Shorefall

by Robert Jackson Bennett

  “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.

  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.

  Sancia said.

  said Valeria’s voice, low and rumbling.