The clerk approached and held out the box. Ziani took it, glaring at him, and opened it.
Sancia almost gasped. Inside the box was another imperiat—but this one appeared to be made of bronze, not the gleaming gold she’d seen before.
<What in hell?> said Clef.
Ziani examined it. “It’s shit,” he said. “It’s shit, is what it is. What happened?”
“The…the same thing that’s always happened, sir,” said the clerk. He was obviously uncomfortable having this conversation with a nude girl in the room. “We forged the device to your specifications. Then we attempted the exchange…and, ah, well. Nothing happened. The device remained as you see it now.”
Ziani sighed and pawed through the notes on the desk. He pulled out one browned, wrinkled sheet of parchment and examined it.
“Perhaps…” said the clerk. Then he stopped.
“Perhaps?” said Ziani.
“Perhaps, sir, since Tribuno has been of such great help on the other devices…Perhaps you could also discuss his notes with him, regarding this subject?”
Ziani tossed the papers back onto the desk. Sancia watched the page fall. Tribuno Candiano’s notes? On what?
“Tribuno is still mad as a tick on a burning hare’s ass,” Ziani said. “And he’s only been somewhat useful. About once a month, we find something scrawled in his cell that, yes, is useful—like the strings for the gravity plates—but it’s not like we can control that. And he’s written shit-all about the hierophants.”
There was a silence. Both the girl and the clerk watched Ziani anxiously, wondering what he’d make them do next.
“The problem is with the shell itself,” said Ziani, looking at the bronze imperiat. “Not the ritual. We’re following the ritual’s instructions exactly. So there must be some sigil we’re missing…Some component of the original we either don’t have or aren’t using right.”
“Do you think we need to reexamine the other artifacts, sir?”
“Absolutely not. It took a lot of work to move the trove out of the Mountain. I wouldn’t want to lead Ignacio or any other of these slippery bastards to it just because I wanted to check notes.” He tapped the bronze imperiat before him. “We’re doing something wrong. Something on these is being made improperly…”
“So…what would you suggest we do, sir?”
“Experiment.” Ziani stood and started getting dressed. “I want a hundred of the shells made before morning and sent to the Mountain,” he said. “Enough for us to experiment on and adjust, comparing it with the original.”
The clerk stared at him. “A hundred? Before morning? But…sir, the Cattaneo’s lexicon is at a reduced state right now. To produce that many, we’d have to spin it up quickly.”
“So?”
“So…the lexicon will spike. It will definitely cause nausea for all of us, I expect.”
Ziani was still. “Do you think I’m stupid?” he asked.
The room grew tense. The girl shrank down below the sheets.
“C-certainly not, sir,” said the clerk.
“Because it feels like you might,” said Ziani. He turned to look at him. “Just because I’m not a scriver. Just because I don’t have as many certifications as you. Because of that—you think I don’t know these things?”
“Sir, I just…”
“It’s a risk,” said Ziani. “And an acceptable one. Do it. I’ll supervise the fabrication.” He pointed at the girl. “You stay there. It’s far too long since I waxed an agreeable cunny, and I won’t have this dull bit of business delay that, either.” He buttoned up his shirt, his face twisted in faint disdain. “I certainly won’t deign to go pawing around Estelle’s musty skirts for a bit of push.”
“And…sir?”
“Yes?” snapped Ziani.
“What should we do with the corpse?”
“The same thing we’ve done with all the others? I mean, why should I know? We have people for that, don’t we?”
Ziani and the clerk left the office and shut the door behind them. The girl slowly shut her eyes, sighing half in relief, half in dismay.
Sancia silently slid out her bamboo pipe and loaded it with a dart.
<I can’t tell if this girl’s night is about to get better or worse,> said Clef.
<Better, I think,> said Sancia.
Sancia waited for a few minutes, making sure they were really gone. Then she silently opened the door a crack, trained the pipe on the girl’s neck, and blew.
The girl made a soft, “Ah!” as the dart struck her neck. She tensed, drunkenly slapped at her neck, fell back, and was still.
Sancia slipped into the room and went to the other office door. She peered through the keyhole and confirmed no one was approaching. Then she looked at the papers and boxes on the desk.
She picked up the thing Ziani had called the “shell”—his term for the bronze imperiat, which apparently did not work. She found he was right: it was little more than a curiosity, a dull, dead hunk of metal. Though it bore many strange sigils, it was not a true scrived device.
<So…that’s what they’re making here,> said Clef. He sounded genuinely frightened. <They’re…They’re making more imperiats. Or trying to.>
<Yeah.>
<A hundred of them. A hundred imperiats…God, can you scrumming imagine?>
She tried to, and shivered.
<That guy could wipe out all the other merchant houses,> said Clef. <He could destroy every army and every fleet in the Durazzo!>
<I need to focus, Clef. What else is here?> She looked at the papers on the desk, and saw most were yellow with age, and written in a strange, spidery hand, like the hand of someone who was either old, infirm, or both.
She looked at the top of one paper:
THEORIES ON THE INTENT OF HIEROPHANTIC TOOLS
The notes of Tribuno Candiano, she thought. The greatest scriver of our age…There were a lot of them, and she understood few at a glance.
But some of the papers were different. They appeared to be wax rubbings of stone engravings or tables or bas-reliefs…But what they depicted was confusing.
Each one showed an altar, always an altar, positioned at the center of each paper. Floating above the altar was the image of a prone, sexless human body—perhaps it was an artistic rendition of someone lying on the altar’s surface. Floating above the human body was always an oversized sword or blade, several times the size of the altar or the person. Written inside the blade were any number of complicated sigils, which varied from engraving to engraving, but all of them had these three things in common: the body, the altar, and the blade.
There was something gruesomely clinical to it all. They did not depict some religious rite, it felt. Instead, they seemed like…
<Instructions,> she thought. <But instructions for what?>
<Maybe Orso knows?>
<Maybe.> She scooped up all the papers, folded them, and stuffed them into her pockets. <We got what we came here for, I think. Let’s get the hell out of—>
Clef moaned, a sound suggesting both pain and epiphany. <Ohh…San. Do you…do you feel that?>
<Feel what?>
<There’s…there’s someone here. There’s a mind down there…>
<Huh? Down where?>
<Down in the ground. It’s waking, thinking, pulling…It’s waking up, San,> he said dreamily.
<The…the lexicon, you mean?>
<I hadn’t realized, you see…The lexicon is a mind, a clever one, one whose arguments are so convincing that all of reality has to listen. Do you know what that feels li—>
Then her head lit up with agony.
* * *
It was like the world was dissolving, like a meteor had struck the earth, like the walls had been turned to ash and cinder…She was still in the office, still standing next to that sleeping girl, but there was a hot coal in her brain, burning it away, scorching the walls of her skull. She opened her mouth in silent pain and was surprised when smoke didn’t come pouring out.
Sancia fell to her knees and vomited. It’s the lexicon spiking, she tried to tell herself. That’s all it is…You’re just…sensitive to it…
Clef cried out joyously: <Do you feel it waking up? I hadn’t realized how beautiful they were!>
She felt warmth running down her face, and saw drops of blood on the floor below her.
<I…I remember someone like that!> said Clef. <I remember…I remember him, Sancia…>
Images leaked into her mind. The dusty smell of the office faded, and she smelled…
Desert hills. Cool night breezes.
Then she heard the hiss of sand, and the sound of millions of wings, and she was gone.
* * *
Berenice peered through the spyglass, watching for Sancia. The girl had abruptly sunk to the ground and fallen out of view—which seemed odd.
What is she doing? Why isn’t she getting out of there?
Then nausea hit her—a familiar sensation for her.
They’re spinning up the lexicon, she thought. Activating more scrivings. And maybe it’s done something to Sancia.
She watched for a moment, then glassed the big, open area beyond the office. She saw glints of metal, and realized guards in scrived armor were walking at a quick pace—not on patrol, then. They were looking for something. And they seemed to be heading straight for Sancia.
“Shit,” she whispered. She looked back at the office. She still couldn’t see Sancia. “Oh, shit.”
* * *