isn’t…”
Sancia remembered. Rapidly, she recalled the commands for this assertion and forced them onto the lexicon. It felt like hurrying an elderly campo domestic officer through a wedding rite—Yes, yes, now the ointments, and the reading of oaths, and the binding of hands…
“What’s next?” shouted Sancia.
Berenice’s eyes went blank, and Sancia knew that she’d gone somewhere deep inside of herself, to some secret place where she’d memorized countless facts and facets. “Next is the assertion of the cradle,” said Berenice, “as the heart of meaning for the lexicon!”
Shit, said Sancia, remembering it. That’s a tricky one…
She started forcing the argument on the lexicon—but then there was the sound of something hurtling through the air overhead, and a crack from nearby, followed by a burst of screaming.
“Shit!” screamed Gio from the pilot’s cockpit. “Something just fell out of the sky in front of us!”
But Sancia knew that whatever it was, it had not fallen—it had been thrown.
She stood and looked over the edge of the wine cask, and saw him flitting through the night sky far behind them—a figure in black, still seated in that curiously meditative, cross-legged position…
She watched as something dark hurtled up toward him, orbited him twice, and then flew straight at them.
“Watch out!” she cried.
A stone plowed into the muddy street just to the side of the carriage, and Gio swerved to avoid it. Their carriage creaked and groaned, and Berenice cursed within the depths of the wine cask.
“Do you have it?” asked Orso. “Do you have it, girl?”
“I’m going, I’m going!” snarled Sancia. “What’s next?”
“Next is the definition of the plates!” cried Berenice. “How to read them, and what order they go through!”
Sancia shut her eyes as she goosed the lexicon through this bit as well. I sure as shit wish, she thought, that I had paid attention to Orso more when he prattled on and on about lexicons…
Another stone cracked through the air and smashed into a rookery. It collapsed like it was made of playing cards.
“We’re almost to Foundryside!” said Claudia. “We…We don’t have much more room to run!”
“What’s next now?” shouted Sancia.
“Final one is the command to start enforcing the arguments on the plates!” cried Berenice. “But…that one takes the longe—”
Then there was a crack, and something bit through the wood, and Orso screamed and fell to the side.
It took Sancia a moment to understand what had happened. There was a hole in the side of the wine cask, one that definitely hadn’t been there before. Orso was gripping his shoulder and screaming, his whole body wracked with painful spasms, and blood was pouring out between his fingers. Berenice was shrieking as she kneeled beside him, unsure what to do.
Sancia looked through the hole in the cask, and saw Crasedes hurtling down the fairway after them, his posture queerly placid, his robe and hat not even flying in the wind.
“You son of a bitch!” snarled Sancia. “You rotten, worthless cowa—”
She shook herself, remembering her task, and placed her hand on the lexicon.
she screamed at it.
said the lexicon, its words dripping by like tar sugar.
cried Sancia desperately.
said the lexicon.
screamed Sancia at the lexicon.
She heard Gio shouting in alarm. The scrived carriage took a sharp turn around a corner—a corner she knew, one close to Foundryside—and they slid in the mud a bit, but they stayed upright…
Berenice was sitting in the wine cask, her hands and arms covered in blood while she pressed on Orso’s wound, sobbing hysterically as she tried to stanch the bleeding.
Sancia begged the lexicon.
But the lexicon would not answer—and then there was a snap from under the carriage, and everything leapt around them.
Sancia cried