“I wanted to ask you,” the young man mumbled, “about that density fix you gave me.”
“Not tonight, Otto,” sighed Sancia.
“I know you fixed it,” said Otto, “but I can’t duplicate what you did.”
“We can discuss this at the library tomorrow,” Berenice told him. “During a scheduled appointment.”
“I’m under a deadline,” said Otto. “If…If there could be just something you could show me…”
Sancia and Berenice dutifully ignored him.
“Please,” he said. “My position is at risk…”
“Ugh!” said Sancia. She slopped down more wine, grabbed a knife, and began scrawling sigils in the tabletop. “Sit down and shut up. Because I’m only going to do this once.”
The young man watched as Sancia drew out a simple set of sigil strings that governed density and started to walk him through the process. A few Crucible patrons stood to observe as well.
“You are giving away our services!” Orso hissed.
“I’ll haul the goddamn table back to the library if I have to!” said Sancia.
Claudia and Giovanni laughed. “It’s your fault for starting a damned scriving charity, Orso,” said Gio. “Everyone expects your help now.”
“The library is not a charity,” Orso said. “Foundryside is a private interest pooling public, communal goods.”
Which was true. After founding Foundryside, Orso had been faced with a dilemma: he’d created a brand-new twinning technique, but there’d been absolutely no market for it. Only merchant houses had the resources to use it, and the merchant houses wouldn’t touch him with a ten-thousand-foot pole—unless they could shove it through his throat.
But then the other scrivers had moved into the Commons and started their own firms, and Orso had realized he had another valuable resource on his hands: Sancia. Specifically, the plate in her head that allowed her to engage with scrivings. That, combined with his and Berenice’s depth of knowledge, meant they were experts in an industry that suddenly needed a lot of help.
So they’d pivoted, and made Foundryside a consulting firm. If you had a design or a rig or a string that you just couldn’t get to work, you took it to Foundryside, and they’d help you fix it, for a fee. The Lamplands even came up with a nickname for Sancia and Berenice: they were “the Muses,” bringing brilliance down from upon high.
But there was a catch: whatever design they helped you fix went into their library. And their library could be perused by anyone who’d also donated a design to it, and paid the fee.
It was a terrifying concept for most scrivers, who came from the campos, where the question of intellectual property was something that regularly got people imprisoned or murdered every month. Sharing scriving designs? Building some kind of library that could be browsed by almost anyone? It seemed mad.
But eventually the scrivers realized: they were not on the campos anymore. And they needed help. “In order to gain,” Orso told them, “you must first give.” And finally, they did.
At first, Sancia had been reluctant to put her talents to such use. But Orso had told her his bet: “Whatever we do to empower the Lamplands will eventually undermine the merchant houses. By making the Lamplands strong, we will make the houses and their empires weak.”
And that was all Sancia had ever been interested in.
She finished scrawling out the strings on the table. “See now?” she said. “See how it works?”
Otto blinked. “I…think so…”
“I do not think he actually does,” said Gregor quietly into his tankard.
Orso clapped his hands. “Otto, you are in luck. If you pop by the offices tomorrow, we will schedule a remedial consultation for you, and give you the low discount of only twice our regular fees.”
“How can it be low,” said Otto, “if it’s also twice as mu—”
“Good day!” snarled Orso, and he pointed a finger at the door. Otto turned and slumped away.
“I so cherish helping out our Lamplands brothers,” said Orso, sitting back. “But I do wish some of them weren’t such dull-witted, brainless bastards.”
Sancia and Berenice exchanged a smile, exulting in the moment, in their success, in the feeling that they were finally starting something new. Sancia tossed back more wine.
“Slow down,” said Berenice. Her fingers trailed down Sancia’s back. “It’s early.”
“I’ve earned it,” said Sancia. “Haven’t we all earned it?”
“We have,” said Orso. He raised his glass again. “Tonight we have saved this city. We have saved scriving itself. And no one even knows it. We are all keepers of a secret flame, lighting the way forward.” He drank—or tried to, as a good bit of it wound up spilling down his chin.
They toasted again, but Gregor’s face was quiet and closed as he drank his tea.
“Something wrong?” asked Sancia.
“Not a flame, I think,” he said. “A spark. We intend to start an inferno.” He looked out the greasy window at the foggy lanes outside. “Yet fires do not care about who they burn.”
* * *
—
Together they wobbled home through the lanes of the Commons. To Sancia’s eyes the sky-bound lamps were smears of yellow and orange and purple on the dark canvas of the night sky. Though the Monsoon Carnival was still days away, a few people were already in costumes. Sancia had a slight scare when someone ran past her wearing the classic Papa Monsoon costume: the black cloak, black mask, and black three-cornered hat of the mythical man who brought the storms and death every six years.
“ ’Magine it,” belched Orso as they stepped over the creaking wooden sidewalks. “Imagine it as it used to be. Hundreds of firms, thinking, working, collaborating…That was as it was.” He stopped and looked down one alley. The wind rippled through the evening sky and all the lanterns danced, the names and colors intermixing, and for a moment it looked like Orso’s head was afire with flames of many hues. “It can be that way again. We can bring it back. Think of all the soldiers, all the scrivers, all the people waiting for a better way of living…All of this, all of it can change.”
“Let’s not get maudlin,” said Gregor. “Let us get home instead.”
Sancia looked at Gregor, and saw he did not look drunk, or happy, or cheerful. Rather, he wore the same expression that he so often did: a look of troubled, quiet loneliness, like a man still puzzling over a bad dream.