“There’s this bit here,” said Berenice. “Also from Pharnakes—‘The lingai divina cannot be utilized by common mortals. By the nature of the Maker’s work’—I assume he means God there—‘it is inaccessible to those who have been born and shall die, to those who cannot, like the Maker, give and take life itself.’ ”
“But what exactly happens?” demanded Clef. “This is all really fun, reading these cryptic bits of quotes—but what is this goddamn transaction supposed to be? What does the dagger have to do with the urn, the shell, with the language of this Maker? It looks like someone is being executed, yeah, but what does that have to do with scrived tools, or this lost minute?”
“Shouldn’t you know?” said Orso, exasperated. “I mean, you are one!”
“Do you remember your birth?” said Clef. “I sure as hell expect not.”
And then Sancia understood everything.
She understood how the ritual worked, how the hierophants had made their tools, why their tools needed no lexicon to function—and why they never actually called them “tools.”
Clef was silent.
Orso glanced at Berenice. “Why isn’t he saying anything? What’s going on?”
“That’s…that’s right,” said Clef quietly. “I do remember how I was made.”
“You do?” said Berenice.
“Yes,” said Clef. “I was lying on my back…and then I felt pain, shooting through me…and then…I…I became the key. I filled it. I moved within it. I filled its cracks and crevices…and…” He trailed off.
“And?” said Orso.
A cold horror filled Sancia’s body—and she suspected that it was Clef’s horror, not her own.
she said.
“What are you saying here?” asked Claudia.
“I’m saying it wasn’t human sacrifice,” said Clef softly. “Not entirely.”
“What?” said Orso. “Then what was it?”
“I…I remember the taste of wine,” whispered Clef. “I remember the feeling of wind on my back, the sound of breeze in the wheat, and a woman’s touch. I remember all these sensations—but how could I, if I was always a key?”
They stared at him. Then Berenice’s mouth opened in horror. “Unless…unless you weren’t always a key.”
“Yes,” said Clef.
“What do you mean?” asked Gregor.
“I think that…once, I was a person,” said Clef. “Once I was alive just as you all are…but then, during the lost minute, they took me out of me…and they put me in…in here. Inside this…contraption.” Sancia’s fingers curled around the golden key, gripping it so hard her knuckles turned white. “The histories don’t record the hierophants killing anyone—because they didn’t. They stripped a mind from raw flesh and bone, and during that lost moment in the depths of the night…they placed it inside a shell. A vessel.”
“All thoughts collected,” said Berenice.
Orso put his face in his hands. “Oh my God…It’s a loophole, isn’t it! A stupid, scrumming loophole!”
“A loophole?” said Claudia.
“Yes!” said Orso. “Occidental sigils—the sigillums of God Himself—can’t be used by anything that has been born or shall die. So what do you do? You take a person and turn them into something deathless—something that is not really born, and never will truly die. You do it during the world’s lost hour, when the rules aren’t enforced. That gives you access to untold permissions and privileges! Reality will happily follow the instructions of the tool you’ve created—because, in a way, it genuinely believes the tool is God Himself!”
“I’ve been trapped in here for…for forever,” said Clef faintly. “I’ve outlived the people who made me. I spent so long in the dark…all because they needed a tool to do a job. It’s not human sacrifice—it’s worse.”
And then, to everyone’s surprise, Clef burst into tears.
* * *
Berenice tried to comfort him as the rest looked on, hugging Sancia’s body close as Clef wept.
“To imagine it,” said Orso. “To imagine that the discovery you’ve sought for so long is…is this ghastly mutilation of the human body and soul…”
“And to imagine what the other houses would do,” said Gregor quietly, “if they were to make the same discovery. In many ways, Tevanne already runs on the fuels of human suffering. But if we were to switch to this method…imagine the sheer human cost.” He shook his head. “The hierophants were not angels at all. They were devils.”
“Why don’t you remember more about yourself?” Giovanni asked Clef. “If you were a person, why do you still think and act like…well, the key?”
“Why is bronze not like copper, or tin, or aluminum, or any of the rest of its components?” said Clef, sniffling. “Because they have all been remade for another purpose. The key looks like just an object to you all, but on the inside it’s…it’s doing things. Redirecting my mind, my soul, to act in a certain way. And because it’s breaking down, I…I remember more of myself.”
“And this is what Tomas Ziani is attempting,” said Gregor. “He is attempting this grand remaking of the human soul—only he is failing, over and over and over again. And he is willing to fail more, with over a hundred people.” He looked at Sancia. “Now we know. Now we truly know what’s at stake. Will you try to stop it tonight, Sancia? Are you willing to rob the Mountain?”
Sancia took control of her body again, like a hand sliding into a glove.
She shut her eyes and bowed her head.
27
Nightfall, and Berenice, Sancia, and Gregor skulked through the Commons south of the Candiano campo. Sancia’s blood buzzed and boiled in her veins. She often felt jittery before a big job, but tonight was different. She tried to stop glancing at the Mountain in the distance so she wouldn’t remember exactly how different it was.
“Slow down,” hissed Berenice behind her. “We’ve got time before the barge gets here!”
Sancia slowed and waited. Berenice was walking along the canal, holding out a fishing pole and dragging a small wooden ball through the waters by a string. Sancia could see the capsule drifting along underneath it, but just barely. It seemed to be floating well—which was a relief.
“I want time to make sure that goddamn thing works,” said Sancia. “It’d make an unfashionable coffin.”
“I take offense to that,” said Berenice. “It’s a knock against my craftsmanship.”
“Now is not the time to hurry,” said Gregor, lumbering along behind Berenice. “Carelessness begets many graves.” He was wearing a thick scarf and wide hat, to keep as much of his face hidden as possible.
Finally they came to the fork in the canal, where the delivery route broke off from the main branch. Sancia looked along its length, spying where it passed through the Candiano walls beyond. “The barge should be carrying a delivery of mangos,” said Berenice. “Which is why I brought this.” She held up a small, unripe mango, and turned it over to reveal a small hole in it, and a switch within. “Inside is the anchor that will pull the capsule along.”
“Clever,” said Gregor.
“I hope so. It should be difficult to notice. When the barge passes, I’ll toss it aboard.”
“Good,” said Gregor. He looked around. “I’ll go to the Candiano campo now to set up the anchor for the air-sailing rig.”
“Make sure you’re in range,” said Sancia. “Otherwise I jump off the side of the Mountain and plummet to my death.”
“Orso
gave me an exact cross-street for its position,” he said. “It should be in range. Good luck to you both.” Then he skulked off into the night.
Berenice looked over her shoulder at the rosy face of the Michiel clock tower in the distance. “We have about ten minutes. Time to get ready.” She pulled the wooden ball back in, adjusted something on it, and held it out over the sloshing waters like someone trying to entice a crocodile to bite.
The waters at their feet bubbled and churned, and the black metal plating of the capsule slowly surfaced.
“Oh shit,” whispered Sancia. She calmed herself, and knelt down and opened the hatch.
“I’ll help you in,” said Berenice. She held out a hand and steadied Sancia as she awkwardly climbed into the capsule, which suddenly felt terribly small.
“God,” said Sancia. “If I survive this, I’ll…I’ll…”
“You’ll what?”
“I don’t know. Do something really fun and stupid.”
“Hm,” said Berenice. “Well. Why don’t we go get a drink, then?”
Sancia, sitting in the capsule, blinked. “Uh. What?”
“A drink. You know—the fluid you put in your mouth, and swallow?”
She stared at Berenice, mouth open, unsure what to say.
Berenice smiled slightly. “I saw you looking at me. When we were moving from Commons to campo and whatnot.”
Sancia shut her mouth, hard. “Uh. Oh.”
“Yes. I thought it’d be wise to maintain professionalism at the time, but”—she looked around at the filthy, reeking canal—“this is not terribly professional.”
“Why?” asked Sancia with genuine surprise.
“Why ask?”
“Yeah. No one’s ever really asked before.”
Berenice struggled for the words. “I…suppose I find you…refreshingly uncontained.”
“Refreshingly uncontained?” said Sancia. She wasn’t at all sure how to take that.
“Let me put it this way,” said Berenice, pinkening. “I am a person who stays inside of a handful of rooms all day. I do not leave those rooms. I do not leave the building, the block, the enclave, the campo. So, to me you are…quite different. And interesting.”
“Because,” said Sancia, “I’m refreshingly uncontained.”
“Ah. Yes.”
“You do know,” said Sancia, “that the only reason I go to all these places is so that I can steal enough to buy food, right?”
“Yes.”
“And you know you seem to usually have enough firepower in your pocket to literally blow down a wall, yeah?”
“True,” she said. “But I never did any such thing until you came along.” She looked up. “I think that’s the barge.”
Sancia lay back into the tiny capsule, pulled out a scrived light, and turned it on. “I’ll think about that drink. If I survive, that is.”
“Do,” said Berenice. Her smile faded. “I’m going to submerge the capsule next, and then plant the anchor. Hold on.”
“All right,” said Sancia. Then she shut the hatch.
* * *
She didn’t finish the thought—her belly swooped as the capsule abruptly descended, sinking to the bottom of the canal. “Oh shit!” she whispered. She could hear the water gurgling and bubbling all around her, the sounds magnified in the tiny, tiny capsule. “Shit, shit, shit!”
She shut her eyes and tried to breathe calmly.
Sancia sighed as she heard the barge drifting through the waters above them.
There was a gentle tug, and the capsule started slowly trundling forward, scraping along the bottom of the canal.
Sancia lay there, listening to the sound of the capsule scraping along the mud and stone, and waited.
An hour passed, maybe two. She idly wondered if this was what being dead was like—If this thing sprang a leak, and I died in here, would I even notice?
Finally the capsule came to a stop. She said,
She hit the switch on the door of the capsule. The metal canister slowly, awkwardly bobbed to the surface.
Sancia cracked the hatch and took a quick look around. They were floating next to a stone walkway running along the canal, just south of the Mountain’s dock. She flung the hatch open, scrambled onto the stone walkway, shut the door behind her, and hit a switch on the front. The capsule silently sank back down to the bottom.
She looked around. No one was screaming or raising any alarms. She was dressed in Candiano colors, so she didn’t look unusual, and there was only the barge crew nearby, unloading on the dock.
Then she saw the Mountain.
“Oh…Oh my God,” she whispered.
The Mountain bloomed into the night sky just ahead of her, surging up like smoke from a forest fire. The thing was lit up brighter than a magnesium torch, spotlights shooting up along its curving black skin, which was dotted with tiny circular windows, like portholes on a ship. The sight set her guts fluttering.
Somewhere up there is the thirty-fifth floor, she thought. That’s what I’ve got to break into. And that’s where I’ll fly from. Soon.
Sancia walked up to the street level and moved down the fairway until she spotted the garden entrance, a big white stone gateway stretching above a somewhat tattered-looking hedge wall. White floating lanterns made lazy circles above the garden. She glanced around and slipped inside.
The garden skirted the edge of the Mountain’s walls, which gave it the feeling of a quaint courtyard built next to a cliff. The trimmed hedges and noble statues and stone follies looked queer and disturbing on the rolling green lawns, lit by washes of brittle white light from the lanterns.
The garden was theoretically open to any enclave resident, but she didn’t risk it. With Clef’s direction, she evaded their slow circuits until she found the stone bridge, which arched above a small babbling stream. She touched the cold metal casket, hidden in her pocket. This would be the first test of the blood Estelle Candiano had given them.
She waited until the way was clear, then paced up the stream to the bridge. As she neared it, a perfectly round seam formed in the smooth stone face. Then, without making a sound, the round plug of stone sank into the bridge and rolled aside.
She slipped through the round door. It silently shut behind her. She now stood at the top of a set of stairs, and she walked down until they ended in a straight, smooth, gray stone tunnel, lined with bright white lights, which stretched forward so far it confused the eye.
She kept walking. And walking. It felt like she was walking into empty space.
Then Clef spoke up:
She looked behind, and saw no line or seam in the smooth gray stone.
After at least ten more minutes, she finally came to a set of stairs up, though these were winding rather than straight. She climbed and climbed until she came to the top, where they ended at a blank wall.
A vast whispering filled her mind as she got to the passageway at the top. She spied a handle on the side wall. She paused before she pulled it.
Sancia pulled the handle. Again, a perfectly round seam appeared in the stone, and the stone circle rolled aside to let her through. But on the other side was—well, nothing, or so it appeared at first. It looked like she was seeing a sheet of cloth. Then she realized—He hid the door behind some kind of wall hanging—and she shoved it aside and stepped through.
She emerged into a lavish, dark-green stone hallway, tall and ornate with elaborate gold molding running along the top. There were white wooden doors dotting the green stone walls, all perfectly circular with black iron handles in the middle. It was clearly a residential wing of the Mountain, and there was some kind of radiant light at the end of the hallway.
Foundryside_A Novel Page 37