Berenice paused and sat back. “Ah…Well. I have a question for you here.”
“Yeah?”
“I don’t have time to make really fine controls. So you’re going to have to tell the plates the density of this mass—how fast you want to go, basically,” said Berenice. “You’ll have to tell it, say, that there are six Earths in the sky—and then you’ll be pulled up at six times the rate of Earth’s gravity, minus Earth’s own actual gravitational effects. See?”
Sancia furrowed her brow. “So…you’re saying there’s a huge scrumming margin of error here.”
“Unimaginably huge.”
“And…what’s the question you have for me?” said Sancia.
“I actually don’t have a question,” said Berenice. “I just wanted to tell you all this without you immediately panicking.” She went back to work.
“Great,” said Sancia faintly.
Another hour ticked by. Then another.
Orso kept an eye on the Michiel clock tower out the window. “Six o’clock,” he said nervously.
“Almost finished,” said Berenice.
“You keep saying that. You said that an hour ago.”
“But I mean it this time.”
“You said that an hour ago too.”
“Orso,” said Sancia, “shut the hell up and let her work!”
Another sigil. Another massive sheaf of parchment. Another dozen styli ruined, another dozen inkpots and bowls of melted bronze. But then, at eight o’clock…
Berenice paused, squinting through the lens. Then she sat back and sighed, looking exhausted. “I…I think I’m done.”
Orso grabbed the definition without a word, ran to the test lexicon, put it in, and turned it on. “Sancia!” he called. “How’s it look?”
The rig now glowed bright in her hands—but not solidly bright. It wasn’t a complete rig, in other words, just most of one. But from what Berenice had said, they might not need the whole thing.
Her belly squirmed with anxiety. She wanted to make sure she understood how this thing worked before she told it what to do.
She was beginning to understand.
Instantly, Sancia’s stomach swooped unpleasantly, like she had a live mouse running around in her intestines. Something had…changed. Her head felt heavy—much like her blood was being pulled up into her skull.
“Well?” said Orso impatiently.
Sancia took a breath, and stood up.
But then…she just kept going.
She stared around, terrified, as her body rose up toward the ceiling at a steady pace. It wasn’t fast, but it felt fast, probably because she was panicking. “Oh my God!” she said. “Holy shit! Somebody grab me!”
They did not grab her. They just stared.
“Looks like it works, yeah,” said Gio.
To her relief, she started to come back down again—but she seemed to be falling toward a big stack of empty metal bowls on a nearby table. “Shit!” she said. “Shit, shit!” She kicked around helplessly, and they all watched as she slowly, inevitably collided with the pile of bowls, which went crashing and clanging all over the workshop.
Instantly, the lightness died inside her, and she crashed onto the table and fell to the ground.
Berenice, delighted, stood up and punched a fist into the air. “Yes. Yes! Yes! I did it, I did it, I did it!”
Sancia, groaning, stared up at the ceiling.
“This is what she’s going to do to stop Estelle?” said Gio. “She’s going to do that?”
“Let’s call this,” said Orso, “a qualified success.”
* * *
An hour later, and they reviewed their plan.
“So we have what we need,” said Orso. “But…we still need to get our empty box within a mile and a half of the Mountain. That’s the farthest the gravity rig will work.”
“So we still need a way through the walls?” said Claudia. “Into the campo?”
“Yes. But only a bit,” said Orso. “A quarter mile or so.”
Claudia sighed. “I don’t suppose Sancia could use the rig to jump over the walls and open the gates from the inside.”
“Not without getting shot to bits,” said Gio. “If the whole campo’s locked down, the guards at the gates will shoot anyone who gets close.”
Sancia held the gravity plates in her hand, whispering to them and listening to them respond. Then she sat up. “I can get us past the walls,” she said quietly. “Or through them, rather.”
“How?” said Berenice.
“A gate is just a door,” she said. “And Clef taught me a lot about doors. I just need to be able to get close.” She sat up and looked around the workshop. She spied something she’d seen the last time she’d been here, when she’d searched the workshop for the listening rig. “Those rows of black cubes over there, the ones that seem to suck up light—are those stable?”
Orso looked around, surprised. “Those? Yes. They’re loaded in one of the main Dandolo foundry lexicons, so you can take those almost anywhere.”
“Can you attach them to a cuirass, or something wearable?” she asked. “It’ll be damn handy if I’m a moving blot of shadow in the darkness.”
“Sure,” said Orso. “But…why?”
“I’ll need them to sneak up to the east Candiano walls,” said Sancia. “Then I’ll get things started. Berenice, Orso—I’ll need you to have your magic box loaded onto a carriage and ready at the southwest gates. All right?”
“You’re going to run along the entire Candiano walls?” said Claudia.
“Most of them,” said Sancia softly. “We’ll need a distraction. And I can give us a good one.”
Gio studied the black cubes. “What are those for, Orso? I’ve never seen someone scrive light like that before.”
“I made those for Ofelia Dandolo,” said Orso. “Some secret project of hers. Gregor mentioned she’d made some kind of assassin’s lorica out of the things…A killing machine you can’t see coming.”
Gio whistled lowly. “It’d be handy to have one of those tonight.”
Sancia sank down in her chair. “What I’d prefer more,” she said, “is to go to war with the one person who has the most experience in waging it. But he’s been taken from us.” She sighed sadly. “So we’ll just have to make do.”
35
Darkness whirled around him. There was the crunch of wood, the crackle of glass, and, somewhere, a cough and a whimper.
“Gregor.”
The scent of putrefaction, of pus, of punctured bowels and hot, wet earth.
“Gregor?”
The swirl of water, the sound of many footfalls, the sound of someone choking.
“Gregor…”
He felt something in his chest, something trembling, something squirming. There was something inside him, something alive, something trying to move.
At first he was horrified. But though he could not really think—how could he think, as he was lost in
the darkness?—he started to understand.
The thing moving in his chest was his own heart. It was beginning to beat—first gently, anxiously, like a foal taking its first steps. Then its beats grew stronger, more assured.
His lungs begged for air. Gregor Dandolo breathed deep. Water burbled and frothed in countless passageways within him, and he coughed and gagged.
He rolled onto his side—he was lying on something, some kind of stone slab—and vomited. What came forth was canal water—that he could tell by the taste—and a lot of it.
Then he realized—his stomach. It had hurt so much, just a bit ago…yet now it didn’t hurt at all.
“There we are, dear,” said his mother’s voice from somewhere near him. “There we are…”
“M-Mother?” he slurred. He tried to see, but there was something wrong with his eyes—he could only make out streaks and shadows. “Wh-where are you?”
“I’m here.” Something in the shadows moved. He thought he saw a human figure, robed and carrying a candle—but it was hard to see. “I’m here right beside you, my love.”
“What…what happened to me?” he whispered. His voice was a crackling rasp. “Where am I? What’s wrong with my eyes?”
“Nothing,” she said soothingly. He felt a touch on his brow, her soft, warm palm against his skin. “They’ll get better soon. They just haven’t been used for a bit.”
He blinked. He realized his eyes felt cold within their sockets. He tried to touch his face and found he couldn’t control his hands or even wriggle his fingers.
“Shh,” said his mother. “Be calm. Be still.”
He swallowed, and found his tongue felt cold too. “What’s going on?”
“I saved you,” said his mother. “We saved you.”
“We?” He blinked again, and more of the room came into focus. He saw he was in some kind of long, low cellar, with a vaulted ceiling, and there were people standing around him, people wearing gray robes and bearing small, flickering candles.
But there was something wrong with the walls of the room—and, now that he saw it, the ceiling as well. They all seemed to be moving. Rippling.
This is a dream, Gregor thought. This must be a dream…
“What happened to me?” he asked.
She sighed slowly. “The same thing that’s happened to you so often, my dear.”
“I don’t understand,” he whispered.
“I lost you,” she said. “But again, you’ve come back.”
Gregor lay on the stone slab, breathing weakly. And then, slowly, the memories returned to him.
The woman—Estelle Candiano. The knife in his stomach. The swirl of dark water…
“I…I fell,” he whispered. “She stabbed me. Estelle Candiano stabbed me.”
“I know,” she said. “You told us already, Gregor.”
“She…she didn’t really stab me, did she, Mother?” He managed to move his hand and push himself up into a sitting position.
“No, no,” his mother chided him. “Lay back down, my love, lay still…”
“I…I didn’t die, did I, Mother?” he asked. His mind felt thick in his skull, but he found he could think now, just a bit. “That would be mad…I couldn’t die and just…just come…come back to li—”
“Enough,” said his mother. She reached out and touched the right side of his head with two fingers.
Instantly, Gregor fell still. His body seemed to grow numb around him. He could not move, could not blink. He was trapped within himself.
“Be still, Gregor,” said his mother. “Be still…”
Then his skull began to grow hot…Exactly on the right side of his head, right where his mother’s fingers touched him. The pain was a low ache at first, but then it got worse, and worse. It felt like his very brains were sizzling on the right side of his head.
And though he had no memory of this ever happening before…he could remember someone describing a sensation just like this.
Sancia, with Orso and Berenice in the library, saying: And if the scrivings in my skull get overtaxed, they burn, just burn, like hot lead in my bones…
What’s going on? Gregor thought desperately. What’s happening to me?
“Be still, Gregor,” said his mother. “Be still…”
He tried to move, raging at his dull, distant body, and found he couldn’t. The heat in his skull was unbearable now, like his mother’s fingers were red-hot irons.
But he could see his mother’s face now, barely illuminated by the candle flame. Her eyes were sad, but she did not look surprised, or upset, or anguished by any of this, really. Rather, it was like this bizarre act was a regrettable duty she was quite familiar with.
“What happened to you wounds my heart, my love,” she said softly. “But I thank you for coming to us now, when we need you the most.”
Gregor’s heart fluttered in his chest. No, no, he thought. No, I’m going mad. This is all a dream. This is all just a dream…
Another memory from that same night in the library—Orso, shrugging and saying: Oh, it probably wasn’t just one merchant house…If one was trying to scrive humans, they all were. It might still be going on, for all I know…
No, Gregor thought. No, no, no.
He remembered himself, saying aloud: …they could scrive a soldier’s mind. Make them fearless…Make them do despicable things, and then forget they’d ever done them…
No! Gregor thought. No, it can’t be! It can’t be!
And then Berenice, whispering: They could scrive you so that you could cheat death itself…
And finally, he remembered his own words, spoken to Sancia beside the Gulf, describing what it’d been like after Dantua: It was like a magic spell had been lifted from my eyes…
His mother watched him, her eyes sad. “You’re remembering now,” she said. “Aren’t you? You usually do about now.”
He remembered her at the Vienzi Foundry, angrily saying: I killed the project. It was wrong. And we didn’t need it anymore anyway.
Which made one wonder—why would you stop trying to scrive humans? Why say you didn’t need it anymore?
Because, thought Gregor slowly, you’d already figured out how to do it.
And then, from that same day at Vienzi, he remembered how his mother had wept, and told him: I did not lose you in Dantua. You survived. As I knew you would, Gregor. As I know you always will…
How did I survive Dantua? he thought, terrified. Did I survive Dantua? Or did I…did I die there?
“I lost your father,” said his mother. “I lost your brother. And I could have lost you in the accident, too, my love. Until he came…He came, and showed me how to save you, to fix you. So I did. But…I had to promise some things in return.”
More of Gregor’s senses returned. He could see now, see the crowd of robed people bearing candles, the curious, rippling walls in the darkness…and there was a whispering sound. At first he thought the robed people were whispering, but that wasn’t it…It was like they were in some kind of forest with velvety leaves. His ears couldn’t make sense of it.
His mother shook herself and cleared her throat. “Enough. Enough sentiment. Listen to me, Gregor.” Her voice became terribly loud in his ears, overpowering his thoughts. “Listen to me. Are you hearing me?”
The fear and rage faded from Gregor’s mind. She took her fingers away. It was as if a cold, wet quilt were being laid over his thoughts.
He heard himself say quietly, “Yes. I hear you.”
“You have died,” she said. “We have saved you, again. But you must do something for us. Do you understand?”
Again, his lips moved and the words sprang from his mouth: “Yes. I understand.”
“You have confirmed something that we have long suspected,” she said. “Estelle Candiano is the person behind this mon
strous plot. Say her name. Now.”
“Estelle Candiano,” said his voice. His words were mush-mouthed and indistinct.
“Estelle Candiano is going to try something foolish tonight,” said his mother. “Something that could endanger us all. We’ve tried to keep our efforts secret, tried to never act in the open—but she’s forced our hand. We must respond, and respond directly—though we must maintain whatever deniability we can. She has something in her possession that she does not understand. Are you hearing me?”
“Yes,” he said helplessly. “I am hearing you.”
His mother grew close. “It is a box. With a lock.”
“A box,” he repeated. “With a lock.”
“We have been looking for this box for some time, Gregor,” she said. “We have suspected that the Candianos possessed it—but we have been unable to discern exactly where they had it. But now we know. Because of your efforts, we believe Estelle Candiano is keeping it in the Mountain. Say that.”
“In the Mountain,” he said slowly.
“Listen to me, Gregor,” she whispered. “Listen carefully—there is a devil in this box. Say that.”
Gregor blinked slowly, and whispered, “There is a devil in this box.”
“Yes. Yes, there is,” she said. “We cannot let Estelle open it. And if she does what she wishes to do tonight—if she elevates herself, and becomes a Maker, and if she possesses the key—she will have that capability. But we cannot, cannot, cannot let her release what sleeps within that box.” Ofelia swallowed, and if Gregor had the mind for it, he would have seen she was clearly terrified. “Once it waged a war…A war to end all wars. We cannot risk such a thing again. We must keep the devil inside the box. Say that.”
“We must keep the devil inside the box,” whispered Gregor.
She leaned close, touching her forehead to his temple. “I’m so proud of you for this, my love,” she whispered. “I do not know if it was your intent, or the hand of fate guiding you…But Gregor, I…I just want you to know, that despite everything—I…I love you.”
Gregor blinked slowly, and mindlessly repeated, “I love you…”
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