“What he is saying, Sancia,” said Gregor patiently, “is that it is a little hard to grasp.”
“If it’s hard for you to hear about it,” said Sancia, “imagine it happening to you.”
“Why don’t you start from the beginning?” said Berenice. “Again.”
Sancia took a shuddering breath. “I told you. She was there in the room with me. She told me he was coming. She showed me something—some tomb, and a tiny bone inside—and somehow I knew this was in the plantations. I saw a ship, sailing across the ocean. She said they were trying to bring him back, and she was too weak to face him. I think she was trying to tell me…to tell us we had to stop them before they brought him back. And then I…” She trailed off, too horrified to speak.
“You saw the thing in black,” said Gregor.
“In the desert,” said Sancia, shivering. “Among stone columns. It looked like a person, draped and wrapped in black, and it was floating.”
“And you’d seen this thing before?” said Orso.
“Once,” said Sancia. “In Clef’s memories. We were on the Candiano campo, and a lexicon spiked. And Clef said the feeling of being so close to it…it reminded him of someone.” She shut her eyes, remembering his words: “Someone from long ago. Someone who could make anything float. And whenever he wished, he could fly through the air, like a sparrow in the night…”
There was a long silence.
“Who is this they?” asked Gregor. “Who’s going about bringing this thing back?”
“I don’t know,” said Sancia.
“Well, why the hell couldn’t she tell you?” said Orso. “It sounds like she sure has a hair up her ass about all this. Why couldn’t she give us a name, or a description?”
“I think she said all she needed to. Someone has found some artifact, some piece of something. They intend to bring it here, in a ship, over the waters. And then…”
Another long silence.
“And then this maker of hers returns to life,” said Orso.
“Yes,” she said in a strangled voice. “I think so.”
“This tomb you said you saw,” said Gregor. “And the black sarcophagus, and the bone within…You said you felt like this was in the plantations?”
“Yeah,” said Sancia. “I don’t know how she did it, but…Valeria put that knowledge directly into my mind, somehow.” She rubbed the side of her head anxiously. “I’m not sure how I feel about that, really…”
Gregor looked away, his face curiously closed.
“What is it?” asked Berenice.
“I…have been having dreams,” he said finally. “Flashes of memories from when I was under my mother’s control, I suspect. Dreams of sand, and the sea, and the moon…”
Sancia sat up. “The plantations?”
“Yes. And…I recall looking for someone. Looking very intensely. I remember thinking that they had hidden themselves away, and I had to find them. And I remember chambers of stone, far under the earth…”
“You think this is one and the same?” asked Berenice. “That your mother sent you to find this…this thing, this artifact? Whatever it is?”
“Yes,” said Gregor quietly. “Maybe I succeeded. Maybe it just took some time for them to get to it. But I have long suspected my mother had some greater plan in mind. I’ve watched for some sign of her movements. I always thought she’d make a move on the other two merchant houses, but…but this…”
Sancia shuddered and put her forehead on her knees.
Orso burst out in desperate laughter. “This is absurd!” he cried. “This is madness. Do you understand what we’re suggesting here?”
“Yes,” she said quietly. “I do.”
“An artificial god shows up in your bedroom,” he said. “And tells you her maker is coming back? That what, that Ofelia Dandolo is going to raise him from the dead? And you haven’t said it, but you’re suggesting that this maker of hers, this thing in black…that it’s…I mean…” He stood and paced around the table. “I mean, who else could have made Valeria? Who else carried around a little god in a box, setting it free to alter the very world? The only person she could possibly mean is…”
Sancia lifted her head up and looked at him. “Crasedes Magnus,” she said quietly. “The first of all hierophants. Yes. I think Valeria is telling us that Ofelia Dandolo is going to try to bring him back to this world.”
* * *
—
Orso stared at her, mouth agape. He opened his mouth wider to speak, then froze, shut it, and sat back in his chair, too stunned for words.
Gregor carefully cleared his throat. “I believe he is normally depicted as a…a bearded, wizened wizard, yes?”
“Yes,” said Berenice. “But those depictions are based on stories. Almost no one really knows much about him, or the other hierophants. For years, all we had were ruins of their works in the north, in the desert lands—fragments of arches, tombs, aqueducts, cities.”
“But we know more than most,” said Sancia.
“They were goddamn monsters,” spat Orso.
There was a grim silence. They knew from their work with Clef that the hierophants’ near-mythical abilities had not come from some divine source, but rather from more disturbing means: they’d augmented, warped, and altered their bodies and souls utilizing horrific, ritualistic human sacrifice. Clef himself was one such specimen: a mind ripped from its body, and trapped in the designs of a golden key.
“Were they monsters by choice?” asked Gregor. “Or by necessity?”
“My suspicion is that by interrupting the process of death,” said Berenice, “by trapping a soul or a mind within an object, or within someone else’s body…they greatly confused reality, giving them access to powers and privileges we can hardly comprehend.”
“And…Crasedes was the first of them,” said Gregor. “He was the one who invented this method. Yes?”
“The greatest,” said Orso, “and the most powerful of all of them.” He shivered. “I’m not surprised to find he’s some…some specter in a black sheet. There are stories about the bastard wiping out entire cities, and nations! Snapping his fingers and making whole civilizations vanish!”
“But why would he try to come back now?” asked Gregor.
“Probably because Sancia let his goddamn pet out of the box!” said Orso. “And he wants to get her back! I’d normally be a wee bit hesitant to run out and wage war because some malfunctioning god whispered in Sancia’s ear, but…if this really is—and I can’t believe I’m saying it—if it is Crasedes Magnus himself who might be coming back, then…Shit.”
They sat around the table, beleaguered and overwhelmed.
“So,” said Sancia. “What do we do?”
Orso laughed dully. “Of course it happens now. Just when we made headway with the Michiels. Just when we were trying to change the city for the better, to actually make some goddamn progress…” Then his pale, cold eyes narrowed. “I don’t doubt that you saw what you saw, Sancia. But Valeria has lied to you before, yes?”
She nodded. “About who and what she was.”
“Then I wish there was some kind of way to verify all this,” said Orso. “I trust apparitions in the night no more than I do the merchant houses. But how in the hell are we going to confirm that Ofelia scrumming Dandolo is actually doing this? And when? And how? We can’t even get past her campo walls!”
“It’s coming in on a ship,” said Gregor. “That’s what you said, correct?”
“Yeah,” said Sancia.
“Then it’s probably coming soon. I doubt if Valeria would have woken you in the night if we still had a month or two to work with.” Gregor slowly sat back, his chair crackling under his weight. “I don’t have a lot of friends in the Dandolo navy anymore. I don’t have a lot of friends in the Dandolo house period, really. But…I may know someo
ne who could tell us if anything unusual is going on with the Dandolos’ shipping patterns.” He glanced at Sancia. “And…it’d likely be helpful if you came.”
“Huh?” said Sancia. “Me? Why?”
“Because of your bountiful charisma,” said Gregor. “Come along. If Valeria really was as urgent as you said she was, we’ve no time to dawdle.”
* * *
—
Gregor and Sancia strode through Old Ditch as a bleary dawn poured over the rooftops—or rather, Gregor did the striding, whereas Sancia slinked along the edges of the streets. His style of walking had always bothered her: back painfully erect, arms swinging to and fro, every bit of him confident and moving. To someone accustomed to the Commons, he was asking for a knife in the back.
“This way, please,” he said, gesturing down an alley.
Sancia realized they were heading toward the Slopes: a stretch of Old Ditch that ran along the main shipping channel. It had once been used as a waterfront, back before the houses, but it had fallen into disrepair and started flooding repeatedly, until finally it’d been abandoned.
But as they turned a corner, Sancia saw it was not abandoned any longer.
A huge tent had been built over the Slopes, about three hundred feet wide and fifty feet tall. Stacked within were piles and piles of crates, barrels, bags, and wagons. She saw there were men stationed around the tent, with curiously lightish-colored skin and fair hair. They had hard faces and hard eyes, and they bore rapiers and espringals and watched the alleys keenly.
Gregor made right for them. Sancia followed, unsure what these men were guarding—but then she caught a whiff of corn, and pepper, and she realized.
It’s food, she thought. Spice. God, even wine…
This was a surprise. Ever since rebellions had broken out all over the slave plantations, food and wine had been scarce in Tevanne, but especially in the Commons.
She had an idea. She flexed her scrived sight, and studied the men before the big tent, and saw their weapons light up with scrivings and bindings.
She felt dread bloom in her stomach. There’s only one kind of person in the Commons who’d have access to food and wine, and scrived weaponry…
“How did you come to know these guys, Gregor?” she asked.
“I consort with many types of people, Sancia,” he said. “That is what a good chief of security does. It’s easier to stop a threat if you know it’s coming first. But…this is the only person I know of who could possibly confirm any of what you are suggesting.”
“Okay?”
“However…they have been very interested in you. They have asked me repeatedly to let them see you. Though I’ve been reluctant to allow that to happen.”
“Okay…why?”
One of the men saw Gregor approaching and walked forward to intercept him. “Not open today,” he said in a curious accent. “Still too early.”
“I am not here to purchase,” Gregor said. “I am here to see Miss Carbonari.”
The man frowned at him mistrustfully. “Why would you get to see her?”
“Because I have politely asked, I should hope.”
The man opened his mouth to respond when a second guard sidled up, tapped him on the shoulder, and whispered something in his ear. Comprehension bloomed on the man’s face. He looked somewhat embarrassed. “Oh,” he said. “Ohh. I will let her know you’re here.”
The man entered the depths of the tent. Gregor turned to Sancia and said, “If asked, you are a scriving prodigy, and nothing more.”
“What?” she said, startled.
“If anyone were to ask,” he said, this time slowly and clearly, “you simply have a natural gift for scriving. There is nothing unnatural about it. Understand?”
“What have you been telling these peop—”
The man emerged from the stacks of crates. “She will see you now.”
Gregor waved a hand, and together they entered the tent.
The light within was a dim yellow, filtered through the cloths and skins above, and there were glimmering oil lanterns staggered throughout the stacks of crates. Though it seemed to be a small labyrinth, it was quite populated: men and women shifted among the goods, or slept on crude pallets, and though they hardly cast an eye at Gregor, many of them stared curiously at Sancia.
Sancia’s eye traced over them in the dark. Some of them had their upper arms bared. Every time, they had a small brand on their left triceps—denoting, Sancia knew, which island had once owned them.
Finally they wound through the depths of the tent until they came to a small makeshift office. A woman sat in the corner, behind a tiny, rickety desk, bent over a stack of papers, an oily candle fluttering just inches from her eye.
She looked up at Gregor. She was dressed plainly in a jerkin and breeches—unusual for a woman, but a choice Sancia herself often opted for—and was perhaps about his age, though she looked a little older, due to a life of hard living. Her skin had probably once been lighter than that of the average Tevanni, but was now dark and lined from years in the sun, and her iron-gray eyes were stuck in a perpetual squint. Still, there was an evenness to her features, and a confidence to her bearing, that made her attractive to look at.
“Gregor,” she said. Her voice was low and sonorous, but her words were stiff. She was obviously not from anywhere close to Tevanne. “Morning. It’s been some time.”
Gregor bowed. “Good morning, Polina. How goes your trade?”
“Booming, as always.” Her hard eyes flicked to Sancia, and narrowed. “Ah. So. You’ve finally brought her.”
“I have.” Gregor sat on one of the crates. “I fulfill my promises.”
“You remain an unusual Tevanni, then.”
“Though I would like something in return,” said Gregor.
The woman’s mouth tightened. “Perhaps not so unusual, then.”
“This would not be anything too dear. Just information.”
“As we’re in a city whose might is founded on that very thing,” she said, “I wonder what definition of ‘dear’ you’re using.” She stood, walked the short distance to Sancia, and stuck out her hand. “I am Polina Carbonari.”
Sancia shook her hand, which was as hard as old wood. “Sancia.”
Polina gripped her hand a little too long. Sancia realized she was feeling her calluses, her skin, her nails. The woman smirked a little and released her.
“You are Sancia Grado, yes?”
“Yeah?”
“You’re quite a celebrity. I’ve heard many rumors that there was a slave girl working in Orso’s shops, doing many wonders with scriving. Are these rumors true?”
“I’m not a goddamn slave anymore. And they don’t feel much like wonders when you have to work your scrumming ass off to get them going. But yeah, I guess.”
“How did you come to have this skill for scrivenings, might I ask?” asked Polina.
Sancia felt very aware of Gregor’s eyes on her. “They’re called scrivings. But just like any child can have a skill with a viol,” she said, “any person, Tevanni or no, can excel at scriving.”
“Is that so?”
“Yes. It is.”
“How curious. I wonder now—what has Gregor here told you about us?”
“Nothing. I’ve no idea why I’m here at all.”
“I see. Then what do you assume?”
Sancia thought for a moment. “I assume…that you lot are smugglers,” she said.
“And?”
“And probably rebellious slaves from the plantations, here to sell all the stuff that normally would have gone straight to the merchant houses.”
A very slight nod. “I see. And why do you assume this?”
“For one thing, you have a lot of food,” said Sancia. “Which no one else in the Commons has. For another, you have
scrived weaponry—which I assume you got after you overthrew some plantation stronghold or another. But I also saw a woman back there with a brand from the Isle of Crepsis. And two men with brands of Ontia.”
“And you?”
Sancia hesitated very briefly. “Silicio.”
“It was my impression that there is no Silicio Plantation anymore,” said Polina. “That someone burned it down.”
Sancia shrugged.
Polina examined her very closely. Sancia found the experience disturbing—especially when Polina’s eyes flicked to the scar on the side of her head, where the Candianos had installed a scrived command plate in her skull.
“And you?” she asked softly. “Are you here to burn down the whole of Tevanne, just as you did Silicio?”
“Burn down Tevanne?” said Sancia. “What the hell? No.”
“Why do you sound so surprised? I thought you and Gregor and Orso were running some kind of revolution, yes?”
“Not all revolutions mean burning down a damned city.”
“I am no historian,” said Polina, “but…it seems likely those are far from the norm…”
“Is that what you’re here to do? Massacre the entire city?”
She waved at the room around her. “Massacre? With wine and grain and old fruit? No. But I admit, many of my compatriots dream of doing so. They think that would make the world a better place.”
“It isn’t as goddamned simple as that,” snapped Sancia. “For one thing, there’s a hell of a lot more people in Tevanne than just those on the campos.”
“I’m sympathetic to them,” said Polina. “But I will say…I am more sympathetic to the people I have known who perished in bondage and misery—while your innocent bystanders here in Tevanne simply…” Her eyes lingered on Sancia for a fraction of a moment. “Well. Stand by.”
Sancia cocked her head. “And what does that mean? You think I’m standing by? That I’m complicit in all this?”
“Polina…” said Gregor.
“To speak bluntly,” Polina said, “I think that if you really are what I am told you are—a freed slave with a gift for scriving—then your energies could be better placed elsewhere.”
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