“It’s scrived to sense your blood…Wait. That’s how the Mountain keeps track of everyone inside? It senses every resident’s blood?”
“Essentially,” said Orso. “Every new resident has to log a drop of blood with the Mountain’s core. Otherwise it won’t let them into where they need to go. Your blood is your sachet, getting you in and out. Visitors are either restricted to visitor areas, or they have to carry around sachets of their own.”
“That’s why the Mountain is so secure,” said Sancia quietly. “It knows who’s supposed to be there.”
“How could it do all that?” asked Gregor. “How could a device be so powerful?”
“Hell, I don’t know. But I did once see a specification list for the Mountain’s core—and it included cradles for six full-capacity lexicons.”
Berenice stared at him. “Six lexicons? For one building?”
“Why go to all that effort?” asked Gregor. “Why do all this in secret, and never capitalize on it, never share it?”
“Tribuno’s ambitions were vast,” said Orso. “I don’t think he wanted to mimic the hierophants—he wanted to become one. He grew obsessed with a specific Occidental myth. Probably the most famous one about the most famous hierophant.” He sat back. “Besides his magic wand, what’s the one thing everyone knows about Crasedes the Great?”
“He kept an angel in a box,” said Berenice.
“Or a genie in a bottle,” said Gregor.
“He built his own god,” said Sancia.
“They all amount to the same thing, don’t they?” said Orso. “A…a fabricated entity with unusual powers. An artificial entity with an artificial mind.”
“And so,” Gregor said slowly, “you think that when he made the Mountain…”
“I think it was something of a test case,” said Orso. “An experiment. Could Tribuno Candiano make the ancestral home of the Candianos into an artificial entity? Could it act as a draft effort at an artificial god? It was a theory he’d mentioned to me before. Tribuno believed that the hierophants had once been men—ordinary human beings. They’d just altered themselves in unusual ways.”
“He thought they were people?” said Gregor. “Like us?” This idea was utter nonsense to most Tevannis. To say that the hierophants were once men was akin to saying the sun used to be an orange, grown on a tree.
“Once,” said Orso. “Long ago. But look around you. See how scriving has changed the world in a handful of decades. Now imagine that scriving could also change a person. Imagine how they could change over time. His suspicion, I think, was that their elevation came from this artificial being they’d made. The men built a god, and the god helped them become hierophants. He believed he could walk in their footsteps.”
“Creepy,” said Sancia. “But none of this makes me any more eager to get in there. If we even can.”
Orso sucked his teeth. “It seems insurmountable, but…There’s always a way. A complicated design means more rules, and more rules mean more loopholes. We have a much more immediate problem, though. How fast are you these days, Berenice?”
“How fast, sir? I average thirty-four strings a minute,” she said.
“With successful articulation?”
“Of course.”
“Full strings, or partials?”
“Full. Inclusive up to tier four for all Dandolo language components.”
“Ah,” said Gregor. “What are we, uh, talking about here?”
“If we’re breaking into the Mountain, even Berenice can’t handle all that work. And besides, she’s no canal man. We’d need more scrivers. Or thieves. Or scrivers who are thieves.” Orso sighed. “And we can’t do it here. Not only will Gregor’s mother notice us plotting treason right in her scrumming workshops, but this place isn’t safe from the assassins. We’d need a full crew, and a new place to work. Without those, this whole thing is just a daydream.”
Sancia shook her head. I’m going to regret this. “Orso—I need to know…how rich are you?”
“How rich? What, you want a number or something?”
“What I’m saying is, do you personally have access to large sums of cash you can quickly retrieve without raising eyebrows?”
“Oh. Well. Certainly.”
“Good. All right.” She stood. “Then get up. We’re all taking a trip.”
“Where to?” asked Gregor.
“Into the Commons,” said Sancia. “And we’re going to need to tread lightly.”
“Because there are still thugs out there who want us dead?” asked Berenice.
“There’s that,” said Sancia. “And we’re going to bring a hell of a lot of money with us.”
* * *
Four lanterns—three blue, one red, hanging above a warehouse door. Sancia scurried up, looked around, and knocked.
A slot in the door opened and a pair of eyes peeked out. They looked at her and sprang wide. “Oh God! You? Again? I just assumed you were dead.”
“You’re not so lucky,” said Sancia. “I’ve brought you a deal, girl.”
“What? You’re not here to ask for a favor?” said Claudia from the other side of the door.
“Well. A deal and to ask for a favor.”
“Should have known,” said Claudia with a sigh. She opened the door. She was dressed in her usual leather apron and magnifying goggles. “After all, how could you have the resources to offer us a deal?”
“They’re not my resources.” She handed a leather satchel out to Claudia.
Claudia looked at it mistrustfully, then took it and looked inside. She stared. “P-paper duvots?”
“Yeah.”
“This has to be…a thousand, at least!”
“Yeah.”
“What’s it for?” asked Claudia.
“That bit there is to calm you down so you listen. I’ve got a job for you. A big one. And you need to hear me out.”
“What, are you playing at being Sark now?”
“Sark didn’t ask for anything this big,” said Sancia. “I need you and Gio to help on this job specifically, full-time, for a matter of days. And we also need a secure space to work in, and all kinds of scriving materials. If you can get me that, there’s a hell of a lot more money where that came from.”
“That is a big ask.” Claudia turned the leather satchel over in her hands. “So that’s the job bit?”
“That’s the job bit.”
“What’s the favor bit?”
“The favor bit,” said Sancia, looking her hard in the eye, “is you forget everything you ever heard about Clef. Ever. Now. This instant. You’ve never heard of him. I’m just some thief who comes to you to get tools and credentials to get into the campos, and nothing else. You do that, and you get your money.”
“Why?” asked Claudia.
“Never mind why,” said Sancia. “Just erase all of that from your brain, get Gio to do the same, and you’ll both be rich.”
“I’m not so sure I like this, San…”
“I’m going to make a signal now,” said Sancia, “and they’re going to walk up. When they do, don’t start screaming.”
“Start screaming? Why would I…” She stopped as Sancia raised a hand, and Berenice, Gregor, and Orso emerged from the shadows and joined her at the door.
She stared in horror, mostly at Orso, who was cursing after having stepped in a puddle. “Holy…holy shit…” she whispered.
Orso looked up at Claudia and the warehouse. He wrinkled his nose. “Dear God,” he said. “They work here?”
“You had better let us in,” said Sancia.
* * *
Orso paced around the Scrappers’ workshop like a farmer buying chickens at a seedy market. He examined their scriving blocks, their sigil strings on the walls, their bubbling cauldrons full of lead or bronze, their air fans strapped to carriage wheels. Claudia had ushered all the other Scrappers out before letting them in, but now she and Giovanni sat there, watching Orso dart around their quarters with terrified looks, like a panther had broken into their home as they slept.
He walked over and looked at the sigils scrawled on a blackboard. “You’re…making a way to control carriages remotely,” he said slowly. It wasn’t a question.
“Uh,” said Giovanni. “Yes?”
Orso nodded. “But it’s not expressing right. Is it, Berenice?”
Berenice stood and joined him. “The orientation’s wrong.”
“Yes,” said Orso.
“Their calibration tools are far too complicated,” she said.
“Yes.”
“The rig probably gets confused, isn’t sure which way it’s facing. So it likely just shuts down after a couple dozen feet or so.”
“Yes.” Orso looked at Giovanni. “Doesn’t it?”
Gio looked at Claudia, who shrugged. “Um. Yes. So far. More or less.”
Orso nodded again. “But just because it doesn’t work…that doesn’t mean it’s bad.”
Claudia and Gio blinked and looked at each other. They slowly realized that Orso Ignacio, legendary hypatus of Dandolo Chartered, had just given them a compliment.
“It’s…something I’ve worked on for a long time,” said Gio.
“Yes,” said Orso. He looked around the room, taking it all in. “Worked on with crude tools, secondhand knowledge, fragments of designs…You’ve improvised fixes to problems no campo scriver’s ever had to deal with. You’ve had to reinvent fire every day.” He looked at Sancia. “You were right.”
“Told you so,” said Sancia.
“Right about what?” said Claudia.