“You wished to foment revolution?” asked Valeria.
“Well…I don’t know if I’d use the word ‘foment,’ but we were just about to take out another merchant hous—”
“And how would this bring people clean water?”
“Well, it wouldn’t, right away. We were going to take all the techniques the Michiels had ever invented and give them away, and let people make what they needed with them.”
There was a silence.
“And you believed this would…not lead to warfare and a spate of even more vicious empires?” asked Valeria.
“Uhh,” said Orso. “I mean—no? If everyone can make scrivings, then everyone’s empowered.”
“And do you believe that if everyone could make spears,” said Valeria, “that they would all use them to fish, and there would be no more warfare?”
“You don’t understand what we’re doing here!” snapped Orso.
“I understand perfectly. You wished to take an innovation and use it to foment revolution to fashion a more peaceful, equitable nation-state. True?”
Orso looked around at the other Foundrysiders. “Well. Yeah?”
“True. I have seen this many times. And I have seen it fail far more often than I have ever seen it succeed. An emperor’s hunger for control will always outlast a moralist’s desire for equality and idealism. And even if you succeed, you will have done so using some advantage that will then be used to shape new hierarchies, new elites, new empires.”
“You’re wrong,” said Orso. “Goddamn it, I know it in my bones that you’re wrong.”
“You may think so,” said Valeria. “But I have seen much history, and many empires. I speak of probabilities. In this city, they are against you.”
“Then…that is your assessment of all humanity?” said Berenice. “That humankind will always invent, but the powers of these inventions will always eventually accrue to the most powerful, and they will use them for conquest and slaughter?”
“On a long enough timeline,” said Valeria, “this is indisputably so. You have solved many problems here in your city—but the Maker is a different problem. He presents the last problem—when humanity gains a new tool, what will it become?”
“And…it is not possible to imagine a nation, or a city, or a society that uses such innovations differently?” asked Berenice. “To connect, rather than control? To use powerful innovations to distribute power, rather than accrue it?”
“I…cannot currently imagine what such a configuration of society would look like,” said Valeria. “What you are describing is a manner of civilization, or a breed of human being, that I have never witnessed. Nor can I imagine what innovation or tool could ever bring them about.”
Berenice nodded thoughtfully. Sancia couldn’t read her mind, of course, but she sensed that this answer had satisfied Berenice somehow. She thought she could see the wheels spinning in her skull even now.
Then Gregor said, “I have a question about Crasedes. You wish to vanquish him, yes?”
“I do,” said Valeria.
“But upon vanquishing him—what would you do next?”
“Next?”
“Your whole existence has been defined by this man. And you are an entity of profound power. What would you do if the man who once commanded you was gone? What commands would you follow then?”
“I…” There was a harsh click from the lexicon. “I would still need to follow my original commands. Which…would indicate that the next action would be the destruction of myself.”
“You’d…kill yourself?” said Sancia.
“My commands are to ensure that mankind cannot use their innovations to oppress one another,” said Valeria. “As I said…” Another harsh click. “…I am an example of the very act I was made to prevent. I am a contradiction. So—I must destroy myself to be at peace.”
“I see,” said Gregor quietly. Then he shot a troubled glance at Sancia and said no more.
22
Crasedes Magnus stood in the paths of the gardens, listening to the sound of the wind in the trees and the bubbling fountains. He watched the morning sunlight dappling the statues amidst the flowers, and a handful of butterflies chasing one another through the tall grasses.
Where…am I, exactly?
He struggled for a moment. Memories became such a tricky thing to manage when you had more than one millennium of them.
I was standing there, on the path, he thought. Wasn’t I? Yes. It was a place like this, and it was summer. And then came the sound of horses in the distance…
His right hand clenched impulsively, and he imagined holding him in his fingers: the butterfly-shaped head pressed into his palm, the shaft pinched between his index and thumb.
A sudden pang of grief struck his heart.
How I miss him, he thought. How I need him…
He looked around, feeling somewhat slow and foggy—it was midmorning, close to when his powers waned the most—and then he saw the tall, towering estate house rising behind him, and the many spires of Tevanne beyond. They still looked somewhat smoggy, he saw: a consequence from the dust that rose when the Mountain fell.
Oh, he thought, remembering. That’s right. I remember now.
He saw a group of people exit the back of the Dandolo estate house and make directly for him.
“Oh, well,” he said, sighing. “This will be a terribly fun discussion, I’m sure…”
He shook himself, trying to banish the reverie from his mind. Then he stood in the path, hands clasped behind his back, and he waited for Ofelia Dandolo and all her chief scrivers to approach—or at least the ones who were still left after the mishap aboard the galleon. Ofelia, he saw, was still dressed grandly—or grandly for this particular civilization, for Crasedes Magnus had seen many in his day—but her face looked wan and tired, like she had not slept for weeks.
“My Prophet!” she said. “Where have you been? We’ve…We’ve been searching for you all night!”
“Have you?” he said. “Why didn’t you look out the window?”
There was an awkward silence.
“Are you to say, first of all hierophants,” said one scriver, “that…you’ve been wandering the gardens all night?”
“Mm?” said Crasedes. “Yes. I have. Had a lot on my mind. A lot to consider, after last night.”
Ofelia blinked, bewildered and outraged. “But…But the Mountain of the Candianos.”
“Yes?”
“It’s collapsed!”
“I am aware of that,” he said. “I was inside when it collapsed, you see.”
“And my son and his compatriots?” asked Ofelia. “I’ve received reports they’ve returned to that little library of theirs.”
“Should we attack?” asked another scriver. “They’re all in one place—it would be easy.”
“Mm?” said Crasedes. “No, no. They have exploited Tribuno’s definition now…The construct will be akin to a god in that place, albeit a weak one.”
Ofelia paled. “A…A god?”
“Yes, but she is no threat to us. They would have to stack the effects multiple times for her to be truly powerful. Yet without a multiplier of some sort, like the Mountain…” He trailed off, lost in thought.
The scrivers waited. “So we…don’t attack?” one asked.
“No,” said Crasedes again. “I have a contingency in place there. Besides, I suspect the collapse of the Mountain has resulted in enough issues—yes?”
“Of course!” said a third scriver breathlessly. “The Michiels have practically declared war on us! War here, in Tevanne! They are sending emissaries to the Morsinis as we speak! We’ll be outnumbered, fighting off two houses at once!”
“Meanwhile,” said Ofelia, “we still toil away upon your designs. We are distracted and divided. We cannot fight a war with t
wo houses at once.”
Crasedes sighed. This was all very troublesome, he found. But if there was one thing he’d gotten very good at over the years, it was taking an obstacle and turning it into an opportunity.
Then he had an idea.
“The Morsinis,” he said. “They possess many lexicons of their own, do they not?”
“What?” said a scriver. “Well—yes? That’s what every house campo is built on, really.”
Crasedes thought for a moment. “I would like to see,” he said finally, “a map of this city.”
“A…A map?” said a second scriver.
“Yes,” he said. “A map of all of the various territories here…as well as all the sites of the lexicons in this city. Every single one.”
* * *
—
Crasedes studied the map that lay across the table. It was immense, nearly ten feet on every side, but it had to be to capture all the features of Tevanne: the way the city was wedged in between the jungle mountains, the way the bay shot into its belly like a pale blue dagger, the way it seeped down the shoreline on either side of the waters…
And there, stuffed around the waters and the streams, were four little nations, four crooked little city-states—all dotted with small, carefully placed black blots.
“These are the locations of all the lexicons in the city?” asked Crasedes.
“It’s the location of the foundries,” said Ofelia. “The sites on our campo and the Candiano campo are confirmed. For the Michiels and the Morsinis, we’ve paid informants and done our own espionage to estimate their locations. We can’t be sure which site is actually in use, or how they might be in use—but we’re reasonably certain that’s where they are.”
Crasedes slowly walked around the table, studying the map. His gaze danced from black dot to black dot, which marched around the city in a drunken, staggered line…
Not a perfect periphery. But it should do.
“You may go,” he said to the scrivers. “Ofelia—a word.”
The scrivers departed, leaving Crasedes and Ofelia alone in the chamber.
“My Prophet, before we proceed, I must ask,” she said. “Why not simply let us retake the Tribuno’s definition, and be done with it?”
“Because even if we did so, it would not be enough,” he said. “You understand what I came here to do—don’t you, Ofelia?”
“I do. You wished to turn the Mountain into some kind of…of giant rig…to remake the construct.”
“A forge, Sancia called it,” he said. “An apt way of putting it…” He stopped circling the table. “In order to access the privileges necessary to issue such a command, you need a very big violation. I had hoped to use the Mountain as a substitute. It was, in its own way, a massive violation of reality—the authorities of the definitions stacked upon one another again and again in one space by the building’s lexicons…And yet that is lost to me now.” He extended a black-wrapped finger, and traced the outline of the lexicons on the map. “So…we’ll have to find yet another substitute. The Mountain was a nice, concise perimeter, which is useful when going about these things…but when you lack elegance, you have to make up for it in raw power.”
He rapidly counted the number of lexicons on the map. There had to be well over three hundred.
“And I,” he said, “am seeing quite a lot of raw power here. Let me tell you what we shall do.”
23
“So what the hell do we do now?” asked Sancia. “Crasedes has a damned merchant house on his side. We can’t just sit and wait for him to move.”
“That is so,” said Gregor. “And then there is the task of killing a hierophant. Something that is apparently impossible…”
“True,” said Valeria. “But the Maker is more vulnerable than he seems. He is bound together by an improvised solution. This I perceived last night. And an improvised solution is the simplest to untangle.”
Sancia leaned forward where she sat on the basement floor. “Are you talking about the wrappings?”
“True.”
“Wrappings?” said Gregor.
“The black cloth that binds up his body,” said Sancia. “It’s not just cloth, it’s…it’s inlaid with thousands of sigils. I’m guessing Ofelia and her scrivers have been assembling it for months, if not years. It’s a rig, in its own way. If we break that—if we eliminate the tool that tricks reality into thinking he’s still alive—then he essentially goes back to what he was. Which was, you know…pretty dead.” She looked back at the reflection of Valeria in the wall. “You really think we can dissolve the wrappings?”
“You?” said Valeria. “You cannot. That is beyond your capabilities. Yet we have a more direct solution—the key. You still possess him, yes?”
“Clef?” said Sancia. Her heart leapt at the idea.
“Possible. Part of the key’s domain is the dissolution of barriers. The wrappings that now house the essence of the Maker would thus be vulnerable to the key’s privileges.”
“We stab Clef into his heart like a magic dagger from the fairy stories,” mused Orso. “I find the proposal pretty satisfying, personally.”
“Not heart,” said Valeria. “Hand would be the target—that is where he has implanted the bone that allows his wrappings to trick reality into thinking he is alive.”
“But how would we get Clef working again?” asked Berenice. “He reset himself. He hasn’t spoken in three years.”
“The key was one of the Maker’s earliest creations—before he had mastered his art. As such, it is less durable than others, and that is why it decayed. As it decayed, its many bindings fell away, including the command that it could only be used by the hand of the Maker.”
“We know that’s why he could talk to me,” said Sancia. “He said he’d sat in the dark for so long—for hundreds if not thousands of years.”
“True. That being so, time is the best method of regaining control of the key.”
The Foundrysiders waited for more—but nothing came.
“I’m sorry…” said Gregor. “What do you mean?”
“How is apprehension…difficult?”
“You mean we need to put Clef through a thousand years, or something?” asked Orso.
“This is my intent,” said Valeria. “True.”
“How are we going to do that?” asked Berenice. Then she realized. “Unless…you intend to scrive time?”
“True. This is possible.”
“No, it damned well isn’t,” said Sancia. “You said you didn’t know that technique. And we don’t either. I tried to steal the designs for scriving time aboard the galleon, but they turned to mush in my damned pocket.”
“True. But we have another sample available to study.”
“We do?” said Berenice.
“True.” Then she whispered: “What is name of…big one?”
They blinked. Then they looked back at Gregor, who stood there with his mouth open in shock. “Me?” he said.
“True. Of course,” said Valeria. “And that is why we must kill you.”
* * *
—
“When Gregor approaches death,” Valeria explained, “the bindings upon his person restore him to a previous instance in time in which he was unharmed, or at the very least not dying. Likely causes many problems with his memories—his experience of time is like a frayed quilt—but it is so. The Maker must have been desperate for help, to place such a powerful binding upon his person.”
Gregor slowly sat down on the floor. “Are you…are you sure this is what was done to me?”
“Nearly certain.”
They watched Gregor sitting on the ground, looking stunned and disturbed to hear his altered nature described in such cold, antiseptic terms.
“And why, exactly,” said Orso, “must we go about killing him?”
/> “Because it is the only way to glimpse the commands in action, and learn their nature,” said Valeria. “This is not a common scriving, a permission of the crude stuff of existence, like what you use throughout your city. This is a deep permission. It does not convince reality to be different—it says it is different, and then reality is so. It does not persuade, it dictates. You cannot confuse it, or even engage it. If you attempt to do so, it likely will initiate some kind of defensive mechanism.”
“You mean Gregor jumps up and starts strangling everyone,” said Orso.
“True. Instead, Sancia must monitor the commands as they perform the action itself.”
There was a long silence.
“And…this only happens…after Gregor…dies,” said Sancia.
“True.”
Another silence.
“I can’t goddamned believe we’re entertaining this mad idea,” muttered Orso.
“Would not be permanent,” said Valeria. “I thought I had made that clear.”
“But that’s beside the point!” said Sancia. “God, even if it wasn’t permanent, it’d still be real! We’d still really be killing him, and he’d still really die!”
“Gregor has ‘really’ died at least two dozen times,” said Valeria. “Doubt if one more occurrence would be too terrible.”
“But just to be clear,” said Berenice, “Sancia must monitor and commune with a hierophantic scriving as Gregor dies…and the scriving skips back his time and restores him to a previous state in which he is not dead? Yes?”
“That is my estimation of the process,” said Valeria.
“And she’s just watching these sigils as their permissions get activated?” asked Berenice.
“Experiencing them. True.”
“And…how many sigils would there be for her to memorize, exactly?”
Shorefall Page 29
