They worked for a few hours more, the Scrappers and Orso sprinting back and forth and crawling in and out of the heat chamber, placing their sigils and strings in just the right places. Eventually the Scrappers were done, and they just sat there looking at Orso’s legs sticking out of the chamber as he finished up.
Finally he slid out. “I…believe I am finished,” he said quietly, wiping sweat from his brow.
“How do we test it?” asked Claudia.
“Good question. Let’s see…” Orso walked over to his shelves and took out something that looked like a small iron can. “A heating rig,” he said. “We use it to make sure the lexicon chambers are insulated properly.” He hit a switch on the side, tossed the can into the chamber in the wall, and shut and locked the door. “Should get up to some pretty incredible temperatures in there quick.”
“So, now we…?” said Gio.
Orso looked around, grabbed a wooden paint box from one of his tables, dumped the paint cans out, and tossed it into the newly built chamber. “Help me get this thing on the floor,” he said, “and turn it on.”
He and Gio lifted the box off the table and, grunting, carefully placed it on the floor. Then they shut and locked the big iron doors and turned on the twinning scrivings by twisting a bronze dial on the side.
Suddenly the box creaked, like someone had just placed a substantial load on it.
“Good sign,” said Orso. “Test lexicons are heavy as hell. If it thinks it holds one then theoretically the thing itself would abruptly gain weight.”
They waited a moment. Then Orso said, “All right. Turn it off.”
Gio turned back the dial. Orso shoved the latch on the door up, and opened the chamber.
An immense cloud of hot black smoke came billowing out. They all coughed and waved the smoke away from their faces, then peered into the heating chamber. As the smoke dissipated, the small, shriveled form of a burned box emerged.
Orso cackled with delight. “Looks like it scrumming works to me! The double believed it held the same heating rig as the first!”
“It works?” said Gio faintly. “I can’t believe it really works…”
“Yes! Now we just put this thing on wheels, and we’ve basically got a light, mobile lexicon on our hands! Of a sort, I mean.”
They finished the job, mounting the empty chamber on a wooden cart and making sure the whole thing was secure. Once they were done, they sat back and marveled at their work.
“Doesn’t look like much,” said Gio.
“Could do with a paint job, yeah,” said Orso.
“But it’s still probably the biggest damned thing I’ve ever done,” said Gio.
“Orso…” said Claudia. “You realize what you’ve done here, right? Scriving’s always been localized—you’ve got to stay close to one big, expensive piece of equipment for it to work. But you’ve essentially come up with a cheap, easy way to cover a whole region without having to build forty lexicons or whatever!”
Orso blinked, surprised. “Have I? Well…it’s still restricted, mind…but I suppose you’re right.”
“If we all live through this thing,” said Claudia, “this would be an incredibly valuable technique.”
“Speaking of living through this thing,” said Gio, “how do we plan on surviving after? Like, we are talking about attacking the heart of a merchant house and killing a scion of the industry.”
Orso stared at the heating chamber on the cart, and slowly cocked his head. “Claudia,” he said softly. “How many Scrappers are there in total?”
“How many? I don’t know. Fifty or so.”
“And how many would follow you faithfully? A dozen, at least?”
“Yeah, thereabout. Why?”
Orso grinned deliriously and tapped the side of his head. “I don’t know what it is about mortal panic,” he said, “but it keeps giving me the best scrumming ideas. We’re just going to need to file some paperwork. And maybe buy some property.”
The Scrappers exchanged a glance. “Oh boy,” said Gio quietly.
* * *
Sancia sat opposite Berenice, watching as the girl dashed from blackboard to parchment to scriving blocks, writing strings of sigils on any surface she could find with a mesmerizing, liquid grace. She’d finished two definition plates so far. The plates themselves were about two feet in diameter, wrought of steel, and they were covered in looping spirals of impossibly delicate bronze sigils—all put there by Berenice’s flowing stylus.
Berenice looked up from her work, a strand of hair clinging to her sweaty forehead. She seemed to glow with a happy energy—and Sancia could not look away.
“Ask it if it says anything about elevation,” Berenice said breathlessly.
Sancia blinked, startled. “Huh? What?”
“Ask the rig if it needs anything about elevation!”
“I told you, it doesn’t respond well to my questi—”
“Just do it!”
Sancia did so. She shut her eyes, then opened them and said, “It doesn’t seem to know what elevation even is.”
“Perfect!” cried Berenice.
“Is it?” asked Sancia.
“It’s one less hole I need to fill,” said Berenice, scribbling away.
Orso walked up and looked over Sancia’s shoulder. “We’ve done our part. Where are we here?”
Berenice peered through a massive magnifying lens at the third definition plate. She wrote one last string in her tiny script, then set the plate aside and picked up the fourth empty one. She said, “Three done. One left.”
“Good,” said Orso. “I’ll load them into the test lexicon.”
He took the definition plates away. Sancia kept her eyes and her hands on the gravity rig—but as she heard Orso clinking and clanking away behind her, the rig suddenly glowed brighter, and brighter…and then it started talking to her.
<Location of MASS is currently NULL!> said the rig with a mad cheer. <DENSITY of MASS? Define DENSITY of MASS in order to enforce effects, please. Levels of…of…Hm. Unable to define levels of DENSITY of MASS.>
“Oh my God,” she said lowly. “It’s working.”
“Excellent,” said Berenice. “What’s it asking for now?”
“I think it wants to know how dense the mass is. In other words, it wants to know how much of a force to effect on the item touching the plates.” She swallowed. “Which will be my body.”
Berenice paused and sat back. “Ah…Well. I have a question for you here.”
“Yeah?”
“I don’t have time to make really fine controls. So you’re going to have to tell the plates the density of this mass—how fast you want to go, basically,” said Berenice. “You’ll have to tell it, say, that there are six Earths in the sky—and then you’ll be pulled up at six times the rate of Earth’s gravity, minus Earth’s own actual gravitational effects. See?”
Sancia furrowed her brow. “So…you’re saying there’s a huge scrumming margin of error here.”
“Unimaginably huge.”
“And…what’s the question you have for me?” said Sancia.
“I actually don’t have a question,” said Berenice. “I just wanted to tell you all this without you immediately panicking.” She went back to work.
“Great,” said Sancia faintly.
Another hour ticked by. Then another.
Orso kept an eye on the Michiel clock tower out the window. “Six o’clock,” he said nervously.
“Almost finished,” said Berenice.
“You keep saying that. You said that an hour ago.”
“But I mean it this time.”
“You said that an hour ago too.”
“Orso,” said Sancia, “shut the hell up and let her work!”
Another sigil. Another massive sheaf of parchment. Another dozen styli ruined, another dozen inkpots and bowls of melted bronze. But then, at eight o’clock…
Berenice paused, squinting through the lens. Then she sat back and sighed, looking exhausted. “I…I think I’m done.”
Orso grabbed the definition without a word, ran to the test lexicon, put it in, and turned it on. “Sancia!” he called. “How’s it look?”
The rig now glowed bright in her hands—but not solidly bright. It wasn’t a complete rig, in other words, just most of one. But from what Berenice had said, they might not need the whole thing.
<Define LOCATION and DENSITY of MASS in order to achieve effect!> said the rig with a manic happiness.
Her belly squirmed with anxiety. She wanted to make sure she understood how this thing worked before she told it what to do. <Tell me how I make you work.>
<First we must decide LOCATION of MASS!> squealed the plates.
<What’s mass?>
<MASS is LARGEST THING. Nearly all FLOW is directed toward LARGEST THING.>
<Okay, a—>
<Then must define the STRENGTH of FLOW of LARGEST THING. All matter FALLS toward LARGEST THING along direction of FLOW.>
She was beginning to understand. <Location is up,> she said.
<Great!> said the plates. <Very unconventional! And DENSITY?>
<Density is…one half of regular Earth density? Can that work?>
<Sure! Want me to implement EFFECTS now?>
<Uh. Yes.>
<Done!>
Instantly, Sancia’s stomach swooped unpleasantly, like she had a live mouse running around in her intestines. Something had…changed. Her head felt heavy—much like her blood was being pulled up into her skull.
“Well?” said Orso impatiently.
Sancia took a breath, and stood up.
But then…she just kept going.