She stared around, terrified, as her body rose up toward the ceiling at a steady pace. It wasn’t fast, but it felt fast, probably because she was panicking. “Oh my God!” she said. “Holy shit! Somebody grab me!”
They did not grab her. They just stared.
“Looks like it works, yeah,” said Gio.
To her relief, she started to come back down again—but she seemed to be falling toward a big stack of empty metal bowls on a nearby table. “Shit!” she said. “Shit, shit!” She kicked around helplessly, and they all watched as she slowly, inevitably collided with the pile of bowls, which went crashing and clanging all over the workshop.
<End effects!> Sancia shouted at the rig.
<Done!>
Instantly, the lightness died inside her, and she crashed onto the table and fell to the ground.
Berenice, delighted, stood up and punched a fist into the air. “Yes. Yes! Yes! I did it, I did it, I did it!”
Sancia, groaning, stared up at the ceiling.
“This is what she’s going to do to stop Estelle?” said Gio. “She’s going to do that?”
“Let’s call this,” said Orso, “a qualified success.”
* * *
An hour later, and they reviewed their plan.
“So we have what we need,” said Orso. “But…we still need to get our empty box within a mile and a half of the Mountain. That’s the farthest the gravity rig will work.”
“So we still need a way through the walls?” said Claudia. “Into the campo?”
“Yes. But only a bit,” said Orso. “A quarter mile or so.”
Claudia sighed. “I don’t suppose Sancia could use the rig to jump over the walls and open the gates from the inside.”
“Not without getting shot to bits,” said Gio. “If the whole campo’s locked down, the guards at the gates will shoot anyone who gets close.”
Sancia held the gravity plates in her hand, whispering to them and listening to them respond. Then she sat up. “I can get us past the walls,” she said quietly. “Or through them, rather.”
“How?” said Berenice.
“A gate is just a door,” she said. “And Clef taught me a lot about doors. I just need to be able to get close.” She sat up and looked around the workshop. She spied something she’d seen the last time she’d been here, when she’d searched the workshop for the listening rig. “Those rows of black cubes over there, the ones that seem to suck up light—are those stable?”
Orso looked around, surprised. “Those? Yes. They’re loaded in one of the main Dandolo foundry lexicons, so you can take those almost anywhere.”
“Can you attach them to a cuirass, or something wearable?” she asked. “It’ll be damn handy if I’m a moving blot of shadow in the darkness.”
“Sure,” said Orso. “But…why?”
“I’ll need them to sneak up to the east Candiano walls,” said Sancia. “Then I’ll get things started. Berenice, Orso—I’ll need you to have your magic box loaded onto a carriage and ready at the southwest gates. All right?”
“You’re going to run along the entire Candiano walls?” said Claudia.
“Most of them,” said Sancia softly. “We’ll need a distraction. And I can give us a good one.”
Gio studied the black cubes. “What are those for, Orso? I’ve never seen someone scrive light like that before.”
“I made those for Ofelia Dandolo,” said Orso. “Some secret project of hers. Gregor mentioned she’d made some kind of assassin’s lorica out of the things…A killing machine you can’t see coming.”
Gio whistled lowly. “It’d be handy to have one of those tonight.”
Sancia sank down in her chair. “What I’d prefer more,” she said, “is to go to war with the one person who has the most experience in waging it. But he’s been taken from us.” She sighed sadly. “So we’ll just have to make do.”
35
Darkness whirled around him. There was the crunch of wood, the crackle of glass, and, somewhere, a cough and a whimper.
“Gregor.”
The scent of putrefaction, of pus, of punctured bowels and hot, wet earth.
“Gregor?”
The swirl of water, the sound of many footfalls, the sound of someone choking.
“Gregor…”
He felt something in his chest, something trembling, something squirming. There was something inside him, something alive, something trying to move.
At first he was horrified. But though he could not really think—how could he think, as he was lost in the darkness?—he started to understand.
The thing moving in his chest was his own heart. It was beginning to beat—first gently, anxiously, like a foal taking its first steps. Then its beats grew stronger, more assured.
His lungs begged for air. Gregor Dandolo breathed deep. Water burbled and frothed in countless passageways within him, and he coughed and gagged.
He rolled onto his side—he was lying on something, some kind of stone slab—and vomited. What came forth was canal water—that he could tell by the taste—and a lot of it.
Then he realized—his stomach. It had hurt so much, just a bit ago…yet now it didn’t hurt at all.
“There we are, dear,” said his mother’s voice from somewhere near him. “There we are…”
“M-Mother?” he slurred. He tried to see, but there was something wrong with his eyes—he could only make out streaks and shadows. “Wh-where are you?”
“I’m here.” Something in the shadows moved. He thought he saw a human figure, robed and carrying a candle—but it was hard to see. “I’m here right beside you, my love.”
“What…what happened to me?” he whispered. His voice was a crackling rasp. “Where am I? What’s wrong with my eyes?”
“Nothing,” she said soothingly. He felt a touch on his brow, her soft, warm palm against his skin. “They’ll get better soon. They just haven’t been used for a bit.”
He blinked. He realized his eyes felt cold within their sockets. He tried to touch his face and found he couldn’t control his hands or even wriggle his fingers.
“Shh,” said his mother. “Be calm. Be still.”
He swallowed, and found his tongue felt cold too. “What’s going on?”
“I saved you,” said his mother. “We saved you.”
“We?” He blinked again, and more of the room came into focus. He saw he was in some kind of long, low cellar, with a vaulted ceiling, and there were people standing around him, people wearing gray robes and bearing small, flickering candles.
But there was something wrong with the walls of the room—and, now that he saw it, the ceiling as well. They all seemed to be moving. Rippling.
This is a dream, Gregor thought. This must be a dream…
“What happened to me?” he asked.
She sighed slowly. “The same thing that’s happened to you so often, my dear.”
“I don’t understand,” he whispered.
“I lost you,” she said. “But again, you’ve come back.”
Gregor lay on the stone slab, breathing weakly. And then, slowly, the memories returned to him.
The woman—Estelle Candiano. The knife in his stomach. The swirl of dark water…
“I…I fell,” he whispered. “She stabbed me. Estelle Candiano stabbed me.”
“I know,” she said. “You told us already, Gregor.”
“She…she didn’t really stab me, did she, Mother?” He managed to move his hand and push himself up into a sitting position.
“No, no,” his mother chided him. “Lay back down, my love, lay still…”
“I…I didn’t die, did I, Mother?” he asked. His mind felt thick in his skull, but he found he could think now, just a bit. “That would be mad…I couldn’t die and just…just come…come back to li—”
“Enough,” said his mother. She reached out and touched the right side of his head with two fingers.
Instantly, Gregor fell still. His body seemed to grow numb around him. He could not move, could not blink. He was trapped within himself.
“Be still, Gregor,” said his mother. “Be still…”
Then his skull began to grow hot…Exactly on the right side of his head, right where his mother’s fingers touched him. The pain was a low ache at first, but then it got worse, and worse. It felt like his very brains were sizzling on the right side of his head.
And though he had no memory of this ever happening before…he could remember someone describing a sensation just like this.
Sancia, with Orso and Berenice in the library, saying: And if the scrivings in my skull get overtaxed, they burn, just burn, like hot lead in my bones…
What’s going on? Gregor thought desperately. What’s happening to me?
“Be still, Gregor,” said his mother. “Be still…”
He tried to move, raging at his dull, distant body, and found he couldn’t. The heat in his skull was unbearable now, like his mother’s fingers were red-hot irons.
But he could see his mother’s face now, barely illuminated by the candle flame. Her eyes were sad, but she did not look surprised, or upset, or anguished by any of this, really. Rather, it was like this bizarre act was a regrettable duty she was quite familiar with.
“What happened to you wounds my heart, my love,” she said softly. “But I thank you for coming to us now, when we need you the most.”