am not worried about me. I’m worried about you.” He looked at her. “Crasedes did something to me. He and my mother can control my thoughts, my actions, my memories. I would not want that control to extend to you both.” He started to sit up. “I would wish to keep what you have safe.”
She helped him stand. “You don’t always have to play at being a goddamned watchman, you know. For once, you could do something to help you.”
Gregor paused, thinking. “I do have a question.”
“Yeah?”
“If…If you think it could work with three people—could it work with more? Like, say, an army?”
“Huh? You want an army of people with their minds all twinned together?”
“I’m not proposing anything. But…I am suddenly imagining an army of people, of all these different perspectives, sharing themselves…Or perhaps a nation. A nation of people, truly, deeply united…” He shook his head. “But now is not the time for dreams. We have enough great works to do today—do we not?”
She sighed deeply, reached into her pocket, and pulled out the long, golden key with the curious tooth. “Yeah. We do.”
* * *
—
“The solution is complete,” said Valeria as they entered the basement. “I have confirmed that the commands we obtained from Gregor will work.”
Sancia glanced at the creation sitting on the table before Valeria’s lexicon. It looked like a small, copper sphere that split in half, opening on a hinge, with each side carefully and artfully engraved. She knew what this device was, and how it worked—one of the benefits of being twinned with Berenice, who’d made it. She also understood that it was one of the most impossibly advanced creations that had ever been made in Foundryside—if not Tevanne.
“You will have to place the key within the sphere,” said Valeria. “And activate it. Then I can utilize the permissions to warp the time within the sphere so it would be as if the key experiences one, or several, millennia. At this point, the key should be usable again.”
“It’s as simple as that?” said Orso.
“Not simple. I will not simply bathe him in endless years while he is in the vessel. That would return him to the state he was at before—which would not be useful. As I said, just opening my casket almost destroyed him.”
“Then what are you going to do?” asked Sancia.
“What I will do with time within that vessel,” said Valeria, “would be the difference between a stone being dropped within a pool of melted iron, and a stone being expertly carved with an iron chisel. When I am finished, he should not only be usable to us, but he will be more powerful than he was before. But it will be terribly, terribly difficult…And it will strain me to my limits…”
“No sacrifices?” said Gregor.
“I am thousands of sacrifices,” said Valeria coldly. “Whatever sacrifices might be necessary have already been made.”
Despite such grisly discussion, Sancia couldn’t help but feel a thrill of excitement. she said to Berenice.
said Berenice.
“And…will there be any side effects?” said Gregor. “Having just had my own time manipulated, I am somewhat anxious about how this might go.”
“On this, I am…uncertain,” said Valeria. “But if you are anxious about such effects, I recommend relocating to a safe space—perhaps five to ten thousand feet away.”
Orso shook his head and sat down on the floor. “I don’t have time for this shit. Sancia—I say you stick the key in, shut the damned ball, and be done with it. We’ve been through hell trying to get Clef back up and running. I wish to see it finished.”
Sancia pulled Clef out of her pocket and looked down at him. It