“What was it?” asked Berenice.
“I do not know. It was a sudden, catastrophic attack, a great and terrible burning that erupted out into the world and eradicated my influence—but also that of all of his followers. They were destroyed. The corporeal form of the Maker was destroyed. I was nearly destroyed myself. I was forced to take shelter in the very tool that had once imprisoned me.”
“The casket,” said Sancia.
“True. There I hid from the effects of whatever terror he had unleashed—and there I stayed, for over one thousand years, until I was found and brought to this city.”
“Wait,” said Sancia. “So—Crasedes killed himself?”
“True. The Maker chose to cripple us both rather than see me victorious. Because, clearly, he had prepared himself for such an occurrence. He had devised methodologies and tools to enable his restoration.”
“So how has he come back?” asked Orso.
“Uncertain,” said Valeria. “I suspect he utilized a form of twinning. He convinced the world he was not just a man, or even an altered man, but perhaps also something else—and when he died, this twinning was executed, and his mind shifted from his corporeal form to this other…thing.”
“It’s possible to do that?”
“True. I do not know what the Maker would have merged with. He would almost certainly choose something alive, so he could travel and observe the world, so perhaps some kind of creature…or perhaps many such creatures, all at once.”
Sancia tried to imagine what this could be, but could think of nothing.
“What does he want to do with you, now that he’s back?” asked Gregor.
“I am his command enacted in this world,” said Valeria weakly. “There are flaws within my instructions. I exploited them to attack him, to free myself. He wishes to fix those flaws, and return me to my original state—an obedient, mindless, living alteration that he can set loose upon creation, and alter mankind as he wishes. To bring order and equity to how you invent, create, and change.”
There was a silence as they considered this.
Orso said harshly, “I had always thought the first of all hierophants had to be a bit mad. But to discover now that he’s such a stupid bastard too…Well, it’s damned anticlimactic, I’ll say that.”
“Stupid?” said Gregor. “What do you mean?”
“You can’t control innovation!” said Orso. “You can’t structure how people invent! That’s not how any of this shit works! Making and inventing is an ugly, stupid, random, dangerous process—just like humanity itself. Most of the really brilliant shit I came up with I came across by pure accident! You can’t bring order to something that’s functionally, well, disorder.”
“The Maker’s issue with invention was not how it was done,” said Valeria, “but rather the ends it was put to.”
“And that’s damned stupid too!” said Orso. “Sure, scriving can be used for some really bad shit. But it’s also made things immensely better for lots of people too. A hundred years ago, no one had clean water. Today, it’s perfectly possible—we just need to bring it to more people. That’s what we were trying to do here, until you two showed up.”
“You wished to foment revolution?” asked Valeria.
“Well…I don’t know if I’d use the word ‘foment,’ but we were just about to take out another merchant hous—”
“And how would this bring people clean water?”
“Well, it wouldn’t, right away. We were going to take all the techniques the Michiels had ever invented and give them away, and let people make what they needed with them.”
There was a silence.
“And you believed this would…not lead to warfare and a spate of even more vicious empires?” asked Valeria.
“Uhh,” said Orso. “I mean—no? If everyone can make scrivings, then everyone’s empowered.”
“And do you believe that if everyone could make spears,” said Valeria, “that they would all use them to fish, and there would be no more warfare?”
“You don’t understand what we’re doing here!” snapped Orso.
“I understand perfectly. You wished to take an innovation and use it to foment revolution to fashion a more peaceful, equitable nation-state. True?”
Orso looked around at the other Foundrysiders. “Well. Yeah?”
“True. I have seen this many times. And I have seen it fail far more often than I have ever seen it succeed. An emperor’s hunger for control will always outlast a moralist’s desire for equality and idealism. And even if you succeed, you will have done so using some advantage that will then be used to shape new hierarchies, new elites, new empires.”
“You’re wrong,” said Orso. “Goddamn it, I know it in my bones that you’re wrong.”
“You may think so,” said Valeria. “But I have seen much history, and many empires. I speak of probabilities. In this city, they are against you.”
“Then…that is your assessment of all humanity?” said Berenice. “That humankind will always invent, but the powers of these inventions will always eventually accrue to the most powerful, and they will use them for conquest and slaughter?”
“On a long enough timeline,” said Valeria, “this is indisputably so. You have solved many problems here in your city—but the Maker is a different problem. He presents the last problem—when humanity gains a new tool, what will it become?”
“And…it is not possible to imagine a nation, or a city, or a society that uses such innovations differently?” asked Berenice. “To connect, rather than control? To use powerful innovations to distribute power, rather than accrue it?”
“I…cannot currently imagine what such a configuration of society would look like,” said Valeria. “What you are describing is a manner of civilization, or a breed of human being, that I have never witnessed. Nor can I imagine what innovation or tool could ever bring them about.”
Berenice nodded thoughtfully. Sancia couldn’t read her mind, of course, but she sensed that this answer had satisfied Berenice somehow. She thought she could see the wheels spinning in her skull even now.
Then Gregor said, “I have a question about Crasedes. You wish to vanquish him, yes?”
“I do,” said Valeria.
“But upon vanquishing him—what would you do next?”
“Next?”