Роберт Беннет - Foundryside

It was her voice — but not her words.

Everyone blinked, confused. Sancia felt no less confused than they — the experience was deeply disorienting. It was like watching yourself doing things in a dream, unable to stop.

“What!” said Orso. “Of course we can hear you! Are you being ridiculous?”

“Okay,” said Sancia’s voice. “Wow. Weird.” She cleared her throat again. “ So weird.”

“Why weird?” asked Claudia. “What’s weird?”

“This isn’t Sancia,” said her voice. “This is the key, Clef. Uh, talking right now.”

They stared at each other.

“The poor girl’s gone insane,” said Gio. “She’s starking mad.”

“Prove it,” said Orso.

“Uh, okay,” said her voice. “Let’s see here. Right now, Orso is carrying two scrived lights and…what I expect is some kind of lexicon tool. It’s a wand that, when touched to certain scrivings, dupes them into going in a loop, essentially pausing them, which allows him to extract the plate and reintegrate it with another command, but it has to have domain over similar metallurgical transitions, because the tool he’s got seems to be really sensitive to bronze and other alloys, and especially tin when it’s present in a ratio of twelve to o—”

“Okay, yeah,” said Claudia. “That’s not Sancia.”

“How are you doing this?” said Berenice, awed. “How are you…Clef…talking with her voice?”

“The girl’s got a plate in her head that gives her…I don’t know the word for it, something like object empathy,” said Clef. “I doubt if it’s intended. I think they scrummed up something when they installed it. Anyways, it’s a connection point between items — only, most items aren’t sentient. I am. So it’s kind of a two-way street.” Clef coughed with her body. “So…how can I help? What do you guys want to know?”

“What are you?” said Orso.

“Who made you?” asked Berenice.

“Will stealing the imperiat really stop Tomas Ziani?” asked Gregor.

“What the hell is Ziani even doing?” asked Claudia.

“Oh, boy. So — everything,” sighed Clef. “Listen, I’m going to try to have to summarize the stuff that Sancia and I have been discussing for days, so just…just sit down and be quiet for a moment, okay?”

And Clef talked.

As he spoke, Sancia began to…well, not quite doze as much as drop out of herself. It was like sitting on the back of a horse and hugging the person who held the reins and slowly falling asleep with the beast’s movements — except the beast was her, her body, her voice and her throat, moving from word to word and thought to thought.

She drifted.

Slowly, Sancia drifted back in.

Orso was pacing around the crypt like he’d drunk all the coffee in the Durazzo, and he was positively ranting: “So Marduri’s Theorem is true ! Scrivings, even small ones, are violations of reality itself, like a run in a hose, all the…the fabric piling up and getting tangled, except it’s a run that accomplishes something very specific!”

“Uh, sure,” said Clef. “I guess that’s one way of putting it.”

“That’s what you perceive!” cried Orso. “That’s what you sense! These…these violations in reality! And when you alter them, you’re just…just fiddling with the tangle!”

“They’re more like errors,” Clef said. “Intentional errors, with intentional effects.”

“The question is what composes the fabric,” said Berenice. “Marduri believed there was reality and a world under it that made reality function. Could scrivings be a tangling of these tw—”

Sancia drifted back out again.

Again, she awoke.

“…guess I’m not understanding the question,” Clef was saying.

Orso was still pacing the crypt. Berenice, Claudia, and Giovanni sat around Sancia, staring at her with wide eyes like she was a village soothsayer.

“I am saying,” Orso said, “that you’re in an unusual position — you can review all of the scrivings of all of Tevanne and see how all of them work, and how well they work.”

“So?”

“So where are we weak? Where are we strong? Are we…Are we good ?”

“Huh,” said Clef. “I guess I hadn’t thought about it. I think the problem comes down to the difference between complicated and interesting. And…well, most of the stuff I’ve seen in Tevanne is more complicated than it is interesting.”

Orso stopped pacing. He looked crestfallen. “R-really?”

“It’s not your fault,” said Clef. “You’re like a tribe that’s just invented the paintbrush. Right now you’re just putting paint everywhere. One thing I do think is pretty innovative, though, is twinning.”

“ Twinning? ” said Berenice. “Really?”

“Yes! You’re essentially duplicating a physical piece of reality!” said Clef. “You could duplicate all kinds of things if you tried.”

“Like what?” said Orso.

“Well,” said Clef. “Like a lexicon.”

The scrivers’ jaws all went slack at that.

“You can’t twin a lexicon !” said Orso.

“Why not?” said Clef.

“It’s…it’s too complicated!” said Giovanni.

“Then why not try to twin a simpler lexicon?” said Clef. “Imagine a bunch of small lexicons, all twinned, all able to project scrivings…well. Anywh—”

Gregor coughed. “As interesting as all this scriving theory is…might we focus on the more lethal issues at hand? We are attempting to sabotage Tomas Ziani — but we still only half-understand what he’s even doing. Will stealing back the imperiat actually stop his efforts?”

“Right,” said Berenice, though she sounded a touch disappointed. “Let’s look back at Tribuno’s notes and see if Mr. Clef has anything to say on tha—”

Again, things faded out.

The world returned. Sancia was seated in front of a sarcophagus that was covered in Tribuno’s notes. The wax rubbings of the bas-reliefs were situated in front of her.

“…that is human sacrifice if I ever saw it,” said Gregor. He pointed to the engravings of the bodies on the altar, and the blades above. “And if Tomas Ziani is handling bodies, then it stands to reason he’s attempting human sacrifice.”

“But that’s not at all what Tribuno Candiano’s notes say,” said Berenice. She picked up a sheaf of paper, and read, “The hierophant Seleikos refers to a ‘collection of energies’ or a ‘focusing of minds’ and ‘thoughts all captured.’ That would suggest the ritual does not involve death, or killing, or murder, or sacrifice. Just…something being gathered or pooled. The hierophants were describing an act that we simply lack the context to understand. And it seems Mr. Clef here also lacks that necessary perspective.”

“Again — could you please not call me that?” said Clef.