Shorefall

by Robert Jackson Bennett

  “Get away from him!” said the captain.

  “Hello, Orso,” said Crasedes silkily.

  “Oh God…” gasped Orso, his eyes shut tight.

  “Where is Sancia?” whispered Crasedes. “Tell me. Now.”

  Crasedes’s words seemed to sink into Orso’s mind, pulling all his other thoughts down with them, and suddenly it felt very hard to do anything besides tell him.

  “I…I don’t know,” said Orso.

  “But she’s here somewhere?”

  “Y-Yes.” Orso felt like weeping, and he opened his eyes, filled with shame and despair.

  “Mm,” whispered Crasedes. “I did tell you all…I’m on your side. Against the construct, yes, but…also against these men, you know. Powerful men, with powerful tools…I have seen that story play out so many times.” He stood, looked around, and saw Gregor. “Ah! And here is young Dandolo himself. How nice to see!”

  “Stop!” said the captain, his face now bright red. “Remove yourself from this property before I have my men shoot you dead!”

  But Crasedes ignored him and walked across the lamplit atrium to Gregor. “Oh, Gregor…” he said. “You seem to have fallen back into your old ways. I wonder what that’s like for you…”

  Orso couldn’t see well from this angle, but Gregor was still sitting with his head bent, his face fixed in an expression of aching grief.

  Crasedes squatted low, his black mask hovering close to his ear. He whispered something to him…and Gregor’s brow creased, ever so slightly.

  “Get away from him!” screamed Orso. He strained against his bonds. “You…You leave him be, you scrumming monster!”

  The captain pointed at Orso. “Shut up, you!” Then he pointed at Crasedes. “Get away from him! Men—prepare to fire, now!”

  The soldiers all pointed their espringals at Crasedes.

  Crasedes paused, glanced over his shoulder, and slowly stood. “Boys,” he said, “I don’t know how you think this is going to go. But let me just say—it’s not going to go how you think it’s going to go.”

  “We gave your soldiers an honorable chance,” said the Michiel captain. “And they chose to fire on us. Why should we give you a chance now?”

  “Orso,” said Crasedes, “did any of the Dandolo scrivers actually succeed in accessing the lexicons of this place?”

  Again, Crasedes’s words seemed to swirl around in Orso’s brain until he could do nothing but respond. “No.”

  He sighed. “How disappointing. But predictable. In that case…I still have work to do here.”

  The Michiel captain’s face was now the shade of a fresh plum. “Then it shall not be do—”

  “Hmm…how many of you are there?” Crasedes said thoughtfully. He looked around at them, unperturbed by the numerous weapons trained on him. “Seems at least a hundred or so…Far too many to convince all at once. Which, frankly, I just don’t have the time for tonight anyway…”

  “Go back to your campo,” spat the captain, “and tell them what you’ve seen here. And let them know they should think twice before challenging the might of the Michiels!”

  “It’s still a bit early,” said Crasedes. “So instead, I will ask—have you fellows ever heard of Brassitus?”

  There was a long pause.

  “Of who?” said the captain. “Is this some campo figure you think will save you?”

  “No, no,” said Crasedes. “Brassitus was a general in the Plenian armies. Are you familiar with them?”

  “I am not.”

  “Oh, giant empire, existed about three thousand years ago. They had a civil war, arguing over whether the landowning classes should get two votes for every hectari they possessed, or three…Silly thing, really. Brassitus came to power after quite a lot of Plenian noblemen and politicians and civic leaders had gotten killed in the streets, and he just decided…enough. Enough with laws, and constitutions, and statutes, and parliamentary procedures. And he stormed the assemblies and took control, and when people complained, he simply said—‘Let us battle, friend. You with your laws, and I with my spear.’ And no one seemed to have a very good answer to that.”

  “What is the point of this?” said the Michiel captain, furious.

  “I am simply saying,” said Crasedes, “that you lot and Brassitus would probably get along. You seem cut from the same cloth. But what you don’t know—what no one knows, really—is what happened to Brassitus.”

  A long silence.

  “Which was what, exactly?” asked the captain.

  “Well,” said Crasedes pleasantly, “someone came to Plenia who was willing to fight with something besides laws or spears. And now all of Brassitus’s glorious armies, and his enlightened despotism…That is all gone.” He leaned forward, and his voice grew queerly, disturbingly deep. “Wiped away. Like raindrops from a leaf…”

  Orso heard a sound in the distance. It was very faint but very familiar: the sound of the Michiel clock tower, chiming midnight in the distance.

  “Oh no,” he whispered.

  The air throughout the atrium seemed to shake and quiver, like a vast wind was running through the Mountain’s many chambers, yet Orso could feel no breeze or draft on his skin. Nausea coiled and thrashed in his belly, and he heard the Michiel soldiers moan quietly around him.

  Crasedes stood up straight…and then he lifted his legs, and he simply seemed to float in the air, seated in a cross-legged position, his hands on his knees, his black mask lifted to the moonlight above.

  When he spoke next, his voice was so deep it seemed to make the very ceiling rattle. “The problem with might, you see,” he said, “is that there’s always someone mightier.”

  Crasedes reached out with an open hand—and then he crooked his fingers, very slightly.

  The Michiel captain gagged.

  Then he screamed, and twitched. And then he began to…

  Float.

  The Michiel soldiers watched in amazement as their captain slowly rose into the air, like a puppet on strings. His face was fixed in an expression of terrible agony, and he shrieked, long and loud—and then he suddenly seemed to implode.

  It was without a doubt the most horrific sight Orso had ever seen. First the captain’s arms snapped in, and then his legs folded up with a crack, and then his ribs and shoulders crinkled inward, and then his skull became curiously elongated, like someone stretching a piece of clay. It was as if he were being crushed by the fists of an invisible giant, clutching each limb one at a time—and yet, he did not bleed, not one drop.

  Crasedes twitched a finger, and the ruined body of the captain fell to the ground with a clump—and yet it kept twitching.

  He’s still alive, thought Orso, horrified. He…He did all that to him but, oh my God, he’s still goddamn alive!

  One of the Michiels screamed, “Shoot the bastard!”

  The next thing Orso knew, the air was filled with the sounds of dozens of hundreds of scrived bolts hurtling through the air.

  He screamed and shut his eyes, certain that one of the stray bolts would fly through his chest or face, but…then the sound tapered off.

  He opened his eyes.

  Crasedes was still floating in the air, yet he had one hand raised—and it seemed like it was holding a giant ball of gray fuzz. The ball appeared to grow denser and denser, but then Orso realized it was not fuzz, but bolts, dozens of them, perhaps hundreds of them, all gathering around Crasedes’s hand—but none of them actually struck him.

  “Enough,” boomed Crasedes’s voice—and then the ball of bolts flew apart.

  Orso watched, terrified, as the bolts all flew back directly at the people who had fired them, dozens of soldiers shredded to pieces in an instant—but then Crasedes guided the wave of bolts with one hand, like they were a school of fish flitting throughout the atrium. He pointed at one balcony
where a soldier crouched, and the river of bolts consumed it, devouring him utterly, and then it snaked through the walkways and shredded another soldier attempting to flee. It all happened so fast Orso’s eye could barely translate what he was seeing.

  “Complacent,” said Crasedes.

  While the river of bolts raged behind him, he pointed a finger at two soldiers before him, then ripped his hand back. Their faces seemed to burst with blood, and their arms went limp—but the blood kept coming and coming out of them, coiling in the air like a long red snake, until Crasedes lazily waved and it splashed to the ground while the soldiers collapsed.

  Orso stared. Did…Did he just pull the blood out of those men?

  “Overconfident,” proclaimed Crasedes.

  He pointed at two soldiers with both hands, and then smashed them together. With a scream, the two men flew together and crunched, like a child taking two dolls of clay and smooshing them into one. He flicked his hands at them, and the mashed-together men fell to the ground.

  “Fat,” he said, “and sated…and slow.”

  He raised his arms and made a gesture as if sweeping a table clean, and with a chorus of screams, all the soldiers and rubble and ruins around Orso slid to the side of the atrium like someone had picked up the whole building and tilted it.

  Orso screamed in abject terror, but he noticed—he did not slide. Nor did Gregor. Both of them stayed right where they were.

  “You don’t know how many empires I’ve crushed in my day,” boomed Crasedes.

  As the soldiers struck the walls they just kept screaming, pinned to the stone, and Orso realized that whatever force had pushed them there was still pushing, still growing stronger, pushing and pushing until the soldiers began to collapse, like they were being compressed by a giant, flat surface…

  “Oh my God,” whispered Orso.

  “The thing that irks me the most,” said Crasedes, “is that you all think you’re so special. So unique. So deserving.”

  He made a gesture, and the crushed soldiers rose to levitate in the air like a mangled wall of human bodies.

  And then the wall began to fold inward, forming a ball…which shrank, and shrank…

  “But to be honest,” said Crasedes, “your empire isn’t even terribly inspired.”

  The ball of flesh and stone and glass hung in the air for a moment.

  “Yet I will still relish grinding it into sand and ash, just like all the others…”

  Then it slowly began to drift down, down, and down…until it rested in the middle of the atrium floor.

  There was a long, long silence.

  Crasedes hovered in the air, still seated in a queerly meditative position. Then he slowly turned to look at Orso.

  “Well,” he said. “It’s been a long time since I did that.”

  19

  Sancia and Berenice watched from the fourth-floor balconies in silent horror as Crasedes finished his slaughter.

  “Oh my God,” said Berenice softly, tears streaming down her cheeks. “Oh my God…”

  Crasedes floated forward into the cavernous atrium, still seated in the air. “I think,” he called, “that I am owed a thank-you.” His black mask scanned the balconies around him. “Am I not? Am I not owed a thank-you, Sancia, for saving your friends?”

  Sancia felt her blood pounding in every limb in her body. Shit. He knows I’m here.

  She watched as his black mask turned to look at the balconies. “This is getting a little tiresome,” echoed Crasedes’s voice throughout the atrium. “All this sneaking and spying, when a simple conversation would work so much better…And after all, we never did finish our discussion earlier.”

  She looked at Gregor, still sitting on the floor, head bent, and Orso, still tied to the table. Then, though she desperately wished she wouldn’t, she looked at the mangled ball of flesh and stone and weaponry on the ground next to them…

  He would do it to them, too. He’d do it and never think about it, not once.

  “Berenice,” she said hoarsely. “Take the definition we came here for and get out of here, now.”

  “What?” Berenice said, stunned. “You…what, are you actually going to go down there and talk to…to that thing?”

  “Yes. I have a plan. Or, rather, an agreement.” She looked up at the roof of the atrium. “One I made with the Mountain. One I think it would dearly like me to keep.”

  “Sancia,” called Crasedes. “I am getting rather bored. And my mind always strays when I’m bored…”

  She looked back at Berenice. “Go. Now! Wait for Orso and Gregor to join you, but you have to save the one thing we came here for.”

  Berenice looked into her eyes, her face trembling. “You’ll be all right?”

  “I’ll be all right.” She tried to believe it as she said it.

  Then they kissed desperately. Berenice felt her face with one hand, and then she turned and ran into the secret exit.

  I sure as shit hope I know what I’m doing, Sancia thought.

  She stood and called out, “I’m coming down!”

  She heard Orso’s voice screaming, “No! No, goddamn it, get the hell out of here! Get out of here, get out of here, get ou—”

  “Oh, enough,” boomed Crasedes’s voice.

  Orso fell silent. He did not seem to be hurt, from where Sancia could see, just…oddly frozen.

  “I will be civil,” said Crasedes. “We will all be civil, for once. And how nice that will be.”

  * * *

  —

  Sancia tried not to shake as she exited the stairs and walked across the atrium main floor. The air stank of blood and death. The floors and walls were covered with gore. Orso whimpered where he’d been tied to the table. And there, seated peacefully and calmly on the air, was Crasedes, his black mask fixed on her as she emerged from the shadows.

  “Ahh,” he said as she walked forward. “There she is. The brave little soldier. Sancia…you don’t look so good, you know. You could use a bath. Or two.”

  “Eat shit,” said Sancia.

  Crasedes cocked his head. Did you succeed in getting the definition, Sancia?”

  She gestured to the blood and destruction around her. “Does anything about tonight seem successful?”

  “I don’t know,” he said dryly. “I’ve seen uglier successes in my day.” He drifted closer to her. Her bowels quivered a little. “You’ve been in contact with the construct, then. She sent you here tonight, as I thought she would.”

  “Yes.”

  “Then I must know—where is she?” asked Crasedes.

  “I’ll tell you everything,” said Sancia. “Everything—if you let my friends go.”

  “Why would I do that?” asked Crasedes. “It seems you’re far likelier to be truthful if I possess some collateral…”

  “You could torture them to get me to tell the truth, if you think I’m lying,” she said. “But that would be a waste of your time. Time you could spend trying to catch Valeria—who is very, very close.”

  Crasedes went still. His mask was fixed on her, his eyes like black chasms.

  “Is that so?” he asked.

  “Yes,” she said. “She’s hiding in a Michiel lexicon. Only, the Michiels are using a new tool of ours—one that allows her to inhabit every Michiel lexicon, all at once.”

  “Sancia!” said Orso, horrified. “What in hell are you doin—”

  Crasedes raised a finger. Orso froze and fell silent.

  “Go on,” said Crasedes.

  “We were going to get the definition, set it up within a lexicon nearby, and twin it with the Michiel foundries,” she said. “Then Valeria could escape, and establish a foothold here in Tevanne.”

  “One that you could then use,” said Crasedes, “to defy me.”

  “Yes.”

  “I see
,” he said. He studied her for a moment. “Orso—is she telling the truth?”

  Orso shut his eyes hard like he was trying to ignore a piercing sound in his ear. “Yes,” he whispered miserably.

  “Let them go,” said Sancia. “If you do, you’ll have everything right where you want it, won’t you?” She glared at him. “After all, you wanted to bring her to the Mountain, didn’t you? To take the horrible tools Tribuno had built here, and use them to turn this whole damned place into a forge—to remake her, and force her to do as you want?”

  He studied her for a moment. “Huh!” he said finally. “Impressive. I had not thought I’d been so…transparent. So—she’s nearby, then?”

  “She is,” said Sancia. “And I can take you to her.”

  “Orso…” said Crasedes quietly. “Can she really? Tell me the truth.”

  Orso’s face twisted in self-hate. “Yes!”

  “And if I don’t,” said Sancia, “you can smash my skull with a rock. That’s plenty of collateral, yeah?”

  Crasedes watched her for a long, long while—or perhaps it just seemed long because of how terrified she was. Sancia could even feel her heart fluttering in her chest.

  Then there was a snap. Sancia flinched, expecting a stone to come hurtling at her—but instead, the bonds holding Orso down suddenly dropped away, as did the ones binding Gregor’s hands.

  Orso slid off the table, coughing and gasping.

  “Orso, get up,” said Sancia sternly. “Get your ass up and get Gregor out of here.”

  Orso fought to his feet, staggered over to Gregor, and helped him stand. “What did you say to him?” Orso demanded, turning to Crasedes.

  “I would leave, if I were you,” said Crasedes, “before I decide your blood looks better outside of you than in.”

  Orso glared at him, but then he and Gregor hobbled out of the atrium, and Sancia was left alone with him.

  I hope to God this works, she thought.

  “Well, then, Sancia,” said Crasedes merrily. “Lead the way.”

  * * *

  —

  Sancia walked off into the passageways of the Mountain, Crasedes silently floating a few feet behind her. If it weren’t for the constant nausea in her stomach, she’d probably forget he was even there.