you get it?” asked Berenice. “Did you get it?”
Sancia pointed at her face with one muddy finger.
“Oh.” She felt Berenice kneel behind her, then wipe her face clean with a cloth.
Sancia gasped for air once her mouth was clear of muck. “Oh, God…Oh, God, it smells, I didn’t realize how it smells…”
“Are you all right, my love?”
Sancia sat up and looked down at her right hand. She opened her fingers and wiped the mud away to reveal a small golden metal cone, intricately engraved with scrivings…
“I,” she said, grinning triumphantly, “am just scrumming fine.”
* * *
—
Orso gasped, shook water from his face, and tried to understand what he was seeing.
His cuirass was still projecting his invisible steel box, but it seemed he’d fallen over—which meant the face of the box was pressed to the ground, and since the cuirass had apparently been scrived to be equidistant from the sides of the box at all times, he was now suspended in the air, facedown, trapped in the cuirass, his arms and legs dangling below.
The hallway was now flooded with water, but only a foot high. However, because the box had no bottom, it had flooded as well—and if the water had been a few feet higher, it would have undoubtedly submerged Orso’s head, and he would have helplessly drowned, trapped inside his cuirass.
He stared into the surface of the water, which was mere inches from his nose. “Shit,” he gasped. “Oh shit.”
He reached up and pushed the button on his left shoulder. The invisible box vanished, and he fell face-first into the scummy waters.
He fought to his feet, gasping and moaning—his brain felt like it was still spinning in his head—and looked around. A few lamps were lit in the hallway, but everything was dark and wet and gleaming—and he couldn’t see Gregor.
“Gregor?” he called. “Gregor?”
A large figure lumbered around the distant corner, sloshing through the water, and stopped when it saw him.
“Gregor?” he said hesitantly.
The figure was then joined by two others—these wearing Dandolo helmets that gleamed in the light.
“Oh hell,” said Orso quietly.
The three soldiers waded down the hallway to him. As they passed one lamp, Orso saw they were all Dandolos, of course: and they were very large, and wet, and angry-looking.
“You bastard little shitling,” snarled the one in the middle, who seemed the biggest. He pulled out his rapier.
Orso stood, slapped the button on his chest, and turned back on his invisible barrier. Then he tried to walk backward, away from them—but the cuirass stopped him, holding him in place.
He looked around and saw the wall of the hallway was very close. He must have turned it on so the invisible steel passed through the stone, immobilizing him.
Oh God, he thought. I’m trapped.
And he knew, of course, that scrived rapiers would have no issue penetrating a steel wall.
“I, uh…” said Orso. He thought desperately, tugging at his cuirass. “This is all a big misunderstanding, I…I used to live here and…”
“I ought to gut you,” said the big soldier, “like a damned…”
He stopped. A boom echoed through the Mountain, followed by a great deal of distant yelling and screaming.
“What the hell is that?” asked the soldier on the right. “Wait…look at your spotter.”
The big soldier looked down at his people finder, and they saw nearly every light was lit up—suggesting that the Mountain was suddenly filled with many, many people who did not bear the Dandolo sachets.
“What?” said the big soldier. “Who is this now? What the hell is going o—”
The hallways of the Mountain filled up with an amplified voice: “SOLDIERS OF DANDOLO CHARTERED! BY THE AUTHORITY OF MICHIEL BODY CORPORATE, YOU ARE HEREBY COMMANDED TO STAND DOWN FROM YOUR POSTS AND DEPART FROM THIS ENCLAVE IMMEDIATELY!”
The soldiers looked at one another, then at Orso.
“The Michiels?” asked the soldier on the left. “What are they doing here?”
“THIS