She nodded.
“People call me that. But they don’t know what it means. Dantua…It was a Daulo city we took. In the north of the Durazzo. But the Daulos in the city had stockpiles of flash powder,” he said. “I’ve no idea how they’d gotten it. But one day some boy, no older than ten, snuck into our camp with a box of it on his back. And he ran up to our lexicon, and set off the charge. Killed himself. Set fire to the camp. And worse, he damaged the lexicon. So all our rigs failed. So we were just stuck there, with the Daulo armies out beyond. They couldn’t penetrate the fortress, even with us helpless — but they could starve us out.
“So. We starved. For days. For weeks. We knew they’d kill us if we surrendered, so we just starved and hoped someone would come. We ate rats and boiled corncobs and mixed dirt with our rice. I just sat and watched it all happen. I was their commander, but there was nothing I could do. I watched them die. Of starvation. Of suicide. I watched these proud sons turn to anguished skeletons, and I buried them in the meager earth.
“And then, one day…some of the men had meat. I found them cooking it in the camps, sizzling on skillets. It…it did not take me long to realize what kind of meat it was. Carcasses were in high supply in Dantua, after all. I wanted to stop them, but I knew if I tried, they’d mutiny.” He shut his eyes. “Then the men started getting sick. Perhaps as a consequence of what they were doing — consume ill flesh, become ill yourself. Swollen armpits, swollen necks. It spread so fast. We started running out of places to bury corpses. It was no surprise that I caught the plague myself, eventually. I…I remember the fever, the coughing, the taste of blood in my mouth. I remember my men watching me as I lay on my bed, gasping. Then things went dark. And when I awoke…I was in the grave, under the earth.”
“Wait. You…you survived? They buried you and you woke up inside the grave?”
“Yes,” he said quietly. “It’s extremely rare, but some people do survive the plague. I awoke in the dark. With…with things on top of me. Blood and dirt and filth in my mouth. I couldn’t see anything. Could barely breathe. So…I had to dig my way out. Through the bodies, through all that earth. Through the rot and the piss and the blood and…and…” He fell silent. “I don’t know how I did it. But I did. I clawed until my fingernails were sloughed off and my fingers were broken and hands bloody, but then I saw it, saw the light flickering through the cracks in the corpses above me, and I crawled out, and saw the fire.
“The Morsinis had gotten to Dantua. They’d attacked. The Daulos had broken in through the walls in desperation, and somehow they’d set the city alight. And some Morsini sergeant saw me clawing my way out of the mass grave, covered in blood and mud and screaming…He thought I was a monster. And by that point, perhaps I was. The Revenant of Dantua.”
They were silent. The tall grasses danced in the wind around them.
“I’ve seen a lot of death, Sancia,” he said. “My father and brother died in a carriage accident when I was young. One I nearly died in myself. I joined the military to bring honor to their name, but instead I got so many young men killed — and, again, I survived. I keep surviving, it seems. It’s taught me many things. After Dantua…it was like a magic spell had been lifted from my eyes. We are making these horrors. We are doing this to ourselves. We have to change. We must change.”
“This is just what people are,” said Sancia. “We’re animals. We only care about survival.”
“But don’t you see?” he said. “Don’t you see that’s a bond they’ve placed upon you? Why did you work the fields as a slave, why did you sleep in miserable quarters and silently bear your suffering? Because if you didn’t, you’d be killed. Sancia…so long as you think only of survival, only of living to see the next day, you will always bear their chains. You will not be free. You’ll always remain a sla—”
“Shut your mouth!” she snarled.
“I will not.”
“You think because you’ve suffered, you know? You think you know what it’s like to live in fear?”
“I think I know what it’s like to die,” said Gregor. “It makes things so terribly clear once you stop worrying about survival, Sancia. If these people succeed — if these rich, vain fools do as they wish — then they will make slaves of the whole of the world. All men and women alive, and all generations after, will live in fear just as you did. I am willing to fight and die to free them. Are you?”
“How can you say that?” she said. “You, a Dandolo? You know more than anyone that this is what all merchant houses do.”
He stood, furious. “Then help me cast them down!” he cried.
She stared at him. “You…you would overthrow the merchant houses?” she asked. “Even your own?”
“Sometimes you need a little revolution to make a lot of good. Look at this place!” He gestured at the Gulf. “How can these people fix the world if they can’t fix their own city?” He bowed his head. “And look at us,” he said quietly. “Look at what they’ve made of us.”
“You’d really die for this?”
“Yes. I’d give away all that I value, Sancia, all, to ensure no one ever has to go through what you or I have ever again.”
She looked down at her wrists, at the scars there, where they’d bound her up before they’d lashed her. <You sure you want to do something big, Clef?> she asked.
<I’m sure.>
She bowed her head, nodded, and stood. “Fine then. Let’s go.”
She marched down the hillside to the drainage tunnel, then into the crypt, with Gregor behind her. They all went silent as she walked in.
She stood in the crypt before a sarcophagus, her heart hammering like mad, not moving.
<What are you going to do, kid?> asked Clef.
<I’m going to try to help. And I’m going to give away the last thing I value to make it happen.> She swallowed. <I’m sorry, Clef.>
She reached up, grabbed the string around her neck, ripped Clef off, and placed him on the sarcophagus. “This is Clef,” she said aloud. “He’s my friend. He’s been helping me. Maybe now he can help you.”
Everyone stared at her.
Orso slowly stepped forward, mouth open. “Well, bend me over and scrum me blue,” he whispered. “Son of a bitch. Son of a bitch.”
III THE MOUNTAIN
Every innovation — technological, sociological, or otherwise — begins as a crusade, organizes itself into a practical business, and then, over time, degrades into common exploitation. This is simply the life cycle of how human ingenuity manifests in the material world.
What goes forgotten, though, is that those who partake in this system undergo a similar transformation: people begin as comrades and fellow citizens, then become labor resources and assets, and then, as their utility shifts or degrades, transmute into liabilities, and thus must be appropriately managed.
This is a fact of nature just as much as the currents of the winds and the seas. The flow of force and matter is a system, with laws and maturation patterns. We should harbor no guilt for complying with those laws — even if they sometimes require a little inhumanity.