Berenice checked out a small passenger carriage and drove them north, grumbling a touch about “not being a damned house servant.” Sancia stared out the windows as they drove. She hadn’t really been paying attention before, but now she couldn’t stop staring at the inner Dandolo enclaves.
The strangest thing about them was that almost all of them glowed. The entire enclaves glowed a soft, warm, rosy color that seemed to emanate from the corners of the huge towers, or from the bases, perhaps—it was hard to tell. She suspected that scrived lights had been built into the facades, lights that had been designed to cast indirect luminescence so no beams of light shone into anyone’s windows at night.
There were other wonders, of course. There were floating lanterns, like the ones her client had used to search for her: they floated in flocks above the main fairways like schools of jellyfish. There were also many narrow canals, full of needle-shaped boats with reclining seats. She imagined residents hopping in a boat and being zipped off across the waters to their destination.
It was unreal. To imagine that people lived in muddy alleys mere miles from here, that she herself had lived in a squalid rookery that shared the same rain clouds as this place…She glanced at Berenice and Gregor. Berenice was totally indifferent to it all. Gregor, on the other hand, had a faint scowl on his face.
Finally they came to a tall, gated mansion, the sort of place for a prestigious campo official. It was impossible to imagine Orso Ignacio living here—yet the copper gates silently parted before them.
“The hypatus bound them to respond to my blood,” said Berenice. She didn’t sound too happy about it. “Along with his own, of course. It’s a favorite trick of his. He rarely comes here.”
“Why wouldn’t he come to the goddamn mansion he owns?” asked Sancia.
“He gets the house as a condition of his position—he didn’t go out and buy the place. I don’t think he actually cares about it at all.”
This became apparent when they walked inside: the carpets, tables, and lanterns all bore a faint coating of dust. “Where does he sleep?” asked Sancia.
“In his office,” said Berenice, “I think. I’ve never actually seen him sleep.” She gestured to the stairs. “The bedrooms are upstairs on the fourth floor, as are the bathing facilities. I suggest you both use them if you’re going to be on the campo, in case someone spots you—it would be wise if you looked the part.” She looked at them and wrinkled her nose. “And you don’t, right now.”
Gregor thanked her and Berenice departed. Sancia wandered upstairs to the third floor, where she found an immense set of windowed doors that opened onto the balcony. She opened them, stepped out, and looked.
The Dandolo inner enclaves curled out before her, bright and creamy and pink as a rose. There was a park across the cobblestone fairway, with a hedge maze and bursting flowers. People were walking the paths together. It was a stupefying idea to Sancia—in the Commons, if you were outdoors at night, there was a decent chance you’d die.
“They went a bit overboard, didn’t they,” said Gregor’s voice behind her.
“Eh?” said Sancia.
He stood beside her. “With the lights. The Daulos call us the glow-men, in their language, because we tend to put lights on everything.”
“Something you picked up in the Enlightenment Wars?”
“Yes.” He turned to her, leaning up against the balcony. “Now. Our deal.”
“You want my client,” said Sancia.
“I want your client,” he said. “Very much so. If you can give him to me.”
“In what condition? You want his name, his head, or what?”
“No, no,” said Gregor. “No heads. These are the stakes of our deal—you not only help me find him, but also get the evidence I need to expose him. I don’t want his name, his money, his company, or his blood. I want ramifications. I want consequences.”
“You want justice,” she said, sighing.
“I want justice. Yes.”
“And why do you think I can help you get it?”
“Because you have evaded nearly every effort to kill you or seize you. And you stole from me. You are—and this is not a compliment, mind—a very accomplished sneak. And I suspect we will need someone with your talents if we are to succeed.”
“But this is a tall goddamn order!” said Sancia. “Sark said he thought our client was founder lineage, just like you, or someone close to it. That means me working in places like this.” She nodded at the city below. “In the enclaves. The places that are basically designed to make sure people like me die the second I step foot in them.”
“I’ll help you. And Orso will too.”
“Why would Orso help me?”
“To get back his key, of course,” said Gregor. “Along with any other Occidental treasures the man’s been hoarding. Our opponent has stolen two items from Orso, and seems to have acquired a third—this imperiat. No doubt there’s more.”
“No doubt.” She suppressed the flicker of anxiety in her belly. She wasn’t sure what seemed harder—delivering founderkin to Gregor, or returning a treasure she wasn’t supposed to have. “So I help you get this…this justice of yours, and then you let me go?”
“In essence.”
She shook her head. “Justice…God. Why are you doing all this? Why are you out here risking your life?”
“Is justice such an odd thing to desire?”
“Justice is a luxury.”
“No,” said Gregor. “It is not. It is a right. And it is a right that has long been denied.” He stared out at the city. “The chance for reform…for real, genuine reform for this city…I would shed every drop of blood in my body for such a thing. And then, of course, there is the fact that if we fail, then a vicious person will possess tools of near-divine power. Which I, personally, would find quite bad.” He took out the key to her bond and held it out. “You can do the honors yourself, I believe.”
“I thought Orso was crazy,” she said, unlocking the bond. “But you’re really crazy.”
“I’d thought you would be more amenable to the idea than others,” he said lightly.
“And why’s that?”
“For the same reason I think wearing that bond irked you so, Sancia,” he said. “And the same reason you conceal the scars on your back.”
She froze and slowly turned to stare at him. “What?” she said softly.
“I am a traveled man, Sancia,” he said. “I know the look of you. I have seen such things before. Though I hope I never will agai—”
She stepped forward, sticking her finger in his face. “No,” she said fiercely. “No.”
He drew back, startled.
“I am not having this conversation with you,” she said. “Not now. Maybe not ever.”
He blinked. “All right.”
She slowly lowered her finger. “You don’t know a goddamn thing about me,” she said. Then she walked back indoors.
* * *
She stalked upstairs, found a bedroom, and shut and locked the door. She stood there in the darkened room, breathing hard.
Then a voice spoke up in her mind: <That was a bit of an overreaction, wasn’t it, kid?>
<Clef!> she said. <Holy shit! You’re alive!>
<As much as a key could be, yeah.>
<How long have you been…I don’t know, there?>
<Just now. That was the first time I’ve seen the captain look scared of anyone. How about getting me the hell out of your shoe?>
She sat down in the middle of the floor, hauled her boot off, and held him in her bare hands. Then she pummeled him with questions. <Where did you go, Clef? How did you do that thing with the gravity rig? Are you hurt? Are you all right?>
He was silent for a long time. <No,> he said in a quiet voice. <No, I’m not all right. But…we’ll get to that. First—where are we? Are we in, like, a mansion?>
She tried to catch him up as fast as she could.
<So,> he said. <You’re…working for the captain now?>
<Kind of. I like to think it’s more of a partner thing, personally.>
<He can still kill you at any time, right?>
<Well. Yeah?>
<Then you’re not partners. You’re also working for this Orso guy? The guy who tried to buy me? And you’re going to steal, uh, me back for him?>
<I think I vaguely agreed to that.>
<How’s that going to work?>
<If you haven’t figured out yet that I’m making this up as I go, Clef, I don’t know what to tell you.>
Clef said nothing for a bit. A flock of floating lanterns trickled through the street below, casting pulsing pink light on the ceiling.
<How did you do that thing with the gravity rig, Clef?> she asked. <How did you make it control the gravity of…of everything? And what happened to you?>
<It’s…hard for me to explain,> he said, sighing. <It’s all a matter of boundaries. I can’t make a scrived device do anything beyond its own boundaries. I can’t make a rig that heats up iron then turn that iron into clay or snow or whatever, in other words.>
<So?>
<So, with the gravity rig, its boundaries were really, really big, and really, really vague. It gave me a lot to work with. Even though the device itself couldn’t stand the strain—because the more a rig pushes against its boundaries, the more it falls apart. And when I made it do that, I…I remembered something. And then I fell asleep, and dreamed.>