The apartment was small and filthy. A young couple was lying on a pallet, quite nude, and Sancia could not see much of the man’s face, as most of it was obscured by the woman’s thighs. Both of them screamed in abject terror as Sancia darted inside.
“Pardon,” she said. She ran through the apartment, kicked open the wooden shutters, climbed up onto the window, and jumped across the alley to the next building.
It was an aging structure—her favorite kind, as it offered plenty of good handholds and niches to stuff her toes into. She crawled down its side slowly and awkwardly, since she’d lost her ability to sense the walls at a touch, then leapt into the muddy alley below and started running north, away from the Anafesto channel, away from the Greens, away from the Commons and the fisheries and the smell of rot and the hissing bolts…
Screams echoed in the distance. Maybe another building had fallen down.
Again, she thought about the dead lanterns, Clef’s slurred words, and how all the world was dead to her touch—and, again, the mad idea returned to her.
But it was impossible. Just impossible.
No one could just turn scrivings off. No one could just hit a switch or a button and make every rig in a whole neighborhood just stop.
But though it might be impossible, thought Sancia, so is a key that can open anything…
She remembered the wink of gold as the man played with his contraption…
What if he already had something like Clef? Something that could do…something else?
Smokestacks soared into the sky ahead of her like a cindery forest—the Michiel campo foundries. She had a sachet, but most of the entryways would be closed and locked by now, since it was well after nightfall.
Then she realized she had an easy solution. <I hope you’re up to the task, Clef.>
<Whuzzuh?> said Clef.
She ran along the smooth, white campo wall until she came to a large iron door, tall and thick and elaborately decorated with the Michiel loggotipo. She took Clef out and was about to stuff him into the lock when suddenly things…changed.
There was a scrived lantern just on the other side of the wall. She hadn’t been able to see it before, because it’d been dark. Yet it had just come back on, flickering to life.
<Ugh,> said Clef, suddenly articulate. <Whoa. I feel like I had a fever or something. What the hell was that?>
A whispering filled her mind. Sancia looked at the iron door. She reached out with her bare hand and touched it. The whispering filled her mind, as did a thousand other things about the door.
“Scriving’s back on,” she said out loud. “It’s back.”
It seemed as if the effects of…well, of whatever the campo man had done back there were fading. This was both good and bad. Good, because both she and Clef now had their abilities back. But also bad, because that meant the scrived lock in this door would now also be fully functional—and though she didn’t know how long it’d take for Clef to pick it, she could tell from the calls and shouts behind her that she didn’t have much time before her pursuers found her.
<No other choice,> she said. <Ready, Clef?>
<Huh? Whoa, wait, are you going to—>
She didn’t let him finish the question. She slid Clef into the lock.
Just like with the Candiano door, a thousand questions and thoughts poured into her mind, all of them directed at Clef.
<BORDER ARGUMENTS…COMMANDS ARE SLOW TO RESPOND,> the door shouted. <BUT THE SEVENTEENTH TOOTH REQUIREMENT STILL REMAINS.>
<Oh, seventeenth?> asked Clef.
<AFTER THE TWENTY-FIRST HOUR OF THE DAY, ALL UNLOCKING IMPLEMENTS MUST POSSESS THE SEVENTEENTH TOOTH, INDICATING PROMINENCE,> said the door. <ONLY APERTURATION SHALL BE GRANTED…AFTER THE TWENTY-FIRST HOUR…TO THOSE BEARING THE SEVENTEENTH TOOTH.>
Sancia glanced down the alley as she listened. She somewhat understood this: apparently after nightfall, only someone with a specific scrived key—one with an important seventeenth tooth—was allowed to unlock and open the door.
<How do you know it’s after the twenty-first hour?> asked Clef.
<TEMPORAL SCRIVING PRORATION RECORDS THE NUMBER OF HOURS PASSED.>
<And how long’s an hour?>
<IT IS RECORDED AS SIXTY MINUTES.>
<Oh, that’s wrong. They changed all that. Listen…>
A huge exchange of information took place between Clef and the door. The distant sounds of shouts were drifting toward her. “Come on,” she whispered. “Come on…”
<WAIT,> said the door. <SO THEY REALLY CHANGED AN HOUR TO BEING 1.37 SECONDS?>
<Yep!> said Clef.
<OH. SO IT’S ACTUALLY TEN IN THE MORNING? WELL, ELEVEN IN THE MORNING NOW. AND NOW IT’S NOON…>
<Yep. Yep. So, uh, go ahead and open, okay?>
<I SEE. CERTAINLY.>
Silence. Then there was a click, and the door opened. Sancia slipped through and slowly shut it behind her. She crouched behind the wall, listening. Her ankles ached, her feet ached, her hands ached, her back ached—but at least for once her head didn’t hurt much.
<Thanks, Clef,> she said.
<Don’t mention it. Let’s hope that worked.>
She heard footsteps on the other side, someone walking, slowing down…and then they tried the handle of the iron door.
Sancia stared at the handle, fervently praying that the handle didn’t keep moving—but it didn’t. It moved just a tiny, tiny bit—and then it stopped.
The person on the other side grunted. Then they walked away.
Sancia waited for a long time. Then she let out a slow breath, and turned to face the gray spires and domes and smokestacks of the Michiel campo.
<We made it!> said Clef. <We got away!>
<Sure,> said Sancia. <Only now we’re unarmed, and stuck on hostile territory.>
<Oh. Right. Well. What do we do?>
Sancia rubbed her eyes. She had to get out of the city, but this presented a familiar problem.
She needed money. She always needed money. Money to bribe someone, money to buy tools to get more money, money to get a safe place to store her damned money. Life was cheap, and cash, as ever, remained dauntingly expensive.
Her normal source of money had been Sark. But Sark wasn’t an option anymore.
Then she had an idea, and slowly cocked her head. But his house—that might be a different case.
<Sark always kept a panic kit,> she said to Clef. <An emergency bag to help him run, just in case someone really heavy came after him again. With money, and forged papers from the merchant houses that could let us get on any ship.>
<So?>
<So, if we get it, we’ll be set! God knows Sark would have overprepared for something like this!>
<For something like this?>
<Well. Maybe not something like this. But it’s a lot better than all the nothing we have.>
<How are we going to get to it? You’re beat to shit, kid, and your own kit’s completely gone. And if these guys were following Sark to your meeting place—don’t you think they at least know where he lives?>
<Yeah…>
<So you’re going to need more than a charming smile and me in your pocket to get in there.>
She sighed and rubbed her eyes. <Well. I guess I could go to the Scrappers. There’s a shortcut over the Michiel foundries, then through Foundryside to Old Ditch. They’ll have something that could help…>
<For free?>
<No. But you can maybe help me get some quick cash, Clef. I know some easy targets. Not enough to get out of the city—but maybe enough to pay for some of the Scrappers’ tools.>
<Is a bad plan better than no plan? I’m not sure.>
<Sometimes you’re tons of help, and other times you’re no help at all.> She turned left, through the foundry yards. <Hey, Clef?>
<Yeah?>
Sancia tried to think about how to phrase these words, as they were essentially incomprehensible to any Tevanni. <Have…have you ever heard of something that can, like, turn off scrivings?>
<What? Why? Is…Wait, is that what you think happened back there?>
<Pretty sure.>
<Oh, hell. Well. No.>
Sancia grimaced. <Yeah.>
<That’s…really concerning.>
<Yeah.>
She glanced to the east, where the giant cloud of dust was drifting toward the moon.
<So is that,> said Clef.
<Yeah.>
* * *
Sancia kept to the rooftops as she made her way through Foundryside to Old Ditch. Her hands hurt like hell and her head wasn’t much better, but she had to make do. Every once in a while she’d peer down into the warrens and spy someone who looked large, well fed, well armed, and quite mean—and she’d know she wasn’t out of danger yet.
She briefly stopped in Old Ditch to hit up a once-favorite stop of hers: the Bibbona Wine Brewery. Everyone said the cane wine made there was atrocious, but they still did a brisk business—brisk enough to be worth her robbing the place every once in a while, back in the day. But then some clever bastard had not only installed a reinforced door in the brewery, but they’d also rigged up a timing system: three Miranda Brass locks that had to be unlocked within twenty seconds of each other—otherwise, they’d all re-lock. Even with Sancia’s talents, the hassle hadn’t been worth the payout.
But with Clef, it was easy—one, two, three, and suddenly she had two hundred duvots in her pocket.
<I guess this is the life we’d lead if a whole army wasn’t looking to cut you to ribbons, huh?> asked Clef as she crept away.