<What happened?>
Another long silence. <Creation of such an intelligence…Not an easy thing. When one makes a mind, it is in itself a product of the mind that made it. There was too much of themselves in the thing they made. They fell to war, between maker and that which is made. War of a sort…I cannot describe. The words, the terms—I can find none. Their civilization failed, and died, and now only dust remains.>
Sancia shuddered, remembering her vision of the man in the desert, turning out the stars. <My God…>
<Know this,> said Valeria. <The same could be visited upon you—should those fools attempt to duplicate the process the Makers detailed. To make toys from the bones of creation—a mad and dangerous practice.>
<So. You want me to get the key to make sure that doesn’t happen.>
<True.>
<How the hell am I going to do that? I can’t even get out of here!>
<I am editor.>
<Yeah, you’ve made that really clear.>
<I am capable of editing reality, was specifically designed for the formulation and editing of scrivings.>
<You…you what? Oh.> Sancia’s heart jumped. <So…So you can edit the scrivings of my shackles!>
<Possible,> said Valeria. <This will exhaust me, however. I will be unable to assist after this endeavor. So I propose editing something that will make your success far more likely.>
<What?>
<You.>
There was a long silence.
<Huh?> asked Sancia.
<Commands in your plate…poorly wrought,> said Valeria. <Confused. Confusing. Unsure what to reference, unsure how to build relationship between references. I can fix. And make you…editor. Of a kind. And you can then free yourself, and find the key.>
Sancia sat there, stupefied. <W-what? You want to edit the plate in my head?>
<I assumed this was a process you desired. Your commands are…always enabled. Does that make sense?>
<Always enabled?>
<Yes. Access is never closed. You cannot…disengage.>
Sancia realized what she meant. Her insides turned to jelly, and she was so overcome with emotion she could hardly respond.
<You mean…> Sancia swallowed. <You mean you can give me a way to turn it off? To turn it all off?>
<True,> said Valeria. <Engage, disengage. That, and more.>
Sancia closed her eyes, and tears ran down her face.
<Sorrow?> said Valeria. <Why is?>
<I’m…I’m not sad. It’s just…I’ve always wanted this! I’ve wanted this for so, so long. And you’re saying—for sure—that you can give it to me? Right now?>
<True.> Clicks. <For…sure.> More clicks. <I see why this would create joy for you. The scrivings…they confuse thing and things.>
<What do you mean?>
<The scrivings they put into you—they wished to make you an object. A…device. A thing to command. A servant.> More clicks—and these were harsh. <Like…Valeria.>
<A slave?>
<True. A mindless thing. A slave that does not know itself and thus cannot know the violation of being a slave. So they wrote the commands within you—“Be as things!” But they did not understand their commands. Did not define “things” adequately. Which things? The scrivings, as always, chose the easiest interpretation—“things” meant whichever items were closest. Whichever items you touched. Does that make sense?>
A cold disgust filled Sancia. <They wanted to make me a passive item, a tool. A servant without will. But because they wrote it wrong, I can…I can feel items, and…>
<And merge. Become them. Know them. As I said—they wrote the commands poorly. Should have destroyed you.> A series of clicks so fast, they were almost a blur. <Supposition—you survived for the same reason the imperiat can control you.>
<Huh?>
A rapid series of clicks. <The imperiat—not made to control human minds. Minds are…complicated. Impossibly complicated. Such an application was never imagined by the Makers. Imperiat was made to control weapons. Items. Objects. Which you think yourself to be.> Click. <The imperiat works upon you because you still define yourself as an item. That is only reason you can be controlled.>
Sancia listened with a sense of mounting outrage. <What the hell do you mean, think I’m an item?>
Click. <Was I unclear?>
<You think I’m just some object?>
<Untrue. I think you think this of yourself.>
<I’m…I’m not some goddamn item! I’m not a thing! I’m not…> She struggled to find the words. <I’m not something to be scrumming owned!>
<Untrue. You believe yourself a thing. A…slave.>
<Shut up!> screamed Sancia at her. She shut her eyes. <Shut up, shut up, shut up! I’m…I’m not a goddamn thing! I’m a scrumming person, I’m a free person.>
<Do you feel free?> asked Valeria. <Or do you feel, perhaps, like you have stolen yourself?>
Tears streamed down her face. The guards looked at her curiously. <Stop it,> said Sancia. <Stop talking!>
Valeria was silent. Sancia lay there, weeping.
<To steal a thing is not the same as freeing a thing,> said Valeria. Then, in a soft, slightly darker tone: <This I know full well. This I know more than anything else.>
Sancia swallowed and tried to blink the tears away. <Enough of this. Enough!>
Valeria said nothing.
<So,> said Sancia. <You edit the plate in my head. It…it will let me turn my scrivings off and on? And it’ll give me a way to…to open my shackles?>
Click. <True. You will be editor. Of a kind. You touch the shackles—with direct contact, you will have influence.>
<What will it be like, to make me an editor myself?>
<The editing will not be…painless,> said Valeria. <To edit the scrivings will be to edit reality—to convince the plate within you that, when it was wrought, it was wrought this way, and not that way. This is no simple thing. Reality is a stubborn thing.>
Sancia wasn’t sure if she wanted to hear more—the more she learned about what Valeria could do, the more she terrified her. <So it’s going to hurt like hell. Is that it?>
<How did it feel when it was first done to you?>
Her stomach fluttered. <Shit…That bad?>
<Yes. But they did a crude thing to you. I will do something much more…elegant.>
Sancia was breathing hard. She knew she needed every advantage she could get. But she wanted to ask more: to ask exactly what Valeria could do, what they’d made her to do, and how the Makers had made her to begin with.
Yet Valeria said, <We must proceed. Will take time. And your enemies could return at any moment.>
Sancia gritted her teeth. <Just…just do it, then. And hurry.>
<You will feel something. Must let me in. Then I will edit. Confirmed?>
<Confirmed.>
<And when completed—the key. You must unlock my casings—confirmed?>
<Yeah, yeah! Confirmed!>
<Good.>
For a second, there was nothing. But then she heard it.
It was almost exactly like that time in Orso’s house, with Clef: there was a quiet, rhythmic tap-tap, tap, tap—a soft pulse, echoing through her mind.
Again, she listened to it, reached out, grasped it, and then…
The beats unfolded, expanded, and enveloped her, filling her thoughts.
And then Sancia was filled with pain.
She felt herself screaming. Felt her skull burn hot with fire, felt every tissue in her skull sizzling, and then the guards were beside her, shouting, trying to hold her down, but then…
She fell.
Sancia was falling, falling into a darkness, an endless, rippling black.
She heard a whispering, and she slowly realized: the darkness was filled with thoughts, with impulses, with desires.
She was not passing into emptiness. It was a mind—she was falling into a mind. But the mind of something huge, something incomprehensibly vast and alien…yet fragmented. Broken.
Valeria, she thought. You lied to me. You were no clerk, were you?
Darkness took her.
30
As midnight passed, a small, white boat slipped through the misty canals of the Commons. Seated within the boat were three people: two boatmen, wearing dark, unmarked clothes, and a tall woman, wearing a thick black cloak.
They passed a barge, quiet and dark, and rounded a bend in the canal. The two men slowed the boat and looked to the woman.
“Farther,” said Ofelia Dandolo.
The prow sloshed through the foul, dark waters as the boat beat on. The canals of the Commons were unspeakably filthy, scummed over with waste and rot and slurry. Yet Ofelia Dandolo peered through these waters like a fortune-teller parsing the leaves at the bottom of a teacup.
“Farther still,” she whispered.
The boat beat on, until they finally came to a sharp bend at the corner of the canal. A tiny flock of pale, white moths danced and circled over a patch in the bend—directly over something floating in the water.
She pointed. “There.” The boat sped over to the floating thing, and the two men took out wooden hooks and pulled it close.