.”

“Yes.” Gregor looked at the grand machine behind him. “Is it true what they say about lexicons, and the hierophants, sir?”

“What?” said Orso, startled.

“About the hierophants. I’ve heard old stories about how when people were close to a true hierophant — like Crasedes the Great himself — they suffered from powerful migraines. Much like how one feels these days, when close to a lexicon. Is that true, sir?”

“How should I know?”

“I understand that you’re interested in the Occidentals yourself, yes?” asked Gregor. “Or you were, once.”

Orso glared at him, and the severity of his harsh, pale eyes rivaled Ofelia Dandolo’s stare. “Once. Yes. But no longer.”

For a moment the two men just stared at each other, Gregor smiling placidly, Orso’s face fixed in a furious glare.

“Now,” said Orso. “If you will excuse us, Captain.”

“Of course. I will let you get back to your business, sir,” said Gregor. “Sorry to trouble you.” He started toward the steps, but paused. “Oh, I’m sorry, but — young lady?”

The girl looked up. “Yes?”

“I apologize, but I believe I have been quite rude. I don’t think I ever learned your name.”

“Oh. It’s Grimaldi.”

“Thank you — but I meant your first name?”

She glanced at Orso, but he still had his back to her. “Berenice,” she said.

Gregor smiled. “Thank you. It was nice meeting you both.” Then he turned and trotted up the stairs.

Orso Ignacio listened as the captain’s footfalls faded. Then he and Berenice turned to look at each other.

“Sir…” said Berenice.

Orso shook his head and lifted a finger to his lips. He pointed at the various hallways and doors leading out of the lexicon chamber, then pointed to his ears: Could be people listening.

She nodded. “Workshop?” she asked.

“Workshop,” he said.

They exited the lexicon chamber, called a carriage, and rode back to the Hypatus Department of the inner Dandolo enclaves, a sprawling, rambling structure that somewhat resembled a university. Orso and Berenice walked in, then silently climbed the stairs to Orso’s workshop. The thick, heavy wooden door felt Orso coming, and began opening. He’d scrived it to sense his blood — a deviously difficult trick — but he was impatient, and shoved it open the rest of the way.

He waited for the door to shut after him. Then he exploded.

“Shit. Shit! Shit!” he screamed.

“Ah,” said Berenice. “Yes. I agree, sir.”

“I…I thought the goddamn thing had been destroyed!” cried Orso. “Along with the rest of the goddamn waterfront! But…It was stolen? Again? I’ve been robbed again?”

“It would seem so, sir,” said Berenice.

“But how? We kept it between us, Berenice! We only discussed it in this room! How did someone find out again?”

“That is concerning, sir,” said Berenice.

“Concerning! It’s a hell of a lot more than conce—”

“True, sir. But the larger question is…” She glanced at him, anxious. “What happens if Captain Dandolo does as he suggested, and catches this thief tonight — and they still have the item in their possession?”

Orso went pale. “Then when he brings the thief back…Ofelia will find out.”

“Yes, sir.”

“She’ll find out that I paid for another expedition, another artifact.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And…and she’ll find out how I paid for it! And how much.” Orso grabbed the sides of his head. “Oh, God! All the thousands of duvots I took, all that money I took, all that money I arranged in the ledgers just right!”

She nodded. “That is my concern, sir.”

“Shit,” said Orso, pacing. “Shit! Shit! We have to…We have to…” He looked at her. “You have to follow him.”

“I beg your pardon, sir?”

“Follow him!” said Orso. “You have to follow him, Berenice!”

“Me, sir?”

“Yes!” He ran to a cabinet and grabbed a small box. “He can’t have left yet. Gregor Dandolo walks all over the campo, like an idiot! Ofelia complains about it all the time! Grab a carriage, go to the southern gates, wait for him, and follow him! And…” He fumbled with the box, frantic, and snatched something out of it. “Take this.”

He shoved what appeared to be a small, scrived strip of tin into her hands, with small tabs at the top and the bottom. “A twinned plate, sir?” she asked.

“Yes!” he said. “I’ll keep its pair. Ah, let’s see — snap off the top tab if Gregor catches the thief. Snap off the bottom if he doesn’t. And snap off both if he catches them and they still have the artifact! If the thief gets away, follow them if you can, and find out where they are. Whatever you do, the same thing will happen to my plate, so I’ll know exactly what’s happened.”

“And you will stay here and do what, exactly, sir?”

“There are favors I can call in,” said Orso. “Debts people owe me, so that I can maybe cover up my own debts to the goddamn company! If Gregor Dandolo comes back here with that key, I need to make it look like I put just a toe out of line, not my whole damn body and thirty thousand scrumming duvots of Dandolo Chartered money!”

“And you plan to arrange all that in…” She glanced out the open workshop window at the Michiel clock tower. “Eight hours?”

“Yes!” he said. “But it would certainly be nice if Gregor Dandolo didn’t bring the thief back here, so then I’d never have to do this at all!”

“I hesitate to say this, sir,” she said. “But I’m surprised that you aren’t asking me to interfere with the captain’s efforts, and make sure the thief gets away. Then Ofelia would never know.”

He paused. “Gets away? Gets away? Berenice — that key could change everything, everything we know about scriving. There’s almost nothing I wouldn’t do to get it. If I’ve got to let Ofelia Dandolo cane me raw, so be it! I just don’t want her tossing me in the campo prison and keeping it for herself! And…” His face slowly twisted into an expression of pure, murderous rage. “And I certainly wouldn’t mind getting ahold of that damned thief — who has humiliated me not once, but twice—and seeing them dismembered right in front of my scrumming nose, either.”

11

asked Clef.

Seated on the edge of a Michiel rooftop, just downwind from the foundries, Sancia tried to shrug, and found she didn’t have the spirit.

said Clef.

Sancia thought about it.

She pointed north.

really big one?>

She sighed.

She laughed lowly. no one—has ever broken into the Mountain. You couldn’t break into that place even if you had the wand of Crasedes himself. I hear weird rumors about the Mountain — that it’s haunted or…well. Something worse.>

She yawned, stretched out, and lay down on the flat stone roof.

Clef paused.

Sancia lay on the roof, staring up at the sky. She thought about Sark, about her apartment — which, as barren as it was, now seemed like a paradise to her.

she said.

He thought about it. His voice grew soft, and a singsong cadence crept into it.

Sancia listened to his voice, her eyelids growing heavy.

She was glad to have him here. He was a friend when she had none.

he whispered.

She slept.

Sancia did not dream anymore, after the operation. Yet sometimes when she slept her memories returned to her, like bones bubbling up from the depths of a tar pit.

There on the roof, Sancia slept, and remembered.

She remembered the hot sun of the plantations, the bite and slash of the sugarcane leaves. She remembered the taste of old bread and the swarms of stinging flies and the tiny, hard cots in the shoddy huts.

She remembered the smell of shit and urine, festering in an open pit mere yards from where they slept. The sound of whimpering and weeping at night. The panicked cries from the woods as the guards hauled away a woman, or sometimes a man, and did as they pleased with them.

And she remembered the house on the hill, behind the plantation house, where the fancy men from Tevanne had worked.

She remembered the wagon that had trundled away from the house on the hill every day at dusk. And she remembered how the flies had followed that wagon so closely, its contents hidden beneath a thick tarp.

It hadn’t taken long for everyone to realize what was happening. One night, a slave would simply vanish — the next day, the wagon would trundle away from the house on the hill, a horrid reek following it.

Some had whispered that the missing slaves had escaped, but everyone had known this was a lie. Everyone had understood what was happening. Everyone knew about the screams they heard from the house on the hill, always at midnight. Always, always, always at midnight, every night.

Yet they’d been voiceless and helpless. Though they’d outnumbered the Tevannis eight to one on the island, the Tevannis bore armaments of terrifying power. They’d seen what happened when a slave raised a hand against their master, and wanted no part of it.

One night she’d tried to run away. They’d caught her easily. And perhaps because she’d tried to run away, they’d decided that she would be next.

Sancia remembered how the house had smelled. Alcohol and preservatives and putrefaction.

She remembered the white marble table in the middle of the basement, its shackles for her wrists and ankles. The thin, metal plates on the walls, covered with strange symbols, and the bright, sharp screws paired with them.

And she remembered the man down in that basement, short and thin and one eye just a blank socket, and she remembered how he was always dabbing at his brow, wiping away sweat.

She remembered how he’d looked at her, and smiled, and wearily said, “Well. Let’s see if this one works, then.”

That had been the first scriver Sancia had ever met.

She often remembered these things when she slept. And whenever she did, two things happened.

The first was that the scar on the side of her head would ache as if it were not a scar, but a brand.

And the second was that she forced herself to remember the one memory that made her feel safe.

Sancia remembered how everything had burned.

It was dark when she awoke. The first thing she did was slip her fingers out of her glove and touch the roof of the foundry.

The roof lit up in her mind. She felt the smoke coiling across it, felt the rain puddling at the base of the stacks, felt her own body, tiny and insignificant, pressing against its huge, stone skin. But most important, she felt she was alone. No one up here but her and Clef.

She started moving. She stood up, yawned, and rubbed her eyes.

said Clef.

There was a sharp crack from somewhere in the distance. Then something slammed into her knees, hard.

Sancia toppled over, crying out in surprise. As she did, she looked down and saw a strange, silvery rope was looping around her shins like a snare. She dimly realized that someone out on the rooftops across from her had hurled or fired this rope at her — whatever it was.

She crashed onto the stone roof. said Clef.

said Sancia. She tried to start crawling away, but found she couldn’t. The rope suddenly seemed impossibly heavy, as if it were not made of fibers but rather lead, and no matter how she heaved she could barely drag the coil of rope any farther than half an inch.

said Clef.

She never finished, because then there was a second crack. She looked up in time to see a silvery rope hurtling toward her from a rooftop nearly a block away. It stretched out like someone opening their arms for an embrace before slamming into her chest, knocking her back onto the roof.

She started to heave at it, but stopped.

could make it so dense that you fall through the roof, though.>

she said. She looked down at the cords — there seemed to be a locking mechanism on the side, awaiting a scrived key.

Sancia tried to pull him out of her shirt, but the second rope kept her arms tied fast to her body.

Sancia stared up at the night sky.

They waited there, looking up, the chants of the scrived ropes echoing in Sancia’s ears. Then, after a long while, she heard footsteps coming close. Heavy ones.

The bruised, scratched face of Captain Gregor Dandolo leaned overhead, a huge espringal on his back. He smiled politely. “Good evening again.”

Apparently Captain Dandolo had the control for the ropes: after adjusting something on his espringal, he was able to reduce their density enough that he could flip her over. He kept her bound, of course. “Something we used back in the wars, when capturing trespassers,” he said merrily. He grabbed the ropes with each hand, and picked her up much as one would a bound pig. “I’d know the smell of the Michiel foundry smoke like I would the scent of jasmine. I had to come here all the time to commission armaments. Flame and heat, as one would expect, are useful when making war.”

“Let me go, you dumb bastard!” she said. “Let me go!”

“No.” He somehow packed an infuriating amount of cheer into that one word.

“You put me in prison and they’ll kill me!”

“Who, your client?” he said, making his way for the stairs down. “They won’t be able to get at you. We’ll put you in the Dandolo jailhouse, which is quite safe. Your only concern will be me, young lady.”

Sancia bucked and kicked and snarled, but Dandolo was quite strong, and seemingly indifferent to her countless swears. He hummed happily as they started down the stairs.

He exited the stairs and hauled her across the street to a scrived carriage bearing the Dandolo loggotipo — the quill and the gear. “Our chariot awaits!” he said. He opened up the back, set her down on the floor, and reactivated the scrivings on the rope — there was some kind of dial on the side of the espringal — until she was pinned to the floor. “I hope this will be comfortable during our short ride.” Then he looked her over, took a breath, and said, “But first, I must ask…where is it?”

“Where’s what?”

“The item you stole,” he said. “The box.”

said Clef.

“I don’t have it!” said Sancia, inventing a story as fast as she could. “I gave it over to my client!”

“Did you,” he said flatly.

said Clef.

“Yes!” she said.

“Then why is your client trying to kill you, if you did as they asked? That is why you’re trying to escape the city — yes?”

“Yes,” said Sancia honestly. “And I don’t know why they’re out for me, or why they killed Sark.”

That gave him pause. “Sark is dead?”

“Yes.”

“Your client killed him?”

“Yes. Yes!”

He scratched his beard at his chin. “And I suppose you don’t know who your client is.”

“No. We were never to know names, and never to look in the box.”

“What did you do with it, then?”

Sancia decided on a story that was close to the truth. “Sark and I took the box to an appointed place and time — an abandoned fishery in the Greens. Four men showed up. Well-fed, campo sort. One took the box away and said he wanted to confirm it. Left us with the other three. Then there was some signal, and they stabbed Sark, and nearly killed me.”

“And you…fought your way out?”

She narrowed her eyes at him. “Yes,” she said defensively.

His large, dark eyes flicked over her small frame. “All by yourself?”

“I’m decent enough in a fight.”

“What fishery was this?”

“By the Anafesto Channel.”

He nodded, thinking about this. “Anafesto, eh. Well then,” he said. “Let’s go have a look, then!” He shut the door and climbed into the pilot’s seat.

“Look where?” said Sancia, startled.

“To the Greens,” said the captain. “To this fishery of which you speak. Presumably there will be dead bodies inside — yes? Bodies that might suggest exactly who paid you to rob my waterfront?”

“Wait! You…you can’t take me there!” she cried. “Just hours ago there were dozens of big bastards walking around there, looking to gut me!”

“Then you had better stay quiet, hadn’t you?”

Sancia lay perfectly still as the carriage rattled over the muddy Commons lanes to the Greens. This was possibly the worst outcome for her: she’d intended to never return to the Greens, let alone trussed up in Captain Gregor Dandolo’s carriage. she said.

said Clef.

Finally the carriage rolled to a stop. There was darkness outside the windows, but she could tell they were at the fisheries by the smell. Dread bloomed in her stomach as she remembered that night — just last night, though it seemed so long ago now.

For a long time, Dandolo said nothing. She imagined him sitting hunched in the cockpit, watching the streets and the fisheries. Then she heard his voice, quiet but confident: “Won’t be a moment.”

The carriage rocked slightly as he climbed out and slammed the door.

Sancia sat there, and waited. And waited.

asked Clef.

said Sancia.

Really small. Tiny, even, easy to miss. It’s…like a dot, stuck to the outside of the carriage, in the back.>

Sancia tensed up. She realized what must be happening. she said.

The cockpit door opened, and someone climbed in — presumably Gregor Dandolo, but she couldn’t see. Then she heard his voice quietly saying, “No bodies. None.”

Sancia blinked in shock. “But…That’s impossible.”

“Is it?”

“Yes. Yes!”

“Where ought there have been bodies, young miss?”

“Upstairs, and on the stairs!”

He looked over the back of the seat at her. “Are you sure? Positive?”

She glared at him. “Yes, damn it!”

He sighed. “I see. Well. I did find quite a bit of blood in both of those locations — so I must grudgingly admit that some aspect of your story appears to be at least somewhat true.”

She stared at the ceiling, outraged. “You were testing me!”

He nodded. “I was testing you.”

“You…You…”

“Do you know what was in the box?” he demanded suddenly.

Surprised, Sancia tried to recover. “I told you. No.”

He stared off into the distance, thinking. “And…I suppose you don’t know anything about the hierophants?” he said softly.

Her skin went cold, but she said nothing.

“Do you?” he asked.

“Beyond that they were magic giants?” said Sancia. “No.”

“I think you’re lying. I think you’re lying to me about something — about what was in the box, about how your deal went down, about how that blood got there.”

said Clef.

“And I think I’m about to save your life,” she said. “Again.”

“Beg pardon?”

“Walk around to the back of your carriage and look for something. It’ll be stuck on the bottom right. Looks like a button, one that shouldn’t be there.”

He narrowed his eyes at her. “What kind of ploy is this?”

“It’s not a ploy at all. Go on,” she said. “I’ll wait.”

He looked at her for a moment. Then he reached down and pulled at her ropes, confirming they were secure. Satisfied, he opened the door again and climbed out.

She listened to the crunch of his feet outside. He stopped somewhere behind the carriage.

said Clef.

Gregor walked around and looked through the back passenger window at her. “What’s this?” he asked, slightly outraged. He held it up — it looked like a big brass tack. “It’s scrived, on the bottom. What is this?”

“It’s like a construction scriving,” said Sancia. “It pulls at its twin, like a magnet.”

“And why,” he said, “would someone want to stick a construction scriving to my carriage?”

“Think for a second,” said Sancia. “They stick one half to your carriage. Then they tie another to a string. Then the string will act like a needle in a compass, always pointing to you like you’re true north.”

He stared at her. Then he looked around, peering at the streets behind him.

“Now you’re figuring it out,” asked Sancia. “See anyone?”

He was silent. Then he thrust his head back through the window. “How did you know it was there?” he demanded. “How did you know what it was?”

“Intuition,” she said.

“Nonsense,” he said. “Did you put it there?”

“When could I have done that? When I was sleeping on the roof, or tied up with your ropes? You need to let me go, Captain. They didn’t put it on there to track you — they put it on there to find me. They’re coming for me. They figured out you knew where I was, so they just followed you. And now you’re right here in it with me. Let me go, and maybe you can survive this.”

He was quiet for a while. It strangely pleased her — for so long it’d seemed like the captain had ice in his veins, so it was nice to see him sweat.

“Hm. No,” he said finally.

“What?” she said, surprised. “No?”

He dropped the button on the ground and stomped on it. “No.” He climbed back into the cockpit.

“Just…Just no?”

“Just no.” The carriage started off again.

“You…You goddamn fool!” she shouted at him. “You’re going to get us both killed!”

“You have damaged lives and careers through your actions,” said the captain. “Not just mine, but those of my officers. You harm those around you without reflection or compunction. I am obligated to amend that. And I will not permit any threat, any lie, or any attack to dissuade me from my path.”

Sancia stared at the ceiling, stunned. “You…You smug idiot!” she said. “What right do you have to speak such flowery words with the Dandolo name hanging over you?”

“What does that have to do with it?”

“Harming people, using people, damaging lives — that’s all the merchant houses ever do!” she said. “You people are every bit as dirty as I am!”

“That may be so,” said Dandolo with infuriating serenity. “This place has a tainted heart. That I’ve seen up-close. But I have also seen horrors out in the world, young lady. I learned to tame some of them. And I have come home to bring to this city the very thing I am delivering you to.”

“And what’s that?”

“Justice,” he said simply.

Her mouth fell open. “What? Are you serious?”

“As serious,” he said as the carriage turned, “as the grave.”

Sancia laughed, incredulous. “Oh, as simple as that? Just like dropping off a package? ‘Here, friends — have some justice!’ That’s the dumbest damned thing I ever heard!”

“All great things must start somewhere,” he said. “I started with the waterfront. Which you burned down. By capturing you, I can continue.”

She kept laughing. “You know, I almost believe you, you and your holy-crusade talk. But if you really are as noble and honest as you sound, Captain Dandolo, you won’t live long. If there’s one thing this city can’t tolerate, it’s honesty.”

“Let them try,” he said. “Many already have. I nearly died once. I can afford to do so agai—”

But he never finished his statement. Because then the carriage went careening out of control.

Gregor Dandolo had piloted scrived carriages many times before, so he was well acquainted with how to maneuver such a vehicle — but he had never piloted one that suddenly had only one front wheel.

And that seemed to have been what had happened, in the blink of an eye: at first they’d been rolling along — and then, suddenly the driver’s front wheel had simply exploded.

He shoved down the deceleration lever while also spinning the pilot wheel away from the damaged carriage wheel — but this proved unwise, because then the carriage jumped a wooden walkway, which snapped the other front wheel — which meant he no longer had any control over the carriage’s direction at all as it hurtled across the muddy lanes.

The world was rattling and quaking around him, but Gregor had sense enough to decipher where the carriage was now headed — and he saw that that space was occupied by a tall, stone building. One that looked well built.

“Oh dear,” he said. He leapt through into the back of the carriage, where the girl was stuck to the floor.

“What did you do, you big idiot?” she cried at him.

Gregor grabbed his espringal and turned the density of her bonds down — otherwise they could fly around throughout the carriage and crush him, and certainly her. “Hold on, please,” he said. “We’re about t—”

Then the world leapt around them, and Gregor Dandolo remembered.

He remembered the carriage crash from long ago. The way the vehicle tipped, the way the world tumbled, the sprinkle of glass and the creak of wood.

And he remembered the whimpering in the dark and the glimmer of torchlight from outside. How the light caught the ruined form of Gregor’s father, crumpled in the seat, and the face of the young man beside him in the ruined carriage, weeping as his blood poured out of his body.

Domenico. He’d died terrified and whimpering in the dark for their mother. The way many young men in this world died, Gregor would later find.

Gregor heard whimpering again, and had to tell himself—No. No. That is the past. That all happened long ago.

Then his mother’s voice in his ear: Wake up, my love…

The muddy world congealed around him, and reality returned.

Gregor groaned and looked up. It seemed the carriage had flipped over, so one passenger window was now pointed at the sky while the other was stuck in the mud. The young woman lay in a heap next to him. “Are you alive?” he asked.

She coughed. “Why do you give a damn?”

“I am not in the business of killing captured people, even accidentally.”

“Are you so sure that was an accident?” she said, her voice rasping. “I told you. They followed you. They’re coming for me.”

Gregor glared at her, then pulled out Whip and climbed up through the cab of the carriage. He crawled out the window of the passenger door, which now looked out on the night sky.

He sat on the edge of the tipped-over carriage and looked at the front axle. A large, thick, metal espringal bolt was sticking out of it right where the wheel had been.

It must have gone right through the spokes of the wheel — and as the wheel spun around it, it shredded the damned thing…

It was an impressive shot. He looked around, but he could see no assailants. They were in one of the larger fairways in Foundryside, but the street was empty — after the building collapse and the shriekers last night, odds were the residents thought if they poked their heads out to see what the commotion was, they’d lose them.

The young woman cried: “Ah, shit. Shit! Hey, Captain!”

“What now?” sighed Gregor.

“I’m going to say something else you’re not going to believe. But I’m still going to say it.”

“You are, of course, free to say what you like, miss.”

She hesitated. “I…I can hear scrivings.”

“You…You what?”

“I can hear scrivings,” she said again. “That’s how I knew about the thing on your carriage.”

He tried to understand what she was implying. “That’s impossible!” he said. “No one can jus—”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” said the young woman. “But listen — you need to know this because right now, right now, a number of very loud scrived rigs are converging on us. I know because I can hear them. And if they’re really loud, that means they must be really powerful.”

He scoffed. “I know you think I’m stupid — after all, you have said so both loudly and repeatedly — but it is biologically impossible that someone could be stupid enough to believe that.” He looked around. “I don’t see anyone walking down the street toward us carrying, say, a shrieker.”

“I don’t hear them on the street. Look up. They’re above us.”

Rolling his eyes, Gregor looked up. And then he froze.

On the side of the building façade above him, four stories up, was a masked person, dressed all in black. They were standing on the building façade as if it were not the side of a building but was actually the floor — in full defiance of all known laws of physics — and they were pointing an espringal at him.

Gregor dove down into the upended carriage. The next thing he knew there were a lot of loud thunks. He shook his head and looked up.

Five espringal bolts were now poking in through the side of the carriage. They had almost punched straight through — and since the walls and floors of this carriage were reinforced, that meant their attackers were using scrived weapons.

More than one of them, he thought. At least five.

“Impossible,” said Gregor. “That can’t be.”

“What?” said the young woman. “What’s out there?”

“There…there was a man standing on the building sides!” said Gregor. “Standing there like gravity doesn’t work at all!”

He looked up through the open window on the side of the carriage, and watched in shock as a figure in black appeared to gracefully float over the carriage like a bizarre cloud. Then he pointed an espringal down, and fired.

Gregor hugged the wall of the carriage as the bolt came hurtling down. The young woman screamed as it thudded into the mud below them.

Gregor and the young woman looked at it, then stared at each other.

“I scrumming hate being right,” she said.