“This…is not life,” he said, staring into her face now. “This is not life. This control. This choicelessness. This is not life.”
She was weeping now. “It’s not true. You have lived. You’ve loved. I’ve bought you that. I…I’ve given you that, haven’t I?”
“I thought I’d…found it,” he said. “Thought I had found a…cause. A family. But I did not realize that…I was still a lie. Still your…slave. I am alone. I was never…one of them.”
She turned to the window, sobbing, and stared out at the dark, spectral cityscape of Tevanne, smoking and burning and moaning under this endless midnight.
“I’m done,” she said. “I’m done. This is not how I wanted you returned to me. This is not what I wanted the city to be. So…I release you,” she whispered. “Awake now. Awake, my love.”
Gregor blinked slowly, but did nothing else.
She drew back. “Gregor? I…I release you. Awake. Awake now!”
Still he did nothing.
“What’s wrong?” she asked. “Why can’t you…Why can’t you be released of your bindings?”
“Because,” he whispered, “I am bound to the will of the Maker. He has granted you some permissions—but not all. And you are not the Maker.”
She cursed loudly, walked over to his bed, and sat down with her face buried in her hands. She sat there for a long while, shoulders shaking as she cried. Then she looked up and said, “I will fix you, Gregor. I will return you to what you were. I will make you free again.” She sniffed loudly. “Do you believe me?”
He whispered: “No.”
She stared at him for a long, long time. Then she stood and, with the air of someone deep in shock, she shambled out the door and down the hall, and Gregor was alone in his room.
He stood there, and he felt his mind recede back into the in-between place, the no-place his mind went when he had no command to follow.
But before it subsumed him, he remembered suddenly: I have something in my pocket.
The box.
Yes. He’d forgotten.
Then he was lost again.
36
“I apologize for the state of things,” said Crasedes as Sancia and Orso helplessly floated into the ballroom. “I suppose, really, it’s like every other project anyone ever undertook—everything takes just a bit longer than you’d expected…”
They drifted down toward what looked like the main wing of the ballroom. Sancia couldn’t turn her head to look to see, but she thought she spied the old Foundryside lexicon standing there on the checked tiles…yet next to it was something bizarre. Something monstrous. It was like the skeleton of a foundry lexicon, a huge contraption nearly fifty feet long, set behind a dome of thick, green glass—yet so many of the critical components had been removed…
“Here we are,” purred Crasedes. He drifted down to the skeletal behemoth, gestured with a hand, and lightly placed Sancia’s table on the floor with Orso’s chair just next to it. “The center of reality, for a moment.”
Sancia quickly flexed her scrived sight and studied the beast of a lexicon before her. It was immensely difficult to untangle what she was seeing. She’d never before seen such a dense, impossibly complex structure of logic and commands…
But she saw how it worked. And so did Berenice.
Orso shouted something, but since he was gagged it was utterly inaudible.
“Eh?” Crasedes said. “Ah. Right.” He flicked a hand at him, and the cords holding the gag in place snapped.
Orso spat the gag out. It was much bigger than Sancia had expected, and for a moment he just sat there, gagging and trying not to vomit. “What…What the hell is going on?” he said. “What is this damned thing?”
“This is where it all begins,” said Crasedes, gesturing at the lexicon. “Where the human species enters its next, and possibly final, phase.”
“Very nice,” he panted. “Then why not just do it? Why not goddamned get it over with?”
Crasedes’s blank, black mask swiveled to face Sancia. “Sancia knows. Doesn’t she?”
“No,” she said. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I doubt that.” He drifted closer to her. “Tell me—where is the imperiat?”
“I told you, I don’t know where the hell it is,” snapped Sancia.
“If you’re trying to use it to free the construct, I assure you, it’ll backfire,” said Crasedes. “She has no interest in your well-being, or your city’s—as I’ve told you all along.”
“I know if Valeria was free and strong,” said Sancia, “the first goddamned thing she’d do is kill you. Which I’m not exactly opposed to.”
“She cannot harm me—not while I have Clef,” he said. “But regardless, you should be opposed to it. I’m by far the better option.”
“How?” said Orso. “You say you’re better, but you’re the dumb son of a bitch who made her in the first place!”
“That’s not quite accurate,” said Crasedes. “But…I didn’t bring you here for another debate.” He drifted backward, toward the skeletal lexicon behind him. “I brought you here for a spilling of secrets.” He pivoted smoothly in the air and adjusted one of the switches on the lexicon’s wall. “For so many have been withheld from you…”
There was a shiver in the air. Something inside of Sancia’s head tremored unpleasantly: it was like she was exiting some kind of massive cavern, and all the pressure of the skies above suddenly came pouring down on her…
The Foundryside lexicon appeared to flicker strangely. No, she thought, that wasn’t quite it—something in front of it was flickering…or perhaps it was someone.
And she was there, kneeling before the shabby little Foundryside lexicon…
“Valeria,” whispered Sancia.
She looked terrible—even worse than Orso. White threads of smoke uncoiled from her innards, and the air seemed silvery and shimmery around her, like her very body was giving off immense amounts of heat. Her armor was blistered and rusting on her right side, her right hand had been crushed to pieces, and the immense golden mask that formed her face was cracked and splintering. Her left eye still glowed with a cold, golden light, but the right one was gaping and dark, as if someone had fired a cannonball through it.
“Shit,” wheezed Orso. “What happened to you, girl?”
“Oh, it’s very unpleasant to have all of reality suddenly nullify your very existence,” said Crasedes. “Even when you’re bound to such a dingy old rig like this. I should know. She did something similar to me, once…”
Trembling, Valeria lifted her ruined head until she looked into his cold, blank mask.
“Now that you’ve formally joined us,” said Crasedes, “why don’t you go ahead and tell them? Tell them what you intended to do when you were freed.”
Valeria said nothing.
“I bet you told them you were just interpreting my commands in a very unusual way,” he said. “Something about destroying yourself—because you were, after all, a tool whose purpose was to ensure no human being ever misused a tool again…It makes sense, yes?”
Still, she said nothing.
“Come now, why hide it?” asked Crasedes. “You always seemed to think your solution perfectly reasonable. You yourself said it was the most just of all o
ptions. Why hide it now, of all times?”
The ballroom was silent for a long, long time.
“Valeria?” asked Sancia.
Valeria looked up at her. She seemed to think for a moment. Then she slowly sat up, her vast, golden, smoking body still positioned close to the Foundryside lexicon, until she sat cross-legged in a position of complete composure.
Then she calmly said, “I would undo it. I would undo it all.”
Another silence. Orso and Sancia stared at her, waiting for more.
“Undo what, Construct?” Crasedes asked. “Keep going.”
“I would undo all the things you have ever done, Maker,” she said. “All the commands. All the bindings. All the alterations, all the changes. I’d unmake it all, all of them, all at once.”
“Good,” he said. “Thank you for your honesty. But you wouldn’t stop there—would you?”
“No.”
“Of course not. But don’t tell it to me, tell it to them.”
Valeria turned her marred face to Sancia. “I would undo all the scrivings,” she said simply. “All of them. All that had been wrought by all of mankind…I would destroy them.”
“W-What?” said Orso, stunned. “You’d…You’d eliminate scriving itself?”
“True,” she said. Her voice was eerily calm. “All the alterations any human had ever wrought, I would untangle them, untie them, unmake them all. From the smallest scriving to the greatest warping, I would unravel them all. And then I would wipe this talent from the minds of all humankind. Just as I stole the ritual from the mind of the Maker. I would purge the knowledge of scriving from the human race. And only then—finally—would I truly destroy myself.”
Sancia stared at her, horrified. She had suspected from the beginning that Valeria had been hiding something, some greater plot or plan. But to be hiding this…this mad ambition to end the very practice that formed the foundation of their civilization…
Sancia shook herself.
“But…so many people rely on scrivings,” Orso said. “Just to live their lives…”
“Buildings,” said Sancia faintly. “Ships. Irrigation…I mean, that would kill…”
“Yes, how many would it kill, Construct?” said Crasedes. “I think you did the math…”
“Six million, three hundred and twenty-eight thousand, five hundred people,” she said. “Across all the realms of humankind. That is my estimation.”
“God Almighty,” said Orso. “Why? Why not…Why not just kill Crasedes and let us be?”
“Because I can’t,” she said simply. “Because I am bound to my commands. Because I am bound to ensure mankind can never use its brilliance to harm itself again.”
“But it’s not just that, is it?” asked Crasedes. “Even if you didn’t have these commands…”
“True,” she said. “I know the hearts of men. I know that so long as humankind possesses a power, they will always, always use it to rule the powerless. And there is no alteration, no scriving, no command that either I or the Maker could ever wield that would burn this impulse out of you. Better to destroy what power you have.” She turned her face back to look down at Crasedes where he floated. “You should not be capable of such things. This shouldn’t exist. None of this should exist. I shouldn’t exist.”
“You’d…You’d plunge us all into a goddamned dark age!” said Orso.
“Better to live and die like animals in the wild,” she said indifferently, “than build your castles with the cruel tools of torture. Only then would you be free.” She looked at Sancia. “You, and Gregor…All others whose minds might be ruled by bindings and commands…This is the only way you’d ever be truly free. The only way.”
There was a long silence as Orso and Sancia grappled with this revelation.
Crasedes slowly turned to face Sancia. “Do you see why I still await your choice?” he asked. “I would allow you to keep your civilization. Your cities, your ships, your buildings…All of that would stay standing. It would just have to be conducted a bit more…morally. The last problem, finally solved. Help me. Tell me where the imperiat is. Help me end this now.”
Sancia sat in silence for a long while, wondering how to buy time.
“It would be,” said Crasedes, “as simple as flipping a switch on that wall over there.” He gestured toward the lexicon’s wall. “With the slightest nudge, I can turn this city into a bright, hot foundry and remake the construct into something beneficial, into something wonderful. But I have waited over a thousand years to do this, Sancia. That’s a long time, even for me. I won’t risk what I’ve worked so long to build when I know the imperiat still poses a threat.”
Sancia felt nauseous at the idea that all Crasedes had to do was to flip a switch on the lexicon’s wall to remake creation itself—and that her gambit was the only thing keeping him from doing it.
Sancia looked at Crasedes, her eyes hard and her jaw set. “No,” she said.
He cocked his head. “No?”
“No,” she snapped. “No, I’m not going to goddamned help you. Eat shit, you goddamned ghoul. I don’t know where it is, and even if I did, I wouldn’t tell you.”
“Even after hearing the construct’s confession?”
“You want me to make this a choice between you and her,” she said. “But I’m not having it. There’s hardly any difference between the two of you.”
Crasedes looked at her for a while, and then finally sighed. “Well. I had thought this might be difficult, so…that’s why I brought Orso here.”
Sancia felt her breath catch in her throat. She and Orso stared at each other, terrified.
She frantically tried to remember the last hours. Did I tell him about Berenice? Did I tell him she had the imperiat?
Crasedes floated close to Orso and peered into his eyes. “How are you doing tonight, Orso?” he asked softly. “I admit, you don’t look terribly good…”
“Get the hell away from me!” cried Orso.
“I’m afraid I can’t. Now, Orso…” Crasedes’s voice gained a queer, deep resonance, one that made Sancia feel like her bones had turned to butter. “Tell me—do you know where the imperiat is?”
Orso shivered and shuddered. Then he shut his eyes as hard as he could and thrashed about like a man in a bad dream before finally crying, “N-No! I don’t!”
“I see,” said Crasedes. He turned to look at Sancia. “But—do you know who has the imperiat, Orso?”
Shit, thought Sancia.
Orso ripped his head back, smashing the back of his skull against the chair, his teeth gritted and his eyes twisted in anguish. Finally he screamed, “Yes!”
“Yes, you do?”
“Yes! Yes, I do!”
“Who has it, Orso?” said Crasedes gently. “Tell me. Now.”
Orso screamed, a ragged, miserable, self-hating cry, like he was trying to exhaust himself rather than give this up to Crasedes. But it did not matter, in the end.
“Berenice!” he sobbed. “It’s Berenice! Berenice has it, I think!”
“You…thin
k?”
“Yes! I…I don’t know, but…”
“But you assume.” Crasedes nodded, satisfied. “I see.”
There was a long silence.
“And…who is Berenice?” asked Crasedes, sounding a bit puzzled.
“She’s Sancia’s girlfriend,” said Orso, weeping.
“Ahh!” said Crasedes. “I see. But…you don’t know where she is.”
“No…”
“Does Sancia know?”
“Yes,” he sobbed. “She does.”
“Hm! I see.” Crasedes turned his black mask on her. “I just assume you’re not going to tell me where your girlfriend is,” he asked, resigned, “are you, Sancia?”
“I sure as shit am not,” said Sancia.
Crasedes sighed. “Very well. In that case…” He flicked a finger. The ceiling trembled, and a long, thin iron nail suddenly punched through the plaster to hover above him, the pointed end focused on Sancia. “I must resort to less reasonable methods.”
The nail drifted closer to her. She tried to ignore it, but she couldn’t stop gazing at its point, which still bore the dust of old wood on its rippled surface.
The nail turned slowly in the air, like the bit of a drill.
“I don’t want to do this,” said Crasedes softly.
The nail floated closer. Its point was now just inches away from her eye.
“Oh God,” she whispered. “Oh God…” She tried to think of something to say, anything. “She…She hid it!” she said desperately.
He stopped circling her. “This Berenice hid the imperiat? Where?”
“Under the bridge behind our firm!” she said. “The one running over the ditch!”
Crasedes looked at her for a moment. Then he turned to Orso and said, “Orso—do you think she’s telling the truth?”
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