stone columns. It looked like a person, draped and wrapped in black, and it was floating.”
“And you’d seen this thing before?” said Orso.
“Once,” said Sancia. “In Clef’s memories. We were on the Candiano campo, and a lexicon spiked. And Clef said the feeling of being so close to it…it reminded him of someone.” She shut her eyes, remembering his words: “Someone from long ago. Someone who could make anything float. And whenever he wished, he could fly through the air, like a sparrow in the night…”
There was a long silence.
“Who is this they?” asked Gregor. “Who’s going about bringing this thing back?”
“I don’t know,” said Sancia.
“Well, why the hell couldn’t she tell you?” said Orso. “It sounds like she sure has a hair up her ass about all this. Why couldn’t she give us a name, or a description?”
“I think she said all she needed to. Someone has found some artifact, some piece of something. They intend to bring it here, in a ship, over the waters. And then…”
Another long silence.
“And then this maker of hers returns to life,” said Orso.
“Yes,” she said in a strangled voice. “I think so.”
“This tomb you said you saw,” said Gregor. “And the black sarcophagus, and the bone within…You said you felt like this was in the plantations?”
“Yeah,” said Sancia. “I don’t know how she did it, but…Valeria put that knowledge directly into my mind, somehow.” She rubbed the side of her head anxiously. “I’m not sure how I feel about that, really…”
Gregor looked away, his face curiously closed.
“What is it?” asked Berenice.
“I…have been having dreams,” he said finally. “Flashes of memories from when I was under my mother’s control, I suspect. Dreams of sand, and the sea, and the moon…”
Sancia sat up. “The plantations?”
“Yes. And…I recall looking for someone. Looking very intensely. I remember thinking that they had hidden themselves away, and I had to find them. And I remember chambers of stone, far under the earth…”
“You think this is one and the same?” asked Berenice. “That your mother sent you to find this…this thing, this artifact? Whatever it is?”
“Yes,” said Gregor quietly. “Maybe I succeeded. Maybe it just took some time for them to get to it. But I have long suspected my mother had some greater plan in mind. I’ve watched for some sign of her movements. I always thought she’d make a move on the other two merchant houses, but…but this…”
Sancia shuddered and put her forehead on her knees.
Orso burst out in desperate laughter. “This is absurd!” he cried. “This is madness. Do you understand what we’re suggesting here?”
“Yes,” she said quietly. “I do.”
“An artificial god shows up in your bedroom,” he said. “And tells you her maker is coming back? That what, that Ofelia Dandolo is going to raise him from the dead? And you haven’t said it, but you’re suggesting that this maker of hers, this thing in black…that it’s…I mean…” He stood and paced around the table. “I mean, who else could have made Valeria? Who else carried around a little god in a box, setting it free to alter the very world? The only person she could possibly mean is…”
Sancia lifted her head up and looked at him. “Crasedes Magnus,” she said quietly. “The first of all hierophants. Yes. I think Valeria is telling us that Ofelia Dandolo is going to try to bring him back to this world.”
* * *
—
Orso stared at her, mouth agape. He opened his mouth wider to speak, then froze, shut it, and sat back in his chair, too stunned for words.
Gregor carefully cleared his throat. “I believe he is normally depicted as a…a bearded, wizened wizard, yes?”
“Yes,” said Berenice. “But those depictions are based on stories. Almost no one really knows much about him, or the other hierophants. For years, all we had were ruins of their works in the north, in the desert lands—fragments of arches, tombs, aqueducts, cities.”
“But we know more than most,”