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,
There was a long silence.
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 O
rso 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.
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