“Come, come,” he said, shepherding them on. “Come on. Off to bed with all of you.”
“I’m sorry, Gregor,” said Sancia.
“For what?” he asked.
Because I couldn’t fix you, she wished to say. But then there was a blare of piping from the corner, and reeling laughter, and the moment was gone.
* * *
—
Berenice helped her up the stairs a step at a time. “Just because you can finally drink,” she said, “it doesn’t mean you should do so with quite so much enthusiasm.”
“Kiss me,” said Sancia.
“I have. Repeatedly. Despite the taste of Crucible wine on your lips.”
“We did it. We really pulled it off, Ber.”
“I know we did.”
“But the hell of it was…it wasn’t even all that hard,” said Sancia.
“I beg your pardon?”
“Well, not for me, anyways. If you could get me to the Morsinis, or the Dandolos…We could wipe out the lot of them.”
“You can hardly handle these stairs. Let’s manage our aspirations accordingly.”
They turned on the next landing and started up the next flight.
“Can we tell him?” asked Sancia.
“Tell who?” Then she realized. “Oh. Yes. Of course.”
They walked up the steps to the Foundryside attic, where they lived together. Berenice unlocked their door—which had been scrived to demand both the presence of their blood and their saliva—and Sancia staggered in and made for the closet.
“Would you let me do that?” said Berenice, locking the door. “You’ll make such a mess of things…”
But Sancia ignored her. She stumbled to the closet and pawed through their clothes and books until she’d revealed a small panel in the back. She pressed her hand to it, and there was a pop.
“Locks and locks and locks,” she muttered, pulling the panel away. She reached inside. “And yet all I want is…ah.”
She felt her fingers close over the metal—over his head, so curiously butterfly-shaped, and his tooth, strange and rippled.
As always, she waited for a moment—to hear his voice, his chatter, his mad running commentary on everything. But there was nothing.
She sighed sadly and pulled him out, his gold glinting in the light of the scrived lanterns.
“Hello, Clef,” she whispered to him.
The key, of course, said nothing back. Or rather, the mind imprisoned within it—the man once named Claviedes, his personality and memories warped by the designs of the key—did not. When the tool had been aging and run-down, Clef had been able to converse with Sancia directly, whispering in her ear like a songbird in a fairy tale—until he’d been forced to reset himself, and restore all the boundaries within the device. He’d been silent ever since.
Sancia believed he was still in there, a mind trapped within all the invisible machinery inside the key, silent but sentient, and lonely.
“Bring him out here, if you’re doing it,” said Berenice. “I daresay he’s sick of the dark.”
Sancia pulled out the little golden key, shakily stood, and walked over and sat by Berenice on the foot of their bed. She held him up to her lips and whispered to him, “We did it, Clef. We did what you said.”
Berenice sat quietly, allowing Sancia this moment.
“Move thoughtfully,” she said. “And bring freedom to others. And…I think we’re going to. The houses are weak, and they know they’re weak. They’ve lost scrivers. Lost money. They can’t keep control of their plantations—the slaves there are rebelling left and right. And…and if we just give them a push, we can…”
Sancia fell silent, and a sudden swell of guilt bloomed in her.
“Don’t,” said Berenice.
“Don’t what?”
“Don’t start beating yourself up.”
“You always say that.”
“You are doing what you can. Freeing who you can. And just because you couldn’t free Clef, or…or Gregor, it doesn’t take away the rest of what we’ve done.”
Sancia shut her eyes wistfully. “I cracked that hypatus building like it was nothing. You’d think…You’d think I’d be able to do more.”
Berenice gently took Clef from her fingers. “Whoever made Clef was a sight better than you, or Orso, or the both of you put together.”
“And Gregor?”
Berenice was silent. The subject of Gregor loomed over all of them like a shadow—for he, like Sancia, was a scrived human being, bearing a command plate in his head that could alter his thoughts, his abilities…and perhaps more.
So the question was—who had done that to him? Who had made him what he was, a specimen that far outstripped anything Foundryside had ever made? And why? Despite all their work and research, they still didn’t know.
“Perhaps Valeria could have fixed him,” said Sancia bitterly, “if she hadn’t gone and vanished on us.”
“The less you talk about Valeria,” said Berenice, “the better I sleep.”
“Don’t little children pray to angels to watch over them as they slumber?”
“Valeria was many things. But I think ‘angel’ is definitely far afield.”
Sancia went to their washing basin and splashed cold water on her face. She stared at her reflection in the dimly lit waters, and studied the wrinkles at the corners of her eyes, the lines around her mouth, and the silvery sprinkles in her closely cropped hair.
She returned to the bed and sat. When did I get so old? She flopped back. When did I get so scrumming old?
Berenice replaced the key in the secret panel in their closet and sat next to her.
“Is this going to cut it?” asked Sancia.
“Is what going to cut what?” asked Berenice.
“What we’re doing. Orso’s grand plan. It feels clever enough, bringing down another merchant house. I just worry it’s another move in the same old game.” She gave a bleak shrug. “Candiano, Morsini, Dandolo, Michiel…even the hierophants, however long ago they were. I feel like they’re all links in a chain, binding us up. But every time we break a link, another gets forged to replace it. When does it stop?”
“For now, stop thinking about it,” Berenice said.