“What?” said Orso, fuming.
“This is a rich man’s fight,” said Sancia. “A rich man’s game. And we’re all just pieces on the board to you. You think you’re different, Orso, but you’re just like all the rest of them!” She put her finger in his face. “My life’s not a hell of a lot better since I escaped the plantation. I still starve a lot and I still get beaten occasionally. But at least now I get to say no when I want to. And I’m saying it now.” She turned and walked out.
25
Sancia sat on the hilltop next to the Gulf, staring out at the ramshackle tent city, rambling and gray in the watery, late-morning light. She’d felt alone many times since she’d found Clef, but she hadn’t felt truly abandoned until now, burdened with secrets, and surrounded with people all too willing to either kill her or put her in harm’s way.
<We’re in a right state, aren’t we, kid?> said Clef.
<Yeah. I don’t know what the hell to do, Clef. I want to run, but I’ve nowhere to run to.>
Sancia watched a group of children playing in the Gulf, running back and forth with sticks. Skinny things, undernourished and filthy. Her childhood had been much the same. Even in the greatest city on earth, she thought, children go hungry, every day.
<I bet I could take the Mountain,> said Clef. <Forget about Orso. You and me, kid. We could do it.>
<We’re not discussing this, Clef.>
<I could. It’d be…interesting. A feat. An experience.>
<It’s the goddamn graveyard of thieves, Clef! Campo operators like Sark talked about it in whispers, like the thing could hear them across the city!>
<I want to get you out of this. I got you into it. And I don’t think I have a lot of time left, Sancia. I want to do something—I don’t know—something big.>
She buried her face in her hands. “Damn it,” she whispered. “Damn it all…”
<The captain’s coming,> said Clef. <He’s got his truncheon. He’s walking up the hill now.>
<Great,> she thought. <Another conversation I don’t want to have.>
She watched as his lumbering form emerged from the tall weeds. He did not look at her. He just walked over and sat, about ten feet away.
“Dangerous to be out in the day,” he said.
“It’s dangerous to be in there too,” said Sancia. “Since you people want to get me killed.”
“I don’t want to get you killed, Sancia.”
“You said to me once that you were not afraid to die. You meant it, didn’t you?”
He thought about it, and nodded.
“Yeah. A guy who’s not afraid to die likely isn’t too torn up about getting other people killed. You might not want it, but it’s a responsibility you’re willing to accept, isn’t it?”
“Responsibility…” he echoed. “You know, I talked to my mother yesterday.”
“That’s why you ducked out? Just to chat up your mother?”
“Yes. I asked her about Silicio. And she admitted that, once, Dandolo Chartered had indeed been involved in trying to scrive human beings. In trying to scrive slaves, I mean.”
She glanced at him. His face was fixed in a look of quiet puzzlement. “Really?”
“Yes,” he said quietly. “Odd thing, to learn of your family’s complicity in such monstrosities. But like you said—it’s not like there weren’t plenty of other tragedies and monstrosities to begin with. That particular one is not especially unusual. So now, today, I think about responsibilities.” He looked out at the cityscape of Tevanne. “It won’t change on its own, will it?”
“What? The city?”
“Yes. I’d hoped to civilize it. To show it the way. But I no longer think it will change of its own accord. It must have change forced upon it.”
“Is this about justice again?” asked Sancia.
“Of course. It’s my responsibility to deliver it.”
“Why you, Captain?”
“Because of what I’ve seen.”
“And what’s that?”
He sat back. “You…you know they call me the Revenant of Dantua, yes?”
She nodded.
“People call me that. But they don’t know what it means. Dantua…It was a Daulo city we took. In the north of the Durazzo. But the Daulos in the city had stockpiles of flash powder,” he said. “I’ve no idea how they’d gotten it. But one day some boy, no older than ten, snuck into our camp with a box of it on his back. And he ran up to our lexicon, and set off the charge. Killed himself. Set fire to the camp. And worse, he damaged the lexicon. So all our rigs failed. So we were just stuck there, with the Daulo armies out beyond. They couldn’t penetrate the fortress, even with us helpless—but they could starve us out.
“So. We starved. For days. For weeks. We knew they’d kill us if we surrendered, so we just starved and hoped someone would come. We ate rats and boiled corncobs and mixed dirt with our rice. I just sat and watched it all happen. I was their commander, but there was nothing I could do. I watched them die. Of starvation. Of suicide. I watched these proud sons turn to anguished skeletons, and I buried them in the meager earth.
“And then, one day…some of the men had meat. I found them cooking it in the camps, sizzling on skillets. It…it did not take me long to realize what kind of meat it was. Carcasses were in high supply in Dantua, after all. I wanted to stop them, but I knew if I tried, they’d mutiny.” He shut his eyes. “Then the men started getting sick. Perhaps as a consequence of what they were doing—consume ill flesh, become ill yourself. Swollen armpits, swollen necks. It spread so fast. We started running out of places to bury corpses. It was no surprise that I caught the plague myself, eventually. I…I remember the fever, the coughing, the taste of blood in my mouth. I remember my men watching me as I lay on my bed, gasping. Then things went dark. And when I awoke…I was in the grave, under the earth.”
“Wait. You…you survived? They buried you and you woke up inside the grave?”
“Yes,” he said quietly. “It’s extremely rare, but some people do survive the plague. I awoke in the dark. With…with things on top of me. Blood and dirt and filth in my mouth. I couldn’t see anything. Could barely breathe. So…I had to dig my way out. Through the bodies, through all that earth. Through the rot and the piss and the blood and…and…” He fell silent. “I don’t know how I did it. But I did. I clawed until my fingernails were sloughed off and my fingers were broken and hands bloody, but then I saw it, saw the light flickering through the cracks in the corpses above me, and I crawled out, and saw the fire.
“The Morsinis had gotten to Dantua. They’d attacked. The Daulos had broken in through the walls in desperation, and somehow they’d set the city alight. And some Morsini sergeant saw me clawing my way out of the mass grave, covered in blood and mud and screaming…He thought I was a monster. And by that point, perhaps I was. The Revenant of Dantua.”
They were silent. The tall grasses danced in the wind around them.
“I’ve seen a lot of death, Sancia,” he said. “My father and brother died in a carriage accident when I was young. One I nearly died in myself. I joined the military to bring honor to their name, but instead I got so many young men killed—and, again, I survived. I keep surviving, it seems. It’s taught me many things. After Dantua…it was like a magic spell had been lifted from my eyes. We are making these horrors. We are doing this to ourselves. We have to change. We must change.”
“This is just what people are,” said Sancia. “We’re animals. We only care about survival.”
“But don’t you see?” he said. “Don’t you see that’s a bond they’ve placed upon you? Why did you work the fields as a slave, why did you sleep in miserable quarters and silently bear your suffering? Because if you didn’t, you’d be killed. Sancia…so long as you think only of survival, only of living to see the next day, you will always bear their chains. You will not be free. You’ll always remain a sla—”
“Shut your mouth!” she snarled.
“I will not.”
“You think because you’ve suffered, you know? You think you know what it’s like to live in fear?”
“I think I know what it’s like to die,” said Gregor. “It makes things so terribly clear once you stop worrying about survival, Sancia. If these people succeed—if these rich, vain fools do as they wish—then they will make slaves of the whole of the world. All men and women alive, and all generations after, will live in fear just as you did. I am willing to fight and die to free them. Are you?”
“How can you say that?” she said. “You, a Dandolo? You know more than anyone that this is what all merchant houses do.”
He stood, furious. “Then help me cast them down!” he cried.
She stared at him. “You…you would overthrow the merchant houses?” she asked. “Even your own?”
“Sometimes you need a little revolution to make a lot of good. Look at this place!” He gestured at the Gulf. “How can these people fix the world if they can’t fix their own city?” He bowed his head. “And look at us,” he said quietly. “Look at what they’ve made of us.”