things. This shouldn’t exist. None of this should exist. I shouldn’t exist.”
“You’d…You’d plunge us all into a goddamned dark age!” said Orso.
“Better to live and die like animals in the wild,” she said indifferently, “than build your castles with the cruel tools of torture. Only then would you be free.” She looked at Sancia. “You, and Gregor…All others whose minds might be ruled by bindings and commands…This is the only way you’d ever be truly free. The only way.”
There was a long silence as Orso and Sancia grappled with this revelation.
whispered Berenice in her ear.
Crasedes slowly turned to face Sancia. “Do you see why I still await your choice?” he asked. “I would allow you to keep your civilization. Your cities, your ships, your buildings…All of that would stay standing. It would just have to be conducted a bit more…morally. The last problem, finally solved. Help me. Tell me where the imperiat is. Help me end this now.”
Sancia sat in silence for a long while, wondering how to buy time.
“It would be,” said Crasedes, “as simple as flipping a switch on that wall over there.” He gestured toward the lexicon’s wall. “With the slightest nudge, I can turn this city into a bright, hot foundry and remake the construct into something beneficial, into something wonderful. But I have waited over a thousand years to do this, Sancia. That’s a long time, even for me. I won’t risk what I’ve worked so long to build when I know the imperiat still poses a threat.”
Sancia felt nauseous at the idea that all Crasedes had to do was to flip a switch on the lexicon’s wall to remake creation itself—and that her gambit was the only thing keeping him from doing it.
she said.
Sancia looked at Crasedes, her eyes hard and her jaw set. “No,” she said.
He cocked his head. “No?”
“No,” she snapped. “No, I’m not going to goddamned help you. Eat shit, you goddamned ghoul. I don’t know where it is, and even if I did, I wouldn’t tell you.”
“Even after hearing the construct’s confession?”
“You want me to make this a choice between you and her,” she said. “But I’m not having it. There’s hardly any difference between the two of you.”
Crasedes looked at her for a while, and then finally sighed. “Well. I had thought this might be difficult, so…that’s why I brought Orso here.”
Sancia felt her breath catch in her throat. She and Orso stared at each other, terrified.
She frantically tried to remember the last hours. Did I tell him about Berenice? Did I tell him she had the imperiat?
Crasedes floated close to Orso and peered into his eyes. “How are you doing tonight, Orso?” he asked softly. “I admit, you don’t look terribly good…”
“Get the hell away from me!” cried Orso.
“I’m afraid I can’t. Now, Orso…” Crasedes’s voice gained a queer, deep resonance, one that made Sancia feel like her bones had turned to butter. “Tell me—do you know where the imperiat is?”
Orso shivered and shuddered. Then he shut his eyes as hard as he could and thrashed about like a man in a bad dream before finally crying, “N-No! I don’t!”
“I see,” said Crasedes. He turned to look at Sancia. “But—do you know who has the imperiat, Orso?”
Shit, thought Sancia.
Orso ripped his head back, smashing the back of his skull against the chair, his teeth gritted and his eyes twisted in anguish. Finally he screamed, “Yes!”
“Yes, you do?”
“Yes! Yes, I do!”
said Berenice.
said Sancia.