Some sources suggest that Crasedes had assistance in the construction of the cairn. These renditions claim that before he began, Crasedes took out a small metal box, and opened it—though the box appeared to be empty to onlookers. However, the stories say that the people of Apamea then saw footprints forming in the dust around the cairn, footprints far larger than a person’s. These versions would suggest that Crasedes had held some kind of invisible sprite or entity within the box, which he released to aid him. Yet such tales hew close to some of the more fantastical stories regarding the hierophants—fables of Crasedes making the stars dance with his magic wand, and so on—and thus must be treated with skepticism.
Regardless of the particulars, Crasedes began to build the cairn, and did not stop. And as night fell, and as they watched this curious display, the people of Apamea suddenly grew fearful, and left.
In the morning, when they returned to the city square, Crasedes was seated in the dust, still waiting patiently, and the cairn was gone—as were, the people later discovered, all the kings and wealthy landowners of Apamea, along with their families, old and young, and all their livestock, and the very buildings they’d lived and worked in. All had vanished overnight without a sound—perhaps taken to the place that the cairn had also gone.
The purpose of the cairn remains unknown, as does the final destination of those who resisted Crasedes in Apamea, who are still lost to history. Apamea, of course, no longer resisted Crasedes, and submitted to the rule of the hierophants—though it, like all of the lands of the Occidental Empire, was eventually totally destroyed. As is well documented, it is unknown if a civil war was the source of this conflict, or if, perhaps, the hierophants battled against another, greater force.
Such an idea troubles me—and yet, it must be considered.
—GIANCAMO ADORNI, DEPUTY HYPATUS OF THE HOUSE OF GUARCO, COLLECTED TALES OF THE OCCIDENTAL EMPIRE
16
Orso ground his teeth, rubbed his forehead, and sighed. “I swear,” he murmured, “if I hear one more insipid shitting word…”
“Quiet,” whispered Ofelia Dandolo.
Orso rested his head on the table before him. He was talented at putting abstract concepts together. That was essentially his entire profession: he wrote essays and arguments that convinced reality to do some new and interesting things.
So if there was one thing he truly despised—one thing that absolutely, positively drove him mad—it was when someone just could not get to the scrumming point. To observe someone fumbling around with words and ideas like a schoolboy trying to navigate a woman’s under-robes was akin to swallowing shards of glass.
“The point is thusly,” said the speaker—a Morsini deputy hypatus, some overdressed asshole whose name Orso couldn’t be bothered to remember. “The point is—is it possible to develop criteria by which we can measure, analyze, and establish the possibility that the Commons blackouts were a natural occurrence—by which I mean some by-product of a storm or meteorological fluctuation in the atmosphere—as opposed to being anthropological—by which I mean, human-caused?”
“Little shit probably just learned the word,” growled Orso. Ofelia Dandolo glanced at him. Orso cleared his throat as if the comment had been a cough.
This was now hour four of this Tevanni council meeting on the blackouts. To his surprise, they’d somehow managed to drag both Eferizo Michiel and Torino Morsini out of their campo cradles. You almost never saw either house head at all, let alone in the same place. Eferizo was trying to sit up and look nobly concerned, whereas Torino was nakedly emanating boredom. Ofelia, as always, comported herself quite well, in Orso’s opinion—but he could see even her stamina was flagging.
Yet Orso was quite alert. He kept looking from face to face, thinking. This room contained some of the most powerful men in the city—and many of them were founder lineage. If anyone acted surprised to see him alive—well. That would be a helpful indication.
Ofelia cleared her throat. “There is no recorded natural occurrence of scriving blackouts,” she said. “Not like a typhoon or some such, anyways—neither in our history, nor that of the Occidentals. So, why don’t we cut to the chase, and simply ask—was this the product of something we did here, in Tevanne?”
The room swelled up with muttering.
“Are you accusing another merchant house of this act, Founder?” demanded a Morsini representative.
“I accuse no one,” said Ofelia, “for I understand nothing. Could it not have been an accidental effect of some research endeavor?”
The muttering grew louder. “Ridiculous,” someone said.
“Preposterous.”
“Outrageous.”
“If Dandolo Chartered is willing to make such a supposition,” said one of the Michiel deputies, “perhaps the Dandolo hypatus can provide us with some supporting research?”
All eyes turned to look at Orso.
Great, he thought.
He cleared his throat and stood. “I must slightly correct my founder’s testimony,” he said. “There is, in hierophantic history, one obscure legend in which the phenomenon we witnessed possibly appears—the Battle of Armiedes.” He coolly looked around at the gathered crowd. Come on, you bastard, he thought. Break for me. Show yourself. “Such methodologies remain beyond the abilities of Tevanne, of course,” he said. “But if we trust our histories, then it is possible.”
One of the Morsinis sighed, exasperated. “More hierophants, more magicians! What more could we expect from a disciple of Tribuno Candiano?”
The room went silent at that. Everyone stared at the Morsini representative, who slowly grew aware that he had greatly overstepped.
“I, ah, apologize,” he said. He turned toward a part of the room that had hitherto remained quiet. “I misspoke, sirs.”
Everyone slowly turned to look at the portion of the room dominated by Company Candiano representatives. There were far fewer of them than the other houses. Sitting in the founder’s seat was a young man of about thirty, pale and clean-shaven, wearing dark-green robes and an ornate flat cap trimmed with a large emerald. He was an oddity in many ways: for one, he was about a third of the age of the other three founders—and he was not, as everyone knew, an actual founder, or indeed a blood relation to the Candiano family at all.
Orso narrowed his eyes at the young man. For though Orso hated many people in Tevanne, he especially loathed Tomas Ziani, the chief officer of Company Candiano.
Tomas Ziani cleared his throat and stood. “You did not misspeak, sir,” he said. “My predecessor, Tribuno Candiano, brought great ruin to our noble house with his Occidental fascinations.”
Our noble house? thought Orso. You married into it, you little shit!
Tomas nodded at Orso. “An experience that the Dandolo hypatus, of course, is keenly aware of.”
Orso gave him the thinnest of smiles, bowed, and sat.
“It is, of course, preposterous to imagine that any Tevanni merchant house is capable of reproducing any hierophantic effects,” said Tomas Ziani, “let alone one that could have accomplished the blackouts, to say nothing of the moral implications. But I regret to say that Founder Dandolo has not truly cut to the quick of the question—what I think we all want to know is, if we want to find out if any merchant house is behind the blackouts…how shall we institute this authority? What body shall have this oversight? And who shall make up this body?”
The room practically exploded with discontented mutterings.
And with that, Orso thought with a sigh, young Tomas delivers the killing blow to this idiot meeting. For this notion was heresy in Tevanne—the idea of some kind of municipal or governmental authority that could inspect the business of the merchant houses? They would genuinely rather fail and die than submit to that.
Ofelia sighed. A handful of tiny, white moths flitted around her head. “What a waste of time,” she said softly, waving them away.
Orso glanced at Tomas, and found, to his surprise, that the young man was watching him. Specifically, he was looking at Orso’s scarf—very, very hard.
“Maybe not entirely,” he said.
* * *
When the meeting closed, Orso and Ofelia held a brief conference in the cloisters. “To confirm,” she said quietly. “You do not think this is sabotage?”
“No, Founder,” he said.
“Why are you so certain?”
Because I have a grubby thief who says she saw it happen, he thought. But he said, “If it was sabotage, they could have done a hell of a better job. Why target the Commons? Why only glancingly affect the campos?”
Ofelia Dandolo nodded.
“Is there a…reason to suspect sabotage, Founder?” he asked.
She gave him a piercing look. “Let’s just say,” she said reluctantly, “that your recent work on light could attract…attention.”
This was interesting to him. Orso had been fooling around with scrived lights for decades, but it was only at Dandolo Chartered, with its superior lexicon architecture, that he’d started trying to engineer the reverse: scriving something so it absorbed light, rather than emitting it, producing a halo of perpetual shadow, even in the day.
So the suggestion that Ofelia Dandolo might worry about other houses fearing this technology…that was curious.
What exactly, he wondered, is she planning to veil in shadow?
“As in all things,” she said, “I expect your secrecy, Orso. But especially there.”
“Certainly, Founder.”
“Now…if you will excuse me, I’ve a meeting shortly.”