“Oh shit,” said Gio. “She did it to all of them, didn’t she?”
Orso and Berenice sat up, startled, as the immense crack echoed through the night skies.
“I told the gates opening outward didn’t count as opening,” said Sancia in the backseat. “The hard part was getting them to wait.” She sniffed. “Should be…oh, one every minute or so for a while.”
In the Mountain, Estelle Candiano heard the crash and looked up. “What in hell?” she said aloud.
She looked down at herself. She’d finished covering her arm and chest in the appropriate sigils, and she did not want to smudge them any.
Still…That was worth investigating.
She walked over to the windows and looked out at the dark ramble of Tevanne. She immediately saw what had happened: one of the northeastern gates appeared to have totally collapsed. Which…should have been impossible. Those gates had been designed by her father. They should have withstood a damned monsoon.
“What in all th—”
Then, as she watched, there was a tremendous crack, and the gate south down the wall from that one suddenly burst outward. The walls around it cracked and began to crumble apart.
Her mouth twisted with rage. “Orso,” she spat. “This is you, isn’t it? What in hell are you trying to pull?”
The intense cracks shot through the Commons with a curiously steady rhythm, like a lightning storm touching down every minute. Orso flinched each time. Soon the sky above the eastern campo was a haze of dust, and the Commons were screaming in panic.
“Sancia,” said Orso quietly. “Did you take down the entire eastern walls?”
“I should have, when this is all over with,” said Sancia. “Should give all those campo soldiers a lot to defend. And it’ll be somewhere far from here. A decent distraction.”
“A…a distraction?” he cried. “Girl…girl, you’ve scrumming killed the Candiano campo! You’ve killed my old house in one night!”
“Eh,” said Sancia. “I just aired it out a bit.”
Estelle Candiano threw on a white shirt just as Captain Riggo threw open the door and charged in.
“What in hell is going on out there, Captain?” she demanded.
“I do not know, ma’am,” he said, “but I came to ask if I could mobilize our reserves in order to investigate and respond.”
There was another sharp crack and the rumble of falling walls. Captain Riggo cringed ever so slightly.
“But…but what do you think is happening, Captain?”
“In my professional estimation?” He thought about it. “It would appear to be a siege, ma’am. Many gates destroyed so that we have to split our forces.”
“Damn it all,” she said. She looked at the clock. She had just over thirty minutes until midnight. I’m so close, she thought. I’m so damned close!
“Ma’am?” said Captain Riggo. “The reserves?”
“Yes, yes!” she snapped. “Throw everything we have at them! Whatever the hell is happening, I want it stopped! Now!”
He bowed. “Yes, ma’am.” Then he turned and smartly strode away, shutting the door behind him.
Estelle walked over to the windows and stared out at the damage. The northeastern half of the campo was almost completely obscured with smoke now. She imagined she could hear screaming from somewhere out in the dark.
Whatever is happening, she thought, I just need it to last more than thirty minutes. After that — nothing else will matter.
The two Scrappers watched as the Candiano campo walls dissolved, bit by bit.
“Well,” said Claudia. “I think we’re done here, yeah?”
“I think so.” Giovanni wrinkled his nose. “Now to file all of Orso’s paperwork — yes?”
She sighed. “Yes. And to buy his property. Off from one mad plan, and on to the next one.”
“You know, we could just take the money he gave us and run,” said Giovanni lightly.
“True,” said Claudia. “But then everyone else would die.”
“Well. Yes. I guess we wouldn’t want that.”
Together, they fled into the darkness.
38
Sancia leaned forward as the gates ahead began to rattle. “Good,” she said. “I told them to go last. The second those things pop open and the way’s clear, you speed in as fast as you can, all right?”
“Oh shit,” said Orso. A bead of sweat ran down his temple as he gripped the pilot’s wheel.
“Don’t go too fast,” said Sancia. “Because there’s going to be shrapnel. Get me?”
“You…you are really not helping here,” snapped Orso.
“Just go when I say go.”
They watched the gates rattle, tremble, and shake — and then, like all the others, they burst open, ripping apart the walls on either side.
A massive tsunami of dust flooded toward them. Sancia shielded her eyes with one hand. She was now mostly blind — but she could still see with her scriving sight.
She waited a moment. Then she said, “Go. Go now.”
“But I can’t see!” said Orso, sputtering.
“Orso, just scrumming go, go!”
Orso shoved the acceleration lever forward and the carriage took off, hurtling into the dust. Sancia squinted and peered ahead, reading the scrivings written into the buildings on either side of the street, glimpsing the massive, rippling landscape of designs and sigils encoded into everything.
“The road curves slightly to the left up ahead,” said Sancia. “No, not that much — there. Yes. Good.”
Finally they broke free of the dust cloud. Orso exhaled with relief. “Oh, thank God…”
“No soldiers in sight,” said Berenice. “Streets are clear.”
“All on the eastern wall,” said Sancia. “Just as I’d hoped.”
“And we’re almost there.” Orso peered out the window at the street names. “Just a little farther…Here! Here’s the spot!” He slammed on the brakes. “Exactly a mile and a half from the Mountain!”
They stared ahead at the vast dome rising among the towers. Then they all scrambled out. Sancia started affixing the gravity rig to her body, and Orso checked his twinned heating chamber. “Everything looks good here,” he said.
“Turn it on,” said Sancia.
“I’ll turn it on once you’re ready,” he said. “Just to be safe.”
She paused, glancing at him, but continued buckling on the gravity rig. “Goddamn, I hope I have this dumbass thing on right,” she muttered.
“Let me see,” said Berenice. She reviewed the various straps, fussing and tutting and adjusting them. “I think you’re set,” she said. “Except perhaps this one here.”
She tightened one buckle on Sancia’s shoulder. Thoughtlessly, Sancia reached up and grabbed her hand, her own bare palm gripping Berenice’s fingers.
Berenice paused. The two looked at each other.
Sancia swallowed. She wondered what to say, and how to say it; how to articulate how impossible touch had been for so long — real, genuine, human touch; and how, after tonight, she wanted to touch no one but Berenice; how hungry she felt for Berenice’s enthusiastic glow, this raw desire to snatch a piece away for herself, like a demigod stealing fire from a mountaintop.