“Yeah,” said Sancia. “I don’t know how she did it, but…Valeria put that knowledge directly into my mind, somehow.” She rubbed the side of her head anxiously. “I’m not sure how I feel about that, really…”
Gregor looked away, his face curiously closed.
“What is it?” asked Berenice.
“I…have been having dreams,” he said finally. “Flashes of memories from when I was under my mother’s control, I suspect. Dreams of sand, and the sea, and the moon…”
Sancia sat up. “The plantations?”
“Yes. And…I recall looking for someone. Looking very intensely. I remember thinking that they had hidden themselves away, and I had to find them. And I remember chambers of stone, far under the earth…”
“You think this is one and the same?” asked Berenice. “That your mother sent you to find this…this thing, this artifact? Whatever it is?”
“Yes,” said Gregor quietly. “Maybe I succeeded. Maybe it just took some time for them to get to it. But I have long suspected my mother had some greater plan in mind. I’ve watched for some sign of her movements. I always thought she’d make a move on the other two merchant houses, but…but this…”
Sancia shuddered and put her forehead on her knees.
Orso burst out in desperate laughter. “This is absurd!” he cried. “This is madness. Do you understand what we’re suggesting here?”
“Yes,” she said quietly. “I do.”
“An artificial god shows up in your bedroom,” he said. “And tells you her maker is coming back? That what, that Ofelia Dandolo is going to raise him from the dead? And you haven’t said it, but you’re suggesting that this maker of hers, this thing in black…that it’s…I mean…” He stood and paced around the table. “I mean, who else could have made Valeria? Who else carried around a little god in a box, setting it free to alter the very world? The only person she could possibly mean is…”
Sancia lifted her head up and looked at him. “Crasedes Magnus,” she said quietly. “The first of all hierophants. Yes. I think Valeria is telling us that Ofelia Dandolo is going to try to bring him back to this world.”
* * *
—
Orso stared at her, mouth agape. He opened his mouth wider to speak, then froze, shut it, and sat back in his chair, too stunned for words.
Gregor carefully cleared his throat. “I believe he is normally depicted as a…a bearded, wizened wizard, yes?”
“Yes,” said Berenice. “But those depictions are based on stories. Almost no one really knows much about him, or the other hierophants. For years, all we had were ruins of their works in the north, in the desert lands—fragments of arches, tombs, aqueducts, cities.”
“But we know more than most,” said Sancia.
“They were goddamn monsters,” spat Orso.
There was a grim silence. They knew from their work with Clef that the hierophants’ near-mythical abilities had not come from some divine source, but rather from more disturbing means: they’d augmented, warped, and altered their bodies and souls utilizing horrific, ritualistic human sacrifice. Clef himself was one such specimen: a mind ripped from its body, and trapped in the designs of a golden key.
“Were they monsters by choice?” asked Gregor. “Or by necessity?”
“My suspicion is that by interrupting the process of death,” said Berenice, “by trapping a soul or a mind within an object, or within someone else’s body…they greatly confused reality, giving them access to powers and privileges we can hardly comprehend.”
“And…Crasedes was the first of them,” said Gregor. “He was the one who invented this method. Yes?”
“The greatest,” said Orso, “and the most powerful of all of them.” He shivered. “I’m not surprised to find he’s some…some specter in a black sheet. There are stories about the bastard wiping out entire cities, and nations! Snapping his fingers and making whole civilizations vanish!”
“But why would he try to come back now?” asked Gregor.
“Probably because Sancia let his goddamn pet out of the box!” said Orso. “And he wants to get her back! I’d normally be a wee bit hesitant to run out and wage war because some malfunctioning god whispered in Sancia’s ear, but…if this really is—and I can’t believe I’m saying it—if it is Crasedes Magnus himself who might be coming back, then…Shit.”
They sat around the table, beleaguered and overwhelmed.
“So,” said Sancia. “What do we do?”
Orso laughed dully. “Of course it happens now. Just when we made headway with the Michiels. Just when we were trying to change the city for the better, to actually make some goddamn progress…” Then his pale, cold eyes narrowed. “I don’t doubt that you saw what you saw, Sancia. But Valeria has lied to you before, yes?”
She nodded. “About who and what she was.”
“Then I wish there was some kind of way to verify all this,” said Orso. “I trust apparitions in the night no more than I do the merchant houses. But how in the hell are we going to confirm that Ofelia scrumming Dandolo is actually doing this? And when? And how? We can’t even get past her campo walls!”
“It’s coming in on a ship,” said Gregor. “That’s what you said, correct?”
“Yeah,” said Sancia.
“Then it’s probably coming soon. I doubt if Valeria would have woken you in the night if we still had a month or two to work with.” Gregor slowly sat back, his chair crackling under his weight. “I don’t have a lot of friends in the Dandolo navy anymore. I don’t have a lot of friends in the Dandolo house period, really. But…I may know someone who could tell us if anything unusual is going on with the Dandolos’ shipping patterns.” He glanced at Sancia. “And…it’d likely be helpful if you came.”
“Huh?” said Sancia. “Me? Why?”
“Because of your bountiful charisma,” said Gregor. “Come along. If Valeria really was as urgent as you said she was, we’ve no time to dawdle.”
* * *
—
Gregor and Sancia strode through Old Ditch as a bleary dawn poured over the rooftops—or rather, Gregor did the striding, whereas Sancia slinked along the edges of the streets. His style of walking had always bothered her: back painfully erect, arms swinging to and fro, every bit of him confident and moving. To someone accustomed to the Commons, he was asking for a knife in the back.