Then there was a cough, and she saw—there was a gap below the device.
Sancia knelt, peered in, and gasped.
There was a man trapped in the gap, lying on his back beneath the machine—which had mutilated him beyond description. His torso and legs and arms were shot through with shafts and spokes, his rib cage was torn by chains and metal teeth, his feet were twisted and tattered from chains and springs…
And yet, he lived. He wheezed and choked, and when he heard Sancia’s gasp, he looked up at her and—to her astonishment—he smiled.
“Ah,” he said weakly. “Sancia. It’s nice to finally talk to you in person.” He looked around. “In a way, I mean.”
She stared at him. The man was unfamiliar—upper-middle-aged, pale skin with white hair—but she knew that voice. The man spoke with the voice of Clef. “Who…” she said. “Who are…”
“I’m not the key,” said the man, sighing. “Just like the wind is not the windmill, I’m not Clef. I’m merely the thing that powers the device.” He glanced around at the wheels and teeth around him. “Do you see?”
She thought she understood. “You…you were the man they killed to make Clef,” she said. “They ripped you from your body and put you in the key.” She looked at the vast amalgam of wheels and teeth around them. “And…this is it? This is the key? This is Clef?”
He smiled again. “It’s a…representation. You’re doing what people have always been so talented at doing—reinterpreting what is before you in understandable terms.”
“So…we’re inside Clef. Right now.”
“In a way, yes. I’d have put out wine and cakes for you, but…” He glanced down at himself. “Just didn’t get around to it, I’m afraid.”
“How?” asked Sancia. “How the hell is this happening?”
“Simple. You’ve been changed. Now you can do many of the same things that I can do, kid,” said the man. “I’ve lived in your thoughts for a long time. I’ve been inside your mind. So, now that you have the tools, it’s perfectly possible for you to come into mine.”
She looked at him, and sensed he wasn’t telling her something. She looked back at the hole in the wall behind her, and thought. “And it’s because you’re falling apart, aren’t you,” she said. “I can get in because the walls are breaking down. Because you’re dying.”
The smile faded from his face. “The key’s breaking down, yes. The box…just engaging with such a thing is destroying whatever strength the key had left.”
“So we can’t open it,” she said quietly.
“Not like this,” he said. “No.”
“But we…we have to do something!” said Sancia. “Can we do something?”
“We have some time,” said the man. “Time in here’s not the same as time out there, and I know…I’ve been imprisoned within this machine since time immemorial.”
“Can Valeria stop the ritual?” asked Sancia. “Even though it’s already started?”
“Valeria? Is that the name she gave you?” asked the man. “Interesting. She’s had many over the years. And that one…” His face filled with a curious horror. “I hope,” he said softly, “that it’s just coincidence.”
“She said she could stop this madness,” said Sancia. “Can she?”
“She can,” said the man, still shaken. “She can stop many things. I should know. I was one of the people who built her.”
Sancia stared at him. She realized there was an obvious question she had not asked yet. “What’s your name?” she asked. “It’s not Clef, is it?”
“I…I was once a man named Claviedes,” he said, smiling wearily. “But you can call me Clef, if you like. It’s an old nickname of mine. I once made many things. I made the box you wish to open, for instance, as well as what lies within. Long, long ago.”
“You’re Occidental?” she said. “A hierophant?”
“Those are just words,” he said. “Divorced from the truth of history long past. I’m nothing now. Now I’m just a ghost within this machine. Don’t pity me, Sancia. I think at times that I deserve worse fates than this one. Listen. You want to open the box, and free what lies within—yes?”
“Yeah. If it’ll stop Estelle and save lives—including mine.”
“It will,” he said, sighing deeply. “For now.”
“For now?”
“Yes. You have to understand, kid, that you’re wading into the depths of a war that has raged for time beyond memory—a war between those who make and that which is made, between those who own and those who are owned. You’ve already seen what the powerful can do—how they can make people into willing slaves, turn them into tools and devices. But if you open the box—if you free what is within—then you’ll open a new chapter in this war.”
“I don’t understand any of this,” said Sancia. “Who is Valeria, really?”
“You already know what she is,” he said. “Don’t you? She showed herself to you, allowed you a glimpse when she changed you—didn’t she?”
Sancia was silent for a long while, thinking. Then she said, “I saw a woodcut once, a strange one…a group of men, standing in a curious room—the chamber at the center of the world, they said it was. There was a box in front of them, and the men were opening it up, and out of the box stepped…something. A god, perhaps.” She looked at him. “An angel in a jar…A god in a basket, or a sprite in a thimble…It’s all her, isn’t it? All of the stories are true, and they’re all about her—the synthetic god in the box, built by Crasedes of metals and machinery…”
“Mm,” said Claviedes. “Not quite a god, really. Valeria is more like a complicated command that was given to reality—a command that reality must change itself. She is still in the process of fulfilling all the requirements of that command—or at least, she’s trying to. She is not a god, in other words—she is a process. A sequence. It just didn’t go as anticipated.”
“And you fought her, didn’t you,” said Sancia. “She wasn’t lying when she told me about that, was she? You fought an entire war against her…”
“I didn’t do any fighting. But…” He was silent for a moment. “All servants,” he said quietly, “eventually come to doubt their masters. Just like you exploit flaws in scrivings, Valeria eventually found a way to exploit the flaws in her own commands. She’s still following her commands…just in an unusual fashion.”
Sancia sat back, dazed. She couldn’t process any of this. “So…We can try to let a synthetic god out of its box. One you fought a catastrophic war against. Or I can let Estelle become a monster. That’s the choice before me.”
“Unfortunately. And though I don’t doubt Valeria will stop Estelle’s ritual—what she does after that is anyone’s guess.”
“Not much of a choice.”
“No. But listen, Sancia,” he said. “Listen closely. You’ve few choices now. But in the future, you will be forced to make many. You’ve been changed. You possess powers and tools and abilities you haven’t even begun to imagine.”
“What,” she said miserably, “you mean tinkering with scrivings?”
“You’ll soon learn to do many things, Sancia—and you’ll have to learn to do many things. Because war is coming. It’s already found you and the rest of this city. And when you decide how to respond, remember—the first few steps of your path will decide the rest of it.”
“What do you mean?”
“Think of the plantations, of slavery. It was to be a short-term fix to a short-term problem. But they grew dependent on it. It became a part of their way of life. And then, without ever realizing it, they couldn’t imagine a way to stop. The choices you make will change you over time, Sancia. Make sure they don’t change you into something you don’t recognize—or you might wind up like me.” He smiled weakly at her.
“How can we release her, then?” said Sancia. “What can I do?”
“You?” he said. “You’ll do nothing. This is my task. My burden, and mine alone.”
“What do you mean? I thought the key was eroding, falling apart?”
“Oh, it is,” he said. “But the more the walls fall away, the more control I have. And I might not have strength enough to open Valeria’s box—but I do have strength enough to restore the key to its original state. And that can open the box.”
She considered this. “But…if the key is restored to the original state…then would we be able to talk? To speak? To be…friends?”
He smiled at her sadly. “No.”
She sat back, shocked. “But…but that’s not fair.”
“No. It isn’t.”
“I…I don’t want you to scrumming die, Clef! And I know it’s not really death, but it’s damned well close enough!”
“Well. You don’t really have a choice, I’m afraid. This is my choice. But it was good to speak to you, and I had to warn you of what awaits, before we part ways.”
“So…so this is good-bye?”
“Yes,” he said softly. “It is.” Something loud clanked above her, and the machine began to whirl. “Remember—move thoughtfully, give freedom to others, and you’ll rarely do wrong, Sancia. I’ve learned that now. I wish I’d known it in life.”
Something rattled and clattered, and a huge wheel began to move above.
“Good-bye, Sancia,” he whispered.
Then there was the whir of machinery, the hum of gears, and things went white.
* * *
Sancia opened her eyes.
She was still in the Mountain, still standing on that tiny shred of floor with Estelle and Tribuno, and the box was still before her, glowing red hot…
Yet Clef was moving. She felt him turn again in her hand, like some part of the lock that had previously resisted her finally gave way.
There was a deep, echoing clank from somewhere within the box. It sounded like it was echoing within an impossibly vast space—one much, much larger than the box itself.
“What did you do?” screamed Estelle. “What did you d—”
Then the lid of the box clunked, and swung back.
A blinding, bright light shone from its interior, as if the sun itself were inside the stone box, and there was a tremendous screeching sound, like enormous metal wheels braking across vast tracks in the sky. Sancia cried out and covered her eyes with one arm, her other hand on Clef, and tried to look away. Yet the light seemed to be everywhere, bathing everything, burning into her, and somewhere she heard a sound like thousands of clocks chiming in a faraway room…
Then the blaze died, the screeching and chiming stopped, and suddenly the box was just a box, cracked and old and empty.
Sancia blinked and looked around. She was still where she was, but…things looked different. The colors were muted and strange, as if a bit of light had leeched out of everything.
Then she heard the clicking—soft and steady, like the rivets and brackets of a massive clock—and she saw her.
Standing at the edge of the broken bit of floor, staring out at the cityscape of Tevanne: a woman made of gold.
But this was not the small, slender thing Sancia had glimpsed in Tomas’s jail cell. This figure was huge—eight feet tall, nine feet, it was strangely hard to tell. Her shoulders were broad, her arms thick, and she was not like a sculpture now, not a human form wrought of gold—instead she appeared to be wearing gold-plate armor, and through the cracks of the armor there seemed to be…something.
Something clicking, something whirring and writhing.
A voice echoed in Sancia’s ears, at once close and distant: “I know these skies,” said Valeria’s voice softly. The huge, golden woman pointed. “Once there were stars there. Four of them. I pulled them down and hurled them upon the heads of my foes, even as they assailed upon my bulk…to no avail. At least, not yet.” She shifted on her feet. “Later they would find a way to kill the very stars. Deprive me of my favorite weapons. But, once, there were stars there.”
Sancia looked around, or at least tried to—but suddenly she couldn’t move. It was like she’d been frozen in place. She looked out of the corner of her eye, and could see Estelle and Tribuno there—yet they seemed frozen too. It was as if Valeria’s arrival had frozen the whole of the world.
Slowly, the hulking figure turned. The clicking increased, like the chatter of insects on a hot afternoon. Valeria’s face, Sancia saw, was now a mask, a blank, calm, golden mask with no apertures for eyes or a mouth. Her hair was like a carving, gold ringlets spilling down her vast shoulders.
“And you, little bird,” she said. She walked closer to the frozen Sancia, and with each step she seemed larger and larger, until she was a vast statue, staring down with golden eyes.
My God, thought Sancia, terrified. What have I set loose?
“You,” said Valeria. “You freed me.” She knelt—a long, slow process—and stared into Sancia’s face with her blank, masked eyes. “I owe you a debt—true?”
Sancia could not move, but she glanced in the direction of Estelle and Tribuno. Valeria turned to look. “Ah. Yes. The elevation. You desire I intervene? That I intended to do regardless. Another Maker—not optimal.”
There was a shiver in the air, and suddenly Valeria was gone. Then Sancia spied her out of the corner of her eye, bending low over Tribuno and Estelle and doing…well, something, to the golden dagger in Estelle’s hand.
The clicking increased, growing so loud, so harsh, like a swarm of wary, terrified cicadas.
There was a pulse in the wind, like someone had slammed a large door in a small room.
“There,” said Valeria’s voice. “A simple fix…”
There was another shiver, and suddenly a shadow fell across her, and Sancia knew Valeria was now behind her—and from the size of the shadow, she had somehow grown, grown so tall…
“A debt is still owed to you,” said Valeria’s voice. “One day we shall decide how it will be repaid in full. For now—tread carefully, little bird. An old monster has been hiding in your city. And tonight, you have made an enemy of him. He will not forgive you for this. So, as I said—tread carefully.”
There was a tremble in the air. The clicking rose to a shriek—and went silent. The shadow vanished, and then…
* * *
Sancia collapsed onto the ground, groaning. She lay there for a moment—her body ached in countless places—then she shook herself and looked around.
Valeria was gone. The box stood open, yet it seemed to hold nothing anymore.
Did that really happen? Or did I imagine it?
Then Sancia saw Estelle and Tribuno. Tribuno was clearly dead. Estelle was still gripping the dagger.
“What…what happened?” Estelle said faintly. “Why isn’t it working anymore?”
Sancia looked at the dagger. It wasn’t gold anymore—now it seemed to be common iron, and it bore no sigils at all.
“Why aren’t I immortal?” said Estelle. “Why…why aren’t I a hierophant?”
There was a soft pattering as Estelle’s blood fell to the floor. Then she lost her strength and sank down the side of the bed, pawing uselessly at its legs.
Sancia walked over and looked down on her.
“It’s not fair,” whispered Estelle. She was as pale as white sands. “I…I was going to live forever…I was going to do such amazing things…” She blinked and swallowed. “I did everything right. I did everything right.”
“No, you didn’t,” said Sancia. “Look at yourself. How could you think such a thing?”
Estelle’s eyes searched the skies, panicked. “This wasn’t how it was supposed to go. This wasn’t how it was supposed to go at all.”
Then she was still.
Sancia looked at her for a moment longer. Then she turned to Gregor.
/> He lay there, trapped in his lorica, staring at her with blank, sad eyes, and blood pooling at his side. She walked to him and said, “Come on. Let’s get you out of that thing.” She cut away the ties, and saw Estelle had seriously injured his arm. She made a crude wrapping to tie it off and helped him sit up. “There. There we go. Can you talk?”
He didn’t move, or speak.
“We need to get the hell out of here, Gregor. Now. Okay?” She glanced around, and grabbed the imperiat. Then she paused and looked at the box.
Clef was still sticking out of the lock. She slowly walked over to him, hesitated, and reached out and plucked him out.
Nothing. Just silence, as she’d expected. The key just sat there in her hand.
“I’ll…I’ll find a way to fix you,” she said, sniffing and rubbing her eyes. “I promise. I…” Beleaguered, she looked out on the city. She could see a lot of the Candiano campo from there, and it looked like Dandolo troops were pouring through the gates.
She walked back over to Gregor. “Come on. Get up. It’s time for us to go.”
* * *
“Did it work?” said Berenice. “Is it over?”
Orso peered through the spyglass at the broken dome of the Mountain. “I can’t see shit! How am I supposed to know?”
“Ah—sir? You will want to look behind us.”
Orso lowered the spyglass and looked back into the Commons. Armored soldiers were pouring through the streets, bearing swords and espringals. They were all wearing yellow and white—Dandolo colors.
“Should we feel…good about this?” asked Berenice.
Orso looked at their faces. They looked grim and hard, the expressions of men who have been given permission to do ghastly things. “No,” he said. “No, we should not. You get going, Berenice.”
“What?” she said, startled.
“Sneak off somewhere. Down that road, or that one.” He pointed. “I’ll hold them up. I think they’re here for me, anyways. Get back to the crypt if you can. I’ll try and find you.”
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