A man was standing atop the gate towers of the Candiano gates, his boots perched on the edge of the wall. He was wearing some kind of contraption, like a black suit of armor, except one arm had been modified to be a large, rounded shield, and the other arm had been modified to hold some kind of massive, retractable polearm…Yet it was difficult to see him clearly, for every movement he made was obscured in darkness. The only reason she could see him at all was because there was a bright scrived light hanging just below him on the wall.
It took her a moment to realize what she was looking at. She’d only ever read about such things, a type of particularly notorious shock weapon deployed abroad in the wars.
“A lorica?” she said aloud, astonished.
“Who the shit is that?” Gio asked. “Did we tell him to be there?”
Claudia stared at the man, huge and gleaming in the dark metal contraption. She saw there was a dead body lying on the walls before him, horribly mangled—presumably this had been the screamer, whom she now thought had had plenty of reasons to scream.
It can’t be, she thought. What the hell is going on?
She watched as the man leapt forward, his body flying up five, ten, fifteen feet—Definitely a real lorica, Claudia thought—and then he crashed down, his polearm licking out like a glittering black whip…
She hadn’t even noticed that there were guards up on the gate towers with him. Yet then there was a massive splash of blood, and she realized that the man had used his polearm to almost completely vivisect a Candiano guard who’d been sprinting at him, rapier in hand.
Three more Candiano guards poured out of the tower onto the gate pathway before the man, espringals raised. The man in the lorica flicked his shield up just in time to catch the volley of bolts, and he started moving forward, perfectly crouched behind his shield, inching forward toward the three men pouring bolts into him.
He stopped, seeming to sense that the men needed to reload. Then he swung his shield arm out, and something…happened.
It was hard to see. There was just a burst of glimmering metal in the air, the Candiano guards shuddered as if struck by lightning, and they fell. But Claudia saw that their bodies were now curiously rent and torn…
She focused on the man in the lorica as he stood up, and saw that his shield was not just a shield: it had been modified so that the back half was also a scrived bolt caster. Probably not accurate over long distances—but nasty up close.
Giovanni stared, horrified. “What do we do?”
She thought about it, and watched as the man leapt off the top of the Candiano gates into the campo.
“Hell,” she said. “He’s not our problem! So just sit tight, I guess!”
* * *
Berenice and Orso huddled in the scrived carriage, staring at the immense Candiano gates ahead. The streets around them were abandoned, like there was a curfew on.
“Everything’s…quiet,” said Berenice.
“Yes,” said Orso. “Scrumming creepy as hell, isn’t it?”
“Yes, sir,” said Berenice in a small voice. She craned her head forward, peering at the walls. “I do hope Sancia’s all right.”
“I’m sure she’s fine,” said Orso. “Maybe.”
Berenice said nothing.
Orso glanced at her out of the side of his eye. “You and she seem to get along all right.”
“Ah. Thank you, sir?”
“You do great things together,” said Orso. “Crack the Cattaneo. Fabricate whole new scriving definitions in hours. That’s…That’s something.”
She hesitated. “Thank you, sir.”
He sniffed and looked around. “It’s dumb as hell, all this,” he said. “I keep thinking this could have been avoided. I could have stopped it. If I’d told Tribuno what I thought about his dumb shit. If I’d…I’d been more diligent in my pursuits of Estelle. I let my pride get wounded when she turned me down. Pride…it’s so often an excuse for people to be weak.” He coughed, and said, “Anyways…if a young person were to ask me advice of a…a personal nature, I’d advise they not sit and passively watch opportunities go by. That’s what I’d say—if, mind, if a young person were to ask me advice, of a personal nature.”
There was a long silence.
“I see, sir,” said Berenice. “But…not every young person is as passive as you may think.”
“Aren’t they?” said Orso. “Good. Very goo—”
“There!” said Berenice. “Look!”
She pointed at the walls. A tiny pool of shadow slipped along the bottom of the white walls, up to the huge towering gates.
“Is that…her?” said Orso, squinting.
The pool of shadow stayed at the base of the gates for a moment before slipping back down the way it came, disappearing behind a tall rookery.
“I don’t know,” said Berenice. “I think so though?”
They waited, and waited.
“Should something be happening now?” said Orso.
Then they both jumped in fright as a wall of shadow leapt at them out of an alley.
“Goddamn it!” said Sancia’s voice, floating out of the darkness. “It’s me! Calm down!” She was panting hard. “Damn…That was a lot of walls, and a lot of gates.” She climbed inside—or Orso thought she did, it was so dark it was hard to tell—and collapsed in the back of the carriage.
“Is it done?” said Orso.
“Yeah,” gasped Sancia.
“And when does your clever plan start?”
“Simple,” said Sancia. “When you hear the explosions.”
* * *
Claudia and Giovanni crouched in the shadows of the street, watching the Candiano gates. Then they heard a sound—a clattering, a clanking.
“What’s that?” said Gio.
Claudia pointed, dumbstruck. “It’s the gates, Gio.”
They watched as the huge gate doors…trembled. They quivered, like they were the skin of a drum that had just received a powerful blow. Then they began rattling, at first quietly, then much, much louder, until it strained their ears, even from where they were.
“Sancia,” said Claudia. “What the hell did you do?”
And then the gates broke.
The two halves erupted open, swinging outward with a force like a raging river, snapping all the locks along their middle. They pivoted a full 180 degrees, slamming into the campo walls and the watchtowers on either side of them, and they struck the walls hard enough to make them crack and start to crumble—a stunning feat, considering the campo walls had been scrived to be preternaturally durable. For a moment the two halves of the gates just stood there, smashed into the walls, before the reverberating momentum caused them to slowly, slowly topple forward, which pulled down a lot of the walls with them. They slammed into the ground hard enough to send a fine spray of mud and dust surging throughout the entire city block.
Claudia and Giovanni coughed and covered their faces. The Commons lit up with cries and shouts—but this wasn’t loud enough to cover up a new sound: a rattling and clattering from the next set of gates, just south of the fallen walls.
“Oh shit,” said Gio. “She did it to all of them, didn’t she?”
* * *
Orso and Berenice sat up, startled, as the immense crack echoed through the night skies.
“I told the gates opening outward didn’t count as opening,” said Sancia in the backseat. “The hard part was getting them to wait.” She sniffed. “Should be…oh, one every minute or so for a while.”
* * *
In the Mountain, Estelle Candiano heard the crash and looked up. “What in hell?” she said aloud.
She looked down at herself. She’d finished covering her arm and chest in the appropriate sigils, and she did not want to smudge them any.
Still…That was worth investigating.
She walked over to the windows and looked out at the dark ramble of Tevanne. She immediately saw what had happened: one of the northeastern gates appeared to have totally collapsed. Which…should have been impossible. Those gates had been designed by her father. They should have withstood a damned monsoon.
“What in all th—”
Then, as she watched, there was a tremendous crack, and the gate south down the wall from that one suddenly burst outward. The walls around it cracked and began to crumble apart.
Her mouth twisted with rage. “Orso,” she spat. “This is you, isn’t it? What in hell are you trying to pull?”
* * *
The intense cracks shot through the Commons with a curiously steady rhythm, like a lightning storm touching down every minute. Orso flinched each time. Soon the sky above the eastern campo was a haze of dust, and the Commons were screaming in panic.
“Sancia,” said Orso quietly. “Did you take down the entire eastern walls?”
“I should have, when this is all over with,” said Sancia. “Should give all those campo soldiers a lot to defend. And it’ll be somewhere far from here. A decent distraction.”
“A…a distraction?” he cried. “Girl…girl, you’ve scrumming killed the Candiano campo! You’ve killed my old house in one night!”
“Eh,” said Sancia. “I just aired it out a bit.”
* * *
Estelle Candiano threw on a white shirt just as Captain Riggo threw open the door and charged in.
“What in hell is going on out there, Captain?” she demanded.
“I do not know, ma’am,” he said, “but I came to ask if I could mobilize our reserves in order to investigate and respond.”
There was another sharp crack and the rumble of falling walls. Captain Riggo cringed ever so slightly.
“But…but what do you think is happening, Captain?”