Shorefall

by Robert Jackson Bennett

  Gregor sat back and stared at the mutilated man, his face like ash. “What did you do here?” he asked softly.

  “Please…I have seen him.” The scriver’s words were slurred and drunken now. “I’ve looked at him. I can’t have that in…inside me…”

  “What has my mother done?” asked Gregor.

  The scriver’s head lolled back, and he went silent.

  For a moment they did nothing, not daring to speak. Then they stared at the door beyond, leading to the larger chamber.

  Sancia looked around again at the books and the bowls on the table. This was their preparation room.

  Gregor and Sancia crossed to the large door on the far side of the wall.

  But is this where they did their true work?

  “Do you see anything inside, Sancia?” whispered Gregor.

  She flexed her sight. The room on the other side of the door was dark, devoid of any logic or arguments. She shook her head.

  Gregor slowly took a breath, opened the door, walked into the room, and held up his lantern.

  “Oh…Oh my God…” he moaned.

  Sancia joined him. Then she saw, and she felt faint and fell to her knees.

  Nearly a hundred bodies of men, women, and children lay on the floor of the room, all bound in chains and ropes and arranged in overlapping rings around a small, circular space where a single lantern shone. Sancia instantly recognized the bodies as slaves, judging from the spectrum of races, or the brands on their arms, or the hardness of their hands. They were all dead, though none bore any sign of injuries—except for a small, scrived metal marker that had been placed upon their chests.

  Sancia dropped her espringal and covered her face. It was too horrible, just too horrible to see…

  And the most curious thing was the moths: the floor of the room was covered in dead, tiny, fragile white moths, so many it was almost like a light dusting of snow.

  “What did they do?” asked Gregor. “How could they…It’s not midnight yet, is it?” He fumbled for his timepiece and read it. “It’s not even eleven o’clock…”

  She shook herself and stood. She studied the little metal markers that lay on the chests of the dead slaves. She saw no silvery tangle of logic, no bundle of commands woven into their reality.

  Which means, she thought, that they aren’t rigs…Or they’ve been used in the creation of something else, like a smithy might use a mold…

  Fighting the urge to vomit or run or scream, she walked among the rings of bodies on the floor to the space in the center, the little circle with the lamp. As she grew closer she saw countless sigils running along the circle’s edge, a dense, tangled stream of metals and paints.

  A stream of blood marred the sigils at one point, breaking whatever binding they’d once laid upon the world here. Sancia saw they were hierophantic commands, but not ones she was familiar with. She pulled out one of the parchments she’d taken from the other room.

  “Sancia,” pleaded Gregor. “Sancia, what’s going on?”

  “Be quiet,” she said as she read.

  “Sancia…it can’t have happened already, can it? He…he cannot be back already…”

  “Gregor, be quiet!” she snapped.

  She studied the sigils on the parchment carefully, then looked at those written on the floor. Her heart grew cold as she became more convinced of what had happened here.

  “They…They scrived time,” said Sancia finally.

  “What?”

  “These sigils here,” she said, pointing to them. “I’ve never seen them before. But…But I think they convinced reality that the time inside the circle was different from the time outside.”

  “You’re not making sense.”

  “Are you listening, Gregor? They didn’t have to wait for midnight. Not if they could convince the space within that circle that it was always midnight. They…They could do the ritual there, and it would work just fine…wouldn’t it?” She put the parchment back in her pocket. “He knew. He knew Valeria would try to stop them. So he had it ready and waiting for him whenever they found the piece of him they needed.”

  “That’s not possible.”

  “It is possible. You can convince gravity that up is down, if you want! And there are stories of Crasedes Magnus playing tricks with time! He just had to tell them how to do it. One ritual to scrive time, then another to bring him back. It…It must have taken an inordinate sacrifice to convince time it could be changed, but…” She looked around at the dead slaves lying on the floor, still and ashen and cold.

  “So can…can he truly be back?” asked Gregor.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Can you see him near us?”

  She peered up into the ship. “No. I…I still don’t see anything.”

  “Could it have failed? Could it have gone wrong? Is that why those men killed themselves? Because it failed, and it did something to them?”

  Sancia looked around the room. She spied something on the floor before an open hatch leading up to the next deck, and walked over to it and knelt.

  It was a black veil. For some reason it made her think of an empty chrysalis, discarded and left behind by…something.

  She remembered her vision of the black-wrapped thing among the columns: how it had reached up, grasped its veil at its face, and slowly pulled it off…

  She looked up at the open hatch and thought for a moment.

  Something is on this ship with us. Right now.

  She grabbed the box with the imperiat, opened it, and slowly, reluctantly pulled out the ancient rig.

  Time to prepare for the worst.

  She’d never really had the opportunity to handle the imperiat much, and unlike with most scrived devices, she had difficulty engaging with hierophantic rigs. Clef, for example, had been completely immune to all of her efforts after he’d “reset” himself. As she crouched in the darkened room and studied the imperiat in the lamplight, she was reminded that there were an intimidating number of controls to it.

  The main set seemed to be three levers on one side. She knew what the largest and smallest ones did—but not the one in the middle.

  Bracing herself, she slid the middle lever back, and a small, round, golden panel in the center of the device shifted rapidly, flashing a series of sigils that appeared to have been instantaneously engraved in the metal itself, like it was made out of liquid.

  She recognized them—sigils for speed, for gravity, for direction…

  I’m seeing the scrivings that are powering the galleon itself.

  It was like a lens, she realized—it could be focused, or directed. You could apply the imperiat’s effects to one scriving in the area, or to all of them. It was a curious feeling, knowing she could sink the whole galleon right here and now, if she wished to.

  She touched the largest lever—but she made absolutely sure not to move it. She knew what this one did, for she’d seen it in action: it controlled the extent of the imperiat’s effects: you could just dampen the selected scriving a little or kill it outright. Touching this lever at all might cause utter disaster.

  The smallest of the three levers was the one she was most interested in now: this one controlled the imperiat’s ability to detect whether a hierophantic scriving was nearby. She knew this, of course, because it had once been able to detect the very hierophantic scrivings on the plate in her head.

  “This should tell me if there’s something hierophantic nearby…” She waved the imperiat past her head, and it whined unsettlingly. Then she waved it by Gregor’s head, and it did the same. “It’s working. But…when Valeria was nearby and active, it suddenly screamed. I think the more powerful the scrivings it detects, the louder its alert.”

  “And the fact that it’s not screaming right now…”

  “It means I don’t know,” said Sancia. She
slid the lever down, making the imperiat less sensitive, and hopefully less loud. If they did walk up on anything hierophantic, she didn’t want it to start screaming and let everyone know where she was.

  “And…the imperiat,” he asked. “If he’s really on the ship with us right now, Sancia, can it…can it kill him?”

  “Again…I don’t know, Gregor.”

  She looked into the darkened hatch before her, flexing her sight. She kept looking up, and up, and up, until she saw a scrived light burning two decks above them, moving back and forth, and back and forth.

  “Someone’s up there,” she whispered.

  “What?” said Gregor.

  “I see a light moving around, like someone is…like they’re holding a lantern and pacing around. Someone’s alive on this ship.”

  “And…And is it…”

  “I don’t know.” She stood. “But we need to go see. We have to find out if he’s really back, if it’s really him, and…and what he plans to do.”

  * * *

  —

  They turned out their lanterns and climbed the stairs in total darkness, moving as slowly as possible, trying to make no noise. Finally they came to the deck with the scrived light, and they crept forward until they came to a closed door. Sancia flexed her sight, saw the light was just beyond, and she tapped Gregor’s shoulder twice and pointed.

  He swallowed hard enough for it to be audible, then pressed his ear to the door, his breathing so fast and panicked it seemed as loud as a scream.

  The scrived light within the room stopped pacing. Then it lowered itself and hovered there—sitting on a table, she thought.

  Imperiat? he mouthed to her.

  She checked the rig again. It was still and silent. She shook her head. “There’s nothing on the other side of this door but the light,” she whispered.

  Gregor nodded, then stood, readied his espringal, and placed his hand on the knob. He took a deep breath, steeled himself, and shoved the door open.

  He moved inside swiftly, espringal raised, and Sancia followed him. She had no idea what they would find within—perhaps some unimaginable monster, or another scene of horrid gore—but what they found was a tall, dark-skinned, rather handsome woman seated calmly at a table with a scrived lantern in her lap.

  “Gregor,” she said softly. Though her face was steady, her voice was very hoarse, and shook badly.

  “Mother?” said Gregor, stunned.

  Sancia stared at the woman, her face eerily lit in the light of the scrived lantern, and slowly realized this had to be Ofelia Dandolo—one of the most powerful people in all of Tevanne. She was grandly dressed, wearing a richly designed bodice and full skirt, and she was of an age that was just on the border between upper-middle and elder years.

  “What…What are you doing here, Mother?” asked Gregor.

  “He said…He said you might come,” she said faintly. She blinked a few times. Sancia could tell she was in shock. “I didn’t really believe him. But here you are.”

  “Mother—why are you here? What’s going on? Did…Did you kill those slaves?”

  “He…He said she would try to stop us,” whispered Ofelia Dandolo, her eyes wide. “So we had to do it fast. But it would take so many lives, to make the world think it was midnight…”

  Gregor let out a shuddering breath. “My God…”

  She looked at him pleadingly. “But he’s back now. He’s back, and he can fix you, my love, and fix the city, fix the world, fix everything, and…and all the things I’ve done to bring us here. He can take it all ba—”

  “Where is he?” asked Sancia.

  Ofelia Dandolo looked at Sancia like she’d only just now realized she was there. “W-What?” she said.

  “Where is he? Where is he now?”

  She looked around dimly, then gestured at the open door on the other side of the room. “I think…I think he went through there.”

  “You think?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “How do you not know?”

  “When…When he first was here, I was waiting, and…and I heard the scrivers screaming, screaming that no one was allowed to see him, and…and so we shut off all the lights. I had them shut off all the lights in the ship and send the crew abovedecks. And I sat here in the dark, waiting, and then I…I heard footfalls, coming closer to me, and then there was a voice. A voice in the dark, Gregor. I heard a voice talking to me, close to me, and it was like…it was like…” She trailed off, unable to even describe it.

  “What happened then?” asked Sancia.

  Her face tremored, and she swallowed. “He said he needed to…to calibrate himself. To understand which privileges and permissions he still retained. And to find something to hide himself in, he said. Something to, to veil his form. And he walked away and…and…I heard these sounds. This tremendous cracking, and crashing, and…and then it stopped.”

  They stared at her for a long while, unable to speak.

  “How long ago did it stop?” Gregor asked.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “I don’t know.”

  Sancia’s eye stayed fixed on the open door on the other side of the room, keenly aware of the darkness beyond—and what could be over there, watching.

  “Damn it, Mother,” whispered Gregor. “What have you done? What have you brought upon us?”

  She blinked, and tears ran down her cheeks. “He apologized, you know. About my scrivers. He said he was sorry. Had not foreseen the issues that his form proposed, he said. He said he…he would make it up to me.” She shut her eyes. “He said he was so sorry, Gregor.”

  She sat there with her eyes shut, breathing in and out. Sancia wondered if she’d gone mad from shock.

  “Sancia,” said Gregor, espringal still trained on his mother. “What do we do now?”

  Good scrumming question, she thought. She looked into the darkened doorway with her scrived sight. Usually when she spied a hierophantic rig—like Clef, or the plate in Gregor’s head—her sight interpreted it as a tiny, blood-red star. But she saw no such thing before them now. “I still don’t see anything.”

  “Do you think he’s…left?”

  “I have no idea.”

  There was a long, dreadful silence as they both stared into the darkened door.

  “We would be idiots,” said Gregor, “to go in there. Yes?”

  “Yes,” said Sancia quietly. “But…I think I’m going to have to.”

  “You can’t be serious.”

  “We cannot let that thing get to Tevanne,” said Sancia. “We cannot let a goddamn hierophant walk into the city! I mean…not only is Valeria vulnerable, but there would be thousands of innocent people in the way!”

  “And you really think the imperiat offers you a chance to stop him?”

  She looked down at the little box hanging around her neck. “I think the imperiat killed a lexicon,” she said. “And hierophants are apparently a lot like a lexicon. So. It’s worth a shot.”

  Gregor took a breath, still staring through the sights of his espringal at his mother. “I will stay here, and guard her to make sure she doesn’t call in any soldiers. You go and look, Sancia—and come right back, understand?”

  “Yeah,” said Sancia lowly. She started toward the darkened door. “I got it.”

  * * *

  —

  Sancia walked forward into the darkness, her scrived lantern in one hand, her imprinter espringal in the other.

  Are we at the midpoint of the ship? How many walls and decks will the shriekers I rigged up have to rip through to get to my target? Then another thought occurred to her: And what if they wind up ripping through me?

  She kept moving forward down the corridor. Her scrived sight showed her nothing, and the imperiat stayed silent.

  She came to a closed door, and she approached
it quietly, her footsteps silent and slow. Yet she noticed there was something different about this door: there was light at the edges. It was a curious, faint light, watery and gray—not at all the light of a scrived lantern.

  She flexed her sight and peered through the door. To her confusion, she didn’t see any scrived rigs of any kind on the other side. So far in the galleon there’d been at least a dozen scrived components every handful of feet. And yet she couldn’t see anything on the other side at all.

  Her skin broke out in goosebumps, but not due to fear. She felt a wind in the corridor, or…

  A draft?

  She hesitated and pulled out the imperiat. She nudged up the smallest lever very slightly, listening hard. It didn’t shriek or warble at all.

  But…that doesn’t mean Crasedes scrumming Magnus isn’t over there. It might just mean he isn’t close.

  She turned the imperiat off and put it away. Then she faced the door, took a deep breath, and opened it.

  She leapt back at the sight of what lay on the other side. For just a few feet beyond the door was…nothing.

  It was as if someone had taken a giant spoon and scooped out a massive chunk from the interior of the galleon, at least three hundred feet across. Floors and decks and ceilings ended in ragged, truncated ruins. Even the main deck above had been breached, and cool, white moonlight spilled in from above, rippling over the wreckage. Water pipes dribbled out into empty space, their flows pouring down into the open depths of the ship, and here and there they caught a ray of moonlight and turned into gleaming silver ribbons.

  It was hard to gauge the scale of the devastation. At least a half dozen decks had been abruptly excised away—but no, she thought as she looked at the devastation on the other side: they’d been broken away, ripped out or snapped off or…She didn’t know. She could barely comprehend what she was seeing.

  But she did not see any person. Nothing alive, no hint of anything moving beyond the water and the bits of boards still clinging to edges of the wreckage.

  She looked up at the rent in the main deck. A person could definitely fit through there.