“No,” said Orso. “We just need to get close to a Michiel foundry. I very much believe that Valeria is in one—which means she must be in all of them, due to them using our damned twinning technique! It might be as simple as getting Sancia close to the right stretch of Michiel campo wall, knocking her on the head, and sending her off to scrumming dreamland!”
“Except my head is too goddamn valuable,” said Sancia.
“We could use dolorspina venom to put you out for an hour or so, though,” said Berenice. “That…might work.”
“Then let’s go!” said Orso, “hopefully before a damned hierophant starts tearing the city to pieces.”
* * *
—
Gregor sought out Polina before they left. He found her standing by the camp’s exits, watching her smugglers carry their goods out for the day—in carts, in baskets, in packs on their backs. She counted every bag, every bottle, every sack, and every crate. Nothing escaped her keen eye.
What a quartermaster she would make, he thought, were she to go to war. Though he reflected that she was at war, in her own way.
“Polina,” he said. “You should not send them out today.”
She looked at him over her shoulder. “What?”
“Your sellers, your merchants. You should not send them out today.”
“Gregor…could we perhaps have one conversation without your cryptic bullshit?”
He struggled for a moment. “Something dreadful has come to this city. My mother has brought it here. I do not know what is coming, but…it cannot be good. You should withdraw your people. They will be of more use at home now.”
She narrowed her eyes at him, then looked at the smuggler before her, counted his wares, and gave him a curt nod. “Dangerous, eh?”
“Yes.”
“More dangerous than, say, the wealthiest empire in the world doing all it can to kill us at any given moment?”
“Polina…I am not joking.”
“Neither am I. Do you think me a fool? We came to this place expecting death, Gregor. Whether it comes by scrived bolt or some contortion of the world brought about by your horrid magics, it makes no difference.” Her gaze softened when she saw his expression. “Didn’t you realize? That’s why we’re going to win.”
“What do you mean?”
“I didn’t come to smuggle or steal. I came to this place to give—my time, or my life—so that others can enjoy what I have.”
She touched his face very briefly, the back of her knuckle tracing his cheek, and her eyes held his for a fraction of a second.
She dropped her hand. “Now. It’s carnival season,” she said, checking off as another merchant departed. “I have a lot of wine to sell, and lives to save.”
He returned to the other Foundrysiders, shaking his head.
Such a damned stubborn woman.
12
They started off into the Commons, walking past lines of oyster shuckers, past a Lamplands firm selling miniature scrived lanterns for carnival, past a pack of wild dogs chasing gray monkeys through the alleys, past a woman playing the box pipes while people tossed coins to her. It all felt so powerfully surreal to Sancia, given what she’d experienced last night: all these everyday occurrences, and no one knew what had arrived just the night before.
Berenice evidently felt the same, saying, “To think he’s here…To think a hierophant is here in the city, and everyone’s just going about living their lives…”
Sancia stared into the ground at her feet as they walked, her face grim and set.
“What’s wrong?” asked Berenice. “Besides the obvious.”
“We were supposed to be making things better,” said Sancia. “We were supposed to be helping. And now we’re mixed up in this. Every time we try to make progress, they change the game on us. They change the rules as they wish.” She watched as the pack of dogs captured a gray monkey and promptly tore it to pieces as it shrieked. “Maybe they always will.”
They walked on through the streets of Old Ditch, then past the Greens, until they spied the Michiel campo walls rising just a few streets beyond. Sancia could see the espringal batteries pivoting this way and that along their tops. “So…how close do we need to get, again?” she asked.
Berenice rummaged in her bag and pulled out a scrived light. “I used a rather unusual Michiel string on this,” she said, “one I pulled off the definitions we stole the other night. It should only light up when we get close enough to a Michiel foundr…Ah!” The light began to glow with a soft luminescence akin to daylight. “There we go. We’re in range.”
Orso looked at Sancia. “Feel anything?” he asked.
Sancia shrugged. “Mostly hungry.”
“Then it’s not just proximity. It must be proximity and sleep. Fine. Gregor—if you would.”
Gregor pulled out one of her dolorspina darts. “I’m not quite sure how to manage the dose. We can’t have you out all day.”
Sancia took it from him. “These are pretty old, so I doubt if they’re as potent. I haven’t had the opportunity to do much thieving recently, after all. So maybe if I just lick the point of one…Hm. I’ve never taken this orally before,” she said, wrinkling her nose. “I wonder what it tastes like.”
“Well, I’d scrumming hate it if your apprehensions about flavor doomed us all, Sancia!” snapped Orso. “Just lick the damned thing!”
Sancia pulled a face, then opened her mouth and sucked the point of the dart. “Ugh. Tastes like fish. But then, I guess it would.” She swallowed and looked around, waiting.
“How do you feel?” asked Berenice.
She thought about it. “Not bad,” she said. “I feel…the same, mostly.”
All three of them made bewildered faces. Sancia suddenly noticed her mouth felt very thick, and the world felt very bright and pleasant.
“Uhh,” said Orso. “What was that nonsense she said?”
“I believe,” said Gregor, “that it is working.”
“What do you mean, nonsense I said?” asked Sancia—or that was what she meant to say. Now that she was listening, she realized it came out as, “Whaa d’ye min, nunseye seed.”
She noticed the world was leaping back and forth, and realized it was because she was staggering around, unable to keep herself upright. She stumbled back, unable to tell which way was up. “Gonna fall. Someone please…catch m…”
She fell forward. She saw Gregor jump forward, arms outstretched.
But he didn’t need to catch her, she thought dreamily. Because then she plunged into the water.
* * *
—
Sancia plummeted down into the dark waters, sinking like a stone, the black depths flying by her as she tumbled.
Where…Where did these waters come from?
She wasn’t sure. But she knew she needed to breathe. Her lungs burned, her ribs ached, her head pulsed with every beat of blood, but she couldn’t open her mouth now, couldn’t let any little rivulet of water invade her body…
Then she saw something below, seemingly at the bottom of this strange, dark sea. It was a bubble of some kind—and it appeared to be glowing.
Sancia shot down toward the bubble, burst through its walls, and shut her eyes, bracing for impact. But she did not strike sand or stone—rather, she just abruptly stopped, and hung in the air as if suspended in an invisible hammock.
She opened her eyes. She was within the giant bubble, the gray sands of the sea floor below her, and the vast, dark waters above. She could barely see any light filtering through the waves. She found it was intensely unpleasant to be within the bubble: she not only felt queerly nauseous here, she also felt thin and stretched, like her very being was trapped in a moment of exhausted, anxious indecision.
But she was not alone. Someone was at the very edge—someone vast and golden, sitting in an a
wkward, cramped position.
Whatever force was allowing her to stay suspended in the air suddenly vanished. She cried out, fell the remaining handful of feet, and struck the sand below.
“Ugh!” she said, standing up and brushing herself off. “Shit…” She shivered—there was something just terribly wrong about this place—and then she looked up.
Valeria sat crouched at the edge of the bubble with her back to Sancia, staring out at the dark waters. Sancia saw she had not chosen to manifest as she’d first seen her—not the nude, golden woman she’d originally glimpsed on the Candiano campo—but was instead the massive, hulking, armored statue she’d seen during the night of the Mountain. She did not react as Sancia stood.
“V-Valeria?” she asked.
There was a long silence.
“Is that you?” asked Sancia. She took a step, feeling nervous. When she’d seen Valeria the last time, in the Mountain, she’d been almost inconceivably powerful. Now Sancia couldn’t help but feel she seemed…diminished. “Do…Do you know what’s happened?”
The giant, golden figure seemed to sigh, despondent. <Unsuccessful.>
Sancia was surprised. She heard the voice in her head, much as she had heard Clef. It had been a long time since she’d engaged with anyone like this. It was like hearing a language you hadn’t heard since childhood.
<Yes,> Sancia said. <He had been resurrected before we ever got to the ship.>
<True,> said Valeria’s voice, low and rumbling. <The Maker has always been…foresighted. Had not realized he had hidden away a piece of his original body, in case he needed to be restored. Suspect he did so long, long before our war. But now, he is back. And he is here.> She paused. <How was it done? How was he capable of such early restoration?>
<He had…scrived time, I think. Tricked a piece of reality into thinking it was midnight.>
She seemed oddly heartened by that. <Altering time…A very difficult practice. He hid the nature of scriving time from me—thought it too dangerous for my use. But to do it in such a fashion, to achieve restoration…that would have significant side effects. A cheap imitation of midnight—not the real thing.>
<He does seem marred,> said Sancia. <Everyone who saw him during the resurrection, uh…cut their own eyes out. And then killed themselves.>
<Then yes,> said Valeria. <There is likely some distortion to reality about him still…One that might make his state unstable. Flawed. Difficult to be perceived by mortals. All in all, a sign of desperation. Good.> She sounded quite pleased with this. <The process, though—did you discover his technique? The method for altering time itself?>
<No,> said Sancia bitterly. <I stole a few papers of their designs, but they fell to pieces in the water.>
Valeria seemed to sink slightly. <Unfortunate.>
<Valeria—why is he here? What is Crasedes after?>
<Me,> she said simply.
<Why? I thought you fought each other. Why would he come for you?>
<I am a command that reality must change. The Maker took unprecedented steps to ensure that I would change all of reality, all at once. But he had not wrought my commands as well as he had thought. I dreaded what he would have me do. So I manipulated his flaws, his—what term works best—loopholes? Is that accurate? Perhaps true. I changed myself, and targeted him. We fought, and injured one another grievously, and slept. Now we are both returned—and he wishes to acquire me, and close the loopholes, and force me to complete his works.> She looked over her shoulder at Sancia, and her golden eyes glimmered like stars in her huge, implacable face. <That must not happen. Reality cannot be changed on the scale he desires. But I am helpless to fight him here.>
<And…where are we?>
<Within the penumbra of…what is your term…a lexicon,> she said.
<W-Wait. We’re inside of a lexicon?> That would explain her discomfort, she thought.
<In a way.> She waved a massive hand at the dark seas. <That is reality. My battle with the Maker exhausted my abilities to change it, to survive within it. So I subsist within this little bubble of unreality.>
<Then what can we do?> asked Sancia. <Crasedes has got to be in Tevanne by now! He could be manipulating time again and making dozens of rigs out in the Dandolo campo—>
<The Maker injured me,> said Valeria. <But I injured the Maker.> Sancia thought she heard a note of wicked glee in her words. <Cannot complete the ritual himself anymore. I tore those designs from his mind, and made him blind to them. He cannot learn what has been unlearned. Cannot acquire new privileges or invest them in other tools, nor can he teach others his methods. That is why it took so long for him to return—he had to wait for these methods to be discovered. And even though he is now restored, he is still limited.>
<How?>
<Just as I am trapped within this bubble of unreality,> she said, <he is anchored to the lost minute, at midnight. His greatest permissions become available as the world grows closer to that time—his control of gravity, of heat, and more. As the world moves away from the lost minute, it remembers he is meant to be gone from this world, and those privileges are withheld.>
<Couldn’t he just get someone to scrive his time to think it’s perpetually midnight?>
<He could,> said Valeria. <But that would require the deaths of thousands of people. Far more than what you witnessed aboard the ship. Yet even though he is weak, he is still immensely dangerous. He still possesses his voice—his most powerful tool. I dread to think who he shall speak to here in this city.>
<What can we do?> asked Sancia. <I assume we just can’t, like…I don’t know, shoot him in the damned head or something.>
<Unlikely, true,> said Valeria. <If I know the Maker, he has bound himself up in countless alterations and scrivings, a network of permissions that would guard him against grave physical harm, even when he is distant from midnight…>
Sancia remembered the black wrappings, coiled around Crasedes’s figure, and shivered.
<But I know what he is here to do,> said Valeria. <The Maker and I are both weak, and injured, and we lack the strength to weaken reality and access the more powerful permissions. So…we must find another tool here in your city to weaken reality for us.>
<True. But…not one such as this.> She waved at the bubble before her. <Though my aims and those of the Maker differ greatly, both of us require something much more powerful to do what we need.>
<And how the hell are you going to get something like that?> asked Sancia. <There’s nothing like that in Tevanne, and I sure as shit hope you’re not going to suggest we need to build one. We’re just three goddamn scrivers—homeless scrivers, at that.>
<Untrue,> said Valeria. <Such a specimen exists in your city. A place that has been argued into existence by a structure full of powerful commands—what you would call hierophantic commands.>
<What the hell? Someone…Someone successfully built something hierophantic in Tevanne?>
<True. I was brought into this place. At the time I was constrained, and was unable to access it.> She turned to look at Sancia, her eyes like pinpricks of yellow light in her vast face. <You were there as well.>
Sancia slowly realized what she meant—or rather where she meant. <Ah, shit.>
<Do not need the entire structure. Or even the lexicon. Just a piece of it, a component. You can then apply it to the little one you had in your…library? Business? Shop? What term?>
<Whatever,> said Sancia miserably.
<Once this is done, I can assist you directly. But most important,> said Valeria, <just as I know that the Maker will have need of this…>
<He’ll know that you need it too.>
<Yes. And he will prepare accord
ingly. And as you have learned…he is not to be underestimated.>
<No shit.>
<I can impress upon you the nature and image of this component,> said Valeria. She turned to face her, shifting her massive bulk in the sands. <If you so wish.> She reached out to Sancia’s face, her index finger extended. The digit was about the size of an adult’s arm.
But Sancia stepped back.
<Problem? What is?> asked Valeria.
<Crasedes said you were deceiving me.>
<Concerning?>
<He said he was here to stop you. That you were the true threat.>
She kept looking at Sancia, her bright eyes studying her. <The Maker,> she said finally, <is a thing of untruths. This is known.>
<A liar?>
<True. Do you think me a thing of untruths?>
<I think you’ve told me lies before. And you gave me protections and defenses without my damned knowing it. Which I don’t scrumming appreciate.>
<This I did for you to survive,> said Valeria, <for you to be freed. For you to be ready for the Maker, who I knew was growing close. He cannot affect you, nor can he perceive you—along with any tool or weapon you bear upon your person. Everything about you is veiled to him.>
<You still could have goddamned asked me!>
<At times, one has only difficult options, branching out in all directions, taking one to undesirable paths. I surveyed you and judged that you were not ready to hear of my truths, and those of the Maker. I gave you half-truths that would lead you to fuller ones. Do you think I was in the right, at that time?>
Sancia was silent.
<I will say this,> said Valeria. <The Maker is a dreadfully clever thing. He has destroyed cities just by whispering a few words to those who would listen. I wished to prepare you against him, and his lies. And between myself and the Maker, only one of us has killed innocents to return. Is this of no significance to you?>
Sancia hesitated. Then there was a pulse in the air, and the walls of the bubble shivered. She felt a queer pressure on her body, like she was being pulled up by invisible strings.