Contents
Chapter 34
Overview
Sancia awakens bound in the Dandolo gardens, while Berenice—sharing Sancia’s protections and senses through their twinning—evades Crasedes and infiltrates the Dandolo campo. Guided by Sancia, Berenice uses the imperiat to distract guards, swims through a drainage tunnel, reaches the Hypatus workshop, and begins building tools to spread their protections and dismantle Crasedes’s lexicon-forge from within. Crasedes confronts Sancia, reveals the city’s engineered midnight, and floats Sancia and a gravely ill Orso toward the estate, as Sancia and Berenice suspect Clef is Crasedes’s son.
Summary
Sancia wakes bound, blindfolded, and venom-sick in a wooden outbuilding on the Dandolo grounds, with Orso gagged nearby. Through their twinning, Berenice contacts Sancia and reports that Crasedes is capturing lexicons and imposing midnight over Tevanne, though resistance slows him. Berenice also realizes she shares Sancia’s protections, making her hard for Crasedes to perceive or influence.
Needing a rescue and a counterstrike, Sancia proposes remotely guiding Berenice to infiltrate the Dandolo campo. By focusing their link, Sancia extends her scrived sight to Berenice. At the Carelli Square gate, Berenice uses the imperiat to send a scrived carriage rolling backward as a distraction, then, terrified but coached by Sancia, dives into the canal and swims to an old drainage tunnel. Their minds briefly merge into one, letting Berenice swim and crack the grate’s logic. She emerges through a disused well inside the enclave.
Moving like a thief with Sancia’s instincts, Berenice slips through the campo, collecting sachets, keys, and tools, and reaches the Hypatus Building. She bypasses wards, enters a workshop, and begins fabricating rigs: chiefly construction plates, a trigger, and a tiny twinning-knife to extend their protections—intending to carry the imperiat to lexicons and collapse Crasedes’s city-spanning forge from within.
As she works, Sancia recalls Valeria’s memory of a grieving man and a dying boy; together they infer that Crasedes may be the man and Clef his son, made immortal as a key—explaining Crasedes’s zeal. Meanwhile, Crasedes visits Sancia, removes her blindfold by bending gravity, and levitates her strapped table and Orso’s chair. He claims he will win her cooperation without torture and flies them toward the Dandolo estate amid a panicked, darkened city; Sancia notes Orso is fevered and failing.
Resolved to finish, Berenice slips out with a pack of hastily made gear, commandeers a hypatus carriage using pilfered sachets, and drives into the black streets to begin deploying their sabotage.
Who Appears
- Sancia GradoCaptured and bound on Dandolo grounds; shares sight and skills with Berenice; deduces Clef may be Crasedes’s son.
- Berenice GrimaldiHidden with the imperiat; inherits Sancia’s protections; infiltrates Dandolo, crafts tools, and sets out to sabotage lexicons.
- Crasedes MagnusImposes midnight, captures lexicons; confronts Sancia, levitates her and Orso; possibly Clef’s father.
- Orso IgnacioGagged captive, gravely ill from prior wound; floated alongside Sancia by Crasedes.
- ClefKey seized by Crasedes; suspected to be Crasedes’s son, motive for zeal.
- ValeriaHer prior protections extend via twinning; past memory helps suggest Clef’s origin.