At the sound of her voice, Gregor snapped up like a spring trap, and pointed the half-shield, half-bolt caster on his arm at her.
Sancia held her arms up. “Whoa! God, man, what are you doing?”
Gregor’s eyes were cold and distant. She saw he had Clef clutched in his other hand.
“Gregor?” she said. “What’s going on? What are you doing with Clef?”
He said nothing. He kept the bolt caster trained on her.
Sancia flexed the muscle inside her mind, and looked at him. It looked like the imperiat had done something to his suit — the arms and legs didn’t appear to be calibrated right anymore. But far more startling, she saw a bright, gruesome red star glowing inside Gregor’s head — the same dusky, red glow as Clef and the imperiat.
“Oh my God,” she said, horrified. “What is that? Did they do that to you?”
He said nothing to her.
She realized it must not be new — when they’d implanted a plate in her head, it had been major surgery. “Gregor — has…has that always been there? All this time?”
Blood dripped down Gregor’s arm, but the bolt caster didn’t waver.
“Then I–I wasn’t the first scrived human at all, was I?” she asked.
He said nothing. His face was inhumanly still.
She swallowed. “Who sent you here? Who did this to you? What’s it making you do?” She looked around. “God, did…did you kill all these men?”
Something in his eyes flickered at that — but still the bolt caster didn’t move.
“Gregor…Give me Clef, please,” she whispered. She held a hand out. “Please give him to me. Please.”
He raised the bolt caster higher, pointing it directly at her head.
“You’re…you’re not really going to do it, are you?” she asked. “Are you? This isn’t you — is it?”
Still he said nothing.
Something inside her curdled. “All right. Scrum it. I’m…I’m going to walk over to you right now,” she said quietly. “And if you want to shoot me, Gregor, then goddamn it, you go ahead and you shoot me. Because I guess you went and made me a dumbass just like you the other day in the Gulf,” she said, louder. “When you went on and on and on about your little bit of revolution, and…and how you never wanted what was done to us to be done to anyone ever again. You were stupid enough to say it, and I was stupid enough to believe it. So I’m going to come over there, right now, and help my friend, and get you the hell out of here. And if you put me in my just grave, then fine. But unlike you, I’m going to stay there. And that’ll be on you.”
Before her will failed, she took four quick steps over to Gregor, arms raised, until the bolt caster was inches away from her.
He did not shoot. He looked at her, and his eyes were wide and wary and frightened.
“Gregor,” she said. “Put it down.”
His face trembled like he was having a seizure, and he choked out the words, “I…I didn’t want to be this anymore, Sancia.”
“I know,” she whispered. She placed a hand on his bolt caster, but kept looking him in the eye.
“They…they m-made me,” he stammered. “They said I was one thing. But…I had changed my mind.”
“I know, I know,” she said. She pushed the bolt caster away. His arm seemed to give up, and the weapon clanked to the floor.
He struggled for a moment. “I’m so sorry,” he whimpered. “I’m so, so sorry.” Then he lifted his other arm and held out Clef to her. “T-tell everyone…that I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I didn’t want to. I…I really didn’t want to.”
“I will,” she said. She reached out to Clef, very slowly, just in case Gregor changed again. “I’ll tell everyone.”
She kept reaching toward Clef’s head, still meeting Gregor’s gaze. She was keenly aware that this man could kill her in an instant, and she didn’t dare breathe.
Finally she touched a bare finger to Clef’s head.
And the second she did, his voice erupted in her mind: <-ID KID KID BEHIND YOU BEHIND YOU BEHIND YOU>
She turned around, and saw a wide streak of blood across the floor — put there by Estelle Candiano as she crawled over to her father, golden dagger in one hand and imperiat in the other.
The Michiel clock tower started to toll out midnight.
“Finally,” Estelle whispered. “Finally…”
She plunged the golden dagger into her father’s chest.
Sancia, still flexing the muscle in her mind, looked out at the Candiano campo, and saw that thousands of bright, blood-red stars now shone out in the darkness — and each star, she knew, was almost certainly someone dying.
All across the Candiano campo, people collapsed.
They collapsed in their homes, in the streets, in the alleys, suddenly falling to the floor in spasms, screaming with pain.
Anyone nearby — anyone who didn’t happen to also be affected, that is — tried their hardest to resuscitate them, but no one could understand what the cause was. A recent blow to the head? Bad water?
No one, of course, suspected it had anything to do with the Candiano sachets that happened to be upon their person, in their pockets or their satchels or hanging from a string about their necks. No one understood what was happening, for it had not happened upon the earth for thousands of years.
Sancia stared in horror as Estelle shoved the golden dagger deeper and deeper into her father’s chest. The old man was squirming, shrieking, coughing in agony, and his eyes and mouth shone with a horrid, crimson light, as if someone had lit a fire in his chest and it was burning him from the inside out…
Which it was, she knew. He was burning from the inside out, along with half the people on the campo.
“I deserve this,” said Estelle coldly. “I deserve this. And you, of all people, deserve to give it to me, Father.”
Sancia looked around, and her eye fell on Tribuno’s desk. Sitting on the desk was the big, cracked box with the golden lock: the box that held Valeria — perhaps the one thing that could stop Estelle now.
Sancia darted toward the box. Yet before she’d even taken a step, Estelle raised her arm.
Sancia glanced at her, and saw the imperiat in her hand.
“Stop,” said Estelle.
And suddenly, all of Sancia’s thoughts were gone.
40
Stillness. Quiet. Thoughtlessness. Patience. These were the things that she knew, that she did, the tasks she performed.
There was no “she,” of course. To be a “she” was to be a thing that she was not, something she had never been. She knew that. She — it — was an object, an item, waiting quietly to be used.
It had been told to stop — very clearly, though it could not properly remember when or why — and so it had stopped, and now it waited.
It waited, still and silent, because it had no other capacity. It stood and stared blankly ahead, seeing the sights before it — the woman with the dagger, the dying old man, the smoking cityscape beyond — but it did not comprehend these sights.
So it just waited, and waited, and waited, like the scythe waits in the toolshed for its master’s grip, thoughtlessly and perfectly.
Yet a thought emerged: This…isn’t right.
It tried to understand what was wrong, but it couldn’t. Blocking its efforts, blocking all its thoughts, was a single, simple sentiment: You are a tool. You are a thing to be used, and no more.