“I? I will go out into the streets of this place. For many more deserve what I have to give than those I found here tonight…”
The hands released his shoulders.
Participazio began counting to sixty—very, very slowly.
When he got to sixty, he cautiously removed his mask—and then he saw what lay before him, and he screamed.
The Hall Morsini was full of ravaged bodies—and yet all of them seemed to have been ravaged by themselves: eyes cut out with forks, faces mangled with butter knives, wrists slashed open with shards of glass, and everywhere, everywhere, was blood, turned an unpleasant purple in the lights of the blue and red lanterns.
Trembling, Participazio watched as the lake of blood approached him. Yet he noticed someone had walked through it recently: there were bloody footprints leading away from the pile of bodies out to the door of the hall.
He stared at it. Then he heard the screams from the streets outside.
IV
SHOREFALL NIGHT
30
Claudia and the Foundrysiders crowded up onto the roof of their offices. Gregor pulled out his spyglass and studied the Morsini campo. “I can hardly see anything in this light,” he said quietly. “But…I can see the gates to the inner enclave are open. Yet people are flooding through. Something…Something has definitely hap—”
He stopped short.
“What is it?” asked Sancia.
“There…There are people jumping out of the windows,” he said quietly. “I see them…They’re jumping out of the windows in one of the towers. I…I mean, they’re killing themselv—”
Sancia realized what was happening, and snatched the spyglass away.
“Stop!” she shouted. “Stop looking! Turn away! Don’t try and see!”
“Why not?” asked Orso.
“When’s the last time we saw a bunch of people suddenly kill themselves?” she asked.
“Oh God,” said Gregor softly. “The scrivers on the galleon…”
“It must be that,” said Sancia. “There’s something…something wrong with how Crasedes was restored, the way he was brought back to life. You can’t look at him. It’s a distortion in reality that drives you mad.”
They all turned away from the nightscape of the campos, shielding their eyes. “You think he, what, he took off his mask?” asked Orso. “And he’s…He’s just walking around the enclave?”
“Yes! During what must have been their carnival celebrations! He’s beheading the entire goddamn Morsini campo in one night, without firing a single bolt!”
Gregor listened to the screams, eyes half-closed. “Bottla ball,” he said quietly. “That’s what this is, isn’t it? Just as Orso said.”
“Said what?” said Orso.
“That sometimes in bottla ball, when you have no good plays,” said Gregor, “the only play is to toss your ball to hit as many as you can, ruin everyone else’s strategy, and scramble the court. And…I would say the court of Tevanne has just been pretty well scrambled, to me…”
“Why?” said Claudia. “Why is he doing this?”
“I don’t know,” said Sancia. “I don’t know why he’d pick the Morsinis at all, since it was the Michiels that were moving against Dandolo Chartered. The Morsinis have been pretty quiet this whole time. Valeria—any ideas?”
They heard her disembodied voice, though it was much fainter up here on the roof: “Unknown. What might these Morsinis possess that the Maker would desire?”
“I’ve no idea,” said Orso.
“Nor I,” said Berenice. “I thought they mostly just made ships and weapons. Brute strength as opposed to…well, any other virtue.”
said Sancia.
he said.
asked Sancia.
There was a pause, and Sancia got the queerest feeling that Clef had just looked through her, as if she were made out of glass.