aware, the focus and tactile care required to unfold a ball of paper is…profound.”
“Didn’t you hurl a dozen big-ass rocks at Crasedes just last night?” asked Sancia.
“Untrue. I simply reversed the Maker’s commands. This is much simpler than manipulating a physical object. All changes you see were done so that I could ascertain the limits of my influence. My assessment is…not terribly encouraging, unfortunately.”
Sancia looked into the reflections in the wall, hunting through the many shards of images until she found Valeria’s face staring back at her. “Wait. So…if these simple tasks are so hard for you, then…did we do all this for nothing?”
“Untrue.”
“But…But I thought this definition was supposed to make you, like, the God of this little place!”
“True,” said Valeria. “But the effect is weak. Tribuno had to stack it six times over to make the Mountain function.”
“And how many times would we need to stack it for you to be back to full strength?” asked Berenice.
A pause.
“I would estimate,” said Valeria, “about several hundred times, at least.”
Sancia threw her hands up in the air. “Well, shit!”
“We are not getting three hundred more of these definitions,” said Berenice. She looked quite shaken at the prospect. “Not only would they be very hard to produce, but we would also have to kill hundreds of people to make them.”
“This I comprehend. I do not suggest this strategy.”
“Then what do you propose?” asked Sancia. “How the hell are you supposed to help us fight Crasedes?”
“For now, I can defend you. I have only limited capacities that I can exert—but one of these is negating or reversing the commands of the Maker. Like myself, the Maker is a bundle of powerful privileges and permissions. If he were to enter my realm of influence, I would negate the most critical of those permissions.”
“And he’d die?” asked Sancia, excited.
“Untrue. Imagine the cuirasses you used last night. If you activated the ignition component, and asserted its commands were true, it would be ‘on.’ If you hit the button again, it would simply be ‘off’—but not dead. Not gone. Not ruined. Just off. A temporary state that could be reasserted at any time.”
“Shit,” said Sancia. She rubbed her eyes. “I guess we can’t just trap him here forever…”
“True. Cannot.”
“But Crasedes can’t touch us here?” asked Berenice.
“True,” said Valeria. “But that does not mean we are safe. The Maker is still free beyond my peripheries. He has many resources at his disposa—” She stopped abruptly, and then said, “Others are coming.”
“Huh?” said Sancia. Then she heard the footsteps from upstairs.
Berenice looked at her, excited. “Orso! I think…I think he’s awake!”
They ran out and trotted up the stairs, and found Gregor helping Orso walk out of his room to the top of the stairs. To Sancia’s eye, Orso did not look much better than he had the night before—the dark mass of bandages at his shoulder made her skin crawl—but more than that, he looked thin, dehydrated, and his skin had an unpleasant, waxy look to it.
Yet he was alive, and he was on his feet. And he was coherent.
“I would kill,” he croaked, “for some goddamn wine…”
“Wine?” said Sancia. “You want wine now?”
“Just something wet…” he begged. “Something fluid I can put in me to replace all the fluids I’ve lost…”
“I’ll be right back!” said Berenice. She ran downstairs.
“What’s happened?” Orso demanded. “Where’s Crasedes? Where’s Valeria? Did we win? Is it…I don’t know, over?”
Sancia sighed. “You’d better come take a look.”
* * *
—
Ten minutes later, Orso sat on a wobbly stool in the corner of the basement, glancing about at the gleaming black walls as he sucked down jug after jug of weak cane wine. “I had initially thought to put a latrine in here,” he said. “Now I regret not doing it. I’d love to see what you could have done to that…” He looked at Sancia. “So—Tribuno’s definition has essentially turned