Gregor turned the carriage. The revelers following their parade carriage were sounding a lot less enthusiastic now. People still didn’t come to this stretch of Tevanne very often since the night of the Mountain.
The carriage drew closer and closer. Sancia kept focusing on the espringal batteries, watching their sleeping commands…and then a few batteries slowly pivoted to target them, sensing their blood, their presence, but unwilling to fire—yet.
“Stop,” said Sancia.
The carriage stopped. The revelers behind them broke out in cheers.
“I’m glad someone is happy, at least,” muttered Orso.
“It’s good cover, though,” said Berenice. “No one’s suspicious about a parade.”
Giovanni opened up the taps to the huge wine cask and the revelers drank and danced and played pipes. Meanwhile, Orso, Gregor, Berenice, and Sancia got ready inside the carriage. They’d brought the usual tools—imprinters, scriving implements, as well as the plates that Gio and Claudia had made for them—but the critical bits were four leather cuirasses.
“How…do these work again?” asked Gregor as he put his on. It was a bit small. “I apologize, I was off getting monkeys from the butchery…”
“See that button on the side of your shoulder?” said Claudia. “No, no, that one’s a fastener for your straps…Right, that one there. Hit that—not now, mind—and it will…well, twin reality the same way Orso’s box worked. But this time it will make reality believe there’s a big metal box around you. Get it?”
Gregor stared at her blankly. “What?”
“It throws up an invisible wall, in other words,” said Berenice gently. “If you saw those big steel boxes back at their workshops—it tricks reality into thinking that box is around you. So if someone shoots a bolt at you…”
“It bounces off an invisible steel wall?” asked Gregor.
“Precisely,” said Claudia. “Just…don’t keep it on all the time. It’ll be hard to get through doors with reality thinking there’s a big steel box around you. And don’t turn it on too close to any walls—you’ll be immobilized, since part of the box wall will be trapped inside of stone. And one more, much more important thing…”
“Oh, God,” sighed Orso.
“Don’t tip over,” said Claudia. “We did a lot of work removing the feeling of weight from the cuirass—you won’t feel like you’re carrying around a big metal box, in other words—but if you tip over, you’ll be stuck.”
“And stuck with your ass exposed at that,” said Gio, “since there’s no bottom to the box.”
“God Almighty…” muttered Orso.
“It’s better than nothing,” said Sancia defensively. “Crasedes can hurl shriekers through the air, rip walls apart…Whatever it takes to buy us time.”
“Speaking of time,” said Gregor, glancing outside, “it’s getting dark faster than I like. We have until midnight, yes?”
“Yeah,” said Sancia. “That’s when he’ll be strongest. I doubt if he’ll make a move before then.”
“Then we should go now,” said Berenice, “so we have as much time as possible to get this component out of the Mountain.”
“Right,” said Orso. He looked at Claudia. “Time for the monkey blood.”
* * *
—
The Foundrysiders climbed out of the carriage and quietly made toward the dead canal. Sancia kept an eye on the espringal batteries, and held up a hand when the big, bronze chambers snapped up and began tracking their movements. Then she looked back at Claudia and waved.
Sitting atop the carriage, Claudia cut the dozens of little floating lanterns loose. The revelers clapped as they drifted into the air like puff seeds from a powdervine…but though the crowd was by now too drunk to notice, all the lanterns drifted in the same direction—toward the wall—and they also drifted at the same height…which happened to be almost level with the espringal batteries.
Sancia watched with her scrived sight as the lanterns slowly drifted to float before the espringal batteries. The batteries came to life, pivoting to target the lanterns—which, if you knew how the batteries worked, would have seemed unusual: espringal batteries only targeted blood that they didn’t recognize. So why would they target some floating lanterns?
This was perhaps the grisliest aspect of their plan, but it seemed to be working. It was common knowledge that espringal batteries had trouble telling the blood of humans apart from the blood of gray monkeys—which scrivers had figured out pretty quickly when the first versions had quickly loosed their salvos at any nearby monkey nests in the rooftops. Most campo scrivers had clarified their commands so that the espringals would figure it out…but Sancia’d had the clever idea of purchasing monkeys from the butchers in the Greens (where blood pie was something of a delicacy), placing the blood in small vials, adding a drop of her own blood to each vial, and attaching them to the floating lanterns.
And a vial of monkey blood in all of our pockets, she thought as she looked around at them. Just to be extra cautious.
As more and more lanterns clustered around the walls, the batteries only became more bewildered. Were these monkeys? Were they unidentified humans? And which one was the target? There seemed to be far too many of them.
Sancia watched as the espringal batteries pivoted from lantern to lantern, utterly unsure what to do. “Now!” she said. Together they leapt down into the canal and ran toward the metal portcullis below the walls.
Sancia gripped the metal of the portcullis, and instantly the rig spoke in her mind.
<…extruding TEN FEET DOWN, provided the farthest extent of all FRAMING do not directly touch any MATTER, and to rise UP when blockage exerts PRESSURE across ALL FRAMES at MAXIMUM PRESSURE…>
It seemed the portcullis had been scrived to gate off the canal, but still allow water to flow through—unless some huge blockage drifted down from within the inner enclave, striking against it. In that case, the portcullis would then rise, allow the blockage to pass through, and then lower again.
<Tell me how you define pressure, and frames,> she asked it.
The metrics and levels poured into her mind, chanted in the curious, anxious voice of the portcullis. She listened closely.
It rises when it feels unusual pressure on the face of the portcullis, she thought. But “the face of the portcullis” isn’t defined well. So if it feels any pressure on one specific square inch of the metal, maybe it should feel obliged to rise…