of images—but I do not remember who you were. Nor do I remember anything concerning your relation to the Maker.?>
said Clef again, this time a little sadly.
Then Sancia remembered. There had been something Crasedes had said to her within the Mountain…
You don’t know what it’s like to lose someone, and know their life meant absolutely nothing in the face of some greater conflict.
Could he have been telling the truth in their first encounter, when he said that Clef was his friend?
As she worked, she kept thinking of Crasedes’s voice, echoing through the darkness, and she wondered how it had sounded and what words it had spoken nearly four thousand years ago.
* * *
—
Ofelia Dandolo stared as the smoke and dust rose from the Morsini campo, and quietly thanked God her estate was too far away for her to hear any screams.
For now, she thought. For war has a discomfiting way of spilling over many boundaries…
She turned away from the window and faced the thing that had been built in the center of her grand ballroom. The sight of it disturbed her even more than the smoke from the Morsini enclave.
She was not quite sure what it was, or what to call it. It appeared to be a half lexicon, or perhaps even less than that, built right on top of her checked tiles and set behind a tremendous dome of green protective glass.
The idea of someone building a foundry lexicon—even a half of one—right in the middle of someone’s ballroom was mad.
The idea of someone doing it in a matter of hours was even more mad.
But then, Ofelia thought, he is capable of so much more than I’d ever imagined…
As if she had summoned him with her thoughts, she heard his voice: “It should all be ready.”
She jumped and looked up, and saw a blot of shadow passing through the open window at the top of the ballroom, though she lost it in the darkness of the ceiling.
Nausea thrummed throughout her stomach. “My…My Prophet?” she said. “I-I thought you were at the Morsini enclave.”
“I was.” His voice now came from beside the green dome of the lexicon. She saw his mask watching her through the glass, his still features distorted in its curves. “But I gain permissions as this city nears midnight. My own gravity grows easy to manipulate.”
She looked at the giant rig sitting hunched in her ballroom. “Is it…safe?”
“Safe enough,” he said. “Like myself, the lexicon is weak now, but…soon it will be powerful.” His mask warped and stretched as he drifted along the side of the dome. “The center of reality. A god of this city, in a way.” He stopped. “In a few moments, I will bring the construct here. When that happens, you must be ready. Prepare every defense you have. Nothing must touch this place. Am I clear?”
“Yes, My Prophet.”
“Good.” She watched as he rose up behind the bubble of green glass and merged with the shadows at the ceiling. “I go now to fetch her—and many other things, of course.”
“But…how shall you do this?” she asked. “How shall you acquire so many things, all at once?”
“Oh, that is simple,” he said. His voice echoed from the distant corner of the room. “First I shall simply ask, and hope they see reason. And if not…Well. All things are possible, with but the turn of a key.”
Then the shadows trembled, and he was gone.
* * *
—
They finished Valeria’s plate and her definition first. Sancia felt ill as she took the tiny tab of bronze in her hand, which was hardly bigger than a grain of rice, and placed it in a small, velvet-lined box.
This tiny thing could kill me or remake my brain or open up the gates of hell, for all I know, she thought. I barely want to touch it to my skin…
said Berenice,