Estelle glanced at the clock on the wall—twenty minutes to go. She’d need only one minute to do this, the lost minute between one day and the next. That was what her research had indicated—you made yourself powerful while the world had its back turned on you.
“That might be them,” she said. “Get ready.”
The soldiers prepared themselves, checking their weapons, unsheathing their swords. Estelle looked down at her father, lying in the bed beside her. Her fingers gripped the golden dagger, sweat running down her temples. She was so close. Soon her knife would pierce the breast of this wretched, thoughtless man, and start a chain reaction that would…
She cringed. She knew what would happen—it would kill most of the people on the Candiano campo. All the scrivers, all the merchants, all the workers who’d labored under Tomas, and, before him, her father…
They could have stopped this, she thought angrily. They knew what Tomas was, what my father was. They knew what these men had done to me, to the world. And yet they did nothing.
She looked up through the round window in the roof of her father’s office, and then she saw it—a tiny black dot, sailing across the face of the moon
“That’s it!” she cried. “There it is! I’ve no idea what it is, but it’s got to be them!”
The soldiers looked up and took positions around her.
“Come on,” said Estelle, staring up. “Come on! We’re ready for you, Orso. We’re ready for y—”
Then the doors to the office exploded behind them, and all hell broke loose.
Estelle did not initially understand what was happening. She just heard a scream, and then droplets of something warm rained down on her. She blinked, looked down at herself, and saw she was covered in blood—apparently blood from someone on the other side of the room.
She dumbly turned, and saw something had erupted into the office…maybe. It was hard to see in all the darkness, which seemed to cling to the thing like moss to a tree branch. But she thought she saw a man-form in there—and she definitely saw a huge black polearm snap out from the depths of that darkness and slash one of her soldiers from shoulder to chest, sending another wave of blood splashing over her.
Her soldiers shouted in rage and charged the shadow-man. The shadow-man leapt toward them with terrifying speed and grace—and as he did, Estelle saw the hallways beyond. She saw they were covered in blood, and the headless corpse of Captain Riggo lay ravaged and mutilated on the floor.
“Oh hell,” said Estelle. She dropped to the floor and crawled to the desk with the artifacts.
* * *
Gregor Dandolo did not think. He could not think. He did not need to think. He only moved.
He moved within the lorica, directing its momentum, its gravity, allowing it to hurtle him through the huge office. He flicked his right arm out, the telescoping polearm extending with a liquid grace, like the tongue of a frog stretching for a dragonfly in midflight. Its huge, thick blade cut through a soldier’s raised arm and the top half of his head like they were made of grass, and the man collapsed.
Get to the Mountain, said the words in Gregor’s mind. Kill the woman. Get the box. Get the key. Destroy anything that tries to stop you. The words echoed over and over again inside of him, until they became him, forming the sum of his soul.
Gregor was still flying through the air, so he twisted his body, reaching down with his leg to scrape the toes of one boot along the floor. He artfully drew himself to a stop, standing in the middle of the office, surrounded by soldiers. He stood in the huge war machine, breathing hard, felt scrived bolts clacking and clicking as they uselessly bit into his armor. He knew that the greatest threat to a soldier in a lorica was the lorica itself: use it poorly, and it would destroy you, literally tearing you apart. Use it well, and you could destroy nearly anything.
He slapped a soldier aside with his shield and slashed forward with his polearm. I have done this before, he kept thinking, over and over again. It was one of the few thoughts his mind could process. I have done this before. Many, many times before.
He whirled and dodged and ducked and cut through the soldiers with balletic ease.
I was made for this, he thought. I was made for war. I was always, always, always made for war.
This fact was written within him. It was as inarguable as the heaviness of stones, as the brightness of the sun. He knew this. He knew this was who he was, what he was, and what he was to do in this world.
But although Gregor Dandolo could not truly think, could not really process anything resembling a genuine thought, he was forced to wonder, absently and dreamily…
If he was truly made for war, why were his cheeks hot and wet with tears? And why did the side of his head hurt so, so, so much?
He stopped and took stock of the situation. He ignored the whimpering old man on the bed—he was no threat—but as he fought, he looked for the woman, the woman, always the woman…There were two soldiers left.
One raised an espringal at him, but Gregor leapt forward and batted aside the man’s body with his shield, sending him crashing into a wall. His polearm flicked out and gutted the man before he could even hit the floor. The second solider screamed and ran at Gregor’s exposed back, but Gregor extended his shield arm, pointed the bolt caster, and released a full volley of scrived fléchettes into the man’s face. He crumpled to the floor.
Gregor retracted the polearm. Then he looked around the office. There seemed to be no one else except for the whimpering old man on the bed.
Get to the Mountain, he thought. Kill the woman. Get the box. Get the key. Destroy anything that tries to stop you.
He saw the box and the key sitting on the desk.
He walked over to the desk, shook off the glove holding his polearm, and let the weapon fall to the floor. Then he picked up the big golden key.
As he did, he heard a clicking sound behind the desk.
Gregor leaned forward, and saw: the woman was there—Estelle Candiano. She sat huddled on the ground, adjusting some device—it appeared to be some kind of large golden pocket watch.
He raised his shield arm, aiming the bolt caster at her.
“There we go,” she said. She hit a switch on the pocket watch’s side.
Gregor tried to fire the bolt caster—but he found he couldn’t. His lorica was frozen: it was like he was wearing a statue rather than a suit of armor, and its penumbra of shadow had abruptly vanished.
Estelle let out a long, relieved sigh. “Well!” she said, standing. “That was close.” She looked him over. “Interesting rig you have here…Are you Orso’s man? He’d always thought about playing with light.”
Gregor kept trying to fire the bolt caster, flexing every muscle he had against his suit of armor, but it was useless. She seemed to have somehow turned the entire thing off.
She glanced at the big golden pocket watch, frowned, and raised it, running it alongside Gregor’s body like a dowsing rod searching for water. The pocket watch let out a loud, piercing shriek when it passed over Gregor’s helmet.
“My word,” said Estelle. “You aren’t Orso’s man—not if you’ve got an Occidental tool in your head.” She placed a hand on his cuirass, grunted, and shoved him backward onto the floor, his suit of armor clattering and clanking as he struck the stones.
She walked over to one of her dead soldiers, pulled out the man’s knife, and then straddled Gregor. “Now,” she said. “Let’s see who you are.”
She cut through the straps fastening on Gregor’s face plate, and pulled it away.
She stared at him. “What in hell?” she said. “What are you doing here?”
Gregor said nothing. His face was placid, blank, empty. He just strained and strained and strained against the armor, trying his hardest to strike the woman, to fill her with bolts, to rend her in two—but the lorica wouldn’t budge.
“Tell me,” she demanded. “Tell me how you got here. Tell me how you survived. Who are you working for?”
Still he said nothing.
She lifted the dagger and leaned over him. “Tell me,” she said softly. “I’ve got ten minutes until midnight. Ten minutes to find out.” She found a gap in his armor, and stabbed the blade deep up into his left bicep. He felt the pain, but his mind told him to disregard it. “Don’t worry, brave soldier—I’ll find a way to make you screa—”
Then she paused. Probably because it sounded like someone was already screaming—and the sound was coming from above.
Estelle looked up, through the round window in the ceiling.
There was a speck of black in front of the moon that seemed to be getting…bigger.
Estelle watched, bewildered, as a filthy, dusty, screaming girl in black came hurtling out of the sky to land on the skylight.
“…aaaaaAAAAAAH-OOF!” said the girl, landing on the window with a solid thud.
Estelle’s mouth fell open. She whispered, “What…”
The girl rose up, shook herself, and looked down through the window at them. And though Gregor’s mind was overtaken with his commands—kill the woman, take the key, take the box—he couldn’t help but recognize her.
I know this girl…But did she just fly? Out of the sky?
* * *
Sancia stared down at the surreal sight below her. Tribuno Candiano’s office appeared to be filled with mangled corpses—one of which seemed to be Gregor Dandolo, who lay bleeding on the floor with blank, empty eyes, clad in a suit of black armor. Estelle Candiano sat on his chest, holding a dagger, and she was staring up at Sancia in shock. Beside them was Tribuno’s desk, upon which sat Valeria’s box—and though she couldn’t see Clef or the imperiat, surely they were in there as well.
She wanted to leap in and save Clef—the person who, for so long, had been her closest friend, her most trusted ally. Her heart hurt to think of losing or hurting him, after all this pain. But she knew there were greater things at risk right now—and she knew that someone as powerless as she would only ever have one shot at taking out someone like Estelle.
One day I’ll live a life that doesn’t force me to make such cold-blooded decisions, she thought. But today is not that day.
She touched the dome of the Mountain with a finger.
She took her hand away, pulled off the gravity plates, and shut her eyes.
There was a pause.
She locked eyes with Estelle Candiano, grinned, and waved good-bye. Then she pulled out her thin cord of rope, looped it around the neck of a gargoyle, and started rappelling down the side of the Mountain.
* * *
Estelle stared up at the device sitting just above her on the opposite side of the window. She recognized it immediately, of course. She had coaxed Tomas into designing the damned thing over years, after all.
She watched as the gravity plates started vibrating faster and faster, like a cymbal being struck again and again…and then it began to glow a soft, blue light.
The building around her began to groan. Clouds of dust floated down as the vaulted ceiling shuddered and moaned.
“Shit,” said Estelle. She staggered off the armored man’s chest and dove for the imperiat. She’d not exactly had a lot of time to acquaint herself with the device—but she’d have to make do now.
* * *
On the streets outside the Candiano campo wall, Orso and Berenice took turns peering through a spyglass at the Mountain. It looked like someone had turned on a new light, shining on its surface—a blue one, glowing with a queerly fluttering light.
Orso peered at it. “What the hell is tha—”
He stopped—because then, with a pop that they could hear even from where they stood, huge cracks shot across the dome of the Candianos…and then they started spreading. Fast.
The cracks flowed in a curious pattern, she noticed: it was like a spiraled spider web, with all the cracks and lines rotating around the blue star.
Then the splinters and fragments of the dome began to retract inward, toward the star.
“Oh my God,” said Berenice.
The skin of the building popped, quaked, shuddered, and then…
Orso expected it to start collapsing; but no, that didn’t quite describe what occurred then—the exterior of the dome was actually falling in, imploding slowly and steadily, nearly a fifth of the huge stone structure rippling and collapsing toward the bright-blue star situated on its side.
“Oh hell,” said Orso, astonished.
They jumped as there was another tremendous crack, and the side of the dome around the blue star began to cave in more, and more.
He swallowed. “Okay,” he said. “Well. I didn’t know she was going to do that.”
* * *
Sancia screamed as she let the rope slide through her hands, speeding down the side of the Mountain as the giant structure fell apart above her. She noticed that her descent was slowing, bit by bit, which was deeply upsetting to her.
I’m not out of range of the rig, she thought. It’s going to suck me in and collapse us into an ugly little brick just like what it’s doing to the dome!
She slowed further, and further, and she felt herself slipping back up—up toward the crumbling dome above.
“Scrum this!” she bellowed. She let go of the rope, gripped the side of the dome, and began springing and sprinting away from the maelstrom of gravity above, running sideways along the building’s face. It was, perhaps, the most absurd moment of the night so far, if not her life—but she had no mind to reflect upon it, since rocks and other debris were hurtling up past her to join the crackling dome.
But at some point, she finally went past the range of the gravity rig—and then she stopped running, and instead started falling down the side of the building.
She screamed, terrified, and watched as quoins and other architectural features flew by her.
She saw a stone balcony hurtling up at her, and flicked her hands out…
Her shoulders and back lit up with pain as her fingers made contact with the railing and gripped it tight. Then she swung down and her torso crashed into the bottom of the balcony, knocking the wind from her.
Breathing hard, she looked up and saw the destruction she had wrought above her. “Oh crap,” she said.
A significant portion of the top of the giant dome was now gone, imploding toward the gravity plates, forming what appeared to be a ball of pure blackness, as if folding in all these materials—stone, wood, and probably people—robbed them of their colors. It was hard to see how much of the dome was gone by now, as the gravity plates had created a giant spinning sphere of dust and debris, all circling that ball of blackness.
The ball grew and grew, a perfect sphere of impossible density…
There was a soft boom from somewhere out in the campo.
Sounds like Orso’s magic empty box just gave up, thought Sancia.
Then, abruptly, the air went still.
The huge ball of black hung in the air, and then…
The ball plummeted down, and struck the ground with a dense, bone-shaking thump—and it just kept falling, penetrating down, down, down into the earth.
Finally the crumbling and cracking ended—either the black ball had stopped falling, or it had fallen so far that it was now beyond earshot.
Sancia let out a gasp and hauled herself up over the balcony. She breathed there for a moment, then looked up at the ruins of the Mountain.
She froze. “No,” she whispered.
A decent chunk of the dome was simply gone, like someone had taken a vast spoon and carved out a bite from the top, much like one might a bowl of pudding—but not all of it.
Hanging in the air, suspended by a handful of pillars and supports in the exact place that damned well should have gotten collapsed into the gravity well first, and thus been totally annihilated, was a tiny island of tile and stone…
And standing in its middle, holding aloft something that looked like a complicated golden pocket watch, was Estelle Candiano.
“Shit!” screamed Sancia. She started to climb.
* * *
Every part of Estelle Candiano trembled. She had never been to war, never seen someone die, never witnessed any kind of genuine catastrophe or disaster in all of her life—so she had been somewhat unprepared for the maelstrom of cracking and crashing and dust that had unfolded mere feet above her head.
But not totally unprepared. Estelle had always been a quick thinker.
She hadn’t been sure it would work. She’d done her research, and had known that the hierophants’ imperiat could single out a specific scrived effect and control or kill it within any given space—and while she’d managed to kill the scrivings in that assassin’s lorica, acting as a breaker against a full-scale gravity-rig collapse was something else entirely.
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