Estelle smiled coldly. “Forget Occidental tools. What no one knows is — who were the hierophants? How did they get to be what they were? The answer was there in front of my father’s face, the whole time. And I’d solved it ages ago. He never listened to me. And I knew Tomas wouldn’t. Yet I needed the resources to prove it.” She paced around Tomas again. “A collection of energies. All thoughts captured in one person’s being. And the grand privileges of the lingai divina—these are reserved for the deathless, for those who take and give life.” She grinned and looked at Sancia. “Don’t you see? Don’t you understand?”
Sancia’s skin crawled. “You…you mean…”
“The hierophants made themselves the same way they made their devices,” said Estelle. “They took the minds and souls of others — and invested them in their very bodies.”
Sancia watched, sickened, as Tomas’s form began to shudder, as if it were being liquefied. Then his eyes began to fill with blood. “Oh God…”
“A single human form!” cried Estelle, triumphant. “Yet within it, dozens, hundreds, thousands of minds and thoughts…A person brimming over with vitality, with meaning, with power, swirling reality around themselves, able to not just patch over reality but change it with a whim…”
Tomas’s body crumpled inward, collapsing in on itself, his shattering arms and chest erupting with blood that then, in full defiance of physics, shrank back into his body, forced in by his unnatural gravity.
“You’re scrumming insane,” Sancia said.
“No!” Estelle laughed. “I’m just well read. I waited for so long for Tomas to collect all the tools and resources I need, all the ancient sigils. I was so patient. But then old Orso presented a wonderful opportunity. And, as they say, you never turn down an opportunity…” She reached into her robes and took out something glimmering and gold — a long, oddly-toothed key.
Sancia stared. “Clef…”
“Clef?” said Estelle. “You have a name for it? That’s rather pathetic, isn’t it?”
“You…you scrumming bitch!” said Sancia, furious. “How did you get him? How did you…” Then she stopped. “Where’s…Where’s Gregor?”
Estelle turned to look at her husband.
“What did you do?” demanded Sancia. “What did you do to Gregor? What did you do to him?”
“I did what was necessary,” said Estelle, “to gain my freedom. Wouldn’t you?”
Sancia stared, disgusted and terrified, as Tomas’s body slowly lost form and shape, turning into a boiling ball of blood and viscera, which shrank, and shrank, and shrank…
“If you hurt him,” said Sancia. “If you hurt him, you, you…”
“It could have been worse.” She gestured at the monstrous sight before her. “I could have put him through this.”
Tomas’s body was now about the size of a small cannonball. It was shuddering slightly in the air, as if it could no longer bear the pressure.
Estelle stood up tall, and despite her mussed hair and her smeared makeup, her eyes were bright and hard and commanding, and suddenly Sancia understood why people had thought Tribuno Candiano a king. “Tomorrow I shall do what my father always dreamt of, but never accomplished. And at the same time, I will take away all he valued, and all you valued as well, husband. I will become Company Candiano. And then I will collect all that I have been denied!”
And then the small, red ball that had once been Tomas Ziani simply…popped.
There was a loud, curious coughing sound, and the room instantly filled with a fine, swirling red mist. Sancia shut her eyes and turned her head away as she felt warm drops stippling her face and neck.
She heard Estelle sputtering and spitting somewhere in the room. “Ugh. Ugh! I suppose I hadn’t thought of that…But every design does have its limit.”
Sancia tried not to shake. She tried not to think of Clef in Estelle’s hands, of what she could have done to poor Gregor. Focus. What can I do now? How can I get out of this?
Estelle spat some more, coughed, and called out, “It’s done!”
The red mist continued to settle. There was the sound of footsteps in the hallway beyond. Two Candiano soldiers walked in. They did not seem surprised by the sight of all these corpses, or the whole room coated in a thin layer of blood.
“Shall we burn them as discussed, ma’am?” asked one.
“Yes, Captain,” said Estelle. She was now red from head to foot, and she cradled the imperiat and Clef in her hands like twin infants. “I am quite eager to finally play with these on my own, but…Have we seen any movements from the Dandolos?”
“Not yet, ma’am.”
“Good. Arrange for my escort to the Mountain, and mobilize our forces,” said Estelle. “The entire Candiano campo must be locked down and patrolled from now until midnight. Issue orders suggesting Tomas has gone missing — and we suspect foul play.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Sancia listened closely. And that word—“orders”—suddenly gave her an idea.
She took a breath, focused on the shackles again — and realized she’d been thinking of them wrong.
She’d been focused purely on the shackles, on the bands of steel, and what they expected or wanted — but she hadn’t realized there might be more to the system.
What’s breath but not a breath?
There were the restraints for her ankles and wrists, yes. But now that she searched them, she realized the shackles were eagerly awaiting a signal from another part of the rig — one she’d totally missed, set on the end of the operating table.
She looked down, and saw this component was small, set on the edge of the stone surface. She reviewed its commands, and saw it was constructed similarly to how Orso had described the aural relay device: a thin, delicate needle, trapped in a cage, that moved with vibrations of sound…only, it needed to move in a specific fashion.
Of course, thought Sancia. Of course!
<Is…Is the secret a word?> she asked the shackles quickly. <A command? A password?>
<Yes,> said the shackles simply.
She nearly sighed with triumph. It must be like a safe word — someone could say the right phrase aloud, and the needle would move in just the right way, and then the shackles would pop open…
<What’s the word?> asked Sancia.
<Secret,> said the shackles. They sounded amused.
<Tell me the secret word,> she said.
<Cannot share the word. It is secret. So secret even I don’t know it.>
<Then how do you know when the secret is said?>
<When the needle moves the right way.>
This was frustrating. She wondered how Clef would have figured this out. He always phrased and rephrased questions or ideas until they didn’t break the rules, in essence — so how to do that here?
She got an idea. <The secret,> she said. <If I said “puh,” would it move the needle the right way, like the start of the secret?>
A long pause. Then the shackles said, <No.>