She hadn’t meant to do it. She’d barely even understood what was happening. One moment, she’d been sitting on the floor. Then Orso spoke that name, and suddenly she smelled the sting of alcohol, heard the whine of flies, and the side of her head was bright with pain—and then she was screaming and throttling a terrified Orso Ignacio, trying to crush his already-bruised windpipe with her bare hands.
She was screaming something, over and over again. It took her a moment to realize she was saying, “Was it you? Was it you? Was it, was it?”
Berenice was suddenly on top of her, trying to haul her off of him, with little success. Then Gregor was there, and since he was two if not three times Sancia’s size, he had much more success.
Gregor Dandolo hugged Sancia tight to his body, his big arms holding her still.
“Let me go!” she screamed. “Let me go, let me go, let me go!”
“Sancia,” said Gregor, surprisingly calm. “Stop. Be still.”
Orso was coughing and gagging and trying to sit up. “What in all the damned world…”
“I’ll kill him!” screamed Sancia. “I’ll kill you, you scrumming bastard!”
“Sancia,” said Gregor. “You are not where you think you are.”
“What’s the matter with her?” said Berenice, terrified.
“She’s having a reaction,” said Gregor. “I’ve seen this among veterans, and experienced it myself.”
“He did it!” shrieked Sancia. She kicked uselessly at Gregor’s legs. “It was him, it was him, it was him!”
“She’s reliving a memory,” he said, grunting slightly. “A bad one.”
“It was him!” she screamed. She felt the blood vessels standing out on her forehead, felt the hot, muggy air on her skin, heard the songs in the fields, the whimpering in the dark. “It was, it was!”
Orso coughed, shook himself, and shouted, “It wasn’t me!”
Sancia struggled against Gregor’s arms. Her back and neck burned with fatigue, but still she struggled.
<Kid,> said Clef in her ear. <Kid! Are you listening? He said it wasn’t him! Come back to me! Wherever you are, come back, please!>
Sancia slowed as she heard Clef’s words. The many sensations of the plantation retreated from her mind. Then she went limp, exhausted.
Orso sat on the ground, panting, and then said, “It was not me, Sancia. I had nothing to do with Silicio. Nothing! I swear!”
Sancia said nothing. Her breath was ragged, and she was spent.
Gregor slowly lowered her to sit on the floor. Then he cleared his throat like they’d all had a loud disagreement at the breakfast table. “I must ask—what is this Silicio?”
Orso looked at Sancia. Sancia glared back, but did not speak.
“To me, it was no more than a rumor,” said Orso. “A rumor of a slave plantation where…where scrivers practiced the one art we are strictly forbidden to pursue.”
Berenice turned to stare at him, horrified. Gregor said, “You mean…”
“Yes,” said Orso, sighing. “The scriving of human beings. And to look at Sancia…it seems like it worked, at least once.”
* * *
“Barely anyone remembers the first days, when they tried scriving humans,” Orso said darkly, sitting at the head of one of the big wooden tables in the scriving library. “Nor would they wish to. I was hardly out of school when they outlawed it. But I saw the cases. I know what happened. I know why they abandoned it.”
Sancia sat silent at the other end of the table, gently rocking back and forth. Gregor and Berenice glanced between her and Orso, waiting to hear more.
“We know how to change an object’s reality,” said Orso carefully. “We speak the language of objects. To speak this language to people, to try to command our bodies with our sigils…It doesn’t work.”
“Why?” asked Gregor.
“On one level, it’s because we’re just not good enough,” said Orso. “It’s kind of like safely scriving gravity, only worse. It would take a huge amount of effort to do—three, four, five lexicons, all to alter one person.”
“But on another level?”
“On another level, it doesn’t work because objects are dumb,” said Orso. “Scriving is all about careful, precise definition, and objects are easy there. Iron is iron. Stone is stone. Wood is wood. Objects have an uncomplicated sense of self, so to speak. People, though, and living things…their sense of self is…complicated. Mutable. It changes. People don’t think of themselves as just a bag of flesh and blood and bones, even if that’s what they basically are. They think of themselves as soldiers, as kings, as wives and husbands and children…People can convince themselves to be anything, and because of that, the scrivings you bind them with can’t stay anchored. To try to bind a person is like writing in the ocean.”
“So what happened to the people the scrivers tried to alter?” asked Gregor.
Orso was quiet for a long while. “Even I won’t speak of such things. Not now. Not ever, if I can help it.”
“Then where did this Silicio come from, sir?” asked Berenice.
“The practice is illegal in Tevanne,” said Orso. “But the laws of Tevanne, as we are all well aware, are weak and restricted. Intentionally so. None of them extend to the plantations. The policy of Tevanne has always been that, provided we get our sugar, coffee, and whatever else on time, we couldn’t care less about what goes on out there. So…if it was communicated to a plantation that, if they accommodated a handful of scrivers from Tevanne, and supplied them with…specimens to experiment on…”
“Then they would receive a bonus, or an amenable contract, or some kind of lucrative reward,” said Gregor dourly, “from one of the merchant houses.”
“On matters completely unrelated to these visiting scrivers,” said Orso. “It all looks aboveboard, from a distance.”
“But why?” said Berenice. “Why experiment on humans at all, sir? We’re successful with our devices—why not focus on those?”
“Think, Berenice,” said Orso. “Imagine if you’d lost an arm, or a leg, or were dying from some plague. Imagine if someone could develop a sigil string that could cure you, or regrow a limb, or…”
“Or keep you alive for much, much longer,” said Berenice softly. “They could scrive you so that you could cheat death itself.”
“Or they could scrive a soldier’s mind,” said Gregor. “Make them fearless. Make it so they don’t value their own lives. Make them do despicable things, and then forget they’d ever done them. Or make them bigger, stronger, faster than all other soldiers…”
“Or scrive slaves to thoughtlessly do their masters’ bidding,” said Berenice, glancing at Sancia.
“The possibilities,” said Orso, “are beyond count.”
“And this is what Silicio was?” asked Gregor. “An experiment run by a merchant house?”
“I’d only heard rumors of it. Some plantation, out in the Durazzo, where people were still attempting the forbidden arts. I heard it moved around, from island to island to make it harder to trace. But a few years ago, news came of a disaster on the island of Silicio. A whole plantation house burned to the ground. All the slaves were running wild. And among those killed in the blaze were a number of Tevanni scrivers, though no one could quite explain what they’d been doing there.”
They looked at Sancia, who was sitting completely still now, her face totally blank of all expression.
“Which house was behind this experiment?” Gregor asked.
“Oh, it probably wasn’t just one merchant house,” said Orso. “If one was trying to scrive humans, they all were. It might still be going on, for all I know. Or perhaps Silicio scared them all off.”
“Even…” Gregor furrowed his brow. “Even Dandolo Chartered?”
“Oh, Captain…How many merchant houses have been doomed because they were too slow to bring a new design to market? How many careers have ended because a competitor found a way to make better wares?”
“But to do that…” said Berenice. “To…to people…”
Suddenly Sancia laughed. “God. God! As if that was any worse! As if that was any worse than the other things happening out there!”
They looked at her, uneasy.
“What do you mean?” asked Berenice.
“Don’t…don’t you understand what the plantations are?” said Sancia. “Think of it. Think of trying to control an island where the slaves outnumber you eight to one. How would you keep them in line? What would you do to keep them docile? What sort of tortures would you apply to those who lashed out? If…If any of you could understand the things I’ve seen…”
“Do they really?” said Berenice. “Then…then why do we allow the plantations to exist?”