Tomas ran to kneel beside Enrico, who lay on the floor, wracked with horrible tremors, his eyes wide and pained. Enrico opened his mouth to scream…and a tiny wisp of smoke unscrolled from his lips.
“What’s happening to them?” said Tomas, panicked. “What did you do?”
“It’s a device I made,” Estelle said calmly, looking down on the dying Candiano guards. “It’s like an eraser. Only I designed it to be attracted to erase one specific thing — the tissue lining the human heart.”
The screams around the room tapered off into whimpers, then a hideous, soft gurgling. Enrico choked and gasped. More smoke billowed up from his throat.
Tomas looked at Estelle, stunned and horrified. “You…you what? You made a device? A scrived device?”
“It was tricky,” admitted Estelle. “I had to tune the scrivings just right to seek out the proper biologies. Went through a lot of pig hearts. Did you know, Tomas, that the lining of a pig heart is quite similar to a human’s?”
“You…You’re lying.” He looked back at Enrico. “You didn’t do this! You didn’t make some blasted rig! You…You’re just a foolish little wo—”
He turned around just in time to see Estelle’s foot flying toward his face.
Her kick caught him perfectly on the chin, and sent him sprawling. As he groaned and tried to sit up, Estelle knelt, reached into his robes, and pulled out the imperiat.
“You…you hit me!” said Tomas.
“I did,” said Estelle calmly, standing back up.
Tomas touched his chin, as if unable to believe it. Then saw the imperiat in Estelle’s hands. “You…Give me that back!”
“No,” said Estelle.
“I…I am ordering you!” spat Tomas. “Estelle, you give me that back, or this time I’ll really break your arm! I’ll break your arms and a whole lot more besides!”
Estelle just watched him, her face serene and untroubled.
“You…” Tomas stood and charged forward. “How dare you! How dare you defy m—”
He never finished the word. As he neared Estelle, she reached out and placed a small plate on Tomas’s chest — and the second it touched him, he froze and hung in the air, completely still, like a statue suspended by strings from the ceiling.
“There,” said Estelle softly. “That’s better.”
Sancia surreptitiously studied the scrived plate stuck to Tomas’s chest. She saw right away that it was a gravity plate, much like the ones that the assassins had used when attacking her and Gregor.
But this one was smaller. Better. Much sleeker and more elegant.
She watched it for a second, and realized that although the plate had frozen Tomas in place, it wasn’t finished yet. It was still doing something to him…
Estelle paced around the frozen Tomas, head cocked in delight and fascination. “Is this what it’s like?” she asked quietly. “Is this what it’s like to be you, my husband? To be a man of power? To stop a life at a whim, and silence those you disdain as you please?”
Tomas did not respond, but Sancia thought his eyes wriggled.
“You’re sweating,” said Estelle.
Sancia lay still, unsure what she meant. Tomas did not seem to be sweating.
“You, on the table,” said Estelle, louder. “You’re sweating.”
Shit. Sancia still did not move.
Estelle sighed. “Give it up. I know you’re awake.”
Sancia took a breath and opened her eyes all the way. Estelle turned and studied her, her face fixed in an expression of icy, regal dignity.
“I suppose I need to thank you, girl,” she said.
“Why?” said Sancia.
“When Orso came to me and said he needed a way to sneak a thief into the Mountain, I realized right away that if Tomas caught this thief, he’d likely take them somewhere safe. And the safest place would likely also be where he’d hidden my father’s collection.” She turned to the table covered in artifacts. “Which I’d been seeking for some time. Looks like it’s all here.”
“It…it was you who backstabbed us,” said Sancia. “You tipped Tomas off that I’d be coming.”
“I told a person to tell a person to tell a person close to Tomas to be on alert,” said Estelle. “It wasn’t personal — surely you understand that. But a creature such as you must be accustomed to being used as a tool by your betters. I’d have hoped Tomas would have given you a quick death, though.” She sighed, slightly put out. “Now I’ll have to decide how to deal with you.”
At the mention of her death, Sancia focused back on the shackles, asking, <Listen — is the secret restricted by time?>
<No.>
<Is the…>
“He thought so much of himself, you know,” Estelle said, looking at Tomas. “He thought scrivers were pale, weak fools. He hated how much he depended on them. He wished to operate in a world of conquest and conflict, a savage world that substituted gold for blood.” She tutted. “Not a man of reflection, then. And when he started finding such valuable designs in Tribuno’s chambers, strings of sigils that just mysteriously appeared overnight, he rejoiced…And he never reflected on where they came from.”
“Y-you made the gravity plates?” asked Sancia, surprised.
“I made it all,” said Estelle, eyes locked on Tomas’s. “I did everything for him. Through hints and nudges, over years and years, I led him to my father’s Occidental collection. I used my father to feed him my scriving innovations — listening rigs, gravity plates, and much, much more. I got him to do everything I could not, everything that I was not allowed to do.” She leaned close to Tomas’s frozen face. “I have done more than you, so much more than you, with you acting as an obstacle every step of the way. With you castigating me, and ignoring me, and grabbing me and…and…”
She paused, and swallowed.
This Sancia understood well. “He thought you his property,” she said.
“A regrettable heirloom, perhaps,” said Estelle quietly. “But no matter. I took that and made an advantage of it as best I could. I’ve rarely had the luxury of pride. So perhaps it didn’t hurt quite as much as it should have.”
Sancia looked at Tomas, and saw he was now strangely bent in places. He was like an iron drum that had been crinkled and crumpled after a few years of hard use.
“What…what the hell are you doing to him?” asked Sancia.
“I am subjecting him to the same thing he and my father subjected me to,” said Estelle. “Pressure.”
Sancia pulled a face, watching as Tomas appeared to…retract. Just ever so slightly. “So his gravity…”
“Every thirty seconds, it increases by a tenth,” said Estelle. “So as it accelerates, its acceleration accelerates…”
“And he still feels…”
“Everything,” said Estelle softly.
“Oh my God,” said Sancia, appalled.
“Why do you react with such horror? Don’t you wish this man dead for what he did to you? For capturing you, for beating you, for slashing your head open?”
“Sure I do,” said Sancia. “Man’s a shit. But that doesn’t mean you’re decent. I mean, even though I might sympathize with you, that doesn’t mean you’re going to let me go, does it? I’d ruin your chance to get at all that money.”
“For money?” said Estelle. “Oh, girl…This isn’t for money.”
“Besides that and killing Tomas, what could it have been about? Or…is a Candiano a Candiano? You think you can make Occidental tools? You’ll succeed where your father failed?”