Well. I did it. I killed a lexicon. And now we’re all going to scrumming die.
But then the pinkness faded, very slowly, bit by bit…until it had returned to the usual bright white.
She almost sighed, overwhelmed with relief. But then she remembered the little cube.
She looked back down, and saw she could track its passage through the pipes of the lexicon: it was a bright little star of white-hot scrivings, swooping and tumbling about in the flow of the waters—until it grew close to the massive rig.
At this point, the little cube’s density scrivings were activated, and it dropped like a stone, sticking to the bottom of the pipe and refusing to budge in the rush of the water. It was practically right in the belly of the thing. It held fast.
I did it. Holy shit, I did it…
“And just how are we going to explain to the hypatus that we set his bed on fire!” screamed a guard inside Moretti’s chambers.
Sancia shut the hatch and slipped away.
* * *
—
Two floors above, Sancia opened the locked door and was met by the sight of a half dozen Michiel scrivers lying on the floor, groaning and moaning, their faces and bodies covered in bright-red welts.
“Is it over?” she asked. “Sorry, I got hit by a few and I just…I just ducked in and hid in that office there…”
The Michiel scrivers glared at her and pulled themselves to their feet, not bothering to respond.
“Did the box work?” she asked. “Do we need to do any more testing?”
“No!” snapped Moretti, whose face paint and hair were now an absolute mess. There were even holes in his robes from where the little glass beads had shot through. “What the devil were you doing in there?”
“I told you, sheltering from th—”
“Search her! Now!”
Two Michiel guards approached her, their armor covered in tiny dents from the lamps. She sighed and put her arms up, and they searched her rather invasively.
“Nothing,” said one when they’d finished.
“Son of a bitch,” spat Moretti. “Orso! At the very least, reprimand this horrid little girl for her impertinence!”
Sancia tried to suppress a grin. But then she heard a voice hissing behind her: “Hid in that office there…You just…You just hid in that office there, eh?”
She turned to find Orso Ignacio glaring at her murderously, his face trembling with fury—his welt-covered, bruised, pockmarked face.
3
Moretti did not apologize for the accident with the sun cloud. He seemed to take it as a natural risk that one might get pummeled by tiny glass beads at any moment when in a hypatus building. Instead, he and Orso—both bruised and furious—sat at the table before the piles and piles of paperwork, nearly all of which was intended to satisfy the other authorities on the Michiel campo.
“Sign there,” said Moretti. He winced as he touched the side of his face. “And there. And there…”
Finally it was done. The Michiels packed up all the tools the Foundrysiders had brought—the plates, the tomes—and took them away, leaving only the chest of duvots beside the table.
Moretti stood and tried to smile, but apparently even this was too painful. “Congratulations, Orso. You will forgive me if I do not shake hands. Or bow. Or discuss this further.” One hand touched his left buttock, and he made an unpleasant grunt of pain. “I have…some pressing issues I need to attend to…Please, go in peace.”
He departed. Two Michiel guards approached, and one said, “We’ll escort you back to your transportation.”
“Thank you,” said Gregor. He picked up the chest of duvots and they followed them out.
Berenice gave Sancia an intense look. Sancia nodded, very slightly. A giant grin blossomed on Berenice’s face—an unusual show of enthusiasm, since she was often preternaturally controlled—and Sancia had to fight from kissing her right then and there.
They trooped out to the Michiel carriage in silence, and rode back to their own shabby carriage in silence, and then drove it away from