Chapter 30

On the firm’s roof, Claudia and the Foundrysiders watch the Morsini campo. Gregor spots people leaping from windows, and Sancia orders everyone to look away, recalling the lethal madness caused by seeing Crasedes unmasked. They infer Crasedes is walking the enclave during carnival, killing without weapons.

Discussing motives, they note the Morsinis weren’t directly opposing Dandolo, and ask Valeria’s insight. With Clef now awake and able to skim memories, he reasons that Crasedes needs mass deaths to forge hierophantic devices and to remake Valeria, though Valeria had stripped him of the ritual’s completion. Regardless, Clef warns Crasedes knows where Valeria is and will come to the firm.

Sancia asks what can affect Crasedes besides Clef and the imperiat. Gregor names Valeria’s nullification of his permissions. Orso, inspired by Claudia’s past steel-box designs that twinned local reality, proposes embedding that logic into a projectile: a lead slug that, on impact, convinces the surrounding space it is the firm’s reality where Valeria cancels Crasedes’s access. The team realizes a hit could drop Crasedes from the sky, rendering him vulnerable. Claudia believes fabrication is possible before midnight, when he’ll be strongest.

Valeria agrees to help but demands a contingency: activating the hidden alteration she placed in Sancia—briefly twinning with Sancia so Valeria can remake herself within a host. She explains constraints: it requires a living access point and cannot be safely done with Gregor, who would fuse irreversibly. Sancia, angry at Valeria’s manipulations, still agrees to prepare the plate as a last resort to prevent further slaughter.

With screams still rising from the Morsini campo, they commit to building the reality-twinning slug and, if needed, the merger plate. If Valeria’s null-field projection fails to stop Crasedes, Orso grimly suggests reconsidering using Clef directly on a bolt.