The sound of footsteps echoed above her.
<Not them,> said Clef.
<Clef, goddamn it! You don’t need to tell me all the times it’s not them! Just tell me when it is them!>
<Okay. Well…I’m pretty sure this next one is them.>
<Huh?>
A door opened somewhere in the basement.
<Yeah, that’s them,> said Clef. <They’ve got the signal. Listen…>
There was a silence, and then the chanting and whispering peaked, and she heard a voice among them: <…I am given rights, given forbearance, because I am chosen, I am allowed, because I am awaited, I am expected, I am NEEDED…>
<God,> said Sancia. <Are all scrivings so neurotic?>
<They’re compelled to act in one specific fashion,> said Clef. <Which is basically the definition of neurotic, if that helps.>
Sancia reached out and touched the floor with a bare hand. The wooden boards crackled to life in her mind, one by one — and, eventually, she felt someone slowly walking across them.
A woman — Sancia could tell by the size of the feet, the build of the shoe, the gait. Walking very…cautiously.
<She’s spooked,> said Clef.
<This is an emergency pickup. I’d be spooked too.>
The woman walked by the broom cupboard — and even tried the knob, though it was locked. Must be checking everything, thought Sancia. Then, finally, she went to the trapdoor to the rig.
Sancia waited, and waited, and waited, one finger pressed to the floor. Then she felt the reverberations in the wood as the trapdoor shut, then footsteps as she came back — and these footsteps were slightly heavier.
<She’s got it,> said Sancia.
Sancia waited until the woman had passed, turned the corner, and started up the stairs. Then she silently unlocked and opened the broom cupboard door, and chased after her.
She caught up with the woman on the main floor of the Hypatus Building, exiting through the lobby. It was late afternoon, and the building was quite busy — though Sancia was wearing Dandolo Chartered colors, so she drew no attention. Sancia spied the woman immediately: she was young, hardly older than Sancia herself, a skinny, dark-skinned thing dressed in formal yellow-and-white robes and bearing a large, leather bag.
She was a secretary or assistant, it seemed — and as such, no one paid any attention at all to her.
<That’s her, right?> said Sancia.
<That’s her. But if she gets past fifty or so yards, I can’t keep up with her. So stay close, or tag her with Berenice’s scriving.>
<Yeah, yeah.>
Sancia exited the building after the woman and kept her in eyesight, pacing across the Hypatus Building’s front steps and down into the streets. It was dreadfully hot, and foggy and rainy — not the best conditions to be following someone. Most of the streets were too empty for Sancia to feel comfortable making a play for the woman, but when they approached a busy carriage fairway ahead, she saw her chance.
The woman waited along with a small crowd of campo denizens as a train of carriages thundered past. Sancia sidled up, got close, and in a smooth, quick motion that resembled waving away a fly, she dropped the tailing scriving in the woman’s bag.
The carriage train tapered off. The woman, perhaps sensing something, turned to look around, but Sancia was already gone.
Sancia reached into her pocket, grabbed Berenice’s twinned plate, and snapped it in half — her signal that the tag had taken place. Then she pulled out her half of the trailing scriving — a small wooden dowel with a wire tied to it, and a scrived button tied to the end of the wire. The wire was pointing straight at the woman.
<It’s on,> said Sancia.
Sancia was following the woman to the south gates when she saw the carriage — unmarked, stationed about twenty feet away from the gates, with a single figure in the front. She walked up to it, keeping an eye as the woman passed through the gates to the Commons.
Berenice nodded at her from the carriage’s front window. The girl’s face was unpainted, but she was, rather frustratingly, still quite pretty. “That’s her,” Sancia said. “Let’s go.”
“We’re not taking this gate,” said Berenice. “We’ll go to the east gate and loop back around.”
“What! Why the hell would we do that? We don’t want to lose her!”
“The rig you put on her should give us a mile range to work with,” said Berenice. “But more to the point — we’re assuming that girl’s employer is the one who paid for all those flying assassins, yes? Well, if she’s as valuable as we think she is, they’ll likely pay to give her a few guardian angels — who will be quite interested in anyone who comes out the gates directly after her.”
<Good point,> said Clef. <And as a heads-up, kid — your friend is loaded up something fierce.>
<What do you mean, loaded up?>
<I mean she’s like a walking goody bag of rigs. You don’t hear them all?>
<I’ve been on the campos too long. It’s tough for me to hear anything specific anymore, unless it’s powerful.> She looked Berenice over. <She really is?>
<Yeah. She’s come prepared — but for what, I don’t know. Stay on your guard.>
“Hurry up and get in,” said Berenice. “Change clothes. And stop arguing.”
Sancia did as she asked, climbing into the back. There was a set of clothes more suitable to the Commons laid there. Sighing — she hated changing clothes — Sancia crouched down and started putting them on.
The carriage took off, speeding down the campo wall to the east gate. “Hold on,” said Berenice, spinning the wheel and sending it hurtling through the gates. Then she took a hard right and sped back toward the south gates.
“Could you scrumming slow down?” shouted Sancia, who’d tumbled over in the back, her head stuck in a light coat.
“No,” said Berenice. She held up the tailing wire, which, rather alarmingly, had gone slack. Then, abruptly, the button shot up and pointed off into the Commons. “There,” she said. “We’re in range.” She brought the carriage skidding to a halt, grabbed a pack from the floor, and jumped out. “Come on, grab the pack of clothes. We’ll go on foot. A carriage would stand out here.”
Sancia was tangled in a set of breeches. “Give me a damn second!” She struggled into the clothes, buttoned them up, and jumped out of the carriage.
The two of them started off into the Commons. “Keep your tailing wire in your breast pocket,” Berenice said quietly. “You can feel it tug in the right direction without having to look at it.” She eyed the streets and the windows. “I assume you can spot someone who means us ill?”
“Yeah, look for someone big and ugly with a knife,” said Sancia.
They closed in on their mark, and found the woman seated in a taverna at the edge of Old Ditch. She’d bought a mug of cane wine, but she wasn’t drinking from it.
Sancia peered at the streets around the taverna. “It’s a handoff. Someone else will take it the rest of the way.”
“What makes you so sure?”
“Well, I’m not totally sure,” said Sancia. Then she spotted him: a man, standing on the corner dressed as a Commoner. He kept glancing at the woman with the bag with an anxious, wary stare. “But that guy looks like a likely candidate, yeah?”