said Berenice, aghast.
She sighed.
Something flickered in the darkness of Sancia’s mind—a glimpse of walls, and a canal, and glints of soldiers’ helmets…
A thoughtful pause. When she spoke again, her voice was quiet and sad.
And then Sancia saw it—just a flash, again, but then more: there was the rippling, slate-gray face of the Dandolo campo walls, and the clouds swirling across a black sky…and then a dark, empty Commons square, and muddy streets under flocks of floating lanterns, and the sounds of many shouts…
And she was there. Sancia could see it, feel it, smell it. It was like a juggler holding a ball in the crook of his elbow—you had to contort and flex yourself just right to hold on to it, but once you had it, it was secure.
whispered Sancia, awed.
Berenice did so, turning a full 360 degrees where she stood. Sancia watched, feeling disoriented and more than a little amazed as the vision in her head turned with her.
There was an anxious silence.
Sancia thought about it, puzzling over how to transfer her talents miles and miles across Tevanne. Then she had an idea.
Sancia took a deep breath. She shut her eyes, and breathed deep again.
And then she flexed.
She almost groaned as the little invisible muscle inside her mind pulled taut. It felt like she was opening up her very skull, exposing her brain to the air so it could catch the scents and aromas drifting around her, but there was just so much to experience, just so much sensation, all of it pouring into her, pouring through her…
And then the vision in her mind lit up.
* * *
—
Berenice gasped as the world changed around her. Suddenly every sight—the walls, the gates, the lanterns above—was overlaid with the curiously wispy tangles of logic she’d seen just hours ago, back in the Foundryside offices.
But these weren’t quite as bright, or strong. When Sancia had first shown scrivings to her she’d been able to understand their meaning at a glance. But now they were oddly muddled and indistinct, and she had to study each one to fully comprehend how it was persuading reality to do this or that.
Berenice started off down the muddy path running parallel to the walls, the cries and wailing from the Commons echoing in her ears.
Berenice trained her eyes on the top of the campo walls as she walked down the muddy path. There was a wide canal between her and the walls, brimming with mud and refuse. Ahead was a short bridge that led to the Dandolo southwestern campo gates, which were standing open—a rare sight in Tevanne, these days—but the reason why was obvious: a full cohort of Dandolo soldiers was streaming out of the campo and headed east, doubtlessly toward the Morsinis.
iously.
Yet she kept her eyes fixed on the tops of the campo walls—and as she did, she got the deeply unnerving feeling of Sancia’s mind within her own, scanning what she saw and reading things Berenice herself didn’t see, and all those little revelations and patterns of thought leaking into her own consciousness…
Berenice’s gaze drifted down into the black waters in the canal—and at the little ball of locking scrivings that was probably fifteen feet below their surface.
Her stomach curdled.
Yet she didn’t need to—her own thoughts slipped to Sancia instantly.
Berenice stared into the flowing dark waters, her heart jittering in her ribs.
Berenice fretted for a moment, trying not to listen to the fresh chorus of despairing moans from the Commons behind her.
Berenice turned her back on the soldiers, stepped into the shadow of an alley, and cautiously took out the imperiat. Even in the night gloom, its gold seemed to shine so brightly that it made her deeply nervous.
Yet as she studied it with both her and Sancia’s perspectives, she suddenly began to understand it, with one lever allowing you to pick and choose which scriving you wished to dampen, and another that would determine how much you wished to dampen it…
Berenice stuck her head around the corner to peer at the bridge over the canal. An armored carriage was slowly rattling its way out into the Commons.
Berenice looked back down at the imperiat and adjusted one lever, moving it back and forth until the little golden plate in the center of the rig displayed the strings that told a scrived carriage’s wheels whether it was going up- or downhill.
She took a breath, braced herself, and pressed the switch.
Instantly, the scrived carriage slowed…and then, to the tremendous alarm of all the soldiers around it, it began rolling backward, back into the Dandolo campo, as if it weren’t placed on a very flat bridge over a muddy canal but was instead on a sharp incline, sloping back past the walls.
Berenice watched as the soldiers abandoned their posts and gave chase, waving their arms and helplessly screaming, “Stop! Stop!” The big carriage caromed off one gate and rocketed back through the walls, out of sight.
said Berenice.
There was a loud crash and a smattering of screams.
Berenice stowed the imperiat away, ran to the edge of the canal, and waited to confirm that the soldiers were gone. Then, with a whimper of fear and disgust, she sat down on the edge, slipped her feet in, and lowered herself into the filthy waters.
She felt her skin crawl as the water rose past her shoulders.
Berenice clamped her eyes shut and lowered herself into the fetid waters.
Sancia was right—the little bundles of logic all around them glowed even through her eyelids. But she could barely think about this with all this water around her, pressing in on her from all sides, invading every part of her—and she was just stuck there, drifting into the black, blind and helpless…
She listened to Sancia’s words, echoing in the depths of her thoughts.
Then she had the strangest feeling in the world.
It was as if Sancia were embracing her, enveloping her, like she was becoming lost in her mind, in her thoughts, in the way she perceived and interpreted and understood all the incoming sensory information about the world…
And then Berenice understood. The twinning they had applied to themselves, the tiny plates now buried in their bodies—she’d been thinking of it all this time as a connection, like a tiny tube that ran back and forth between their minds, piping in thoughts and ideas and words…
But that wasn’t so. The connection was just the start.
A little like how Crasedes tried to use the Mountain, she thought. The little plates in our heads are…reforging us. They’re changing who we are, what we are.
Berenice drifted in the water, listening to Sancia’s words:
The burble of black waters. The flows and currents pulling at her skin.
I am she, Berenice thought suddenly, and she is me.
And suddenly she knew.
She knew how to swim, how to part the water with her cupped hands, how to kick herself forward. She knew how the water would react around her, how to feel the weak currents tugging at her body, how to ignore the bubble threading its way up one of her nostrils. She knew because she was Sancia, and Sancia was also her, and all that was one was also the other.
They turned in the waters, spied the grate at the bottom, and swam down, parting the inky black, their ears whistling and popping under the pressure, one kick after another, until their hands grasped the iron and the scrivings leapt to life in their mind…
<…shall remain SHUT,> said the scriving,
And they knew how to open it. Of course they did. They had done this many times before, hadn’t they?
If a door opens the wrong way, it doesn’t count as opening…
The next thing they knew they were arguing with it, her mind speaking Sancia’s thoughts, or her thoughts mixed with Sancia’s mind:
A pause.
Their lungs began to ache. How long it’d been since they’d drawn breath…
They withdrew their hand and swam back into the black, waiting, watching…
The little knot of silver began to quiver, then quake. The water trembled around them, and then…
Snap.
The sound of it was so much louder down in the depths of this canal. They swam into the open tunnel, their fingers grasping the edges, and they pulled themselves through, their lungs burning, their head aching. They ignored it, worming themselves on and on and on, clawing their way through the darkness until their fingertips struck flat stone, and they opened their eyes in the filthy, noxious water, and they looked up and saw…
The stars overhead, their pale light lancing down through a narrow shaft above.
They darted up, their body turning with effortless grace, muscles flexing as they parted the waters like a hard, sharp spear, and they rose, and rose, and rose…
Who am I?
Another stretch of shaft, and another, their lungs screaming, their body begging for air.
I can barely remember if we were two people, or if we’ve always been one…
The stars were so close now, the surface just above.
That’s it, isn’t it? We aren’t individuals anymore. Not anymore. There’s no going back. Not from this.
Shorefall Page 42
