He fell silent, staring out at the streets with a baleful expression.
“What happened in the Mountain, Gregor?” asked Berenice.
He swallowed hard, his jaw and neck flexing. “Some men tried to kill Orso.”
“And?”
“And I…stopped them.”
They waited for more, but it didn’t come.
“You killed them,” said Sancia.
He nodded. “But when I did…When I did that, I…I suddenly remembered.”
“Remembered what?” asked Berenice.
Gregor bowed his head. “I remembered…dying. I remember dying. When I…when I picked up the sword, and used it, and felt the blood on my face…It was like a dam broke open in my head. I always suspected my mother had given me some capability of…of resuscitating myself, or bringing me back, but…I finally got to see it. I got to see and feel myself returning from the dead.” He looked up at them, his cheeks covered with tears. “I was dead. I was dead. I was really, truly dead—and then I just wasn’t.”
Berenice covered her mouth in horror. “But…how did you come back?” she asked.
“I…I don’t know. Suddenly my wounds blurred, and then they were simply gone. It was like I’d been restored to some…some other version of myself. And I knew instantly that it wasn’t the first time it had happened to me, or the last. I mean…how many times has she let me die?”
There was a long silence. Sancia had no idea what to say.
“You need a physiquere, don’t you,” he said.
“Orso does, yes,” said Sancia.
“But you can’t go out. Not with so many people watching us.”
“I mean, I could, but…”
“No. People will be looking for us specifically. It’s too dangerous.” He let out a shuddering breath. “So. I should be the one to go.”
“What? You just said it was too dangerous.”
“It is. But not for me. Because I can’t…I can’t…” He looked at her pleadingly. “I mean, I’ll be all right, won’t I?”
She realized what he was suggesting. “Gregor! Goddamn it, I…I’m not going to ask that of you!”
“Orso needs a physiquere. He’s going to die without one.”
“But we are not suggesting you use the gruesome alterations that have been done to you to survive,” said Berenice. “We are not asking that of you, Gregor.”
“This is what I am,” he said. “We might as well use it for what it is. Maybe I could clear the way for you, I could take them out or…”
“Stop with the goddamn martyr bullshit!” snapped Sancia. “Now that we have Valeria, this would be the dumbest possible time to give up, or give in. All right?”
Gregor sighed deeply. “Then…what are we going to do about Orso? Or the people watching outside?”
Berenice stepped to the window. “Well. One of them appears to have walked to the gates.” She leaned forward, narrowing her eyes. “And they are…waving. At us.”
“What?” said Sancia. She and Gregor both went to the window.
She was right: there was a figure standing at the Foundryside gates, peering through the bars, and waving stiffly. At first Sancia couldn’t make out anything, but then the winds shifted and the countless floating lanterns danced, spilling rosy light across their courtyard—and she spied long hair tied back in a familiar severe bun, and narrow, shrewd eyes, and an unsmiling mouth.
“Polina?” said Sancia. “These are her people? What in hell is she doing here?”
They watched her waving for a moment longer. Then she lowered her hand and crossed her arms, waiting.
“I…suspect she wants to come in,” said Gregor. “Shall I, ah, let her?”
Sancia sighed. “Let’s find out what she wants. Maybe she has news.”
* * *
—
Gregor went to the gates, opened them a bit, and let her inside, flanked by the two armed men. Polina’s shrewd eyes danced about as she walked through the front door, taking in the three Foundrysiders and making careful note of the interior.
“What brings you here, Polina?” asked Gregor.
“Mostly,” she said, “I came to see if you lot were still alive.”
“What makes you think we wouldn’t be?” asked Sancia.
“Well, you tell me you’re off to do many dreadful things—and then suddenly the Mountain comes down, and there are tales of ghosts and devils battling in the streets outside your office…and rumors of Orso Ignacio, struck down and dying. I note that he is not among you now.” She looked at Gregor. “Is he slain?”
Gregor shook his head. “He lives. But he is gravely injured.”
“And you go to get a physiquere?” she asked. “A dangerous time to be out. The streets are swarming with bad men with many bad things on their minds. Some of my sources tell me that war has broken out between the Dandolos and the Michiels—something I’d never have believed—but others tell me these bad men are looking for a wine cart, last seen headed toward your firm.”
“What’s your point?” asked Sancia.
“My point is—you aren’t going to be able to go out for a cup of wine, let alone a physiquere.” She locked eyes with Sancia. “But I could get you one. If you were to ask it of me.”
Sancia watched her mistrustfully. “What do you want in return?”
“Nothing. Except to talk. Is that so much?”
Sancia sighed.
* * *
—
They converted the upstairs meeting room into an impromptu surgeon’s bay. Then they placed Orso on the table, shirtless and moaning, and Gregor held down his injured arm with a strap of leather. Two other men restrained his other limbs—his legs, his other arm—and sopped up the blood with bright-white linens while a large, sweaty, bald man delicately poured boiled water over Orso’s wound, studied it with a magnifying loupe, carefully picked out pieces of black detritus, and placed them in a wooden bowl beside him.
“We should go,” Polina said to Sancia quietly. “Eduardo is a gifted physiquere, but it is wisest to let him practice his trade in peace, without an audience.”
Sancia and Berenice followed her downstairs to the library. “What is it you have to say to us?” Sancia asked.
Polina thought about it, then took a small pack off her shoulder. “I have brought food,” she said. “Would you prefer to sup first?”
“Really?” said Sancia.
“Have you not yet realized that I have no taste for idle chat? Especially not now.”
Sancia glared at her, but then realized she was ravenously hungry—as well as still covered with dried muck from the Mountain. “Fine. Just let me wash up.”
A few minutes later they sat on the floor of the Foundryside library eating cold rice and lentils, and some decent but fairly old bread. Berenice ate with a shallow wooden spoon, but Sancia did not bother: she ate with her fingers, stuffing it into her mouth as fast as she could, not caring if she spilled.
“So. What do you want from us, Polina?” asked Sancia as she finished.
“Must you think me so transactional?” said Polina.
“I think smugglers and spies are some of the most goddamned transactional kinds of people, and you’re both.”
“Perhaps I’m here out of force of habit. My first role was smuggling people rather than wares—stealing slaves out of the plantations and spiriting them away in boats and canoes and the backs of carts.” Her eyes glittered in the low light as she watched Sancia. “Many of them like you.”
“I don’t need saving.”
“I am not so sure.” She took out her pipe, lit it with a scrived fire starter, and sucked at it. “I so despise your magics, of course, but…they can be convenient.” She sniffed and looked at them, her mouth trailing smoke. “You didn’t seem surprised when I told you that the M
ichiels and the Dandolos were at war. Which suggests you already knew.”
Sancia and Berenice were silent.
“This will not end well,” she said. “You know that. But I must say it aloud now. This will not end well. You—you and your friends and allies—you are going to fail here. And Tevanne will not survive. At least, not as you know it.”
“What’s your point?” asked Sancia.
“My point is…I am pulling out all my smugglers,” she said, “all my spies, all my servants and supporters. We will take our focus elsewhere. It pains me—I made a lot of money in Tevanne, and I saved a lot of lives with it. But I will not stay and die with this city. And when we go…I would prefer if you all came with us.” Her eyes were fixed on Sancia, unblinking.
“Why?” asked Berenice.
“This place is doomed,” said Polina simply. “The peoples in the plantations are not—not yet. So I ask you—come with me, and help them.”
There was a silence.
“We are not done yet,” said Berenice quietly. “We worked hard to get where we are, and there’s too much at risk. We can’t walk away now.”
Polina nodded as she smoked, as if this were the most perfectly reasonable conversation in the world. “I see. It will take one week for my smugglers to move out. If you change your minds before then, I’ll be at the docks in the Slopes.”
There were footsteps from above them. A weary, bloodied Gregor Dandolo came downstairs and gave them a bleary look. “It’s done,” he said.
They stood. “He’s all right? He’ll…He’ll live?” asked Berenice.
“For now,” said Gregor. “He will mend, and the physiquere has applied his poultices. But he needs rest.”
“You all need rest,” said Polina. “I can let you sleep for a time, while my people keep watch. But then we will go.” She stood and looked at Sancia. “Just remember—a scriver makes something from nothing. Perhaps you attempt the same here. But eventually, eventually, the magic always stops, and all the illusions vanish.”
* * *
—
Sancia and Berenice wearily staggered upstairs. When they came to their rooms, Sancia made straight for their closet, fumbled in the dark, and pressed her hand to the hidden switch.
The wall popped open, and Sancia felt inside. Her heart leapt when her fingers closed around the cold metal inside.
“Thank God,” she whispered. “Thank God…”
She took Clef out and studied him, watching how his curious tooth glimmered in the low light.
“He’s here,” said Berenice. “And he’s safe. We need to get rest while we can. Because this is nowhere close to being finished yet.”
“I know.” Then Sancia looked at her. “Ber. There’s something you should know.”
“Yes?”
“I saw something when I first talked to Valeria. A…A vision, perhaps, or a memory. I saw it when she pressed the image of the component into my head. I…I don’t think she meant for me to see it. I’ve wanted to tell you, but we’ve had so much to do.”
She described the vision she’d had—of the man in dusty wrappings weeping before the dying child, and then Crasedes in the peristyle, wielding Clef and opening the black doors.
Berenice listened, her eyes growing wide. “You…You think these were her memories of Crasedes?”
“I think so. He said something curious tonight—about how I’d never know what it was like to lose someone and know it didn’t matter…Do you think he meant this?” She looked at Clef, cradled in her hands, winking gold. “Did…Did Crasedes Magnus lose his child, thousands of years ago? And is that why he’s trying to put the world all aright?”
21
Sancia woke to see the ceiling of her attic, and felt Berenice beside her. She ached in countless places. My body, she thought, is not as young as it once was.
But as she slowly awoke, she realized that something else was wrong.
The room felt wrong. The shadows seemed to lie at slightly wrong angles. The air itself felt wrong when she breathed in. Everything felt just a touch off, like someone had taken a weak magnifying glass and laid it over everything she saw.
Either I’ve taken a blow to the head, thought Sancia, which is entirely possible…or something’s just wrong here.
She began to get a very bad idea.
She hobbled downstairs to the basement to check on Valeria. She opened the door and stared—for it seemed Valeria had been up to quite a bit.
The walls and floor of the basement had completely changed. A few things were still there—the lexicon, of course, and a few pieces of old furniture—but the moldering stone and creaky wood walls were gone, and had somehow been transformed into a curiously cold, flat, gleaming marble of a very dark greenish-black.
“What the hell…” whispered Sancia.
As she stared at the walls, she realized they were so shiny that she could see her reflection in them—but then she got the crawling sense that she was seeing too many reflections, like the walls and floors were reflecting other reflective walls and floors that she herself couldn’t see. The experience was like being inside of a black diamond, or some bizarrely fractal crystal, and the longer she looked at the glassy walls, the more reflections she glimpsed at angles that really shouldn’t be possible…
The room keeps going, she thought. It keeps going in, and in, and in…
She shook herself and looked away, but made sure to avoid actually entering this strange room, since she couldn’t understand what it was or where it’d come from. “What the hell,” she whispered.
said Valeria’s voice.
Sancia jumped at the sound, and looked around. She expected to see the huge golden figure towering over her—but instead she saw Valeria’s visage emerge from one of the many reflections in the walls before her.
But just one. None of the others. The effect was deeply disturbing.
“What the hell am I looking at, exactly?” asked Sancia. “What did you do to our goddamn basement?”
“What does that mean?” asked Sancia. She peered in through the open door. “How is our damned basement…fundibular?”
A click from somewhere, and the reflections in the walls seemed to split into more and more reflections.
Sancia struggled to comprehend this. “So…you’ve, like, wrinkled up the reality within our basement?”
Sancia didn’t answer. She just took a step back, shut the door, and turned and pressed her back up against it.
What the hell? What the hell have we gotten ourselves into?
“Sancia?” Berenice came down the stairs, yawning. “Is Valeria done with…whatever it was she needed to do? Because something feels very odd about…Well. Everything.”
Sancia opened her mouth to answer, but realized she didn’t know how. “See for yourself,” she said finally.
She opened the door for her.
Berenice stared inside. Sancia could hear Valeria say: “Hello, other girl.”
Without a word, Berenice reached out, grabbed the door, and slammed it shut.
“Oh my God,” she said faintly. “And I…I thought Crasedes was bad!”
“Yeah,” said Sancia. She rubbed her eyes. “With Crasedes, you just feel him bending reality. You don’t have to scrumming see him do it.�
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Berenice thought hard for a moment. “She can probably hear us talking.”
“Huh? How could she?”
“Well, I mean…with the definition we got for her, she’s capable of directly influencing the reality all around her, like the Mountain did. Like—the definition essentially asserts that she’s the God of everything around her. I think that’s why the atmosphere inside the firm feels changed.”
“Yeah?” said Sancia.
“So—if Crasedes can’t get within a thousand yards of here, or whatever some such, because that’s the limit of her influence…and if we’re inside of that influence…then technically we’re inside of her. Like—right now.”
“Other girl apprehends well,” whispered Valeria’s voice in Sancia’s ear appraisingly.
“It appears,” said Berenice faintly, “that I am right…”
“True. The functionality is like your foundry lexicons. Proximity is crucial. Closer to the locus, the more influence I maintain. The more you can hear me, in other words.”
They cracked open the door and peered inside. “Can we…like, come inside?” asked Sancia.
“There is no reason why not.”
“We wouldn’t be stepping on your brain or something?”
A pause.
“Unsure how to respond to this question.”
“Never mind.”
They walked down the steps into the basement—if that word even applied anymore. The experience was deeply strange: you knew there were walls and a ceiling and floor around you, but when you actually looked at them there were so many reflections that you got the paralyzing sense that the floor and walls weren’t actually there at all.
I can’t help but get the strong sensation, thought Sancia, that we are literally inside of Valeria’s mind…
She focused on what few tangible things she could see. All of their belongings were still in here: tables, pens, chairs…though now that she noticed, they had been carefully rearranged.
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