Did he leave? Is all this just the wreckage of…of his calibration? Again, she was reminded of some insect forcing its way out of its pupa.
I bet the crew made for shallops when all this shit happened, she thought. I know I would’ve. We’re on a ghost ship. So…how is it still moving?
She leaned forward through the open door and looked out. There was a bit of deck running along the side of the giant aperture, enough for her to walk on. She stepped out and crept along the edge, listening, watching, trying to spy some hint of what could have happened here—and where Crasedes had gone.
If he’s already left for Tevanne, she thought, then…God. Then we’ve failed.
She stalked among the edges of the ruins, then stood with her back to the center of the aperture, looking at the damage. She noticed that where there was a metal component, like a support beam or a steel wall, it had not snapped, exactly—at first it had been bent or stretched, like the tar candy they made from sugar.
She knew what this suggested. She’d used just such a tool once before, to devastating effect.
Did something alter the gravity in here?
Then the nausea hit her.
She nearly collapsed in agony. It was like her stomach was full of boiling water and writhing worms at once, like her head was an infected wound full of pus. She cried out and fell to her knees, grinding her knuckles into the center of her forehead.
She knew lexicons weren’t the only devices that caused such a sensation: the old stories said people felt overcome with sickness when they approached one of the ancient ones.
A ray of moonlight had lanced down from the torn deck above, illuminating the wall before her—and a shadow was rising on the wall, like a shadow puppet from the plays: the shadow of a man seated cross-legged on nothing.
Behind me…
She heard a voice.
It was a masculine voice, but…it was not a man’s voice, not truly. A man’s voice would sound human, and this did not. Though it was silky, and strangely pleasant to listen to, it was too deep, too resonant, far more than any mortal man’s ever could be.
It said: “Hello, Sancia.”
* * *
—
Sancia stood very, very still, her eyes fixed on the shadow cast on the wall before her. She stared at it for what felt like an eternity, breathing hard.
She remembered the scrivers down below, their eyes ravaged and bloody, their throats slit. Don’t turn around, she thought. Don’t look at him. Don’t!
“It’s nice to finally meet you,” said the voice. “Though obviously…these circumstances are a little less than ideal…”
She blinked as the words rippled through her. The sound of his voice was like having chocolate and honey poured into her ear. Though she was terrified—and she was terrified—she had the sudden and curious desire for him to never stop speaking to her. She ignored it, and she stood there ramrod-straight, watching the shadow on the wall, keenly aware that the thing currently occupying this space with her had destroyed the interior of this ship like it’d been made of straw.
He’s right behind me…Oh God, he’s just right there…
Then the shadow moved—was it cocking its head?
“You can turn around, you know,” said his voice. “I did have some—how shall I put this?—issues with my original appearance. It was nearly as unpleasant for me as it was for them, but…I think I’ve found a suitable method to veil my form. You should be safe.”
No. Don’t. Don’t turn around. Don’t see.
“Or…don’t.” The shadow assumed a standing posture, like he stood on the air itself, and he began to pace around. “I mean, ordinarily I’d think—anything to make this situation a little more personable, but…” The detritus seemed to rattle as his voice plumbed the lower depths of his range. “It has been a long while since I’ve had a real conversation. Especially a conversation with someone like you.”
She was baffled by how untroubled, how plummy he sounded. This thing had been the cause of the deaths of hundreds of slaves, and a dozen scrivers—and yet now he addressed her like an acquaintance at the street corner.
But perhaps it made sense. A being like him would be worried by very little.
The shadow stopped pacing. Then it swelled on the wall as he grew near, and her stomach trembled with nausea.
Oh God, she thought. Tears sprang to her eyes. Oh God, please…
“You know why I’m here, Sancia,” he said. “And I’m sure you know who I am.”
There was a long, long silence.
She eventually realized he was expecting an answer.
“C-Crasedes,” she said.
The shadow shifted again, like he’d cocked his head the other way. “And I’m sure the construct’s told you all kinds of stories about me. Stories about how I’m a monster, some implacable, horrific thing…”
She thought of the imperiat, in the box at her side. Could she get to it fast enough, and turn it on? She very much doubted she could with him watching—and the utter devastation around her was an excellent reminder of what could go wrong.
“Yes?” said Crasedes. “Do you think me such a thing?”
She swallowed. “I…I saw the slaves and the scrivers down in the belly of the ship…”
“Hmm,” he said contemplatively. “That’s fair. This restoration was a far cry from ideal. I would have done it about a dozen other ways if I could have. But I knew I needed to be here as fast as possible—because the construct is lying to you, Sancia. If you keep helping her, I must tell you—she’s going to kill you and everyone in your city. And that, I guarantee you, will be just the start. Are you hearing me? Are you hearing me, Sancia?”
His voice seemed to echo inside her head, so much so it almost felt indistinguishable from her own thoughts.
She shook herself. Focus.
The shadow began pacing on the wall again, his limbs huge and spectral and distorted on the face of the dripping wood. “I need something from you, Sancia. I need you to tell me where the construct is. I know she’s wounded, and weak. I know she’s probably trapped in an actual, physical place, if I had to guess. And I need you to tell me where that is, so I can get to her and stop her before things get very bad. So tell me, Sancia. Please. For your sake, and the sake of all your people—where is the construct?”
Sancia stood perfectly still, staring at the shadow on the wall. Don’t speak again. Don’t turn around. Don’t see him.
“You know her power,” said Crasedes. “You’ve been touched by her, been altered in ways you both know and don’t know…”
Her heart went cold. What in hell does he mean by that?
“But just because she’s changed you, it doesn’t mean you owe her anything. She already thinks you’re her tool. Just look at how she’s made you…”
“What do you mean?” demanded Sancia, still facing the wall. “How has she made me?”
The shadow turned to her. “Well…I can’t quite tell you. Because one of those changes, it seems, makes you very, very difficult for me to perceive. She has…protected you. Hidden you. She means to make a weapon out of you, to be used against me. Did you know she had done this? Did you ask for this alteration?”
She was silent.
“Hadn’t thought so,” he said. “One wonders what other designs are ticking away inside that head of yours…”
Sancia started trembling. Oh God…
“I didn’t want it to be this way,” he said. The shadow on the wall assumed a pose of theatrical contemplation. “I didn’t want her to escape. I didn’t want her to use you. I certainly didn’t want all those people on board this ship to die. But I knew I had to, Sancia. Are you hearing me?” Again, his voice seemed to spill into her mind like the ocean at high tide, and she found it hard to think. “I had to do it because I knew if I wasn’t here to
stop her, she would kill a thousand times more than those who perished here tonight. So I had to make a choice—a callous, coldhearted, monstrous choice. I’m sure you can sympathize…”
She listened to his voice. It felt very hard to remember the faces of the dead slaves lying on the floor of the galleon. She couldn’t recall what the children had looked like, so pale and so still…Or had there been any children at all? She suddenly wasn’t sure.
“Turn around, Sancia. Turn around and talk to me face-to-face. I mean—look at this ship,” his voice purred. “If I’d wanted you dead, well…you would have been dead a long time ago.”
His words danced over the surface of her mind. Suddenly it seemed like such a reasonable request…
Yes. I will. I’ll do it.
Sancia turned around.
She was still perceiving the world with her scrived sight, so that was how she first saw him—though as she turned around, initially she wasn’t sure what she was seeing.
When she’d looked at Clef and the other hierophantic rigs with her scrived sight, they had always looked like little bloody red stars that glimmered unpleasantly—but this thing before her was most certainly not a star. It was like a giant, whirling, crimson maelstrom, a massive, bloody thumbprint hanging in the center of the aperture, a violation so tremendous it was like reality itself was bleeding.
But she also saw him with her regular sight. And that confused her no less.
A man was hanging in the air above the wreckage, sitting cross-legged. He wore a black cloak, a three-cornered hat, and a shining black mask—the classic Papa Monsoon costume from carnival. His mask was totally expressionless, just a blank face with slits for eyes, and yet Sancia could not spy any hint or glint of eyes behind that mask. She couldn’t see any skin or sign of human features at all, really: every human feature was shrouded by sleeves, or gloves, or cloak.
The floating man in the Papa Monsoon costume slowly cocked his head. “There,” said Crasedes in his deep, flowing voice. “That isn’t so bad—is it?”
* * *
—
Gregor looked back at the open door. She’s been gone too long. She’s been gone much too long.
“Don’t,” said Ofelia. “Don’t go. You don’t understand him yet.”
“Is she in danger?” he demanded. “Have you put her in peril too, Mother?”
“Stay with me,” she said. “Stay with me and…and I will help him fix you. I didn’t want you to be like you are, Gregor. It was never meant to be permanent, you must believe me.”
Gregor took a step toward the door, espringal still trained on his mother.
“Your father…” She shook her head. “You don’t remember. You don’t remember those days, and what happened to him, what he became…and then came the carriage accident, and you and Domenico…”
Gregor whirled around, espringal raised. “I will shoot you!” he said. “I will! I’ve heard enough lies, I’ve…I’ve died enough times for you, haven’t I? Maybe you ought to know what it’s like!”
She looked at him, her eyes wide and untroubled. She still seemed to be in shock. “The world is broken. It is unbalanced. It is a design, poorly planned, and poorly wrought. You know that, don’t you?”
“Those slaves, below,” said Gregor. “All the people in the plantations. In the Mountain. All dead. Yes, Mother. Yes, I know the world is broken—and that people like you are the ones who broke it.”
“If you leave me now,” she said, her voice small and brittle, “I don’t know if we’ll ever be able to put you back. Is she worth that?”
He stared down the sights of his weapon at her. How old she seemed now, how gray and lined and frail…
But then he felt a wind at his back, a curious breeze, and he remembered Sancia, lost in the darkness.
“I would rather risk a life of damnation,” said Gregor, “and save her, than abandon her and stay with those who first damned me.”
He turned and ran into the darkness.
* * *
—
Crasedes did not move as she looked upon him. He didn’t even seem to be breathing. He hung in the air so still she wondered if he was perhaps a dummy or a doll. There was no sound but the wind and the pattering of waters falling into the broken decks below.
Then he held out his arms to her beseechingly, still suspended in a moonbeam, his black mask gleaming, the atrium echoing with his deep, rich voice. She suddenly understood how ancient peoples had believed him to be a god. “This…This isn’t ideal, obviously,” he said. “None of this is ideal. My appearance…” He gestured around him. “This ship. Those poor people below. You and Gregor here…None of this is how I wanted it to go. But I am here to help. That is why I’ve come, why I’ve always been here, Sancia.” He drifted down until his toes touched the deck before her, and he stood facing her. “But I won’t be able to do it without you.”
A voice spoke up in her mind—Stop! Don’t listen to him! Stab out your ears if you need, but stop listening to him!
She felt her brow crease faintly, and she started backing away.
“You still don’t trust me?” he said. “After all I’ve said? I’m worried you’re not hearing me, Sancia.”
His words blossomed in her head, smothering out all her worries. He advanced on her, walking along the fragments of decking that ran around the gaping hole. “You should. We have much in common—or, more specifically, someone in common.” He cocked his head, his eyes dark and huge in his mask. “For I am here to do the same thing I suspect you are—to move thoughtfully, and bring freedom to others.”
Sancia froze. It was as if a bell had been rung deep inside the recesses of her thoughts.
“No,” she whispered.
“He was my friend too,” said Crasedes. “Long, long, long ago. I know you have him, Sancia, and I’ll tell you—I don’t mind. But I must ask—did he truly trust you? Did he tell you his true name? Did he tell you to call him…Clef?”
She stared at him, feeling very faint now. Only she and the other Foundrysiders had ever known Clef’s name—or, indeed, that he was a person at all.
“He did, didn’t he,” said Crasedes. “I can tell by the look in your eyes.”
She felt sick, like her stomach was full of lightning, and she couldn’t think. She just couldn’t think…
But even though her mind was overpowered, she couldn’t help but notice that something very unusual had appeared to her scrived sight.
Crasedes still appeared as a whirling mass of hellish blood-red—but there was more there than just his violation. His arms and legs and chest all rippled with an unpleasant red, and there, buried in his right hand, was a bright, glimmering red star…
The knuckle, she thought. The bone. That’s where it is. And his wrappings…the clothing on his very body are what’s keeping him alive, convincing the world he never died…
“He was my friend,” said Crasedes softly. “I would like you to be my friend too. Tell me, Sancia. Tell me—where is the construct? Where is she? Help me. You must help me.”
“I don’t know,” she said. She helplessly watched in horror as the words tumbled out of her mouth.
Crasedes studied her carefully. “You don’t?”
“N-No. I don’t. She…She just came to me one night.”
Stop! Stop, she thought, stop, stop, stop! What are you doing, WHAT ARE YOU DOING?
“I see…” he said softly. “Then, perhaps you can help me another way, Sancia. Tell me—where is Clef?”
The words nearly leapt out of her—He’s in my attic back at Foundryside, there’s a button I have to hit to open his little cubby—but she just barely snatched them back before she said them.
“Sancia,” said Crasedes, advancing on her. “You must help me. Are you hearing me? To combat the construct, I must have Clef. Please—help me.”
Again, she nearly blurted it out, nearly screamed the answer to the rafters of the ship, but she held the words back—for she could not do this to Clef, not give up her friend who had helped her so much so many times.
What am I doing? What the hell am I doing?
Then another thought struck her—Maybe the first of all hierophants doesn’t just have power over the gravity of objects. Maybe he also has control over the gravity of thoughts.
Her skin broke out in a cold sweat. I have got to get the ever-living hell out of here. But how?
Then she noticed movement behind him, from the fragment of the deck she’d just come from—and she had an idea.
“I think…” she said slowly.
He watched her, his black-shrouded body as still as a statue.
“I think…that I am going to have to think about it,” she said.
He didn’t react at all. He just stood there, his body facing her.
“I think it would be best if…if you let me go,” said Sancia. “You need to let me go, so I can think about this, and decide on my answer. And I know you’re going to let me go, of course. Because I am from Tevanne, where plenty of powerful people say many admirable things about saving or fixing the world, but…when they finally have to do it, suddenly there’s a change in the melody of their speech.” She looked at him, the moonlight shifting on his shoulders. “And surely the first of all hierophants isn’t like them—are you?”
Crasedes watched her, his visage implacable, unreadable. She started to think that he was not a person but rather a totem or a token that was being moved about in the world by something…else. Something perhaps on the other side of reality—if that even made sense.
“No,” said Crasedes.
Sancia waited for more.
“No to…what?” she asked.
Crasedes did not move.
Then Gregor popped out from behind a column across the gap in the ship, and fired his imprinter espringal.
Crasedes didn’t even look away from her. His right hand shot out behind him and he snatched the lead slug out of the air like it was a butterfly flitting through trumpet vines. The movement was so unnatural it seemed like it should have dislocated his shoulder.
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