She touched a single bare finger to the gold key.
And the second she did, she heard a voice in her mind — not the usual avalanche of sensations, but a real, actual voice, so clear it sounded like someone was standing right next to her, speaking rapidly in a bored tone: <Oh, great. First the box, and now this! Aw, look at her…I bet she’s never even heard of soap…>
Sancia let out a gasp and dropped the key. It fell to the floor, and she jumped back from it like it was a rabid mouse.
The key just sat there, much as any key would.
She stared around herself. She was — as she knew full well — completely alone in this room.
She crouched down and looked at the key. Then she reached down and carefully touched it…
Instantly, the voice sprang to life in her ear.
<…can’t have heard me. It’s impossible! But ah yeeaaahh she’s definitely looking at me like she heard me, and…Okay. Now she’s touching me again. Yeah. Yeah. This is probably bad.>
Sancia took her finger away like it had been burned. She looked around herself again, wondering if she were going mad.
“This is impossible,” she muttered.
Then, throwing caution to the wind, she picked up the key.
Nothing. Silence. Maybe she’d imagined it.
Then the voice said: <I’m imagining this, right? You can’t actually hear me — can you?>
Sancia’s eyes shot wide.
<Oh, hell. You can hear me, can’t you?>
She blinked, wondering what to do. She said aloud, “Uh. Yes.”
<Crap. Crap! How can you do that? How can you hear me? I haven’t met anyone who could hear me in…Hell, I don’t know. I can’t remember the last time. Then again, I can’t really remember all that much, truth be to—>
“This is impossible,” said Sancia for the second time.
<What is?> said the voice.
“You’re a…a…”
<A what?>
“A…” She swallowed. “A key.”
<I’m a key. Yes. I didn’t really think that was under dispute.>
“Right, but a…a talking key.”
<Right, and you’re some grimy girl who can hear me,> said the voice in her ear. <I’ve been talking for a hell of a lot longer than you’ve been alive, kid, so really I’m the normal one here.>
Sancia laughed madly. “This is insane. It’s insane. That’s got to be it. I’ve gone insane.”
<Maybe. Maybe. I don’t know what your situation is. But that wouldn’t have anything to do with me.> The voice cleared his throat. <So. Where am I? And, ah, oh. That’s right. I’m Clef, by the way. Now — who in the hell are you?>
4
Sancia put the key back in the false floor in her closet, slammed it shut, and then slammed the closet door closed.
She stared at the closet for a moment, breathing hard. Then she walked over to her apartment door, unlocked the six locks, and peered out into her hallway.
Empty. Which made sense, since it was probably three in the morning by now.
She shut the door, locked it, went to the shutters, unlocked them, and looked outside, panic fluttering in her rib cage like a trapped moth. Again, no movement in the street.
She didn’t know why she was doing this. Perhaps it was sheer compulsion: to have something so wild, so insane, so unbelievable happen to her had to invite danger.
Yet she could see none coming — not yet, at least.
She closed her shutters and locked them. Then she sat on her bed, holding her stiletto. She wasn’t sure what she was going to do with it — stab the key? — but it felt better to be holding it.
She stood, walked back to her closet door, and said, “I’m…I’m going to open the door and take you out now — all right?”
Silence.
She let out a shuddering breath. What the hell did we get mixed up in? She was used to scrived devices muttering things, sure, but to have one directly address her like an overcaffeinated street vendor…
She opened the closet door, opened the false floor, and looked at the key. Then she gritted her teeth, stiletto still in her left hand, and picked it up with her right.
Silence. Perhaps she’d dreamed it, or imagined it.
Then the voice spoke up in her mind: <That was kind of an overreaction, wasn’t it?>
Sancia flinched. “I don’t think so,” she said. “If my chair starts talking to me, it’s going out the goddamn window. What the hell are you?”
<I told you what I am. I’m Clef. You never told me your name, you know.>
“I don’t need to tell a damn object my name!” said Sancia angrily. “I’m also not going to introduce myself to the doorknob!”
<You need to calm down, kid. You’re going to give yourself a fit if you stay this worked up. And I don’t want to be stuck in the saddest apartment in the whole world with some grimy girl’s decaying corpse.>
“What merchant house made you?” she demanded.
<Huh? House? Merchants? What?>
“What merchant house made you? Dandolo? Candiano? Morsini, Michiel? Which one of them made this…this thing you are, whatever it is?”
<I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about. What thing is it that you think I am?>
“A scrived device!” she said, exasperated. “Altered, augmented, elevated, whatever damn term the campo people use! You’re a rig, aren’t you?”
Clef was silent for a long while. Then he said, <Uh, okay. I’m trying to think of how to answer that. But, quick question — what’s “scrived” mean?>
“You don’t know what scriving is? It’s the…it’s the symbols that are drawn on you, these things that make you who you are, what you are!” She looked closer at his tooth. She didn’t know much about scriving — as far as she was aware, it took about a thousand certifications and degrees to do it — but she hadn’t ever seen sigils like these. “Where did you come from?”
<Ah, now that question I can answer!> said Clef.
“Okay. Then tell me.”
<Not until you at least tell me your name. You’ve compared me to a doorknob and a chair, and you’ve also said I was a…a “rig.”> He said the word with palpable contempt. <I feel like I’m entitled to something resembling decent treatment, here.>
Sancia hesitated. She wasn’t sure why she was so reluctant to tell Clef her name — perhaps it felt like something out of a children’s story, the foolish girl who gives her name away to the wicked demon. But finally she relented, and said, “Sancia.”
<Sahn chee yuh?> He said the word like it was the name of a grotesque dish.
“Yes. My name is Sancia.”
<Sancia, huh?> said Clef. <Terrible name. Anyways. You already know I’m Clef, so—>
“And where did you come from, Clef?” she said, frustrated.
<That’s easy,> said Clef. <The dark.>