Sancia took a breath and opened it.
She felt sure the papers would be covered in sigil strings, which would have been as good as a death warrant for her—but they were not. They were elaborate-looking sketches of what looked like old carved stones with writing on them.
Someone had written notes on the bottom of a sketch. Sancia was only a little better than literate, but she tried her best, and read:
Artifacts of the Occidental Empire
It is common knowledge that the hierophants of the old empire utilized a number of astounding tools in their works, but their methods remain unclear to us. While our modern-day scriving persuades objects that their reality is something that it is not, the Occidental hierophants were apparently able to use scriving to alter reality directly, commanding the world itself to instantly and permanently change. Many have theorized about how this was possible—but none have conclusive answers.
More questions arise when we study the stories of Crasedes the Great himself, first of the Occidental hierophants. There are many tales and legends of Crasedes utilizing some kind of invisible assistant—sometimes a sprite, or spirit, or entity, often kept in a jar or box that he could open at his discretion—to help him in his labors.
Was this entity another alteration that the hierophants had made to reality? Or did it exist at all? We do not know—but there seems to be some connection to the greatest and most mysterious of the tales of Crasedes the Great: that he built his own artificial god to govern the whole of the world.
If Crasedes was in possession of some kind of invisible entity, perhaps it was but a rough prototype for this last and greatest iteration.
Sancia put the paper down. She understood absolutely none of this. She’d heard something once about the Occidentals during her time in Tevanne—some kind of fairy story about ancient giants, or maybe angels—but no one had ever claimed the hierophants were real. Yet whoever had written these notes—perhaps the owner of the box—certainly seemed to think so.
But she knew these papers weren’t the real treasure. She dumped them out and set them aside.
She reached into the box, touched two fingers to the bottom, and slid the false bottom away. Below was the small item, wrapped in linen, about as long as your hand.
Sancia reached for it, but paused.
She couldn’t afford to screw up this payout. She needed to get the money together to pay a physiquere who could fix the scar on her head, fix what was wrong with her, make her somewhat…normal. Or close to it.
She rubbed the scar on the side of her head as she looked inside the box. She knew that somewhere under her scalp, screwed into her skull, was a fairly large metal plate, and on that plate were some complicated sigils. She didn’t know anything about the commands there, but she knew that they were almost certainly the source of her talents.
She also knew that the fact that the plate had been forcibly implanted inside her would not matter one whit to the merchant houses: a scrived human was somewhere between an abomination and a rare, invaluable specimen, and they’d treat her accordingly.
Which was why her operation would be so expensive: Sancia would have to pay a black-market physiquere more than the merchant houses were willing to reward them for handing her in—and the merchant houses were willing to pay a lot.
She looked at the linen-wrapped item in her hand. She had no idea what it was. But despite Sark’s warnings, the risks of not knowing were just too high.
She put the box down, took out the item, and began unwrapping it. As she did so, she caught a glint of gold…
Just a gold piece? A piece of gold jewelry?
But then she pulled the cloth away, and saw it was not jewelry.
She looked at the item lying on the linen in the palm of her hand.
It was a key. A large, long key made of gold, with an intricate, terribly strange tooth, and a rounded head that sported an oddly carved hole. To Sancia, the hole faintly resembled the outline of a butterfly.
“What in hell?” she said aloud.
Sancia peered closely at it. It was a curious piece, but she couldn’t see why it would be worth all this…
Then she saw them—there, along the edge of the key, and curling around the tooth: etchings. The key was scrived, but the commands were so slender, so delicate, so complex…They were like nothing she’d ever seen before.
But what was stranger still—if this key was scrived, why couldn’t she hear it? Why didn’t it murmur in the back of her mind like every other scrived device she’d ever encountered?
This doesn’t make any sense, she thought.
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.>