Shorefall
Page 41
Crasedes took one careful step forward. “Be quiet,” he said.
“Did he love you? Did you love him?”
“Enough.”
“I do not think he loves you anymore, Maker…”
“ENOUGH!” bellowed Crasedes, and his voice grew so deep and resonant that the windows of the grand ballroom buckled and bent and exploded into a rain of tinkling shards.
A cool breeze poured into the room, layered with scents of smoke and salt and the sea.
“You are not as powerful as you think,” she whispered. “And when midnight comes, and you attempt to remake me…I think you will find yourself where you always wind up—frustrated, and failing.”
“You think I’ll wait for midnight?” said Crasedes. “For the lost minute? Are you so small-minded? Goodness. And here I am, believing you and Sancia and the rest of this civilization might actually be clever, for once…”
He walked over to his half-built lexicon and its wall. But this lexicon’s wall, of course, was different from that of most foundries—for he had built it to accomplish very different things.
“Let’s see what sort of progress we’ve made out there, eh?” he said.
She watched him reach out to the wall, and though her face showed no emotion he could feel her anxiety pouring off of her like smoke.
“One command to twin this lexicon with all the ones I’ve captured out in this city, beyond this campo…” he said. He altered a handful of switches. “There. And now another—a command sent out to all of them…disputing the very nature of time itself.”
“No…” Valeria said very faintly.
“Yes,” he said.
He flipped the next switch.
Instantly, there was a pulse around them. Then came a change in the breeze, in the wind, in the very air, an indistinct, curious, unpleasant shift, like drinking from a mountain stream and suddenly tasting blood or rot in the water.
And then the sky outside the windows began to change.
* * *
—
Ofelia Dandolo was standing at the edge of her balcony when she felt the air suddenly grow cool, and all the hair on her arms and neck stood up.
She looked around. The light was dying. And it was dying so fast…
She turned back to Gregor. “Do…Do you feel that, my love?” she asked. “Do you see this?”
Gregor did not respond. He just stared straight ahead, his eyes cold yet anguished, his hands still balled into fists.
She dragged her eyes away from him and stared out at the skies above Tevanne, which were now a patchwork of black. She heard a dreadful moan rise up from the city all at once, people screaming and crying out, and she knew she was not alone in experiencing this.
And there, in the skies above her estate—were those stars? Hadn’t it just been morning a few moments ago?
* * *
—
Berenice trudged through the Commons toward the Dandolo campo, carefully avoiding the war carriages and the streams of troops moving between the Dandolo and Morsini territories. She didn’t think she had to worry much about being spotted—she was so filthy from the ditch that she now looked like every other beggar in the Commons—but she still took no risks.
She paused at one corner, peering up at the vast white walls…
And then, suddenly, the walls weren’t white anymore.
She blinked, watching as they suddenly darkened. She looked up, and saw the sky abruptly grow black, like a giant had just placed a massive cup over the whole of the Commons.
“What on earth?” she asked quietly.
She thought perhaps she was going mad—perhaps too much time near Valeria or Crasedes affected one’s sanity—but then she heard someone else scream in the street, and people began pointing up at the sky, and she knew what she was seeing was real.
However, unlike the rest of the Commoners, Berenice did not quail or shriek or moan in terror. Because when she saw the stars begin to glimmer in the depths of the black above, she knew perfectly well what had happened.
Crasedes has twinned all the lexicons of the city, she thought. And he must have made them believe they contain Tribuno’s definition, allowing them to stack those authorities again and again and again…Which means he can tell reality to change at a whim. Including what time it is.
Berenice picked up the pace, running through the streets of the Commons toward the Dandolo walls. All around her, the city of Tevanne seemed to lose its head.
People sprinted through the streets, screaming incoherently. She ran through one Commons square, close to the Lamplands, and stared as a floating lantern slowly fell from the sky to her right, all of its paper and canvas aflame, a great, floating cloud of fire and roiling black smoke that slowly crashed to the earth. One man stood on a cart and bellowed, “Shorefall Night! Shorefall Night everlasting!”
She ran on. But why hasn’t he done it yet?
She passed one couple furiously copulating on the doorstep of a shop, both of them half-undressed with tears in their eyes. “Just one more time,” whispered the woman. “Just one more time, before the end…”
If he’s twinned all the lexicons in the city—why is he waiting to remake Valeria at all?
Then she rounded the corner and saw the sky of Tevanne stretching out before her.
The sky above her, right close to the Dandolo campo, was completely black. But there, above bits and pieces of the Morsini campo, and some portions of the Candianos—there it was still light.
He doesn’t have them all. He’s got the Dandolos, and the Michiels—I mean, we tricked them into twinning all their lexicons already, so we practically did his work for him there—but he still needs to finish the Morsinis and the Candianos. And I bet he needs every single one he can get.
She watched as the sky appeared to fail above the edge of the Morsini walls, and go dark.
But it won’t take him long. Not at this rate.
She tried to reach out to Sancia, but she got nothing more than a drunken, warm darkness.
I have to get to Sancia. And I have to get to her fast. If only she’d wake up.
34
Sancia gasped, awoke, and tried to open her eyes.
She couldn’t see anything. All the world was dark.
What the hell? Where am I? What’s going on?
She stared into the darkness for a moment. And then, all at once, it felt like someone had filled up her head with putrid brine.
Dolorspina venom, she thought miserably as her head ached. My God, have I come to hate that shit…
Her face was a throbbing mess of pain. She could tell her lips were badly swollen, and her nose felt queerly numb. But then she realized it wasn’t just her face and head that ached: her shoulders, hips, and arms hurt as well.
She blinked hard, but she still couldn’t see anything. The world before her was a curious, mottled gray, though she caught little glimmers of light filtering through what seemed to be cloth…
Huh. They’ve blindfolded me…
She tried to look around, but it seemed her head had been restrained, tied down to some flat surface by a band around her forehead.
Shit, she thought.
She tried to flex her arms and legs, but found that these had also been restrained. In fact, she seemed to have been bound up in every possible way: her legs and arms were being pulled in all directions by what felt like heavy iron manacles—definitely not the scrived kind—and her head and back were lashed to some kind of wooden surface.
Double shit, she thought. I thought I was done getting tied up…She flexed her arms again. The manacles didn’t give.
Then she had an idea, and flexed her scrived sight—but it showed absolutely nothing before her. Everything was just a sea of black.
She flexed it harder, trying to see farther and farther
and farther…and then she caught a glimpse of alterations at the very edge of her vision. From the hint of logic she spied, it seemed to be something being convinced to be unusually hard, and sturdy—probably a construction scriving, then. Nothing useful to her. They must have put her somewhere far away from anything scrived.
I have to admit, they definitely didn’t screw around this time.
She tried to focus. She couldn’t remember the trip here, but she just assumed they were on the Dandolo campo somewhere. She couldn’t imagine where else they might take her. Nor did she know where Gregor, Orso, and Berenice were, though she guessed they had to be alive…or, at least, she desperately hoped they were alive.
“H-Hello?” she said aloud. Her voice sounded horribly low and raspy, like she’d been screaming for hours. “Is…Is anyone there?”
She made note of the way her voice sounded in this room—the way it bounced off of the walls, the way it made its way back to her ears…
A big room. Not stone, though. Wood?
Then there came an answer—a muffled, garbled voice that could only manage a curious, inarticulate groan that was mostly vowels.
“Uh,” said Sancia. “Hello?”
The voice spoke again, saying something akin to a miserable “Hurrgh.” She thought it was a man’s…and that it sounded familiar.
“Or-Orso?” she said.
The voice groaned again, this time much louder. She guessed that was a “yes.”
“And, if that is you…I’m guessing you’re bound up and gagged?” she asked.
Again, his voice groaned, this time quite loud, and very angry. She imagined him with a wad of cloth stuffed into his mouth, blocking his tongue.
“Two grunts for no,” said Sancia. “One grunt for yes. All right?”
“Hurgh.”
“Are you all right?”
“Hurgh!” said his voice, in a rather irritable tone, as if to say—How goddamned all right could I possibly be?
“Are…we alone right now?”
“Hurgh.”
“Are we on the Dandolo campo?”
“Hurgh.”
“Okay. Are we in the illustris?”
“Hu-hurgh.”
“Are we in…a foundry?”
“Hu-hurgh.”
“Are…Are we in the Dandolo estate house?”
A pause. Then a slow, uncertain “Hurgh…Uhhh…hu-hurgh.”
Yes…but also no?
She wasn’t sure what that could mean. How could they be in the estate house, but also not?
Then she realized. “Are we on the grounds, but not in the house itself?” she asked. “In the…the gardens?”
“Hurgh! Hurgh!”
So—they were locked up in some shack in Ofelia’s gardens, far away from almost anything scrived.
Clever, thought Sancia.
“Orso,” she said. “Where’s Berenice? Is she alive? Do you know?”
Nothing but a slight, miserable whimper.
Oh God, Berenice, she thought. I hope you’re all right, wherever you are. And I hope you’re seeing some way out of thi—
Sancia nearly cried out in surprise.
Sancia lay there for a moment, shocked.
Sancia blinked in the darkness as she tried to process this. The idea seemed mad—that Berenice, even when separated from her, was capable of sharing her rights and permissions…
A silence.
Sancia sighed.
said Sancia.
There was a shocked silence.
* * *
—
Alone and lost in the darkness of her blindfold, Sancia explained her plan to Berenice.