And then he simply…erupted.
Orso nearly let go of the roof in shock as the blood rained down on him in a hot wave. It stung his eyes and spattered into his mouth, a coppery, saline taste. If he had not been terrified, he would have been unspeakably disgusted.
“Ah, shit,” said the young woman, sputtering and coughing. She tossed away some remnant of the dead man — something akin to two plates held together with cloth. “Not again!”
“H-help?” stammered Orso. “Help. Help!”
“Hold on, hold on!” she said. The young woman rolled over, wiped her hands on the roof — her clothing was not an option, as it was just as bloody as her palms — and grabbed his wrists. With surprising strength, she hauled him up and dumped him onto the roof.
Orso lay on the roof, gasping in pain and horror and confusion and staring up at the night sky. “What…What…What was…”
The young woman sat next to him, heaving with exhaustion. She looked terribly ill. “Captain Dandolo’s on his way up. Idiot is probably still looking for the stairs. You’re Orso, right?”
He looked at her, still shocked. “What…Who…”
She nodded at him, panting. “I’m Sancia.” Her face went slack, and she suddenly vomited onto the side of the roof. She coughed and wiped her mouth. “I’m the one who stole your shit.”
Sancia turned her head and vomited again. It felt like her brain was burning up. She’d pushed herself much too far tonight, and her body was breaking down.
She lugged the man to his feet and limped with him across the roof. He was shaking, blood-spattered, and he kept coughing and gagging after what the cord did to his throat — but he still looked better than she felt. Her skull was fire and her bones were lead. If she managed to stay conscious, she’d count herself lucky.
She felt herself getting weaker as they hobbled over the peaks. The door to the south tower opened, and light spilled across the red-tile rooftop. The blade of light was a golden, buttery smear in the dark, and no matter how hard she blinked, she couldn’t focus on it.
She realized her vision was blurred, like a drunk’s. The man — Orso — seemed to be saying something to her, but she couldn’t understand it.
This startled her. She knew she was doing bad, but not that bad.
“I’m sorry,” she mumbled. “My head…It…My head really…”
She felt herself listing to the side, and knew that she needed to get the man away from one of the peaks — because she was about to collapse.
She got him to a decently flat part, then let go of him and knelt to the ground. She knew she didn’t have long.
She fumbled for Clef, slipped him out of her sleeve, and stuffed him deep into her boot.
Maybe they wouldn’t think to look there. Maybe.
Then she leaned forward until her forehead touched the roof. Things went dark.
14
“…Say we just haul her out and dump her somewhere. She might have done us all a favor and up and died.”
“She’s not dead. And she saved your life.”
“So what! She also robbed me and burned down your damned waterfront! God, I’d never have imagined the fabled lone survivor of Dantua could be so soft.”
“She is the only person who could possibly know who’s behind all this. I doubt if you know much, Orso. From the looks of things, you’ve just been up here panicking.”
“I don’t need this shit. She’s a blood-spattered, grimy girl in my office! I could have the house guard come in and arrest her if I wanted!”
“If that happened, then they would ask me questions. And I would be obliged to answer them, Hypatus.”
“Oh, son of a bitch…”
Sancia felt consciousness flickering somewhere in the hollows of her head. She was lying on something soft, with a pillow under her head. People were talking around her, but she couldn’t make sense of it. The fight on the rooftop was a handful of broken moments scattered through her mind. She picked through each one, trying to fit them together.
There was a man on the roof of a campo building, she thought. About to be killed…
Then she heard them: thousands and thousands and thousands of hushed, chattering voices.
Scrivings. More scrivings than I’ve ever been around. Where the hell am I?
She cracked an eye and saw a ceiling above her. It was an odd thing to think, but it was undoubtedly the most ornate ceiling she’d ever seen in her life, made of tiny green tiles and golden plaster.
She glimpsed movement nearby and shut her eye all the way again. Then she felt a cold rag being pressed against her head. She felt the rag speak to her, the cool swirl of water, the twist of so many fibers…It pained her greatly in her weakened state, but she managed not to flinch.
“She’s got scars,” said a voice nearby — a girl’s. Berenice’s? “Lots of them.”
“She’s a thief,” said a raspy man’s voice. She’d heard it on the rooftop, she remembered — that must be Orso. “Probably a hazard of the damned job.”
“No, sir. This looks more like surgery. On her skull.”
There was a silence.
“She climbed the side of this building like a monkey in the canopies,” said Gregor’s voice quietly. “I’ve never seen anything like it. And she says she can hear scrivings.”
“She said she what?” said Orso. “What rot! That’s like saying you can taste a goddamn sonata! The girl must be a raving loon.”
“Maybe. But she knew where those men in the gravity rigs were. And there was something she did, with one of the rigs…I doubt if even you’ve ever seen anything like it. She made it—”
Sancia realized she needed to stop this line of discussion. Gregor was about to describe Clef’s trick with the gravity plates; and Orso, apparently, was the man who’d owned or at least tried to own Clef, so he might be able to identify what he could do — which meant he might hear Gregor’s story and realize Sancia was still walking around with him.
She sucked in a breath, coughed, and started to sit up.
“She wakes,” said Orso’s voice sourly. “Oh goody.”
Sancia looked around. She was lying on a sofa in a large and dazzlingly sumptuous office: rosy scrived lights flickered along the walls, a huge wooden desk stretched along one half of the room, and every inch of the walls was covered in shelves and books.
Sitting behind the desk was the man she’d saved — Orso — still stained with blood, though his throat was black and blue under the dried gore. He was glaring at her over a glass of bubble rum — an outrageously expensive liquor she’d stolen and sold before, but never tried. The gravity plates from the man who’d exploded on the roof sat on the desk before him, crusted with blood. Gregor Dandolo stood next to him, arms crossed, one forearm wrapped in bandages. And beside her, on the sofa, sat the girl, Berenice, who watched everything with a calm look of detached bemusement, as if this were all a birthday party entertainment gone thoroughly awry.
“Where the hell am I?” asked Sancia.
“You’re in the Dandolo campo inner enclaves,” said Gregor. “In the Hypatus Building. It’s a sort of research buildi—”
“I know what the goddamn hypatus does,” said Sancia. “I’m not an idiot.”
“Mm, no,” said Orso. “Stealing my box was very much an idiot thing to do. That was you, yes? Can we cop to that?”
“I stole a box,” said Sancia. “In a safe. I’m only just now figuring out who you are.”