Shorefall

said Berenice, aghast. <I…I can’t.>

  <You’re going to have to.>

  <I can’t possibly do all that!>

  <Well, if not you, then who? I sure as hell can’t, not with my ass chained up in here. You know the Dandolo campo. You know what we need to do—and to make.>

  <Yes, but…but you’re going to need to see through my eyes, in essence!> said Berenice. <And though I’m capturing some of your experiences now, I’m not getting nearly as many as I did when we were in the firm together…>

  <Because we’re not close. So how do we get close?>

  <Well…We can’t, can we? Not physically, right? That’s kind of the problem.>

  <I’m not so sure it is. I’m more used to activating internal permissions and rights than you are…I mean, that’s what my scrived sight is. It’s like flexing a muscle.> Sancia thought about it. <Tell me what you’re seeing.>

  <What?>

  <Just talk to me, Ber. Give me something to focus on. I can’t climb inside your experiences without a handhold. What are you seeing now?>

  <Well…I’m seeing the Dandolo walls.>

  <And what are they like?>

  <Ah, well…It looks like Ofelia had them extended and raised, just like the Michiels did…God, it’s an ugly rework. I can see where they basically just plopped new masonry on the most exposed bits and then applied adhesion scrivings to them one by one. They’ve tried to cover up the work with banners but honestly, that’s not working at all…>

  <Go on. Talk about anything.>

  She sighed. <I’m by the Carelli Square. It’s practically empty. Everyone’s hiding. I’m alone. It’s so odd to be here now, with the stars above and the soldiers everywhere, and the world screaming, and the wall’s been reworked and everything’s changed…I used to live near this place when I was young. When carnival came, my father would let me leave my studies and go watch the parades and the floats, and then came Shorefall Night with all the dancers…>

  Something flickered in the darkness of Sancia’s mind—a glimpse of walls, and a canal, and glints of soldiers’ helmets…

  <Keep talking,> said Sancia.

  A thoughtful pause. When she spoke again, her voice was quiet and sad. <Looking back on it, I know carnival in the Commons must have been a very shabby affair. These little parades marching through the muddy lanes…But to me, a little girl then, with everyone masked and the torches and the firelight…It seemed like some wicked but fun shadow world, with the rules all suspended for one night. And I didn’t realize it, but I so hoped to get to share that with you, San. To give you carnival, to give you Shorefall. I wanted to give you all the treasures I’d had as a child, all the good bits of this city and this way of life that seem to be so long ago now…That’s all I wanted. I just wanted to share what I had. What made me me.>

  And then Sancia saw it—just a flash, again, but then more: there was the rippling, slate-gray face of the Dandolo campo walls, and the clouds swirling across a black sky…and then a dark, empty Commons square, and muddy streets under flocks of floating lanterns, and the sounds of many shouts…

  And she was there. Sancia could see it, feel it, smell it. It was like a juggler holding a ball in the crook of his elbow—you had to contort and flex yourself just right to hold on to it, but once you had it, it was secure.

  <I think I’ve got it,> whispered Sancia, awed. <I think I see what you see…Ber—look around.>

  Berenice did so, turning a full 360 degrees where she stood. Sancia watched, feeling disoriented and more than a little amazed as the vision in her head turned with her.

  <Okay,> said Sancia. <Yeah. I have it. Shit, this kind of makes me dizzy…>

  <How are you seeing this? How…How am I feeling you see this?>

  <I don’t know. It was almost too easy. I think…I think something’s changed.>

  <With our connection?>

  <No,> said Sancia. <I…I think our connection’s changed us. But I’m not sure yet.>

  There was an anxious silence.

  <Can you figure out how to help me see scrivings?> asked Berenice. <Then I might be able to find a way to get past the walls.>

  <Yeah, yeah…Just give me a second here, hon.>

  Sancia thought about it, puzzling over how to transfer her talents miles and miles across Tevanne. Then she had an idea.

  <You said you could feel my pain, right?> said Sancia.

  <Yes? I mean, I can practically feel it now…>

  <Okay. So if I flexed a muscle super, super hard, almost to the point of straining it—you’d feel that?>

  <Well…yes? I guess?>

  <Okay. Then that’s what I’m going to do.> Sancia took a deep breath. <I am going to flex my scrived sight now, Ber. I’m going to flex it hard as hell, to push it to its absolute limits. And then, you try it too. And you should be able to do the same stuff I can do. Understand?>

  <I suppose! It seems mad to think this might work, but…>

  <Then stop thinking it won’t! Okay?>

  <Okay, okay!>

  <All right. Here goes.>

  Sancia took a deep breath. She shut her eyes, and breathed deep again.

  And then she flexed.

  She almost groaned as the little invisible muscle inside her mind pulled taut. It felt like she was opening up her very skull, exposing her brain to the air so it could catch the scents and aromas drifting around her, but there was just so much to experience, just so much sensation, all of it pouring into her, pouring through her…

  And then the vision in her mind lit up.

  * * *

  —

  Berenice gasped as the world changed around her. Suddenly every sight—the walls, the gates, the lanterns above—was overlaid with the curiously wispy tangles of logic she’d seen just hours ago, back in the Foundryside offices.

  But these weren’t quite as bright, or strong. When Sancia had first shown scrivings to her she’d been able to understand their meaning at a glance. But now they were oddly muddled and indistinct, and she had to study each one to fully comprehend how it was persuading reality to do this or that.

  <We’re too far away,> whispered Sancia in her mind. <But it’ll have to do. Get moving! And make sure to cover the imperiat up!>

  Berenice started off down the muddy path running parallel to the walls, the cries and wailing from the Commons echoing in her ears. <Where am I going?> she asked. <I thought even you couldn’t get close enough to the campo walls to do anything.>

  <Yeah, but that was before Dandolo Chartered launched a goddamn war right here in the city. Now troops have to be streaming in and out of all the gates…>

  <Which means their scrived defenses have to be somewhat lowered?>

  <I’d imagine so. You wouldn’t want a soldier to forget his sachet and get all of his cohort shredded by the espringal batteries. Walk along the walls, and look up for me…Yeah. There. Right there, like that. God, it’s so creepy with the skies so dark…>

  Berenice trained her eyes on the top of the campo walls as she walked down the muddy path. There was a wide canal between her and the walls, brimming with mud and refuse. Ahead was a short bridge that led to the Dandolo southwestern campo gates, which were standing open—a rare sight in Tevanne, these days—but the reason why was obvious: a full cohort of Dandolo soldiers was streaming out of the campo and headed east, doubtlessly toward the Morsinis.

  <Oh shit, I know where we are,> said Sancia. <Carelli Square, of course! This didn’t used to be a canal…It used to be a drainage ditch. Why the hell did they flood this whole thing with water?>

  <Probably because you destroyed the damn Candiano campo!> said Berenice irritably. She was suddenly very aware of two Dandolo guards stationed at the bridge ahead glancing at her cur
iously.

  Yet she kept her eyes fixed on the tops of the campo walls—and as she did, she got the deeply unnerving feeling of Sancia’s mind within her own, scanning what she saw and reading things Berenice herself didn’t see, and all those little revelations and patterns of thought leaking into her own consciousness…

  <The espringal batteries near the gates are turned off,> said Berenice. <Aren’t they?>

  <Yeah, a few. If you walked back a couple hundred yards, you’d be in range again. It’s just here that they’re off, to make sure they don’t accidentally kill their own soldiers.>

  <Excellent. So…how do we use that?>

  <Well. I didn’t run a lot of jobs on the Dandolo campo in the old days. But when I did, and when I needed to get in, I used a scrived key I’d bought that went to a locked drainage tunnel underneath that very bridge up ahead…>

  Berenice’s gaze drifted down into the black waters in the canal—and at the little ball of locking scrivings that was probably fifteen feet below their surface.

  Her stomach curdled. <You aren’t serious.>

  <Sure I am.>

  <You want me to swim down there?>

  <Yes. I don’t have the key anymore, but—I mean, I bet I can pop the lock pretty quick with you, yeah?>

  <And this tunnel—where does it go?> asked Berenice.

  <About fifty feet past the walls, then straight up into an old well they don’t even use anymore.>

  <And…that’s also filled with water?>

  <I’d guess so. Why?>

  <But…Sancia…> She couldn’t bring herself to say it.

  Yet she didn’t need to—her own thoughts slipped to Sancia instantly.

  <Ahhh crap,> said Sancia. <Shit, I forgot. You can’t swim.>

  <No!> said Berenice. <I have always been a very indoors sort of person! And I also can’t see underwater in pitch-black!>

  <That’s not a problem. You can see scrivings through your eyelids, so we’ll be able to see the grate to the tunnel even with your eyes closed.>

  <Really?> she said, amazed.

  <Yes. Trust me, it gets old.> Sancia grumbled for a moment, a cloud of irritation and frustration at the back of Berenice’s mind. <I have an idea.>

  <Yes?>

  <I know how to swim. So…maybe…I can just guide you? Maybe?>

  Berenice stared into the flowing dark waters, her heart jittering in her ribs. <Are…Are we sure we wish to try this theory out when my very body is at stake?>

  <Listen, if you didn’t think your body was going to be at stake during all the rest of this shit, I don’t know what to tell you.>

  Berenice fretted for a moment, trying not to listen to the fresh chorus of despairing moans from the Commons behind her. <Ohh, fine! But how am I going to get down there without those soldiers noticing me?>

  <We need a distraction,> said Sancia, <and the imperiat is pretty good at making those. Maybe I can help you understand what little I know about it…>

  Berenice turned her back on the soldiers, stepped into the shadow of an alley, and cautiously took out the imperiat. Even in the night gloom, its gold seemed to shine so brightly that it made her deeply nervous.

  Yet as she studied it with both her and Sancia’s perspectives, she suddenly began to understand it, with one lever allowing you to pick and choose which scriving you wished to dampen, and another that would determine how much you wished to dampen it…

  Berenice stuck her head around the corner to peer at the bridge over the canal. An armored carriage was slowly rattling its way out into the Commons. <Am I right in thinking that if we turned off the scrivings that govern the direction of that thing’s wheels…that it would be a pretty good distraction?>

  <Sounds brilliant to me.>

  Berenice looked back down at the imperiat and adjusted one lever, moving it back and forth until the little golden plate in the center of the rig displayed the strings that told a scrived carriage’s wheels whether it was going up- or downhill. <And I…just hit the switch?>

  <Yeah. Get ready.>

  She took a breath, braced herself, and pressed the switch.

  Instantly, the scrived carriage slowed…and then, to the tremendous alarm of all the soldiers around it, it began rolling backward, back into the Dandolo campo, as if it weren’t placed on a very flat bridge over a muddy canal but was instead on a sharp incline, sloping back past the walls.

  Berenice watched as the soldiers abandoned their posts and gave chase, waving their arms and helplessly screaming, “Stop! Stop!” The big carriage caromed off one gate and rocketed back through the walls, out of sight.

  <I hope it doesn’t hurt anyone,> said Berenice.

  There was a loud crash and a smattering of screams.

  <Stop hoping for shit and get in the damned water!> said Sancia.

  Berenice stowed the imperiat away, ran to the edge of the canal, and waited to confirm that the soldiers were gone. Then, with a whimper of fear and disgust, she sat down on the edge, slipped her feet in, and lowered herself into the filthy waters.

  She felt her skin crawl as the water rose past her shoulders. <Oh God,> she said. <What do I do?>

  <What do you do? God, hon! You take a big breath, shut your eyes, and stick your goddamn head under!>

  <But…But…>

  <Just do it and go before they come back!>

  Berenice clamped her eyes shut and lowered herself into the fetid waters.

  Sancia was right—the little bundles of logic all around them glowed even through her eyelids. But she could barely think about this with all this water around her, pressing in on her from all sides, invading every part of her—and she was just stuck there, drifting into the black, blind and helpless…

  <Relax!> said Sancia. <Relax, Ber. Relax, relax, relax…>

  She listened to Sancia’s words, echoing in the depths of her thoughts.

  Then she had the strangest feeling in the world.

  It was as if Sancia were embracing her, enveloping her, like she was becoming lost in her mind, in her thoughts, in the way she perceived and interpreted and understood all the incoming sensory information about the world…

  And then Berenice understood. The twinning they had applied to themselves, the tiny plates now buried in their bodies—she’d been thinking of it all this time as a connection, like a tiny tube that ran back and forth between their minds, piping in thoughts and ideas and words…

  But that wasn’t so. The connection was just the start.

  A little like how Crasedes tried to use the Mountain, she thought. The little plates in our heads are…reforging us. They’re changing who we are, what we are.

  Berenice drifted in the water, listening to Sancia’s words: <Relax, relax, relax…>

  The burble of black waters. The flows and currents pulling at her skin.

  I am she, Berenice thought suddenly, and she is me.

  And suddenly she knew.

  She knew how to swim, how to part the water with her cupped hands, how to kick herself forward. She knew how the water would react around her, how to feel the weak currents tugging at her body, how to ignore the bubble threading its way up one of her nostrils. She knew because she was Sancia, and Sancia was also her, and all that was one was also the other.

  They turned in the waters, spied the grate at the bottom, and swam down, parting the inky black, their ears whistling and popping under the pressure, one kick after another, until their hands grasped the iron and the scrivings leapt to life in their mind…

  <…shall remain SHUT,> said the scriving, <shall remain CLOSED, shall adhere my surface to the frame…Waiting to open upon physical contact with the third, fourth, and ninth security tiles…Only then shall my face be parted from the frame, fro
m the EAST marker, from the WEST mark—>

  And they knew how to open it. Of course they did. They had done this many times before, hadn’t they?

  If a door opens the wrong way, it doesn’t count as opening…

  The next thing they knew they were arguing with it, her mind speaking Sancia’s thoughts, or her thoughts mixed with Sancia’s mind: <What if you move toward me?>

  A pause.

  <What?> said the door, confused.

  <What if you move toward me? Would that require the security tiles?>

  <Toward you?>

  <Yes.>

  <Through the east marker?>

  <Yes.>

  <And through the west marker?>

  <Yes.>

  <All the way?>

  Their lungs began to ache. How long it’d been since they’d drawn breath…

  <Hm,> said the scriving. <Well. All right!>

  They withdrew their hand and swam back into the black, waiting, watching…

  The little knot of silver began to quiver, then quake. The water trembled around them, and then…

  Snap.

  The sound of it was so much louder down in the depths of this canal. They swam into the open tunnel, their fingers grasping the edges, and they pulled themselves through, their lungs burning, their head aching. They ignored it, worming themselves on and on and on, clawing their way through the darkness until their fingertips struck flat stone, and they opened their eyes in the filthy, noxious water, and they looked up and saw…

  The stars overhead, their pale light lancing down through a narrow shaft above.

  They darted up, their body turning with effortless grace, muscles flexing as they parted the waters like a hard, sharp spear, and they rose, and rose, and rose…

  Who am I?

  Another stretch of shaft, and another, their lungs screaming, their body begging for air.

  I can barely remember if we were two people, or if we’ve always been one…

  The stars were so close now, the surface just above.

  That’s it, isn’t it? We aren’t individuals anymore. Not anymore. There’s no going back. Not from this.