Foundryside

33

“It’s a cowardly plan, sir,” said Berenice.

“Oh, come off it, Berenice!” said Orso. “It’s been seven hours, and we’ve seen neither hide nor hair of Sancia or Gregor! No messages, no communications, nothing! And the Candiano campo is suddenly completely shut down! Something has gone wrong. And I’ve no interest in sticking around to see what.”

“But…but we just can’t leave Tevanne!” said Berenice, pacing back and forth across the crypt.

“I could,” said Gio. The two Scrappers were obviously terrified. They were far more vulnerable than two campo scrivers.

“Maybe instead of paying us,” said Claudia, “you can pay for our passage out of here.”

“We can’t abandon Sancia and Gregor!” said Berenice. “We can’t leave the imperiat in Tomas Ziani’s hands! A man like that…Think of the damage he could do!”

“I am thinking of that,” said Orso. “I can’t stop thinking about it! That’s why I want to get the hell out of here! And as for Sancia and Gregor…”

Berenice stopped and glared at him. “Yes?”

Orso grimaced. “They made their choice. They knew the risks. We all did. Some wind up lucky, and others don’t. We’re survivors of all this, Berenice. The wisest thing to do is just keep surviving.”

She heaved a great sigh. “To think of us hopping aboard a ship and sneaking away in the dead of night…”

“What else are we supposed to do?” said Orso. “We’re just some scrivers, girl! We can’t design our way out of this! The idea is preposterous! Anyways, Sancia and Gregor are smart people, maybe they can find their own way ou—”

They froze as they heard the stone door roll away in the crypt passage beyond. This was troubling — because only Gio had the key, and that was currently sitting in his pocket.

They looked at one another, alarmed. Orso held a finger to his lips. He stood, grabbed a wrench, and gingerly approached the opening of the passageway. He paused — he could hear slow footsteps approaching.

He swallowed, took a breath, and screamed and leapt in front of the passageway, wrench raised over his head.

He skidded to a stop. Standing before him, grim and stone-faced, was a wet, filthy, bloody Sancia Grado.

“Holy hell,” said Orso.

“Sancia!” cried Berenice. She ran to her, but stopped a few feet away. “My…my God. What happened to you?”

Sancia had not yet seemed to notice either of them — she was just staring into the middle distance. But at these words, she slowly blinked and looked at Berenice, meeting her eyes. “What?” she said faintly.

They stared at her. She had a slash on her head, cuts on her forearms, a bruise on her cheek, and crusts of dried blood all over her face and neck…but the worst part about her was her eyes. One eye remained the same, the usual white with dark brown, but the other eye, her right, was flooded with red. It was like she’d received some fierce blow to the side of her head, one that had almost killed her.

Sancia exhaled, then said in a croaking voice, “What a lovely sight you are, Berenice.”

Berenice blushed hugely, turning bright crimson.

“What the hell happened?” demanded Orso. “Where have you been?” He looked at the open door to the crypt. “And how the hell did you get in?”

“I need to sit down,” said Sancia softly. “And I need a drink.”

Berenice helped her into a chair while Gio opened a bottle of cane wine. “Don’t bother with a glass,” whispered Sancia. He popped it open, handed it over to her, and she took a huge swig.

“You look, my girl,” Gio said, “like the shepherd who climbed the mount and saw God’s face in the skies.”

“You’re…not quite wrong there,” she said darkly.

“What happened to you, Sancia?” asked Orso. “What did you see?”

She started talking.

At some point, the words just ran out. A long, long silence stretched on. And while Berenice, Gio, and Claudia looked pale and shaken, Orso looked like he was about to vomit.

He carefully cleared his throat. “So,” he said. “A…hierophant.”

“Yeah,” said Sancia.

He nodded, trembling. “Estelle Candiano,” he said. “Formerly Ziani…”

“Yes,” said Sancia.

“Was, in some way, behind all of this from the start…”

“Yeah.”

“And now she has murdered her husband…”

“Yeah.”

“And she now intends to become…one of the ancient ones.” Orso spoke like saying the words aloud would make them make more sense.

“I guess it wouldn’t be that ancient if she’s doing it right now,” said Sancia. “But yeah. That’s the sum of it.” She bowed her head. “And Gregor…I think Gregor’s dead. And she has Clef. She has everything. Clef, the imperiat, the box with the voice in it…Everything.”

Orso blinked and stared into a wall. Then he held out a hand and whispered, “Give me that scrumming bottle.”

Sancia handed it over. He took a huge pull from it. Then, legs quaking, he sat down on the floor. “I didn’t think Tribuno would have made those designs,” he said softly. “I suppose I was…right?”

“My question is…can she do it?” said Claudia. “Let’s say she becomes a hierophant. All I’ve heard of them are children’s stories. I thought they were scrumming giants! What do we actually know about what they could do?”

Sancia remembered the vision of Clef’s she’d seen: the thing wrapped in black, standing on the dunes. “They were goddamn monsters,” she rasped. “They were devils. That thing in the box told me as much — they waged a war that turned the land to ash and sand. One could do the same here.”

“Right,” said Orso, shivering. “So. I…I think my first plan is looking pretty good right now. We find a boat. We get on that boat. We take the boat far across the ocean. And then we, I don’t know, keep living for a while. How does that sound?”

“You weren’t listening,” said Sancia lowly. “I told you. She said she wants to become Company Candiano.”

“And what’s the significance of that?” cried Orso. “It’s not like that stands out from the sea of other crazy shit you’ve been saying for the past half hour!”

“Think. I told you — that machine, the voice in the box…”

“This Valeria you spoke to,” said Orso.

“Right.”

Sancia hesitated. This part of her story, she knew, was the most inexplicable, and the most disturbing. “You…you believe me about that, right?” she asked. “About what she said, what she did to me? I know it all sounds insane…”

Orso was still for a long time, thinking. “I have some…ideas about that. But I do believe. Please continue.”

“Okay. So. Valeria told me that the way the hierophants did their ritual,” said Sancia, “you first mark the body holding the spirit, then mark what you wish to transfer it into.”

“I must admit,” said Gio, “that in the course of our projects, it’s grown pretty hard to discern one bit of mystical shit from another.”

“Gio’s right,” said Claudia. “Please clarify how that matters.”

“Remember — right as I took the job for Clef, Candiano Company changed up their sachets, yes?” said Sancia.

“Yeah,” said Gio. “We had to make whole new ones for half the prostitutes in Tevanne.”

“Right. It was a big shift. Nobody knew why it got changed. At the time, I didn’t think much about it. But now, after hearing what she said…I’m thinking that those new sachets are more than just sachets.”

Berenice’s mouth dropped open in horror. “You think the sachets…the little buttons being carried by every single Candiano employee…”

Sancia nodded grimly. “Estelle either issued them, or tampered with them when they went out. I think they double as the markers the hierophants used.”

“Then…then when Estelle starts the ritual,” said Orso, “all the people carrying those sachets with the markers…”

“They all die,” said Sancia. “Maybe a few who set their sachets aside get lucky, but, for all intents and purposes, the whole of Company Candiano dies. All of their minds and souls get invested in Estelle. Who then becomes a hierophant.” She looked at Orso. “We leave and let Estelle do her thing, and all your old coworkers, and all the other thousand some — odd people who work at Company Candiano, even the damned maids, all die a horrible, horrible death.”

For a moment they all just sat there.

“So,” said Sancia. “Yeah. We have to stop her. The voice in the box — Valeria — said she could edit all their tools so they wouldn’t work anymore. But to do that, we need Clef. Which Estelle has. After…after she killed Gregor.” She shook her head. “So. Sorry, Orso. But it seems like we’re going to have to figure out a way to kill your old girlfriend. And we’ve got until midnight to do it.”

Orso and Berenice looked horrified. “Assassinate Estelle Candiano?” said Orso faintly. “On the Candiano campo?”

“I’ve gotten in there before,” said Sancia. “I can do it again.”

“Doing it once,” said Berenice, “actually makes it harder. They’ve got the gates closed, and they know we came in through the canals. All the easy routes will be eliminated. They’ll be ready.”

“But I’m not just a thief anymore,” whispered Sancia, staring into space. “I can do a hell of a lot more than I used to.” She looked around the crypt, her eyes unfocused, like she was seeing many invisible things. “And I think soon I’ll learn how to do a whole lot more…”

“You might be changed,” said Orso. “And you might have escaped Estelle. But you can’t do much against a couple of cohorts of soldiers shooting at you, Sancia. One person, no matter how augmented, can’t fight an army.”

“We don’t even know where we want to attack,” said Giovanni.

“Yes, we do,” said Sancia. She looked at Orso. “And you do too. Estelle needs to start her ritual with the death of one person — just one. She hated Tomas — but there’s someone else she hates even more. Someone who’s still alive. And I can think of only one place she’d choose for her transformation.”

Orso frowned at her for a moment. Then he went white and said, “Oh my God…”

“Is this where you want him, ma’am?” asked the attendant.

Estelle Candiano stared around her father’s office. It was as she’d remembered it, all grim gray stone, all walls with far too many angles. A huge window on the far side stared out at the city of Tevanne, and a second small circular window stared up at the sky — these were the only reminder that this large room existed in any semblance of reality.

She remembered being here, once. As a child, when her father had first built it — she’d played before his desk, drawing on the stone floor with chalk. She’d been a child then, but when she’d gotten older, and become a woman, she’d been disinvited from such places, where powerful men made powerful decisions. Women, she’d understood, were unfit for inclusion among those ranks.

“Ma’am?” asked the attendant again.

“Mm?” said Estelle. “What?”

“Do you want him there?” asked the attendant. “By the wall?”

“Yes. Yes, that will do.”

“All right. They should have him here shortly.”

“Good. And the rest of my things — from the abandoned foundry — they’re on the way, yes?”

“I believe so, ma’am.”

“Good.”

She looked around at the office again. My workshop, she thought. Mine. And soon, I shall have the tools here to make wonders the world cannot imagine…

Estelle looked at her left hand. Within a few hours the skin there, as well as the skin on her wrist, her arm, her shoulder and breast, would all be marked with delicately drawn sigils, a chain leading from her palm — which would be holding the dagger, of course — to her heart. Ancient sigils of containment, of transference, capable of directing huge amounts of energies into her body, her soul.

There was the sound of squeaking, rattling wheels in the hall outside.

Estelle Candiano considered that she was likely the only person alive who knew of those ancient sigils, and how to use them.

The sound of squeaking wheels grew closer.

She was the only one, she thought — except possibly the person being wheeled to her right now.

Estelle turned to face the door as the two attendants directed the rolling bed into the office. She looked at the shrunken, frail figure nestled in its sheets, face covered in sores, eyes tiny and bleary and red and thoughtless.

She smiled. “Hello, Father.”

34

“Is a direct attack even possible?” said Claudia. “If you all are right about this imperiat thing, couldn’t Estelle shut down any assault?”

“The imperiat isn’t all-powerful,” said Sancia. “It has a limited range, and I don’t think it’s easy to operate. If Estelle screws it up, it could kill all the scrivings in the Mountain — which would send the whole place down on her head. I think she knows that. She’ll be cautious.”

“So a quick strike,” said Gio. “Fast, before she can prepare.”

“Right, but fast is a problem,” said Sancia. “I don’t see how we get to the Mountain without a fight. There’s hundreds of soldiers between us and them.”

“Direct confrontation, though…” said Claudia. “I always advise against it.”

“Like we say, you’ve always got three options,” said Gio. “Across, under, or over. No tunnels to go under. No way across through all those mercenaries. And I doubt if we can go over. You’d have to plant an anchor to make an air-sailing rig go — and that means getting to the Mountain, which is kind of our problem.”

“It’s mad to ask, but can we develop a way to fly without an anchor?” said Claudia.

Berenice, Orso, and Sancia grew still. They slowly looked at one another.

“What?” said Claudia.

“We’ve seen people fly,” said Berenice.

“And do it scrumming well!” said Orso. “Brilliant!”

Claudia stared at them. “Uh, you have?”

Berenice leapt up and ran to a large trunk in the corner. She opened it, hauled something out, and brought it back to the table.

It looked like two iron plates, tied together with fine, strong ropes, with a bronze dial in the center…And they looked like they were crusted over with blood.

“Is that…” said Claudia.

“They’re gravity plates,” said Berenice, excited. “Made by Estelle Candiano herself! Assassins were able to jump over walls and buildings with them!”

“And more than that,” said Sancia. “They could basically fly with the damn things!”

“Well, then,” said Claudia. “Holy shit.”

“So it’s simple!” said Giovanni. “You just use the plates to fly to the Mountain. Or, say, jump from roof to roof to the Mountain.”

Sancia looked at the gravity plates. She tensed the muscle in her mind, opened the floodgates, and looked…

She’d expected the plates to glimmer and shine brightly, as any powerfully scrived item did. But they did not — rather, they looked like a patchwork of silver, shining in some spots but not in others.

She shook her head. “No. They’re not working right,” she said. “Some of the scriving commands are operating, but not all of them — so the whole rig is nonfunctional.”

“You can tell that just by looking at it?” said Orso, stunned.

“Yeah,” said Sancia. “And I can talk to it.”

“You can talk to i—”

“Shut up, and let me see here…”

She shut her eyes, placed her bare hands on the plates, and listened.

<…location…location of MASS?> said the plates.

She shook her head. “It’s…weird. It’s like listening to someone with a head injury muttering in their sleep. It’s not making sense.” She opened her eyes. “It’s like they’re broken.”

Claudia clucked her tongue. “You said Estelle Candiano made these?”

“Yeah?” said Sancia. “Why?”

“Well, if I were her, and if I knew there was a chance my enemies had stolen my toys…I’d just turn off the scriving definitions at my lexicon. It’d make them useless, or broken — just like this rig.”

“Of course!” said Orso. “That’s why the plates can’t talk! Estelle has taken away some critical pillar in its logic, so the whole thing has collapsed!”

“Which means it won’t work,” said Claudia. “So we’re scrummed.”

“I guess we can’t make our own definition plates that could make these run?” sighed Gio.

“Estelle has basically achieved the impossible with this rig,” said Orso. “No one’s ever exhibited such fine control over gravity short of a hierophant. Remaking the impossible in a day is quite out of the question.”

There was a silence as everyone thought about this.

Berenice sat forward. “But…but we don’t have to remake all of it,” she said.

“We don’t?” said Sancia.

“No! Estelle’s probably just deactivated a few critical scrivings — but the rest still work. If you’ve got a hole in a wall, you don’t tear it down and make a whole new wall — you just cut a piece of stone to fit the hole.”

“Wait,” said Orso. “Are…are you saying we should fabricate the missing definitions ourselves?”

“Not we,” said Berenice. “Me. I’m faster than you, sir.”

Orso blinked, taken aback. Then he gathered himself. “Fine. But your metaphor is shit! This isn’t just filling in a goddamn hole in a wall! This is some complicated scrumming scriving, girl!”

“Good thing we’ve got someone who can talk to rigs, then,” said Berenice. She slid into a seat across from Sancia and pulled out a sheet of paper and a quill. “Go on. Tell me everything the plates are saying.”

“But it’s gibberish!” protested Sancia.

“Then tell me all the damned gibberish, then!”

She started talking.

She described how the plate plaintively asked for the location of this “mass,” begging for someone to tell it where the mass was, and the density of this mass, and so on and so on. She kept hoping Berenice would tell her to stop, but she didn’t. She just kept writing down everything Sancia said — until, finally, she held up a finger.

Berenice slowly sat back in her chair, staring at the sheet of paper before her. Half of it looked to be notes. The other half was covered in sigils and strings of symbols. She turned to look at Orso. “I…I am starting to believe everyone’s been trying to scrive gravity wrong, sir. And only Estelle Candiano has ever really figured it out.”

Orso leaned forward and examined what she’d written. “It’s mad…but I think you’re right. Keep talking.”

“You all could make sense of that?” said Claudia.

“Not entirely,” said Berenice. “But there’s a common theme. There’s this subject of mass — and the device is trying to figure out where this mass should be, and how big the mass is.”

“So?” said Sancia. “What’s that got to do with floating and flying?”

“Well,” said Berenice. “I’m not sure if I’m right here…But every scriver before us has assumed that gravity only worked one way — down, and to the earth. But Estelle’s designs seem to suggest that…that everything has gravity. Everything pulls everything else to it. It’s just that some things have a strong pull, and others have a weak pull.”

“What!” said Giovanni. “What rot!”

“It sounds mad, but that’s how this rig works. Estelle’s designs don’t defy gravity — the rig convinces what it’s touching that, say, there’s a whole scrumming world just above it with a gravity equal to the Earth’s, so the Earth’s gravity is canceled out, and the thing just…floats. The designs just…reorient gravity, counterbalance it — almost perfectly.”

“Is that possible?” said Claudia.

“The hell with what’s possible!” said Orso. “Can you figure out what’s missing? Can you fabricate the definitions to get the damned thing working, Berenice?”

“I could probably do it all, if I had a month,” she said. “But I don’t think we need it all. We don’t need all the crucial calibrations or control strings.”

“We don’t?” said Sancia nervously.

“No.” She looked at her. “Not if you can just talk to the damned thing. All I need to fabricate is some definitions that can give the rig some impression of the location and density of this mass. And it would have to match these sigils etched on the rig, of course.”

Orso licked his lips. “How many definitions?”

Berenice did some calculations on the corner of her paper. “I think…four should do.”

He stared. “You think you can fabricate four definitions? In a handful of hours? Most fabricators can barely manage one in a week!”

“I’ve been neck-deep in Candiano shit for the past days,” said Berenice. “I’ve been looking at all their strings, their designs, their methodology. I…I think I can make it work. But there’s another problem — we’ll still need to put these definitions in a lexicon to actually make them effectual. We can’t just walk into one of the Dandolo foundries and slip these in there — the guards wouldn’t even let you do that, sir.”

“Could they work in a combat lexicon?” asked Claudia. “Like the portable ones they use in the wars?”

“Those are pretty limited to powering weaponry,” said Berenice. “And they’re hard to get ahold of, as anything having to do with the wars often is.”

“And the test lexicon back at my workshop can’t cast far enough,” said Orso. “It only extends a mile and a half or so — not nearly enough to fly Sancia to the Mountain.”

“We can’t take it with us, either,” said Berenice. “Not only is it stuck on tracks in the workshop, but it weighs close to a thousand pounds itself.”

“Right,” said Orso. “Shit!” He fell into silence, glowering into the wall.

“So…are we scrummed here?” said Sancia.

“Sounds like we’re scrummed,” said Gio.

“No!” Orso held up a finger. A wild, mad gleam crept into his eye. He looked at Claudia and Giovanni, and the two Scrappers recoiled slightly. “You two — you do much work with twinning?”

Claudia shrugged. “Uh…as much as any scriver worth their salt does?”

“That’ll do,” said Orso. “All of you — get up. We’re going to my workshops. Berenice is going to need a lot of space and the proper tools to do her bit. And that’s where we’ll get to work as well,” he said, nodding at Claudia and Gio.

“On what?” said Claudia.

“I’ll figure it out along the way!” he snapped.

They trooped out of the drainage tunnel into the Gulf, then started up the hill. They moved quickly, filing through the Commons with the air of refugees or fugitives. Orso seemed filled with a mad energy, muttering to himself excitedly, but it wasn’t until they approached the Dandolo walls that Sancia glanced at him, and saw his cheeks were wet with tears.

“Orso?” she said quietly. “Uh — you all right?”

“I’m fine,” he said. He wiped his eyes. “I’m fine. Just…God, what a waste!”

“A waste?”

“Estelle,” he said. “The girl figured out how goddamn gravity works. She figured out how to make a listening rig. All while being trapped in some hole in the Mountain!” He paused for a moment, and seemed too stricken for words. “Imagine what wonders she could have made for us all, if she’d only had a chance! And now she’s become too dangerous to be free. What a waste. What a scrumming waste!”

When they got to the workshops, Sancia sat at a table with her hands on the plates while Berenice set up scriving blocks, parchment papers, and, of course, dozens of definition plates and molten bronze and styli to do the actual fabrication. Orso brought Claudia and Giovanni to the back of the workshop, where his test lexicon sat on rails that slid back into an ovenlike chamber in the wall, with a thick iron door.

“God,” said Gio, looking at it. “How I’d love to get my hands on one of these…Something that could actually, genuinely allow you to toy around with definitions!”

Claudia examined the iron door and the chamber. “Pretty massive heat resistance commands in this,” she said. “It’s a tiny lexicon, relatively speaking, but it still throws out a huge amount of temperature. If your idea is for us to build a test lexicon to carry around, that’s a giant task.”

“I don’t want you to build a lexicon,” said Orso. “I just want you to build a box. Specifically, a box shaped like that.” He pointed at the chamber.

“Huh?” said Claudia. “You just want us to build a heat chamber?”

“Yes. I want you to duplicate the one in the wall, and twin them — but we’ll need a switch to activate and deactivate the twinning designs. Get me?”

The Scrappers exchanged a glance. “I guess?” said Claudia.

“Good,” said Orso. “Then do it.”

This was a familiar job for the Scrappers, who Orso knew were a deft hand at construction, and his workshops offered far finer tools than what they’d used in the crypt. Within less than three hours they had the basic raw structure ready, and they started scriving the twinning sigils on its frame.

Claudia looked at Orso, who had half his body stuck in the chamber in the wall as he did his own delicate work. “What’s going in this box, exactly?” she asked him.

“Technically?” said Orso. “Nothing.”

“Why are we building a box that’ll hold nothing?” said Gio.

“Because,” said Orso, “it’s what the box will think it holds that matters.”

“Since we’ve got a serious scrumming deadline here,” said Claudia, “can you cut to the point?”

“I had the idea when we talked to Sancia’s key — Clef, or whatever,” said Orso. He popped out of the chamber, dashed to a blackboard covered in sigils, and made a few adjustments. “He talked about how impressive twinning was, and later I realized — Tribuno Candiano had developed a way to scrive reality. I mean, the Mountain is basically a big box that’s sensitive to all the changes that take place inside it! It’s aware of its contents, in other words. It’s something Tribuno and I toyed with back in the day, but it required too much effort to manage. But…what if you could build a box that was somewhat aware of its contents, and then twin the box? Then if you put something into one box, the other box thinks it holds that exact same thing as well!”

Claudia stared at him, her mouth open as she understood. “So…so your idea is to duplicate the heat chamber here in your workshops, twin it…and we’ll take the empty double into the Candiano campo.”

“Right,” said Orso cheerfully.

“And because the first chamber will know it holds a test lexicon, then the double will also think it holds a test lexicon…so the empty one will project the necessary definitions far enough for Sancia’s rig to work? Is that it?”

“That’s the theory!” said Orso. He grinned wide enough that they saw all of his teeth. “We’re essentially twinning a chunk of reality! Only, this particular chunk happens to hold a small lexicon loaded with the definitions we need to do the shit we need to do! Make sense?”

“This…this is tying my brain in knots,” said Gio faintly. “You’re scriving something to believe it’s scrived, in other words?”

“In essence,” said Orso. “But that’s what scriving is. Reality doesn’t matter. If you can change something’s mind enough, it’ll believe whatever reality you choose.”

“How are we supposed to do this, exactly?” said Claudia.

“Well, you two aren’t doing shit, really,” snapped Orso. “I’m doing the hard bit, where I make the heat chamber in the wall aware of what it holds! Then you’re just doing your basic twinning designs. So could we stop talking, and let me get back to goddamn work?”

They worked for a few hours more, the Scrappers and Orso sprinting back and forth and crawling in and out of the heat chamber, placing their sigils and strings in just the right places. Eventually the Scrappers were done, and they just sat there looking at Orso’s legs sticking out of the chamber as he finished up.

Finally he slid out. “I…believe I am finished,” he said quietly, wiping sweat from his brow.

“How do we test it?” asked Claudia.

“Good question. Let’s see…” Orso walked over to his shelves and took out something that looked like a small iron can. “A heating rig,” he said. “We use it to make sure the lexicon chambers are insulated properly.” He hit a switch on the side, tossed the can into the chamber in the wall, and shut and locked the door. “Should get up to some pretty incredible temperatures in there quick.”

“So, now we…?” said Gio.

Orso looked around, grabbed a wooden paint box from one of his tables, dumped the paint cans out, and tossed it into the newly built chamber. “Help me get this thing on the floor,” he said, “and turn it on.”

He and Gio lifted the box off the table and, grunting, carefully placed it on the floor. Then they shut and locked the big iron doors and turned on the twinning scrivings by twisting a bronze dial on the side.

Suddenly the box creaked, like someone had just placed a substantial load on it.

“Good sign,” said Orso. “Test lexicons are heavy as hell. If it thinks it holds one then theoretically the thing itself would abruptly gain weight.”

They waited a moment. Then Orso said, “All right. Turn it off.”

Gio turned back the dial. Orso shoved the latch on the door up, and opened the chamber.

An immense cloud of hot black smoke came billowing out. They all coughed and waved the smoke away from their faces, then peered into the heating chamber. As the smoke dissipated, the small, shriveled form of a burned box emerged.

Orso cackled with delight. “Looks like it scrumming works to me! The double believed it held the same heating rig as the first!”

“It works?” said Gio faintly. “I can’t believe it really works…”

“Yes! Now we just put this thing on wheels, and we’ve basically got a light, mobile lexicon on our hands! Of a sort, I mean.”

They finished the job, mounting the empty chamber on a wooden cart and making sure the whole thing was secure. Once they were done, they sat back and marveled at their work.

“Doesn’t look like much,” said Gio.

“Could do with a paint job, yeah,” said Orso.

“But it’s still probably the biggest damned thing I’ve ever done,” said Gio.

“Orso…” said Claudia. “You realize what you’ve done here, right? Scriving’s always been localized — you’ve got to stay close to one big, expensive piece of equipment for it to work. But you’ve essentially come up with a cheap, easy way to cover a whole region without having to build forty lexicons or whatever!”

Orso blinked, surprised. “Have I? Well…it’s still restricted, mind…but I suppose you’re right.”

“If we all live through this thing,” said Claudia, “this would be an incredibly valuable technique.”

“Speaking of living through this thing,” said Gio, “how do we plan on surviving after? Like, we are talking about attacking the heart of a merchant house and killing a scion of the industry.”

Orso stared at the heating chamber on the cart, and slowly cocked his head. “Claudia,” he said softly. “How many Scrappers are there in total?”

“How many? I don’t know. Fifty or so.”

“And how many would follow you faithfully? A dozen, at least?”

“Yeah, thereabout. Why?”

Orso grinned deliriously and tapped the side of his head. “I don’t know what it is about mortal panic,” he said, “but it keeps giving me the best scrumming ideas. We’re just going to need to file some paperwork. And maybe buy some property.”

The Scrappers exchanged a glance. “Oh boy,” said Gio quietly.

Sancia sat opposite Berenice, watching as the girl dashed from blackboard to parchment to scriving blocks, writing strings of sigils on any surface she could find with a mesmerizing, liquid grace. She’d finished two definition plates so far. The plates themselves were about two feet in diameter, wrought of steel, and they were covered in looping spirals of impossibly delicate bronze sigils — all put there by Berenice’s flowing stylus.

Berenice looked up from her work, a strand of hair clinging to her sweaty forehead. She seemed to glow with a happy energy — and Sancia could not look away.

“Ask it if it says anything about elevation,” Berenice said breathlessly.

Sancia blinked, startled. “Huh? What?”

“Ask the rig if it needs anything about elevation!”

“I told you, it doesn’t respond well to my questi—”

“Just do it!”

Sancia did so. She shut her eyes, then opened them and said, “It doesn’t seem to know what elevation even is.”

“Perfect!” cried Berenice.

“Is it?” asked Sancia.

“It’s one less hole I need to fill,” said Berenice, scribbling away.

Orso walked up and looked over Sancia’s shoulder. “We’ve done our part. Where are we here?”

Berenice peered through a massive magnifying lens at the third definition plate. She wrote one last string in her tiny script, then set the plate aside and picked up the fourth empty one. She said, “Three done. One left.”

“Good,” said Orso. “I’ll load them into the test lexicon.”

He took the definition plates away. Sancia kept her eyes and her hands on the gravity rig — but as she heard Orso clinking and clanking away behind her, the rig suddenly glowed brighter, and brighter…and then it started talking to her.

said the rig with a mad cheer.

“Oh my God,” she said lowly. “It’s working.”

“Excellent,” said Berenice. “What’s it asking for now?”

“I think it wants to know how dense the mass is. In other words, it wants to know how much of a force to effect on the item touching the plates.” She swallowed. “Which will be my body.”

Berenice paused and sat back. “Ah…Well. I have a question for you here.”

“Yeah?”

“I don’t have time to make really fine controls. So you’re going to have to tell the plates the density of this mass — how fast you want to go, basically,” said Berenice. “You’ll have to tell it, say, that there are six Earths in the sky — and then you’ll be pulled up at six times the rate of Earth’s gravity, minus Earth’s own actual gravitational effects. See?”

Sancia furrowed her brow. “So…you’re saying there’s a huge scrumming margin of error here.”

“Unimaginably huge.”

“And…what’s the question you have for me?” said Sancia.

“I actually don’t have a question,” said Berenice. “I just wanted to tell you all this without you immediately panicking.” She went back to work.

“Great,” said Sancia faintly.

Another hour ticked by. Then another.

Orso kept an eye on the Michiel clock tower out the window. “Six o’clock,” he said nervously.

“Almost finished,” said Berenice.

“You keep saying that. You said that an hour ago.”

“But I mean it this time.”

“You said that an hour ago too.”

“Orso,” said Sancia, “shut the hell up and let her work!”

Another sigil. Another massive sheaf of parchment. Another dozen styli ruined, another dozen inkpots and bowls of melted bronze. But then, at eight o’clock…

Berenice paused, squinting through the lens. Then she sat back and sighed, looking exhausted. “I…I think I’m done.”

Orso grabbed the definition without a word, ran to the test lexicon, put it in, and turned it on. “Sancia!” he called. “How’s it look?”

The rig now glowed bright in her hands — but not solidly bright. It wasn’t a complete rig, in other words, just most of one. But from what Berenice had said, they might not need the whole thing.

said the rig with a manic happiness.

Her belly squirmed with anxiety. She wanted to make sure she understood how this thing worked before she told it what to do.

squealed the plates.

She was beginning to understand. she said.

said the plates.

Instantly, Sancia’s stomach swooped unpleasantly, like she had a live mouse running around in her intestines. Something had…changed. Her head felt heavy — much like her blood was being pulled up into her skull.

“Well?” said Orso impatiently.

Sancia took a breath, and stood up.

But then…she just kept going.

She stared around, terrified, as her body rose up toward the ceiling at a steady pace. It wasn’t fast, but it felt fast, probably because she was panicking. “Oh my God!” she said. “Holy shit! Somebody grab me!”

They did not grab her. They just stared.

“Looks like it works, yeah,” said Gio.

To her relief, she started to come back down again — but she seemed to be falling toward a big stack of empty metal bowls on a nearby table. “Shit!” she said. “Shit, shit!” She kicked around helplessly, and they all watched as she slowly, inevitably collided with the pile of bowls, which went crashing and clanging all over the workshop.

Sancia shouted at the rig.

Instantly, the lightness died inside her, and she crashed onto the table and fell to the ground.

Berenice, delighted, stood up and punched a fist into the air. “Yes. Yes! Yes! I did it, I did it, I did it!”

Sancia, groaning, stared up at the ceiling.

“This is what she’s going to do to stop Estelle?” said Gio. “She’s going to do that?”

“Let’s call this,” said Orso, “a qualified success.”

An hour later, and they reviewed their plan.

“So we have what we need,” said Orso. “But…we still need to get our empty box within a mile and a half of the Mountain. That’s the farthest the gravity rig will work.”

“So we still need a way through the walls?” said Claudia. “Into the campo?”

“Yes. But only a bit,” said Orso. “A quarter mile or so.”

Claudia sighed. “I don’t suppose Sancia could use the rig to jump over the walls and open the gates from the inside.”

“Not without getting shot to bits,” said Gio. “If the whole campo’s locked down, the guards at the gates will shoot anyone who gets close.”

Sancia held the gravity plates in her hand, whispering to them and listening to them respond. Then she sat up. “I can get us past the walls,” she said quietly. “Or through them, rather.”

“How?” said Berenice.

“A gate is just a door,” she said. “And Clef taught me a lot about doors. I just need to be able to get close.” She sat up and looked around the workshop. She spied something she’d seen the last time she’d been here, when she’d searched the workshop for the listening rig. “Those rows of black cubes over there, the ones that seem to suck up light — are those stable?”

Orso looked around, surprised. “Those? Yes. They’re loaded in one of the main Dandolo foundry lexicons, so you can take those almost anywhere.”

“Can you attach them to a cuirass, or something wearable?” she asked. “It’ll be damn handy if I’m a moving blot of shadow in the darkness.”

“Sure,” said Orso. “But…why?”

“I’ll need them to sneak up to the east Candiano walls,” said Sancia. “Then I’ll get things started. Berenice, Orso — I’ll need you to have your magic box loaded onto a carriage and ready at the southwest gates. All right?”

“You’re going to run along the entire Candiano walls?” said Claudia.

“Most of them,” said Sancia softly. “We’ll need a distraction. And I can give us a good one.”

Gio studied the black cubes. “What are those for, Orso? I’ve never seen someone scrive light like that before.”

“I made those for Ofelia Dandolo,” said Orso. “Some secret project of hers. Gregor mentioned she’d made some kind of assassin’s lorica out of the things…A killing machine you can’t see coming.”

Gio whistled lowly. “It’d be handy to have one of those tonight.”

Sancia sank down in her chair. “What I’d prefer more,” she said, “is to go to war with the one person who has the most experience in waging it. But he’s been taken from us.” She sighed sadly. “So we’ll just have to make do.”

35

Darkness whirled around him. There was the crunch of wood, the crackle of glass, and, somewhere, a cough and a whimper.

“Gregor.”

The scent of putrefaction, of pus, of punctured bowels and hot, wet earth.

“Gregor?”

The swirl of water, the sound of many footfalls, the sound of someone choking.

“Gregor…”

He felt something in his chest, something trembling, something squirming. There was something inside him, something alive, something trying to move.

At first he was horrified. But though he could not really think — how could he think, as he was lost in the darkness? — he started to understand.

The thing moving in his chest was his own heart. It was beginning to beat — first gently, anxiously, like a foal taking its first steps. Then its beats grew stronger, more assured.

His lungs begged for air. Gregor Dandolo breathed deep. Water burbled and frothed in countless passageways within him, and he coughed and gagged.

He rolled onto his side — he was lying on something, some kind of stone slab — and vomited. What came forth was canal water — that he could tell by the taste — and a lot of it.

Then he realized — his stomach. It had hurt so much, just a bit ago…yet now it didn’t hurt at all.

“There we are, dear,” said his mother’s voice from somewhere near him. “There we are…”

“M-Mother?” he slurred. He tried to see, but there was something wrong with his eyes — he could only make out streaks and shadows. “Wh-where are you?”

“I’m here.” Something in the shadows moved. He thought he saw a human figure, robed and carrying a candle — but it was hard to see. “I’m here right beside you, my love.”

“What…what happened to me?” he whispered. His voice was a crackling rasp. “Where am I? What’s wrong with my eyes?”

“Nothing,” she said soothingly. He felt a touch on his brow, her soft, warm palm against his skin. “They’ll get better soon. They just haven’t been used for a bit.”

He blinked. He realized his eyes felt cold within their sockets. He tried to touch his face and found he couldn’t control his hands or even wriggle his fingers.

“Shh,” said his mother. “Be calm. Be still.”

He swallowed, and found his tongue felt cold too. “What’s going on?”

“I saved you,” said his mother. “We saved you.”

“We?” He blinked again, and more of the room came into focus. He saw he was in some kind of long, low cellar, with a vaulted ceiling, and there were people standing around him, people wearing gray robes and bearing small, flickering candles.

But there was something wrong with the walls of the room — and, now that he saw it, the ceiling as well. They all seemed to be moving. Rippling.

This is a dream, Gregor thought. This must be a dream…

“What happened to me?” he asked.

She sighed slowly. “The same thing that’s happened to you so often, my dear.”

“I don’t understand,” he whispered.

“I lost you,” she said. “But again, you’ve come back.”

Gregor lay on the stone slab, breathing weakly. And then, slowly, the memories returned to him.

The woman — Estelle Candiano. The knife in his stomach. The swirl of dark water…

“I…I fell,” he whispered. “She stabbed me. Estelle Candiano stabbed me.”

“I know,” she said. “You told us already, Gregor.”

“She…she didn’t really stab me, did she, Mother?” He managed to move his hand and push himself up into a sitting position.

“No, no,” his mother chided him. “Lay back down, my love, lay still…”

“I…I didn’t die, did I, Mother?” he asked. His mind felt thick in his skull, but he found he could think now, just a bit. “That would be mad…I couldn’t die and just…just come…come back to li—”

“Enough,” said his mother. She reached out and touched the right side of his head with two fingers.

Instantly, Gregor fell still. His body seemed to grow numb around him. He could not move, could not blink. He was trapped within himself.

“Be still, Gregor,” said his mother. “Be still…”

Then his skull began to grow hot…Exactly on the right side of his head, right where his mother’s fingers touched him. The pain was a low ache at first, but then it got worse, and worse. It felt like his very brains were sizzling on the right side of his head.

And though he had no memory of this ever happening before…he could remember someone describing a sensation just like this.

Sancia, with Orso and Berenice in the library, saying: And if the scrivings in my skull get overtaxed, they burn, just burn, like hot lead in my bones…

What’s going on? Gregor thought desperately. What’s happening to me?

“Be still, Gregor,” said his mother. “Be still…”

He tried to move, raging at his dull, distant body, and found he couldn’t. The heat in his skull was unbearable now, like his mother’s fingers were red-hot irons.

But he could see his mother’s face now, barely illuminated by the candle flame. Her eyes were sad, but she did not look surprised, or upset, or anguished by any of this, really. Rather, it was like this bizarre act was a regrettable duty she was quite familiar with.

“What happened to you wounds my heart, my love,” she said softly. “But I thank you for coming to us now, when we need you the most.”

Gregor’s heart fluttered in his chest. No, no, he thought. No, I’m going mad. This is all a dream. This is all just a dream…

Another memory from that same night in the library — Orso, shrugging and saying: Oh, it probably wasn’t just one merchant house…If one was trying to scrive humans, they all were. It might still be going on, for all I know…

No, Gregor thought. No, no, no.

He remembered himself, saying aloud: …they could scrive a soldier’s mind. Make them fearless…Make them do despicable things, and then forget they’d ever done them…

No! Gregor thought. No, it can’t be! It can’t be!

And then Berenice, whispering: They could scrive you so that you could cheat death itself…

And finally, he remembered his own words, spoken to Sancia beside the Gulf, describing what it’d been like after Dantua: It was like a magic spell had been lifted from my eyes…

His mother watched him, her eyes sad. “You’re remembering now,” she said. “Aren’t you? You usually do about now.”

He remembered her at the Vienzi Foundry, angrily saying: I killed the project. It was wrong. And we didn’t need it anymore anyway.

Which made one wonder — why would you stop trying to scrive humans? Why say you didn’t need it anymore?

Because, thought Gregor slowly, you’d already figured out how to do it.

And then, from that same day at Vienzi, he remembered how his mother had wept, and told him: I did not lose you in Dantua. You survived. As I knew you would, Gregor. As I know you always will…

How did I survive Dantua? he thought, terrified. Did I survive Dantua? Or did I…did I die there?

“I lost your father,” said his mother. “I lost your brother. And I could have lost you in the accident, too, my love. Until he came…He came, and showed me how to save you, to fix you. So I did. But…I had to promise some things in return.”

More of Gregor’s senses returned. He could see now, see the crowd of robed people bearing candles, the curious, rippling walls in the darkness…and there was a whispering sound. At first he thought the robed people were whispering, but that wasn’t it…It was like they were in some kind of forest with velvety leaves. His ears couldn’t make sense of it.

His mother shook herself and cleared her throat. “Enough. Enough sentiment. Listen to me, Gregor.” Her voice became terribly loud in his ears, overpowering his thoughts. “Listen to me. Are you hearing me?”

The fear and rage faded from Gregor’s mind. She took her fingers away. It was as if a cold, wet quilt were being laid over his thoughts.

He heard himself say quietly, “Yes. I hear you.”

“You have died,” she said. “We have saved you, again. But you must do something for us. Do you understand?”

Again, his lips moved and the words sprang from his mouth: “Yes. I understand.”

“You have confirmed something that we have long suspected,” she said. “Estelle Candiano is the person behind this monstrous plot. Say her name. Now.”

“Estelle Candiano,” said his voice. His words were mush-mouthed and indistinct.

“Estelle Candiano is going to try something foolish tonight,” said his mother. “Something that could endanger us all. We’ve tried to keep our efforts secret, tried to never act in the open — but she’s forced our hand. We must respond, and respond directly — though we must maintain whatever deniability we can. She has something in her possession that she does not understand. Are you hearing me?”

“Yes,” he said helplessly. “I am hearing you.”

His mother grew close. “It is a box. With a lock.”

“A box,” he repeated. “With a lock.”

“We have been looking for this box for some time, Gregor,” she said. “We have suspected that the Candianos possessed it — but we have been unable to discern exactly where they had it. But now we know. Because of your efforts, we believe Estelle Candiano is keeping it in the Mountain. Say that.”

“In the Mountain,” he said slowly.

“Listen to me, Gregor,” she whispered. “Listen carefully—there is a devil in this box. Say that.”

Gregor blinked slowly, and whispered, “There is a devil in this box.”

“Yes. Yes, there is,” she said. “We cannot let Estelle open it. And if she does what she wishes to do tonight — if she elevates herself, and becomes a Maker, and if she possesses the key — she will have that capability. But we cannot, cannot, cannot let her release what sleeps within that box.” Ofelia swallowed, and if Gregor had the mind for it, he would have seen she was clearly terrified. “Once it waged a war…A war to end all wars. We cannot risk such a thing again. We must keep the devil inside the box. Say that.”

“We must keep the devil inside the box,” whispered Gregor.

She leaned close, touching her forehead to his temple. “I’m so proud of you for this, my love,” she whispered. “I do not know if it was your intent, or the hand of fate guiding you…But Gregor, I…I just want you to know, that despite everything — I…I love you.”

Gregor blinked slowly, and mindlessly repeated, “I love you…”

Ofelia stood up, her face twisted in shame and disgust, as if pained by his toneless words. “Enough. When you have fully recovered, you must fight your way to the Mountain, Gregor. Once there, you must find Estelle Candiano. Kill her. And then you must take the key and the box. Eliminate anyone who tries to stop you. We have wrought such powerful, beautiful tools to assist you in this task. You must use them to do what you do best, Gregor, to do what we have made you to do — you must fight.”

She pointed over his shoulder. Gregor turned to look.

But as he looked, he realized two things.

The first was that he suddenly understood why the walls of the room seemed to be rippling, why there was that fluttering and whispering in his ears…

The room was full of moths.

Moths swirled and danced and flittered all along the walls, along the ceiling, a sea of white moths flowing around and under and over all of them, their wings like flickering bone.

The second thing he realized was that there was someone standing behind him, and he saw them out of the corner of his eye as he turned, just a glimpse.

It was a man. Maybe. A human figure, tall and thin, wrapped in strips of black cloth like a mummified corpse, and wearing a short, black cloak.

And it was watching him.

Gregor turned to look, but in a flash, the figure was gone. In its place was a column of moths, a storm of them, a swirling vortex of soft, white wings.

He stared at the moths. He realized there was something within the column — they were swirling around something, dancing around it, something white.

The column of moths slowly lifted like a curtain, and he saw.

A wooden stand, and hanging upon it a scrived suit of black armor. Built into one arm was a black, glittering polearm, half massive ax, half giant spear. Built into the other was a huge, round shield, and installed behind it a scrived bolt caster. And set in the center of the cuirass — a curious black plate.

His mother’s voice in his ear: “Are you ready, my love? Are you ready to save us all?”

Gregor stared at the lorica. He had seen such things before, and he knew what they were meant for: war, and murder.

He whispered, “I am ready.”

36

On the other side of the city, at the top of the Mountain, Estelle Candiano stared into the mirror and breathed.

Slow, deep breaths, in and out, in and out, filling every part of her lungs. She was doing such delicate work, and the breathing helped steady her hands — if she made one mistake, just one tiny stroke out of place, the whole thing would be ruined.

She dipped the stylus in the ink — heavy with particulates of gold, tin, and copper — looked in the mirror, and continued painting symbols onto her bare chest.

It was tricky work, doing it backwards. But Estelle had practiced. She’d had all the time in the world to practice, alone and ignored in the back rooms of the Mountain for nearly a decade.

The common sigils are the language of creation, she thought as she worked. But Occidental sigils are the language with which God spoke to creation. She dipped the stylus back in the ink, and began a new line. And with these commands, with these authorities, one may alter reality if one wishes — provided you are careful.

One stroke more, then another, finishing the sigils…Her left hand was already covered in them, as well as her forearm, upper arm, and shoulder, a twisting, curling lattice of shimmering black symbols, crawling up her arm to swirl about her heart.

There was a cough, and a gurgle. She looked over her shoulder in the mirror at the figure lying in the bed behind her. A small, wet, beady-eyed man, gasping for breath.

“Please stay still, Father,” she said softly. “And hold on.”

Then she glanced at the clock on the wall. Ten twenty now.

Her eyes darted to the window. The sprawling nightscape of Tevanne stretched out below the Mountain. Yet all seemed quiet, and still.

“Captain Riggo!” she called.

Footsteps, and then the office door opened. Captain Riggo walked in and saluted. He did not glance at Tribuno Candiano, wheezing and lying there in his soiled sheets. He did not pause at the sight of a bare-breasted Estelle, painting symbols upon her skin. Captain Riggo possessed the virtue that Tevanne valued most of all: the ability to ignore what was right in front of his eyes for a huge sum of money.

“Yes, ma’am,” he said.

Estelle sat perfectly still, stylus hovering above her skin. “Is anything happening out there?”

“No, ma’am.”

“Not on the campo?”

“No, ma’am.”

“Not in the Commons?”

“Not as far as we can tell, ma’am.”

“And our forces?”

“They sit ready, and can be deployed with but a word, ma’am.”

Her eyes narrowed. “My word.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

She considered this. “You are dismissed,” she said. “Notify me the moment you hear anything. Anything.”

“Yes, ma’am.” He smartly turned, strode out, and shut the door.

Estelle resumed painting the symbols on her body. Her father gasped, smacked his lips, and fell silent.

She made one stroke, then another…

Then she froze.

Estelle blinked for a moment, then sat up and looked around the room.

Empty. Empty except for her herself and father, that was, and all of his and Tomas’s antiquities, sitting on the massive stone desk.

“Hm,” she said, troubled.

For a moment she’d suddenly had the strangest and most intense feeling that there had been someone else in the room with them — a third person, standing just behind her, watching her closely.

She took a breath, looking around — and then her eye fell on the curious old box that Tomas had stolen before Orso Ignacio could get it, the cracked, ancient, lexicon-looking thing with the gold lock.

Estelle Candiano looked at the box, at the lock, at the keyhole. An idea wriggled its way into her mind, wild and insane.

The keyhole is an eye. It watches your every move.

“That’s mad,” she said softly.

Then, louder and with more assurance, as if hoping the box might hear her: “That’s mad.”

The box, of course, did nothing to acknowledge this comment. She looked at it for a moment longer, then turned and resumed painting the sigils on her breast. After my elevation, she thought, perhaps all these old tools Father dug up will make sense. Perhaps I will crack open that box, and see what treasures spill forth.

Then her eye paused on the object placed right next to the box — the large, oddly toothed key she’d taken off Orso’s man, with the butterfly-shaped head. It had been useful in giving her the last few sigils she’d needed to complete the ritual, but she still didn’t know the full extent of its nature.

Or perhaps I don’t need to break the box open, she thought. We shall see — won’t we?

37

Out in the streets of the Commons, just east of the Candiano walls, Sancia and the Scrappers moved.

“I wish you could turn those damned shadows off,” said Giovanni, panting as they ran through the alleys. “It’s like I have a literal blind spot running alongside me.”

“Just shut up and run, Gio,” said Sancia. Though she found it odd herself, frankly. Orso had affixed a few samples of the shadow materials to a leather jerkin for her — a slap-dash, laughably shoddy solution — but she was now veiled in constant shadow, and it was difficult for her to see what her hands or feet were doing.

Finally they approached the eastern Candiano gates. They slowed and crept along the side of a tottering rookery, peering beyond. Sancia saw the gleam of helmets in the gate towers, huddling in the windows. Probably a dozen men, each with high-powered espringals that could punch a hole in her wide enough to toss a melon through.

“Ready?” whispered Claudia.

“I guess,” said Sancia.

“We’ll go down this alley,” Claudia said, pointing backward, “to draw their eyes away from you. We’ll wait two minutes, then fire. The instant you see it, you run.”

“Got it,” said Sancia.

“Good. Good luck.”

Sancia ran along the rookery to the side facing the path to the Candiano gates. Then she pressed her back to the wood and waited, counting out the seconds.

When she got to two minutes, she crouched. Any minute now…

Then there was a hiss over her shoulder. Something flew high up above the building tops — and then the sky erupted with lights.

Sancia sprinted forward, pumping her arms and legs as hard as she could. She was aware that the Scrappers’ stun bomb — cleverly attached to a scrived bolt — would only last for a handful of seconds. Even though she was little more than a drop of shadow to the naked eye, that didn’t mean she’d be safe without that distraction.

The lights behind her died, and then there was a terrific pop!

The walls were twenty feet away. The last few strides felt like they took an agonizingly long time — but then she made it, quietly sliding to a stop against their massive stone face.

She heard a voice above, from the guards’ tower: “What the hell was that?”

She waited. She heard murmuring, but little more.

Praise God, she thought to herself. Then she carefully, carefully crept along the walls toward the gates.

She slid up to them and flexed that odd muscle in her mind. The huge, bronze gates erupted with light, two vast, rippling panes of white luminescence, hanging in space.

She looked at them carefully. She could see a hint of their commands within them, their nature, their restrictions. I sure as shit hope I’m right about this, she thought.

She took a breath, and placed a bare hand on the door.

<…TALL AND STRONG AND RESOLUTE, WE STAND VIGILANT AND WATCHFUL, AWAITING THE MESSAGES, AWAITING THE SIGNS, AWAITING THE CALL TO BEGIN FULL PIVOT INWARDS, OUR HIDES AS HARD AND DENSE AS COLD IRON…>

She flinched at the enormous sound of it. The campo gates were undoubtedly the biggest thing she’d attempted to fool yet. Yet she persisted, and asked,

bellowed the gates.

said Sancia to the gates.

There was a long silence.

asked the gates.

said the gates.

She told it what to do. It listened, and agreed. And then she crept away, down the walls to the next set of gates.

And the next, and the next.

Giovanni and Claudia crouched in the alley and watched as the tiny dot of shadow silently slipped along the base of the Candiano walls.

“Did…did she do anything?” said Giovanni, baffled.

Claudia pulled out a spyglass and examined the gates. “I don’t see anything.”

“Did we just risk our necks for that damned girl to do nothing? I’ll be pissed as hell if that’s the case!”

“We didn’t risk our necks, Gio. We just shot a firework into the damned air. Sancia’s the one literally running along the watchtowers.” She peered along the walls as Sancia stopped at the next gates, paused, and continued on. “Though I honestly have no idea what she’s doing.”

Gio sighed. “To think of all the mad shit we’ve had to eat to get to here. We could have left Tevanne ages ago, Claudia! We could have been on board a ship right now, headed toward some remote island paradise! A ship full of sailors. Sailors, Claudia! Young, sun-darkened men with thick, rippling shoulders from heaving huge ropes around all da—”

Then there was a sharp, warbling scream.

Claudia took the spyglass away from her eye. “What the hell was that?” She looked around, but couldn’t see anything. “Gio, do you see any—”

Then another scream, one of pure, naked terror. The screams seemed to be coming from the Candiano gates just ahead of them.

“Is…is this part of Sancia’s doing?” asked Gio. He leaned forward. “Wait! Oh my God…Someone’s up there, Claudia…”

She lifted her spyglass and looked at the Candiano gates.

Her mouth fell open. “Holy shit.”

A man was standing atop the gate towers of the Candiano gates, his boots perched on the edge of the wall. He was wearing some kind of contraption, like a black suit of armor, except one arm had been modified to be a large, rounded shield, and the other arm had been modified to hold some kind of massive, retractable polearm…Yet it was difficult to see him clearly, for every movement he made was obscured in darkness. The only reason she could see him at all was because there was a bright scrived light hanging just below him on the wall.

It took her a moment to realize what she was looking at. She’d only ever read about such things, a type of particularly notorious shock weapon deployed abroad in the wars.

“A lorica?” she said aloud, astonished.

“Who the shit is that?” Gio asked. “Did we tell him to be there?”

Claudia stared at the man, huge and gleaming in the dark metal contraption. She saw there was a dead body lying on the walls before him, horribly mangled — presumably this had been the screamer, whom she now thought had had plenty of reasons to scream.

It can’t be, she thought. What the hell is going on?

She watched as the man leapt forward, his body flying up five, ten, fifteen feet—Definitely a real lorica, Claudia thought — and then he crashed down, his polearm licking out like a glittering black whip…

She hadn’t even noticed that there were guards up on the gate towers with him. Yet then there was a massive splash of blood, and she realized that the man had used his polearm to almost completely vivisect a Candiano guard who’d been sprinting at him, rapier in hand.

Three more Candiano guards poured out of the tower onto the gate pathway before the man, espringals raised. The man in the lorica flicked his shield up just in time to catch the volley of bolts, and he started moving forward, perfectly crouched behind his shield, inching forward toward the three men pouring bolts into him.

He stopped, seeming to sense that the men needed to reload. Then he swung his shield arm out, and something…happened.

It was hard to see. There was just a burst of glimmering metal in the air, the Candiano guards shuddered as if struck by lightning, and they fell. But Claudia saw that their bodies were now curiously rent and torn…

She focused on the man in the lorica as he stood up, and saw that his shield was not just a shield: it had been modified so that the back half was also a scrived bolt caster. Probably not accurate over long distances — but nasty up close.

Giovanni stared, horrified. “What do we do?”

She thought about it, and watched as the man leapt off the top of the Candiano gates into the campo.

“Hell,” she said. “He’s not our problem! So just sit tight, I guess!”

Berenice and Orso huddled in the scrived carriage, staring at the immense Candiano gates ahead. The streets around them were abandoned, like there was a curfew on.

“Everything’s…quiet,” said Berenice.

“Yes,” said Orso. “Scrumming creepy as hell, isn’t it?”

“Yes, sir,” said Berenice in a small voice. She craned her head forward, peering at the walls. “I do hope Sancia’s all right.”

“I’m sure she’s fine,” said Orso. “Maybe.”

Berenice said nothing.

Orso glanced at her out of the side of his eye. “You and she seem to get along all right.”

“Ah. Thank you, sir?”

“You do great things together,” said Orso. “Crack the Cattaneo. Fabricate whole new scriving definitions in hours. That’s…That’s something.”

She hesitated. “Thank you, sir.”

He sniffed and looked around. “It’s dumb as hell, all this,” he said. “I keep thinking this could have been avoided. I could have stopped it. If I’d told Tribuno what I thought about his dumb shit. If I’d…I’d been more diligent in my pursuits of Estelle. I let my pride get wounded when she turned me down. Pride…it’s so often an excuse for people to be weak.” He coughed, and said, “Anyways…if a young person were to ask me advice of a…a personal nature, I’d advise they not sit and passively watch opportunities go by. That’s what I’d say — if, mind, if a young person were to ask me advice, of a personal nature.”

There was a long silence.

“I see, sir,” said Berenice. “But…not every young person is as passive as you may think.”

“Aren’t they?” said Orso. “Good. Very goo—”

“There!” said Berenice. “Look!”

She pointed at the walls. A tiny pool of shadow slipped along the bottom of the white walls, up to the huge towering gates.

“Is that…her?” said Orso, squinting.

The pool of shadow stayed at the base of the gates for a moment before slipping back down the way it came, disappearing behind a tall rookery.

“I don’t know,” said Berenice. “I think so though?”

They waited, and waited.

“Should something be happening now?” said Orso.

Then they both jumped in fright as a wall of shadow leapt at them out of an alley.

“Goddamn it!” said Sancia’s voice, floating out of the darkness. “It’s me! Calm down!” She was panting hard. “Damn…That was a lot of walls, and a lot of gates.” She climbed inside — or Orso thought she did, it was so dark it was hard to tell — and collapsed in the back of the carriage.

“Is it done?” said Orso.

“Yeah,” gasped Sancia.

“And when does your clever plan start?”

“Simple,” said Sancia. “When you hear the explosions.”

Claudia and Giovanni crouched in the shadows of the street, watching the Candiano gates. Then they heard a sound — a clattering, a clanking.

“What’s that?” said Gio.

Claudia pointed, dumbstruck. “It’s the gates, Gio.”

They watched as the huge gate doors…trembled. They quivered, like they were the skin of a drum that had just received a powerful blow. Then they began rattling, at first quietly, then much, much louder, until it strained their ears, even from where they were.

“Sancia,” said Claudia. “What the hell did you do?”

And then the gates broke.

The two halves erupted open, swinging outward with a force like a raging river, snapping all the locks along their middle. They pivoted a full 180 degrees, slamming into the campo walls and the watchtowers on either side of them, and they struck the walls hard enough to make them crack and start to crumble — a stunning feat, considering the campo walls had been scrived to be preternaturally durable. For a moment the two halves of the gates just stood there, smashed into the walls, before the reverberating momentum caused them to slowly, slowly topple forward, which pulled down a lot of the walls with them. They slammed into the ground hard enough to send a fine spray of mud and dust surging throughout the entire city block.

Claudia and Giovanni coughed and covered their faces. The Commons lit up with cries and shouts — but this wasn’t loud enough to cover up a new sound: a rattling and clattering from the next set of gates, just south of the fallen walls.

“Oh shit,” said Gio. “She did it to all of them, didn’t she?”

Orso and Berenice sat up, startled, as the immense crack echoed through the night skies.

“I told the gates opening outward didn’t count as opening,” said Sancia in the backseat. “The hard part was getting them to wait.” She sniffed. “Should be…oh, one every minute or so for a while.”

In the Mountain, Estelle Candiano heard the crash and looked up. “What in hell?” she said aloud.

She looked down at herself. She’d finished covering her arm and chest in the appropriate sigils, and she did not want to smudge them any.

Still…That was worth investigating.

She walked over to the windows and looked out at the dark ramble of Tevanne. She immediately saw what had happened: one of the northeastern gates appeared to have totally collapsed. Which…should have been impossible. Those gates had been designed by her father. They should have withstood a damned monsoon.

“What in all th—”

Then, as she watched, there was a tremendous crack, and the gate south down the wall from that one suddenly burst outward. The walls around it cracked and began to crumble apart.

Her mouth twisted with rage. “Orso,” she spat. “This is you, isn’t it? What in hell are you trying to pull?”

The intense cracks shot through the Commons with a curiously steady rhythm, like a lightning storm touching down every minute. Orso flinched each time. Soon the sky above the eastern campo was a haze of dust, and the Commons were screaming in panic.

“Sancia,” said Orso quietly. “Did you take down the entire eastern walls?”

“I should have, when this is all over with,” said Sancia. “Should give all those campo soldiers a lot to defend. And it’ll be somewhere far from here. A decent distraction.”

“A…a distraction?” he cried. “Girl…girl, you’ve scrumming killed the Candiano campo! You’ve killed my old house in one night!”

“Eh,” said Sancia. “I just aired it out a bit.”

Estelle Candiano threw on a white shirt just as Captain Riggo threw open the door and charged in.

“What in hell is going on out there, Captain?” she demanded.

“I do not know, ma’am,” he said, “but I came to ask if I could mobilize our reserves in order to investigate and respond.”

There was another sharp crack and the rumble of falling walls. Captain Riggo cringed ever so slightly.

“But…but what do you think is happening, Captain?”

“In my professional estimation?” He thought about it. “It would appear to be a siege, ma’am. Many gates destroyed so that we have to split our forces.”

“Damn it all,” she said. She looked at the clock. She had just over thirty minutes until midnight. I’m so close, she thought. I’m so damned close!

“Ma’am?” said Captain Riggo. “The reserves?”

“Yes, yes!” she snapped. “Throw everything we have at them! Whatever the hell is happening, I want it stopped! Now!”

He bowed. “Yes, ma’am.” Then he turned and smartly strode away, shutting the door behind him.

Estelle walked over to the windows and stared out at the damage. The northeastern half of the campo was almost completely obscured with smoke now. She imagined she could hear screaming from somewhere out in the dark.

Whatever is happening, she thought, I just need it to last more than thirty minutes. After that — nothing else will matter.

The two Scrappers watched as the Candiano campo walls dissolved, bit by bit.

“Well,” said Claudia. “I think we’re done here, yeah?”

“I think so.” Giovanni wrinkled his nose. “Now to file all of Orso’s paperwork — yes?”

She sighed. “Yes. And to buy his property. Off from one mad plan, and on to the next one.”

“You know, we could just take the money he gave us and run,” said Giovanni lightly.

“True,” said Claudia. “But then everyone else would die.”

“Well. Yes. I guess we wouldn’t want that.”

Together, they fled into the darkness.

38

Sancia leaned forward as the gates ahead began to rattle. “Good,” she said. “I told them to go last. The second those things pop open and the way’s clear, you speed in as fast as you can, all right?”

“Oh shit,” said Orso. A bead of sweat ran down his temple as he gripped the pilot’s wheel.

“Don’t go too fast,” said Sancia. “Because there’s going to be shrapnel. Get me?”

“You…you are really not helping here,” snapped Orso.

“Just go when I say go.”

They watched the gates rattle, tremble, and shake — and then, like all the others, they burst open, ripping apart the walls on either side.

A massive tsunami of dust flooded toward them. Sancia shielded her eyes with one hand. She was now mostly blind — but she could still see with her scriving sight.

She waited a moment. Then she said, “Go. Go now.”

“But I can’t see!” said Orso, sputtering.

“Orso, just scrumming go, go!”

Orso shoved the acceleration lever forward and the carriage took off, hurtling into the dust. Sancia squinted and peered ahead, reading the scrivings written into the buildings on either side of the street, glimpsing the massive, rippling landscape of designs and sigils encoded into everything.

“The road curves slightly to the left up ahead,” said Sancia. “No, not that much — there. Yes. Good.”

Finally they broke free of the dust cloud. Orso exhaled with relief. “Oh, thank God…”

“No soldiers in sight,” said Berenice. “Streets are clear.”

“All on the eastern wall,” said Sancia. “Just as I’d hoped.”

“And we’re almost there.” Orso peered out the window at the street names. “Just a little farther…Here! Here’s the spot!” He slammed on the brakes. “Exactly a mile and a half from the Mountain!”

They stared ahead at the vast dome rising among the towers. Then they all scrambled out. Sancia started affixing the gravity rig to her body, and Orso checked his twinned heating chamber. “Everything looks good here,” he said.

“Turn it on,” said Sancia.

“I’ll turn it on once you’re ready,” he said. “Just to be safe.”

She paused, glancing at him, but continued buckling on the gravity rig. “Goddamn, I hope I have this dumbass thing on right,” she muttered.

“Let me see,” said Berenice. She reviewed the various straps, fussing and tutting and adjusting them. “I think you’re set,” she said. “Except perhaps this one here.”

She tightened one buckle on Sancia’s shoulder. Thoughtlessly, Sancia reached up and grabbed her hand, her own bare palm gripping Berenice’s fingers.

Berenice paused. The two looked at each other.

Sancia swallowed. She wondered what to say, and how to say it; how to articulate how impossible touch had been for so long — real, genuine, human touch; and how, after tonight, she wanted to touch no one but Berenice; how hungry she felt for Berenice’s enthusiastic glow, this raw desire to snatch a piece away for herself, like a demigod stealing fire from a mountaintop.

But before she could start to fumble with the words, Berenice just said, “Make it back.”

Sancia nodded. “I’ll try,” she said hoarsely.

“Don’t try.” Berenice leaned in, and suddenly kissed her. Quite hard. “Do it. All right?”

Sancia stood there for a moment, dazed. “All right.”

Orso cleared his throat. “Listen, uh — I don’t want to interject here, but we are dealing with, you know, the apocalypse, or thereabout.”

“Yeah, yeah,” said Sancia. She released Berenice and took stock of her gear — some stun bombs, darts, and a long, thin length of rope — and breathed deep. “I’m ready.”

Orso turned the bronze dial on the side of the heating chamber.

The gravity rig grew bright on Sancia’s chest.

“Shit,” she said. “Oh boy.”

“It’s still working, yes?” said Orso anxiously.

chirped the rig.

“Yeah,” said Sancia. “It’s working, all right.”

“Then do it! Now, now, now!”

Sancia took another deep breath and told the rig,

said the rig.

She situated her feet and dipped her legs down into a crouching position.

As she did, the gravity around her…changed.

Things began to float around her: pebbles, grains of sand, shreds of leaves…

“Berenice?” said Orso nervously.

“Ah…I believe this is upthrust,” Berenice said. “Like — step into a bathtub, and the water level rises. I didn’t have time to control for that.”

“Shit,” said Sancia. “Here I go.”

Then she sank lower, and jumped.

And she flew.

Orso watched as Sancia seemed to be obscured by a fine mist. Then he realized that the mist was actually more motes of dust and sand, all hanging suspended in the air around her, cheerily denying gravity.

Then her legs flexed, and things seemed to…explode.

It was like something huge and invisible had fallen down nearby, causing a huge gust of wind and a massive swirl of sand. But of course, there was nothing there — at least as far as Orso was aware, but it was hard to verify since the next thing he knew he and Berenice were flying ass-over-head down the street.

He crashed into the cobblestones, coughing, and sat up. “Shit!” he said. Then he peered up. He thought he could make out a tiny dot arcing across the night skies toward the Mountain. “It worked? Did it really work?”

“I would say so,” said Berenice wearily, sitting up on the other side of the street. Groaning, she stood and hobbled over to Orso’s empty heating chamber. “It’s giving off a lot of heat…I know scriving defies reality, but it seems like you’ve defied a lot more reality than normal tonight. Now what do we do?”

“Now?” said Orso. “Now we run like hell.”

“We run? Why?”

“I thought I mentioned this to you…” said Orso. “Or maybe I mentioned it to the Scrappers. I forget. Anyway, scriving a chunk of reality is really very hard to manage. Tribuno and I found that out a long time ago. So although this thing is stable now…” He knocked on the side of the carriage. “It won’t be for long.”

She stared at him, horrified. “What do you mean?”

“I mean in about ten minutes, this thing is either going to explode or implode, I honestly don’t know which. But I know I don’t want to be around to see it.”

“What!” she screamed. “Then…then what’ll happen to Sancia?”

“Well, if she’s still flying…then she will stop flying,” he said. He saw her outraged stare. “Well, the girl’s obviously going to make it there in way less than ten minutes! I mean, look at her, she’s hauling ass! It was just a gamble I had to make!”

“You could have scrumming told us this!” shouted Berenice.

“And what would that have done?” said Orso. “Probably made everyone yell a bunch, just as you’re doing now. Now, come on, Berenice, let’s go!” He turned and sprinted down the street, back to the gates.

39

“Captain Riggo!” shouted Estelle.

Again — the footsteps, the door, the salute. “Yes, ma’am?”

“Have we encountered anything in the campo?” she asked.

“I’ve not heard back yet, ma’am,” he said. “But from my vantage point…I’ve yet to see much in the way of conflict.”

She shook her head. “It’s a diversion. A goddamn diversion. They’re coming here, here! I know it in my bones. How many soldiers do we have in the Mountain, Riggo?”

“At least four dozen, ma’am.”

“I want three dozen up here,” said Estelle. “Two dozen in the hallways, and a dozen in here with me. I’m the target — me, or the antiquities.” She pointed at the desk, upon which sat the box, the imperiat, and the key, along with dozens and dozens of books and other artifacts. “And we can’t move all those now. So we have to be ready.”

“I see, ma’am,” said Riggo. “I’ll deploy your orders immediately.”

Above the campo, Sancia screamed.

Screaming was all she could do, really. So many of her higher levels of thought had just been abruptly obliterated by the sudden acceleration, the raging press of the wind and the reek of smoke, that she could only react to her situation in the dumbest and most instinctual of ways — which meant screaming.

She was rising so fast, so damned fast. She blinked tears out of her eyes, and saw she was already far, far, far above the city. Too far, really — and she also wasn’t going anywhere close to the Mountain.

If I don’t stop this thing, she thought, I’m going to sail past the damn clouds!

Sancia placed both hands on the plate and tried to tell it to slow down.

squealed the rig.

Sancia screamed at it.

She mentally directed the rig at the Mountain.

chirped the plates.

said Sancia.

Their ascent slowed, but not much.

she said.

Their ascent slowed more.

she said.

Then her ascent stopped…and she slowly started being redirected toward the Mountain, lightly drifting down to the huge black dome.

She’d have to make more adjustments to make it there, she knew. But she was getting the hang of this. The gravity rig was incomprehensibly powerful — probably more powerful than Estelle’s version, since Berenice had left out all the calibrated controls. If Sancia screwed up the directions or the power too much, the thing would basically be a devastating weapon.

But then, she had been counting on that.

Quietly, gently, she sailed toward the Mountain.

“Ma’am!” called a soldier. “Something’s coming!”

Surrounded by a dozen soldiers, Estelle Candiano peered through the gaps in their shoulders at the office windows. “Something?” she said.

“Yes, ma’am! I…I think I saw something flying through the sky?”

Estelle glanced at the clock on the wall — twenty minutes to go. She’d need only one minute to do this, the lost minute between one day and the next. That was what her research had indicated — you made yourself powerful while the world had its back turned on you.

“That might be them,” she said. “Get ready.”

The soldiers prepared themselves, checking their weapons, unsheathing their swords. Estelle looked down at her father, lying in the bed beside her. Her fingers gripped the golden dagger, sweat running down her temples. She was so close. Soon her knife would pierce the breast of this wretched, thoughtless man, and start a chain reaction that would…

She cringed. She knew what would happen — it would kill most of the people on the Candiano campo. All the scrivers, all the merchants, all the workers who’d labored under Tomas, and, before him, her father…

They could have stopped this, she thought angrily. They knew what Tomas was, what my father was. They knew what these men had done to me, to the world. And yet they did nothing.

She looked up through the round window in the roof of her father’s office, and then she saw it — a tiny black dot, sailing across the face of the moon

“That’s it!” she cried. “There it is! I’ve no idea what it is, but it’s got to be them!”

The soldiers looked up and took positions around her.

“Come on,” said Estelle, staring up. “Come on! We’re ready for you, Orso. We’re ready for y—”

Then the doors to the office exploded behind them, and all hell broke loose.

Estelle did not initially understand what was happening. She just heard a scream, and then droplets of something warm rained down on her. She blinked, looked down at herself, and saw she was covered in blood — apparently blood from someone on the other side of the room.

She dumbly turned, and saw something had erupted into the office…maybe. It was hard to see in all the darkness, which seemed to cling to the thing like moss to a tree branch. But she thought she saw a man-form in there — and she definitely saw a huge black polearm snap out from the depths of that darkness and slash one of her soldiers from shoulder to chest, sending another wave of blood splashing over her.

Her soldiers shouted in rage and charged the shadow-man. The shadow-man leapt toward them with terrifying speed and grace — and as he did, Estelle saw the hallways beyond. She saw they were covered in blood, and the headless corpse of Captain Riggo lay ravaged and mutilated on the floor.

“Oh hell,” said Estelle. She dropped to the floor and crawled to the desk with the artifacts.

Gregor Dandolo did not think. He could not think. He did not need to think. He only moved.

He moved within the lorica, directing its momentum, its gravity, allowing it to hurtle him through the huge office. He flicked his right arm out, the telescoping polearm extending with a liquid grace, like the tongue of a frog stretching for a dragonfly in midflight. Its huge, thick blade cut through a soldier’s raised arm and the top half of his head like they were made of grass, and the man collapsed.

Get to the Mountain, said the words in Gregor’s mind. Kill the woman. Get the box. Get the key. Destroy anything that tries to stop you. The words echoed over and over again inside of him, until they became him, forming the sum of his soul.

Gregor was still flying through the air, so he twisted his body, reaching down with his leg to scrape the toes of one boot along the floor. He artfully drew himself to a stop, standing in the middle of the office, surrounded by soldiers. He stood in the huge war machine, breathing hard, felt scrived bolts clacking and clicking as they uselessly bit into his armor. He knew that the greatest threat to a soldier in a lorica was the lorica itself: use it poorly, and it would destroy you, literally tearing you apart. Use it well, and you could destroy nearly anything.

He slapped a soldier aside with his shield and slashed forward with his polearm. I have done this before, he kept thinking, over and over again. It was one of the few thoughts his mind could process. I have done this before. Many, many times before.

He whirled and dodged and ducked and cut through the soldiers with balletic ease.

I was made for this, he thought. I was made for war. I was always, always, always made for war.

This fact was written within him. It was as inarguable as the heaviness of stones, as the brightness of the sun. He knew this. He knew this was who he was, what he was, and what he was to do in this world.

But although Gregor Dandolo could not truly think, could not really process anything resembling a genuine thought, he was forced to wonder, absently and dreamily…

If he was truly made for war, why were his cheeks hot and wet with tears? And why did the side of his head hurt so, so, so much?

He stopped and took stock of the situation. He ignored the whimpering old man on the bed — he was no threat — but as he fought, he looked for the woman, the woman, always the woman…There were two soldiers left.

One raised an espringal at him, but Gregor leapt forward and batted aside the man’s body with his shield, sending him crashing into a wall. His polearm flicked out and gutted the man before he could even hit the floor. The second solider screamed and ran at Gregor’s exposed back, but Gregor extended his shield arm, pointed the bolt caster, and released a full volley of scrived fléchettes into the man’s face. He crumpled to the floor.

Gregor retracted the polearm. Then he looked around the office. There seemed to be no one else except for the whimpering old man on the bed.

Get to the Mountain, he thought. Kill the woman. Get the box. Get the key. Destroy anything that tries to stop you.

He saw the box and the key sitting on the desk.

He walked over to the desk, shook off the glove holding his polearm, and let the weapon fall to the floor. Then he picked up the big golden key.

As he did, he heard a clicking sound behind the desk.

Gregor leaned forward, and saw: the woman was there — Estelle Candiano. She sat huddled on the ground, adjusting some device — it appeared to be some kind of large golden pocket watch.

He raised his shield arm, aiming the bolt caster at her.

“There we go,” she said. She hit a switch on the pocket watch’s side.

Gregor tried to fire the bolt caster — but he found he couldn’t. His lorica was frozen: it was like he was wearing a statue rather than a suit of armor, and its penumbra of shadow had abruptly vanished.

Estelle let out a long, relieved sigh. “Well!” she said, standing. “That was close.” She looked him over. “Interesting rig you have here…Are you Orso’s man? He’d always thought about playing with light.”

Gregor kept trying to fire the bolt caster, flexing every muscle he had against his suit of armor, but it was useless. She seemed to have somehow turned the entire thing off.

She glanced at the big golden pocket watch, frowned, and raised it, running it alongside Gregor’s body like a dowsing rod searching for water. The pocket watch let out a loud, piercing shriek when it passed over Gregor’s helmet.

“My word,” said Estelle. “You aren’t Orso’s man — not if you’ve got an Occidental tool in your head.” She placed a hand on his cuirass, grunted, and shoved him backward onto the floor, his suit of armor clattering and clanking as he struck the stones.

She walked over to one of her dead soldiers, pulled out the man’s knife, and then straddled Gregor. “Now,” she said. “Let’s see who you are.”

She cut through the straps fastening on Gregor’s face plate, and pulled it away.

She stared at him. “What in hell?” she said. “What are you doing here?”

Gregor said nothing. His face was placid, blank, empty. He just strained and strained and strained against the armor, trying his hardest to strike the woman, to fill her with bolts, to rend her in two — but the lorica wouldn’t budge.

“Tell me,” she demanded. “Tell me how you got here. Tell me how you survived. Who are you working for?”

Still he said nothing.

She lifted the dagger and leaned over him. “Tell me,” she said softly. “I’ve got ten minutes until midnight. Ten minutes to find out.” She found a gap in his armor, and stabbed the blade deep up into his left bicep. He felt the pain, but his mind told him to disregard it. “Don’t worry, brave soldier — I’ll find a way to make you screa—”

Then she paused. Probably because it sounded like someone was already screaming — and the sound was coming from above.

Estelle looked up, through the round window in the ceiling.

There was a speck of black in front of the moon that seemed to be getting…bigger.

Estelle watched, bewildered, as a filthy, dusty, screaming girl in black came hurtling out of the sky to land on the skylight.

“…aaaaaAAAAAAH-OOF!” said the girl, landing on the window with a solid thud.

Estelle’s mouth fell open. She whispered, “What…”

The girl rose up, shook herself, and looked down through the window at them. And though Gregor’s mind was overtaken with his commands—kill the woman, take the key, take the box—he couldn’t help but recognize her.

I know this girl…But did she just fly? Out of the sky?

Sancia stared down at the surreal sight below her. Tribuno Candiano’s office appeared to be filled with mangled corpses — one of which seemed to be Gregor Dandolo, who lay bleeding on the floor with blank, empty eyes, clad in a suit of black armor. Estelle Candiano sat on his chest, holding a dagger, and she was staring up at Sancia in shock. Beside them was Tribuno’s desk, upon which sat Valeria’s box — and though she couldn’t see Clef or the imperiat, surely they were in there as well.

She wanted to leap in and save Clef — the person who, for so long, had been her closest friend, her most trusted ally. Her heart hurt to think of losing or hurting him, after all this pain. But she knew there were greater things at risk right now — and she knew that someone as powerless as she would only ever have one shot at taking out someone like Estelle.

One day I’ll live a life that doesn’t force me to make such cold-blooded decisions, she thought. But today is not that day.

She touched the dome of the Mountain with a finger.

said the Mountain’s voice in her mind.

said Sancia.

She took her hand away, pulled off the gravity plates, and shut her eyes.

said the plates.

There was a pause.

said the plates.

said the plates.

She opened her eyes as the plates began softly vibrating. Then she slammed the plates down on the window.

She locked eyes with Estelle Candiano, grinned, and waved good-bye. Then she pulled out her thin cord of rope, looped it around the neck of a gargoyle, and started rappelling down the side of the Mountain.

Estelle stared up at the device sitting just above her on the opposite side of the window. She recognized it immediately, of course. She had coaxed Tomas into designing the damned thing over years, after all.

She watched as the gravity plates started vibrating faster and faster, like a cymbal being struck again and again…and then it began to glow a soft, blue light.

The building around her began to groan. Clouds of dust floated down as the vaulted ceiling shuddered and moaned.

“Shit,” said Estelle. She staggered off the armored man’s chest and dove for the imperiat. She’d not exactly had a lot of time to acquaint herself with the device — but she’d have to make do now.

On the streets outside the Candiano campo wall, Orso and Berenice took turns peering through a spyglass at the Mountain. It looked like someone had turned on a new light, shining on its surface — a blue one, glowing with a queerly fluttering light.

Orso peered at it. “What the hell is tha—”

He stopped — because then, with a pop that they could hear even from where they stood, huge cracks shot across the dome of the Candianos…and then they started spreading. Fast.

The cracks flowed in a curious pattern, she noticed: it was like a spiraled spider web, with all the cracks and lines rotating around the blue star.

Then the splinters and fragments of the dome began to retract inward, toward the star.

“Oh my God,” said Berenice.

The skin of the building popped, quaked, shuddered, and then…

Orso expected it to start collapsing; but no, that didn’t quite describe what occurred then — the exterior of the dome was actually falling in, imploding slowly and steadily, nearly a fifth of the huge stone structure rippling and collapsing toward the bright-blue star situated on its side.

“Oh hell,” said Orso, astonished.

They jumped as there was another tremendous crack, and the side of the dome around the blue star began to cave in more, and more.

He swallowed. “Okay,” he said. “Well. I didn’t know she was going to do that.”

Sancia screamed as she let the rope slide through her hands, speeding down the side of the Mountain as the giant structure fell apart above her. She noticed that her descent was slowing, bit by bit, which was deeply upsetting to her.

I’m not out of range of the rig, she thought. It’s going to suck me in and collapse us into an ugly little brick just like what it’s doing to the dome!

She slowed further, and further, and she felt herself slipping back up — up toward the crumbling dome above.

“Scrum this!” she bellowed. She let go of the rope, gripped the side of the dome, and began springing and sprinting away from the maelstrom of gravity above, running sideways along the building’s face. It was, perhaps, the most absurd moment of the night so far, if not her life — but she had no mind to reflect upon it, since rocks and other debris were hurtling up past her to join the crackling dome.

But at some point, she finally went past the range of the gravity rig — and then she stopped running, and instead started falling down the side of the building.

She screamed, terrified, and watched as quoins and other architectural features flew by her.

She saw a stone balcony hurtling up at her, and flicked her hands out…

Her shoulders and back lit up with pain as her fingers made contact with the railing and gripped it tight. Then she swung down and her torso crashed into the bottom of the balcony, knocking the wind from her.

Breathing hard, she looked up and saw the destruction she had wrought above her. “Oh crap,” she said.

A significant portion of the top of the giant dome was now gone, imploding toward the gravity plates, forming what appeared to be a ball of pure blackness, as if folding in all these materials — stone, wood, and probably people — robbed them of their colors. It was hard to see how much of the dome was gone by now, as the gravity plates had created a giant spinning sphere of dust and debris, all circling that ball of blackness.

The ball grew and grew, a perfect sphere of impossible density…

There was a soft boom from somewhere out in the campo.

Sounds like Orso’s magic empty box just gave up, thought Sancia.

Then, abruptly, the air went still.

The dome stopped collapsing.

The huge ball of black hung in the air, and then…

The ball plummeted down, and struck the ground with a dense, bone-shaking thump — and it just kept falling, penetrating down, down, down into the earth.

Finally the crumbling and cracking ended — either the black ball had stopped falling, or it had fallen so far that it was now beyond earshot.

Sancia let out a gasp and hauled herself up over the balcony. She breathed there for a moment, then looked up at the ruins of the Mountain.

She froze. “No,” she whispered.

A decent chunk of the dome was simply gone, like someone had taken a vast spoon and carved out a bite from the top, much like one might a bowl of pudding — but not all of it.

Hanging in the air, suspended by a handful of pillars and supports in the exact place that damned well should have gotten collapsed into the gravity well first, and thus been totally annihilated, was a tiny island of tile and stone…

And standing in its middle, holding aloft something that looked like a complicated golden pocket watch, was Estelle Candiano.

“Shit!” screamed Sancia. She started to climb.

Every part of Estelle Candiano trembled. She had never been to war, never seen someone die, never witnessed any kind of genuine catastrophe or disaster in all of her life — so she had been somewhat unprepared for the maelstrom of cracking and crashing and dust that had unfolded mere feet above her head.

But not totally unprepared. Estelle had always been a quick thinker.

She hadn’t been sure it would work. She’d done her research, and had known that the hierophants’ imperiat could single out a specific scrived effect and control or kill it within any given space — and while she’d managed to kill the scrivings in that assassin’s lorica, acting as a breaker against a full-scale gravity-rig collapse was something else entirely.

And yet, as she cracked an eye and saw the wall beyond her had been totally obliterated, and saw that she and her gasping father and all these brutalized corpses were now situated upon a tiny blot of building floating in almost nothing, she realized her gambit had been phenomenally successful.

She stared around in disbelief. Dusty winds battered her face, and she could see straight across into one of the Candiano towers beyond — there were even people standing on the balconies, staring at her openmouthed.

She took a breath. “I–I knew I could do it,” she said coolly. She looked at her father. “I always told you — I could do anything. Anything. If you only gave me the chance.”

She could see the pink face of the Michiel clock tower. Four minutes left.

She stooped, picked up the golden dagger from the bloody office floor, and surveyed Tevanne before her.

“Broken,” she pronounced. “Smoking. Unintended. Corrupt!” she said to the city. “I will not forgive what you’ve done to me. I shall wash you all away with a dash of my hand. And though you’ll drown in pain and agony, on the whole, really, the world will thank m—”

There was a sharp tap sound. Estelle jumped as if someone had bustled into her. Then she staggered slightly to the side, and looked down.

The side of her stomach was a ragged hole, just above her left hip. Blood poured out of her belly and down her leg.

Bewildered, she tottered around, and saw the armored man lying on the floor, aiming his bolt caster at her.

Her face twisted in outrage. “You…you stupid son of a bitch!” She fell to her knees, grimacing in pain, and fruitlessly pressed a hand to the wound. “You…you stupid, stupid man!”

said the Mountain dolefully.

said Sancia as she ran through the Mountain’s halls.

said the Mountain.

She leapt into a lift.

now.>

The lift lurched to life, and suddenly she was speeding up, up, up. Then the doors sprang open, and the Mountain said,

She ran down the hallway — which, she noted, was covered with ravaged corpses — and sprinted into Tribuno’s office, completely unsure what she’d find.

She skidded to a halt, and saw.

Gregor Dandolo lay on the ground, bleeding from one arm and trying to sit up, but his armor seemed too heavy for him. Estelle knelt a few feet beyond him, next to her father, a golden dagger in her hand. She had an enormous wound on her side, and blood was pouring out of her stomach to pool on the floor.

Sancia walked in slowly. Neither Gregor nor Estelle moved, and she stared at Gregor in disbelief. “God,” she said. “Gregor…How the hell are you alive? I heard you wer—”

At the sound of her voice, Gregor snapped up like a spring trap, and pointed the half-shield, half-bolt caster on his arm at her.

Sancia held her arms up. “Whoa! God, man, what are you doing?”

Gregor’s eyes were cold and distant. She saw he had Clef clutched in his other hand.

“Gregor?” she said. “What’s going on? What are you doing with Clef?”

He said nothing. He kept the bolt caster trained on her.

Sancia flexed the muscle inside her mind, and looked at him. It looked like the imperiat had done something to his suit — the arms and legs didn’t appear to be calibrated right anymore. But far more startling, she saw a bright, gruesome red star glowing inside Gregor’s head — the same dusky, red glow as Clef and the imperiat.

“Oh my God,” she said, horrified. “What is that? Did they do that to you?”

He said nothing to her.

She realized it must not be new — when they’d implanted a plate in her head, it had been major surgery. “Gregor — has…has that always been there? All this time?”

Blood dripped down Gregor’s arm, but the bolt caster didn’t waver.

“Then I–I wasn’t the first scrived human at all, was I?” she asked.

He said nothing. His face was inhumanly still.

She swallowed. “Who sent you here? Who did this to you? What’s it making you do?” She looked around. “God, did…did you kill all these men?”

Something in his eyes flickered at that — but still the bolt caster didn’t move.

“Gregor…Give me Clef, please,” she whispered. She held a hand out. “Please give him to me. Please.”

He raised the bolt caster higher, pointing it directly at her head.

“You’re…you’re not really going to do it, are you?” she asked. “Are you? This isn’t you — is it?”

Still he said nothing.

Something inside her curdled. “All right. Scrum it. I’m…I’m going to walk over to you right now,” she said quietly. “And if you want to shoot me, Gregor, then goddamn it, you go ahead and you shoot me. Because I guess you went and made me a dumbass just like you the other day in the Gulf,” she said, louder. “When you went on and on and on about your little bit of revolution, and…and how you never wanted what was done to us to be done to anyone ever again. You were stupid enough to say it, and I was stupid enough to believe it. So I’m going to come over there, right now, and help my friend, and get you the hell out of here. And if you put me in my just grave, then fine. But unlike you, I’m going to stay there. And that’ll be on you.”

Before her will failed, she took four quick steps over to Gregor, arms raised, until the bolt caster was inches away from her.

He did not shoot. He looked at her, and his eyes were wide and wary and frightened.

“Gregor,” she said. “Put it down.”

His face trembled like he was having a seizure, and he choked out the words, “I…I didn’t want to be this anymore, Sancia.”

“I know,” she whispered. She placed a hand on his bolt caster, but kept looking him in the eye.

“They…they m-made me,” he stammered. “They said I was one thing. But…I had changed my mind.”

“I know, I know,” she said. She pushed the bolt caster away. His arm seemed to give up, and the weapon clanked to the floor.

He struggled for a moment. “I’m so sorry,” he whimpered. “I’m so, so sorry.” Then he lifted his other arm and held out Clef to her. “T-tell everyone…that I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I didn’t want to. I…I really didn’t want to.”

“I will,” she said. She reached out to Clef, very slowly, just in case Gregor changed again. “I’ll tell everyone.”

She kept reaching toward Clef’s head, still meeting Gregor’s gaze. She was keenly aware that this man could kill her in an instant, and she didn’t dare breathe.

Finally she touched a bare finger to Clef’s head.

And the second she did, his voice erupted in her mind: <-ID KID KID BEHIND YOU BEHIND YOU BEHIND YOU>

She turned around, and saw a wide streak of blood across the floor — put there by Estelle Candiano as she crawled over to her father, golden dagger in one hand and imperiat in the other.

The Michiel clock tower started to toll out midnight.

“Finally,” Estelle whispered. “Finally…”

She plunged the golden dagger into her father’s chest.

Sancia, still flexing the muscle in her mind, looked out at the Candiano campo, and saw that thousands of bright, blood-red stars now shone out in the darkness — and each star, she knew, was almost certainly someone dying.

All across the Candiano campo, people collapsed.

They collapsed in their homes, in the streets, in the alleys, suddenly falling to the floor in spasms, screaming with pain.

Anyone nearby — anyone who didn’t happen to also be affected, that is — tried their hardest to resuscitate them, but no one could understand what the cause was. A recent blow to the head? Bad water?

No one, of course, suspected it had anything to do with the Candiano sachets that happened to be upon their person, in their pockets or their satchels or hanging from a string about their necks. No one understood what was happening, for it had not happened upon the earth for thousands of years.

Sancia stared in horror as Estelle shoved the golden dagger deeper and deeper into her father’s chest. The old man was squirming, shrieking, coughing in agony, and his eyes and mouth shone with a horrid, crimson light, as if someone had lit a fire in his chest and it was burning him from the inside out…

Which it was, she knew. He was burning from the inside out, along with half the people on the campo.

“I deserve this,” said Estelle coldly. “I deserve this. And you, of all people, deserve to give it to me, Father.”

Sancia looked around, and her eye fell on Tribuno’s desk. Sitting on the desk was the big, cracked box with the golden lock: the box that held Valeria — perhaps the one thing that could stop Estelle now.

Sancia darted toward the box. Yet before she’d even taken a step, Estelle raised her arm.

Sancia glanced at her, and saw the imperiat in her hand.

“Stop,” said Estelle.

And suddenly, all of Sancia’s thoughts were gone.