<And you would have said yes if it did?>
<Yes?>
She swallowed, relieved. Of course, she thought. Because asking about phonetics, not words, doesn’t break the rules.
<If I said “tuh,” would it move the needle like the start of the secret?>
<No.>
<If I said “seh,” would it move the needle like the start of the secret?>
<No?>
<If I said “mah,” would it move the needle like the start of the secret?>
<…Yes,> said the shackles.
She took a breath. So the password starts with an “m.” Now I just need to keep guessing — as fast as I can.
“And the girl?” said the guard.
“Dispose of her,” said Estelle. “However you like. She is of no consequence.”
“Yes, ma’am.” He saluted as Estelle turned and left, leaving him alone in the room with Sancia.
Shit! thought Sancia. She started guessing, faster and faster — and she realized then that she could communicate faster with rigs than she could with people. Just like when there’d been a sudden, impenetrable burst of messages between Clef and a rig, she could focus her thoughts and ask dozens if not hundreds of questions at once.
Her mind became a chorus of noes with the occasional yes. And slowly, steadily, she assembled the password in her mind.
The guard walked over and looked down at her. His eyes were small and watery and deep set. He looked her over with the air of a man reviewing a meal and wrinkled his nose. “Hm. Not really my type…”
“Uh-huh,” said Sancia. She shut her eyes, ignored him, and focused on her restraints.
“You praying, girl?”
“No,” said Sancia. She opened her eyes.
“You going to make any noise?” he asked. He thoughtlessly pinched the fabric of his trousers, just next to his crotch, and started kneading it back and forth. “I don’t mind that, honestly. But it’d be a bit inconvenient, with the boys in the hall…”
“The only noise I’m going to make,” she said, “is mango.”
“Is wha—”
With a pop! all of Sancia’s shackles swung open.
The guard stared, and said, “What in the h—”
Sancia sat up, snatched his hand, stuffed his wrist into the shackles, and snapped them shut.
Stunned, the guard stared at his hand and heaved at it. It didn’t budge. “You…You…”
Sancia jumped off the table and smashed the listening needle in the cage. “There. Now you’ll stay put.”
“Clemente!” he bellowed. “She’s loose, she’s loose! Send everyone, everyone!”
Sancia punched the guard in the side of the head as hard as she could. He staggered and slipped, his hand still stuck in the shackles. Before he could react, she knelt and unsheathed his scrived rapier.
She looked at the blade, alight with commands. She could see it was made to amplify gravity, to believe it’d been hurled through the air with inhuman force.
Then there were footsteps in the hallway — lots of them. Sancia took stock of the situation. The hallway beyond was the only exit, and it was rapidly filling up with guards, from the sound of it. She had just the sword on her — and, given her new talents, that gave her a considerable advantage. But probably not enough to take on a dozen men with espringals and the like.
She looked around the room. The far wall was made of stone, and her talents allowed her to glimpse the commands on the other side. These were fainter and more difficult to read, probably due to the distance — but she could see that one rig was scrived to be unnaturally dense, almost unbreakable, a thin, rectangular plate seemingly set in the wall…
A foundry window, she thought. And she’d had recent experience with those.
She addressed the rapier: <You — you amplify gravity, yes?>
<WHEN I APPROACH PROPER SPEEDS, MY DENSITY ACHIEVES AMPLIFICATION AND GRAVITY IS TRIPLED,> the sword bellowed back promptly.
<How amplified does your density get?>
<IT IS AS THOUGH THERE ARE TWENTY OF ME,> said the sword.
<And how much do you weigh?>
<AH…THIS IS LESS DEFINED? I WEIGH AS MUCH AS I WEIGH?>
<Oh, no, no, no. That’s wrong. You actually weigh this much…>
The guards were close now. Sancia put the sword on the ground and stood on it with both feet. Then she picked it back up, took a few steps away from the far wall, and lifted the blade.
She aimed carefully. Then she hurled the sword forward, dropped to the floor behind the table, and covered her head.
It had been a stupefyingly easy thing to do, really. The sword’s weight had been essentially undefined, so she’d just stood on the blade and told it that this new weight it was experiencing was the sword’s actual weight.
But this definition only mattered when its scrivings were activated — specifically, when it was swung at the proper speed. Which included being thrown.
Now when the sword activated its scrivings, it did not think it was as heavy as twenty six-pound rapiers, but rather twenty hundred-and-sixteen-pound rapiers. And then, of course, it amplified its gravity, which made the effect even more extreme.
When the rapier hit the far stone wall, it was like it’d been struck by a boulder falling off the side of a mountain. There was a tremendous crash, shrapnel and debris rained throughout the room, and dust filled the air.
Sancia lay on the ground, covering her head and neck with her hands as the pebbles and rocks rained down on her. Then she stood and dashed through the hole in the wall to the window on the far side of the room.
She barely had time to look out — she was about sixty feet up above the Candiano campo. Like a lot of the Candiano campo, this area was deserted, but there was a wide canal just below the wall. She jumped up and shoved the window open. Then she lifted herself up, through, and over, and then she hung on the window of the foundry, reviewing her options to descend.
She heard the sounds of shouts within, and looked up through the window to see seven Candiano soldiers charge in. They stared at her, hanging there on the window, and raised their espringals.
For a moment, she debated what to do. She knew the window was scrived to be unnaturally durable. But she knew at a glance that the soldiers’ espringals were quite advanced.
The hell with it, she thought. She turned and leapt off the window, arms outstretched for the canal below.
She tumbled, end over end. She heard the window explode above her, and she opened her eyes. And then she saw.
Even though she had no mind for it, she nearly cried, “Oh my God!” as she fell. Yet not out of fear, or dismay — but rather wonder.
For she was still seeing the scrivings around her. And as she fell, she did something more, something she had no idea she could do: it was like there was a floodgate in her mind, and out of fear or wonder or instinct, it opened up just as she opened her eyes…
Sancia saw the nightscape of Tevanne below her, suddenly rendered in the juddering, jangly tangles of silver scrivings, thousands and thousands and thousands of them, like a dark mountain range covered in tiny candles. She watched in wonder as the scrived bolts hissed through the air above her, glittering like falling stars as they sped out over the city, a city that swarmed with minds and thoughts and desires like a forest full of fireflies.