“Captain Riggo!” she called.
Footsteps, and then the office door opened. Captain Riggo walked in and saluted. He did not glance at Tribuno Candiano, wheezing and lying there in his soiled sheets. He did not pause at the sight of a bare-breasted Estelle, painting symbols upon her skin. Captain Riggo possessed the virtue that Tevanne valued most of all: the ability to ignore what was right in front of his eyes for a huge sum of money.
“Yes, ma’am,” he said.
Estelle sat perfectly still, stylus hovering above her skin. “Is anything happening out there?”
“No, ma’am.”
“Not on the campo?”
“No, ma’am.”
“Not in the Commons?”
“Not as far as we can tell, ma’am.”
“And our forces?”
“They sit ready, and can be deployed with but a word, ma’am.”
Her eyes narrowed. “My word.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
She considered this. “You are dismissed,” she said. “Notify me the moment you hear anything. Anything.”
“Yes, ma’am.” He smartly turned, strode out, and shut the door.
Estelle resumed painting the symbols on her body. Her father gasped, smacked his lips, and fell silent.
She made one stroke, then another…
Then she froze.
Estelle blinked for a moment, then sat up and looked around the room.
Empty. Empty except for her herself and father, that was, and all of his and Tomas’s antiquities, sitting on the massive stone desk.
“Hm,” she said, troubled.
For a moment she’d suddenly had the strangest and most intense feeling that there had been someone else in the room with them—a third person, standing just behind her, watching her closely.
She took a breath, looking around—and then her eye fell on the curious old box that Tomas had stolen before Orso Ignacio could get it, the cracked, ancient, lexicon-looking thing with the gold lock.
Estelle Candiano looked at the box, at the lock, at the keyhole. An idea wriggled its way into her mind, wild and insane.
The keyhole is an eye. It watches your every move.
“That’s mad,” she said softly.
Then, louder and with more assurance, as if hoping the box might hear her: “That’s mad.”
The box, of course, did nothing to acknowledge this comment. She looked at it for a moment longer, then turned and resumed painting the sigils on her breast. After my elevation, she thought, perhaps all these old tools Father dug up will make sense. Perhaps I will crack open that box, and see what treasures spill forth.
Then her eye paused on the object placed right next to the box—the large, oddly toothed key she’d taken off Orso’s man, with the butterfly-shaped head. It had been useful in giving her the last few sigils she’d needed to complete the ritual, but she still didn’t know the full extent of its nature.
Or perhaps I don’t need to break the box open, she thought. We shall see—won’t we?
37
Out in the streets of the Commons, just east of the Candiano walls, Sancia and the Scrappers moved.
“I wish you could turn those damned shadows off,” said Giovanni, panting as they ran through the alleys. “It’s like I have a literal blind spot running alongside me.”
“Just shut up and run, Gio,” said Sancia. Though she found it odd herself, frankly. Orso had affixed a few samples of the shadow materials to a leather jerkin for her—a slap-dash, laughably shoddy solution—but she was now veiled in constant shadow, and it was difficult for her to see what her hands or feet were doing.
Finally they approached the eastern Candiano gates. They slowed and crept along the side of a tottering rookery, peering beyond. Sancia saw the gleam of helmets in the gate towers, huddling in the windows. Probably a dozen men, each with high-powered espringals that could punch a hole in her wide enough to toss a melon through.
“Ready?” whispered Claudia.
“I guess,” said Sancia.
“We’ll go down this alley,” Claudia said, pointing backward, “to draw their eyes away from you. We’ll wait two minutes, then fire. The instant you see it, you run.”
“Got it,” said Sancia.
“Good. Good luck.”
Sancia ran along the rookery to the side facing the path to the Candiano gates. Then she pressed her back to the wood and waited, counting out the seconds.
When she got to two minutes, she crouched. Any minute now…
Then there was a hiss over her shoulder. Something flew high up above the building tops—and then the sky erupted with lights.
Sancia sprinted forward, pumping her arms and legs as hard as she could. She was aware that the Scrappers’ stun bomb—cleverly attached to a scrived bolt—would only last for a handful of seconds. Even though she was little more than a drop of shadow to the naked eye, that didn’t mean she’d be safe without that distraction.
The lights behind her died, and then there was a terrific pop!
The walls were twenty feet away. The last few strides felt like they took an agonizingly long time—but then she made it, quietly sliding to a stop against their massive stone face.
She heard a voice above, from the guards’ tower: “What the hell was that?”
She waited. She heard murmuring, but little more.
Praise God, she thought to herself. Then she carefully, carefully crept along the walls toward the gates.
She slid up to them and flexed that odd muscle in her mind. The huge, bronze gates erupted with light, two vast, rippling panes of white luminescence, hanging in space.
She looked at them carefully. She could see a hint of their commands within them, their nature, their restrictions. I sure as shit hope I’m right about this, she thought.
She took a breath, and placed a bare hand on the door.
<…TALL AND STRONG AND RESOLUTE, WE STAND VIGILANT AND WATCHFUL, AWAITING THE MESSAGES, AWAITING THE SIGNS, AWAITING THE CALL TO BEGIN FULL PIVOT INWARDS, OUR HIDES AS HARD AND DENSE AS COLD IRON…>
She flinched at the enormous sound of it. The campo gates were undoubtedly the biggest thing she’d attempted to fool yet. Yet she persisted, and asked, <So you’re not allowed to open unless you get the signals?>
<FIRST THE SIGNAL OF THE LIEUTENANT, THE TWIST OF CRYSTAL,> bellowed the gates. <THEN THE FRICTION CAUSED BY THE ROPE CARRIED BY THE SERGEANT AT WATCH. THEN ALL WATCHMEN PRESENT MUST SHIFT THEIR SAFETY SWITCHES. THEN THE SERGEANT AT WATCH MUST UNLOCK AND CRANK TH—>
<Okay, question,> said Sancia to the gates. <Can you pivot outward?>
There was a long silence.
<PIVOT OUTWARD?> asked the gates.
<Yeah.>
<THERE IS NO INDICATION THAT THIS IS…NOT POSSIBLE,> said the gates.
<Would that count as opening? Would pivoting outward require any of your safety switches?>
<CHECKING…HM. ALL SAFETY AND SECURITY CHECKS RELATE SPECIFICALLY TO OPENING, THE PROCESS OF OPENING INWARD.>
<Would you be willing to try opening outward?>
<THERE…IS NOTHING INDICATING I SHOULD NOT.>
<Great. Then here’s my idea…>
She told it what to do. It listened, and agreed. And then she crept away, down the walls to the next set of gates.
And the next, and the next.
* * *
Giovanni and Claudia crouched in the alley and watched as the tiny dot of shadow silently slipped along the base of the Candiano walls.
“Did…did she do anything?” said Giovanni, baffled.
Claudia pulled out a spyglass and examined the gates. “I don’t see anything.”
“Did we just risk our necks for that damned girl to do nothing? I’ll be pissed as hell if that’s the case!”
“We didn’t risk our necks, Gio. We just shot a firework into the damned air. Sancia’s the one literally running along the watchtowers.” She peered along the walls as Sancia stopped at the next gates, paused, and continued on. “Though I honestly have no idea what she’s doing.”
Gio sighed. “To think of all the mad shit we’ve had to eat to get to here. We could have left Tevanne ages ago, Claudia! We could have been on board a ship right now, headed toward some remote island paradise! A ship full of sailors. Sailors, Claudia! Young, sun-darkened men with thick, rippling shoulders from heaving huge ropes around all da—”
Then there was a sharp, warbling scream.
Claudia took the spyglass away from her eye. “What the hell was that?” She looked around, but couldn’t see anything. “Gio, do you see any—”
Then another scream, one of pure, naked terror. The screams seemed to be coming from the Candiano gates just ahead of them.
“Is…is this part of Sancia’s doing?” asked Gio. He leaned forward. “Wait! Oh my God…Someone’s up there, Claudia…”
She lifted her spyglass and looked at the Candiano gates.
Her mouth fell open. “Holy shit.”