the blankets. I doubt if you remember that now. He said you’d lose some memories when we…When…” She trailed off and sighed. “Do you remember this place, Gregor?” she asked.
He said nothing.
“I…I command you to answer. Tell me the truth. Do you remember?”
“Yes,” he whispered. To speak aloud felt like he had to dig every syllable from the depths of his belly.
She swallowed, staring hungrily into his face. “Gregor, my love…are…are you happy to be back?”
Another whisper: “No.”
She looked away, her breath whistling in her nostrils. “If only you knew…I mean, do you realize what I did to bring you back, Gregor? Do you know what I had to do? Do you know what I’ve done?”
Another whisper: “Yes.”
She looked back at him, surprised. Clearly she had not expected a response. “You do?”
“Yes.”
“You…You can’t. What do you think you know, Gregor?”
“I…know that…you killed my father,” he whispered, staring into space. He felt tears running down his cheeks, felt his fingernails biting into the palms of his hands. “I know…the carriage crash was…your sabotage. And I know that…that you did not intend for…Domenico or me to be on board, but…you killed us. You killed us both. You…killed your children.”
“No!” she cried. “I…I didn’t! I fought to save you, I did so much to secure your life! Don’t you realize that?”
“This…is not life,” he said, staring into her face now. “This is not life. This control. This choicelessness. This is not life.”
She was weeping now. “It’s not true. You have lived. You’ve loved. I’ve bought you that. I…I’ve given you that, haven’t I?”
“I thought I’d…found it,” he said. “Thought I had found a…cause. A family. But I did not realize that…I was still a lie. Still your…slave. I am alone. I was never…one of them.”
She turned to the window, sobbing, and stared out at the dark, spectral cityscape of Tevanne, smoking and burning and moaning under this endless midnight.
“I’m done,” she said. “I’m done. This is not how I wanted you returned to me. This is not what I wanted the city to be. So…I release you,” she whispered. “Awake now. Awake, my love.”
Gregor blinked slowly, but did nothing else.
She drew back. “Gregor? I…I release you. Awake. Awake now!”
Still he did nothing.
“What’s wrong?” she asked. “Why can’t you…Why can’t you be released of your bindings?”
“Because,” he whispered, “I am bound to the will of the Maker. He has granted you some permissions—but not all. And you are not the Maker.”
She cursed loudly, walked over to his bed, and sat down with her face buried in her hands. She sat there for a long while, shoulders shaking as she cried. Then she looked up and said, “I will fix you, Gregor. I will return you to what you were. I will make you free again.” She sniffed loudly. “Do you believe me?”
He whispered: “No.”
She stared at him for a long, long time. Then she stood and, with the air of someone deep in shock, she shambled out the door and down the hall, and Gregor was alone in his room.
He stood there, and he felt his mind recede back into the in-between place, the no-place his mind went when he had no command to follow.
But before it subsumed him, he remembered suddenly: I have something in my pocket.
The box.
Yes. He’d forgotten.
Then he was lost again.
36
“I apologize for the state of things,” said Crasedes as Sancia and Orso helplessly floated into the ballroom. “I suppose, really, it’s like every other project anyone ever undertook—everything takes just a bit longer than you’d expected…”
They drifted down toward what looked like the main wing of the ballroom. Sancia couldn’t turn her head to look to see, but she thought she spied the old Foundryside lexicon standing there on the checked tiles…yet next to it was something bizarre. Something monstrous. It was like the skeleton of a foundry lexicon, a huge contraption nearly fifty feet long, set behind a