The man looked around at the street for a while before he finally moved, stalking into the taverna and up to the bar. He ordered and, as he waited, the woman stood and left without a word — leaving the bag behind. When the man got his drink, he walked over to her table, sat, drank his wine in no fewer than five gulps — staring anxiously out at the street — picked up the bag, and left.
He turned east, walking quickly with the bag over his shoulder. Sancia felt the tailing wire twitching in her pocket as he moved. Yet as he walked, Sancia noticed that more people were walking with him, trickling after the man one by one from doorways and alleys. They were all large, and though they were dressed like Commoners, there was an undeniable heft and professionalism to them.
“We’ll keep our distance,” said Berenice quietly.
“Yeah,” said Sancia. “As much of it as we can.”
The group of men kept going east, through Old Ditch, then through Foundryside, until they came to the Michiel campo walls.
“The Michiels?” said Berenice, surprised. “Really? I didn’t think they had the guts. They’re more artisans, focusing on heat and light and glass and—”
“And they’re not going in,” said Sancia. “They’re still moving. So cut the speculation.”
They kept following, lagging behind a bit to give the men some breathing room. Sancia felt the tailing wire in her pocket twitch as the men moved — and, now that they were away from the campos, she could hear the multitude of mutterings emanating from Berenice’s person, many of them quite powerful, by the sound of it.
Sancia glanced sideways at her and cleared her throat. “So — what’s your relationship to Orso?”
“Our relationship?” said Berenice. “You want to talk about that now?”
“A natural conversation would be a good cover.”
“I suppose that’s so. I’m his fab.”
Sancia had no idea what that was. “So…does that mean you and he are, uh…I mean, you know…”
Berenice looked at her, disgusted. “What? No! God, why does everyone always think a fab is a sex thing when I say it? Plenty of men are fabs and no one ever gets that impression about them!” She sighed. “Fab is short for fabricator.”
“Still not following you.”
She sighed again, deeper. “You know how sigils rely on definitions? Discs of thousands and thousands of other sigils that define what that one new sigil means?”
“Vaguely.”
“A fabricator is the person who makes those definitions. Every elite scriver has one, if not several. It’s like architects and builders — the architect dreams up these vast, grand plans, but they still need an engineer to actually make the damned thing.”
“Sounds complicated. How’d you get into that line of work?”
“I’ve a head for remembering things. My father used to make money off me. I’d memorize all the hundreds and thousands of scivoli moves — the game with the checked board and the beads on strings? — and he’d take me around the city and bet against my opponents. Scivoli is a favorite among fabricators, and it became something of a competition to see which one could beat me. But since they all played among themselves, they all basically had the same moves — so it was pretty easy to memorize their games as I went along. So I won.”
“How’d that get you to working for Orso?”
“Because the hypatus found out his fabricator got beat by a seventeen-year-old-girl,” said Berenice. “And he called me in. Looked at me. Then he fired his old fabricator and hired me on the spot.”
Sancia whistled. “I guess you traded up pretty quick. That’s lucky.”
“It was lucky twice over,” she said. “Not only was I plucked out at random to become a scriver, but women are rarely admitted to scriving academies these days. It’s become a more masculine pursuit, after the wars.”
“What happened to your old man?”
“He was…less lucky. He kept coming around to the office and demanding more money. Then the hypatus sent some people to talk to him, and he never came back.” Her words had a forced lightness to them, as if describing a half-remembered dream. “Whenever I go into the Commons, I wonder if I’ll see him. I never do.”
The men began walking northeast. Then they turned a corner, and Berenice sucked in a breath. “Ohhh, shit.”
“What’s wrong?” asked Sancia.
“I…think I know where they’re going,” she said.
“And where’s that?”
Then she saw it: five blocks down the muddy fairway from them was a campo gate, lit with flickering torches. Set in the dark stone arch above the gate was a familiar loggotipo: the hammer and the chisel, crossed before the stone. The men appeared to be heading straight for it.
“The Candianos,” sighed Berenice. She watched as the men trickled through the gates. The Candiano house guards nodded to them. “He knew…” she said quietly. “That’s why he talked to her. Because he’d already suspected.”
“What?” said Sancia. “What are you talking about?”
“Never mind,” said Berenice. “You said you can get us in there?”
“Yeah. Come on.” Sancia trotted down the Candiano campo wall until she found a small steel, altered door.
“This is a security door,” said Berenice. “What the guards use when they need to infiltrate the Commons. You really got a key to here?”
Sancia shushed her. <Clef — can you break this thing without blowing it off its hinges?>
<Ehh, yeah. Shouldn’t be hard. Listen to it…>
A swell of whispering, and the voice emerged: <…strong and firm and hard and true, I await…I await the key, the key of light and crystal to shine stars within my depths…>
<What the hell is it saying?> asked Sancia.
<It’s kind of clever,> said Clef. <The lock is waiting for a key to go into its housing and shine light in a few places. Then it’ll unlock and open.>
<How are you going to make light?>
<I’m not going to make light. I’m just going to trick the door into thinking it’s had light shone in all the right places. Or maybe I’ll make the door forget which places need light…and instead make it think the whole front of the door is that specific place…Yeah, that should be easy!>
<Whatever. And it won’t set off the alarms if we go through without sachets?>
<I can make this entry forget what human bodies feel like when they pass through it, so it won’t know to perform a check — but it’ll only last for a few seconds.>
<Fine. Just do it fast.> She looked at Berenice. “Keep watch. We can’t get caught doing this.”
“What are you going to do?”
“Use a stolen key,” said Sancia. She approached the door, and, making sure Clef wasn’t visible and that Berenice’s back was turned, she stuck him into the lock.
She’d expected the exchange from before — the bellowing voice, the dozens of questions — but it didn’t come. Rather, the exchange happened so much…faster. It was more like when Clef had picked the mechanical locks, popping the Miranda Brass in the blink of an eye, only she felt a burst of information exchanged between Clef and the door.