That comment—They used to own you—it had bothered her then, and it bothered her now.
The scar on the side of her head prickled. So did the scars on her back—and she had a lot more there.
They don’t own me still, she insisted to herself. My days are free now.
But this, she knew, was not entirely true.
She opened the closet, opened the false floor, and picked Clef up.
<Let’s go,> she said.
<Finally!> Clef said, excited.
5
Sancia ran a string through Clef’s head and hung him around her neck, hidden in her jerkin. Then she walked down her rookery stairs and slipped out the side door. She scanned the muddy fairway for any watchful eyes, and started off.
By now the streets of Foundryside were filling up with people, tottering or skulking over the wooden sidewalks. Most were laborers, staggering off to work with their heads still aching from too much cane wine the night before. The air was hazy and humid, and the mountains rose in the distance, steaming and dark. Sancia had never been in the uplands beyond Tevanne. Most Tevannis hadn’t. Living in Tevanne might be rough, but the mountainous jungles were a lot worse.
Sancia turned a corner and spotted a body lying in the fairway up ahead, its clothes dark with blood. She crossed the street to avoid it.
<Holy shit,> said Clef.
<What?>
<Was that guy dead?>
<How can you see, Clef? You don’t have eyes.>
<Do you know how your eyes work?>
<…that’s a good point, I guess.>
<Right. And…and you did see that, right? That guy was dead?>
She looked back and observed how much of the man’s throat was missing. <For his sake, I sure hope so.>
<Whoa. Is…Is anyone going to do something about it?>
<Like what?>
<Like…I don’t know, take care of the body?>
<Eh, maybe. I’ve heard there’s a market for human bones in the Commons north of here. Never found out exactly what they wanted them for, though.>
<No, I mean—is anyone going to try to catch the killer? Don’t you have any authorities who try to make sure that stuff doesn’t happen?>
<Oh,> said Sancia. <No.>
And she explained.
Since it was the merchant houses that made Tevanne great, it was probably inevitable that most city property would wind up being owned by them. But the houses were also all competitors who jealously protected their scriving designs; for as everyone knew, intellectual property is the easiest kind to steal.
This meant that all the land the houses owned was fiercely guarded, hidden behind walls and gates and checkpoints, inaccessible to all except those who possessed the proper markers. The house lands were so restricted and controlled they were practically different countries—which the city of Tevanne more or less acknowledged.
Four walled-off little city-states, all crammed into Tevanne, all wildly different regions with their own schools, their own living quarters, their own marketplaces, their own cultures. These merchant house enclaves—the campos—took up about 80 percent of Tevanne.
But if you didn’t work for a house, or weren’t affiliated with them—in other words, if you were poor, lame, uneducated, or just the wrong sort of person—then you lived in the remaining 20 percent of Tevanne: a wandering, crooked ribbon of streets and city squares and in-between places—the Commons.
There were a lot of differences between the Commons and the campos. The campos, for instance, had waste systems, fresh water, well-maintained roads, and their buildings tended to stay standing, which wasn’t always the case in the Commons. The campos also had a plethora of scrived devices to make their lives easier, which the Commons certainly did not. Walk into the Commons showing off a fancy scrived trinket, and you’d have your throat slit and your treasure snatched in an instant.
Because another thing that the campos had that the Commons did not was laws.
Each campo had its own rules and law enforcement, all of which fully applied within their rambling, crooked boundaries. But because each campo’s individuality was considered sacrosanct, this meant there was no defined set of citywide laws, nor was there any real citywide law enforcement, or judicial system, or even prisons—to establish such things, the Tevanni elite had decided, would be to suggest that the power of Tevanne superseded the powers of the campos.
So if you were part of a merchant house, and resided on a campo, you had such things.
If you didn’t, and you lived in the Commons, then you were just…there. And, considering all the disease and starvation and violence and whatnot, you probably weren’t there for long.
<Holy hell,> said Clef. <How do you live like that?>
<Same way everyone lives, I guess,> said Sancia, taking a left. <One day at a time.>
Finally they came to their destination. Up ahead, the wet, rambling rookeries of Foundryside came to a sharp stop at a tall, smooth white wall, about sixty feet high, clean and perfect and unblemished.
<We’re coming up on something big and scrived, aren’t we?> said Clef.
<How can you tell?>
<I just can.>
That disturbed her. She could tell if a rig was scrived if she got within a few feet of it—she’d start hearing that muttering in her head. But Clef seemed to be able to do it from dozens of feet away.
She walked along the wall until she found it. Set in the face of the wall was a huge, engraved bronze door, intricate and ornate, with a house loggotipo in the middle: the hammer and the chisel.
<That’s a hell of a big door,> said Clef. <What is this place?>
<This is the Candiano campo wall. That’s their loggotipo in the door.>
<Who are they?>
<Merchant house. Used to be the biggest one, but then their founder went mad, and I hear they had to lock him away in a tower somewhere.>
<Probably not good for business, that.>
<No.> She approached the door and heard a faint chanting in her head. <No one really knows what they use this door for. Some say it’s for secret business, when the Candianos want to snatch someone out of the Commons. Others say it’s just so they can sneak their whores in and out. I’ve never seen it open. It’s not guarded, because they think no one can break it—since it’s scrived, of course.> She stood before the door. It was tall, about ten feet high or so. <But you think you can, Clef?>
<Oh, I’d love to try,> he said with surprising relish.
<How are you going to do it?>
<I dunno yet. I’ll have to see. Come on! Even if I can’t, what’s the worst that can happen?>
The answer, Sancia knew, was “a lot.” Tampering with anything related to the merchant houses was a great way to lose a hand, or a head. She knew this wasn’t like her, to be walking around the Commons with stolen goods in broad daylight—especially considering this particular stolen good was the most advanced scrived rig she’d ever seen.
It was unprofessional. It was risky. It was stupid.
But that nonchalant comment of Sark’s—They used to own you, you know what they’re like—it echoed in her head. She was surprised to find how much she resented it, and she wasn’t sure why. She’d always known when she was doing work for the merchant houses, and it’d never inspired her to play the job wrong before.
But to have him just come out and say that—it burned her.
<What are you waiting for?> begged Clef.
She approached the door, eyeing the scrivings running along its frame. She heard the faint muttering in her head, as she did whenever she was close to anything altered…
Then she knelt and put Clef into the lock, and the muttering turned into a scream.
* * *
Screaming questions poured into her mind, all of them directed at Clef, asking him dozens if not hundreds of questions, trying to figure out what he was. Many of them went by too fast for her to understand, but she caught some of them:
<BE YOU THE BEJEWELED SPUR OF WHICH THE LADY WROUGHT ON THE FIFTH DAY?> bellowed the door at Clef.
<No, bu—>
<BE YOU THE TOOL OF THE MASTER, THE WAND FERROUS WITH THE WIDDERSHINS ETCHINGS, WHO SHALL HAVE ONLY ACCESS ONCE A FORTNIGHT?>
<Well, see, I—>
<BE YOU THE TREMBLING LIGHT, FORGED TO FIND THE FLAWS OTTONE?>
<Okay, hold on now, but…>
And on and on and on. It all went too fast for Sancia to really understand—and how she was even hearing it was stupefying to her—but she could still catch snatches of the conversation. It sounded like security questions, like the scrived door was expecting a specific key, and it was slowly figuring out that Clef was not that key.
<BE YOU AN ARMAMENT FERROUS, FORGED FOR THE BREAKING OF THE OATHS WHICH HAVE BEEN LAID UPON ME?>
<Partially,> Clef said.
A pause.
<PARTIALLY?>
<Yeah.>
<HOW ARE YOU PARTIALLY AN ARMAMENT FERROUS FORGED FOR THE BREAKING OF THE OATHS WHICH HAVE BEEN LAID UPON ME?>
<Well, it’s complicated. Let me explain.>