Crasedes slowly drifted inside. “This…This is your device? This room is…Wait.”
Then all the lights came on, and the music started.
Crasedes stared at the ornate, intricate, and frankly ridiculous display around him. A huge, painted banner hung from the ceiling, reading: WELCOME, MAKERS OF THE GOLDEN AGE OF SIGILS! In the center of the room was a giant statue of all the great hierophants—Pharnakes, Aerothos, Seleikos, Agathoklies—and it rotated very, very slightly. On one wall was a massive bronze engraving of Crasedes Magnus himself—the bearded, wizardly version, of course—breaking open the doors of the chamber at the center of the world, a large key in his hand. On the other wall was a second bronze engraving depicting a group of wizened, robust men quite literally poking their heads through the walls of the cosmos, and glimpsing a colossal hammer, and chisel, and a mold, and multiple crucibles, all arrayed against the stars.
The music was by far the worst part: two scrived harps and a scrived set of pipes rose up out of the tile floor and began playing a song that might have been in tune when Tribuno Candiano had made this place however many decades ago—but it certainly didn’t sound much like music now.
“What?” said Crasedes, bewildered.
Sancia darted forward through the room. The blank wall on the far side gave way, allowing her a route out of this blaring, shrieking chamber.
The Mountain’s voice roared to life in Sancia’s mind: <MY PURPOSE! MY PURPOSE! OH, OHH, HOW HAPPY I AM! HOW HAPPY I AM TO HAVE FOUND MY PURPOSE!>
“What!” said Crasedes, much louder.
Then two enormous steel walls fell from the ceilings at the side of the room, locking him in.
<I WILL HOLD YOU FOREVER!> screamed the Mountain to him, overcome with joy. <YOU ARE SO BEAUTIFUL! YOU ARE SO EXCELLENT! I WILL HOLD YOU FOREVER, FOREVER, FOREVER!>
Sancia turned and ran, bolting forward as fast as she could, through doorways and halls and down stairs, until she came to the secret exit. She tore through it at full tilt.
A tremendous, rattling bang filled the dome.
I give it ten minutes, she thought, heart hammering as her feet hit the floor of the darkened passageway.
Another enormous bang.
Maybe five.
* * *
—
Sancia sprinted down the secret entrance as fast as she could, hurtled up the steps, and leapt out into the gardens. She was vaguely aware of smoking buildings around her—apparently the battle between the Dandolos and the Michiels had been taking place in the streets outside the Mountain as well—but she didn’t have time to pay attention to it: she just ran as fast as she could, trying to get away, to get back to the walls and out of this accursed ghost town of a campo…
Another tooth-rattling boom from within the Mountain.
Oh God, she thought. I need to move, I need to move, I need to move…
She glimpsed the giant green floating lantern over the walls ahead—far, far ahead, still tethered to the Foundryside wine carriage.
I hope the others made it back, she thought as she ran on. But how the hell am I going to get there in time?
Then she had an idea. A pretty awful idea, really—but still an idea.
She pulled out her imprinter as she ran. She set it to the anchoring string, aimed, and fired at the lantern.
It was too far away for her to see if she hit it. But I sure as shit hope I did, she thought. Otherwise I’m dead as a goddamn doornail.
She turned on her cuirass, flexed her scrived sight, and confirmed that it was working right, and that it really was projecting the steel box around her.
Another tremendous bang from the Mountain.
Here goes nothing.
Then she aimed forward and fired the other half of the anchoring slug.
There was a clang, and the anchoring slug struck to the inside of the invisible wall. It appeared to hang in midair before her eyes.
And the next thing she knew, she was flying through the air.
Sancia screamed out of sheer instinct, even though she had done this before. Anchoring techniques were a cheap, simple method of transportation—but the reason it was cheap and simple was that it was also sloppy and dangerous as hell. The two lead slugs adhered to both surfaces emphatically believed they should be together, so they were drawn across the distances with what was simply an insane amount of force.
The cuirass bit into her shoulder as she flew. The buildings hurtled by with terrifying speed, and the green floating lantern grew closer and closer, as well as all the little floating lamps dancing around it, bewildering the espringal batteries atop the walls…
She smashed through the fog of lamps, then crashed into the giant green floating lantern. Luckily they had wrought it to be preternaturally durable, but it still complained loudly when her invisible steel box smashed into its side, creaking and crackling unpleasantly.
She heard Orso’s voice below: “What the hell was that?”
“ ’s me!” she screamed.
“Sancia?” cried Berenice.
Sancia realized how absurd this had to look: the side of her invisible box adhered to the side of the floating lantern, and she dangling midair within her cuirass.
“Hold on!” called Claudia. “We’ll get you down!”
Another earth-shaking boom from the Mountain.
“Just go, go, go!” she screamed at them. “Forget about me and just scrumming go!”
“Shit…” said Gio, and the carriage leapt forward, with the lantern—and Sancia—twirling along in its wake.
Her stomach lurched as the lopsided floating lantern went spinning and careening through the streets. She heard revelers shouting and screaming somewhere nearby—maybe at her, maybe at whatever was happening in the Mountain. The lantern bounced off of one building front, then another, and she screamed as she was jerked painfully about in her cuirass.
She heard Claudia shouting, “Get her down, just get her down!”
Then Orso: “Yes, please! For the love of God, we need her!”
And even though she was dizzy to the point of being sick, this made Sancia’s heart drop. For it suggested the final piece of Gregor’s plan was not going quite so well.
The carriage hit a relatively straight fairway. The lantern began to lower, bit by bit. She guessed they were hauling her in on the line, pulling her down to the speeding carriage.
Then there was another boom from the Mountain, and another. Sancia looked over her shoulder out at the rooftops of the city—just in time to see it happen.