Any given innovation that empowers the individual will inevitably come to empower the powerful much, much more.

Because though few understood how scriving worked, everyone in the world understood that it was both powerful and reliable. When merchant house ships – scrived to part the waters with incredible ease, and sporting altered sails that always billowed with the perfect breeze at the perfect angle – pulled up in front of your city and pointed their vast

Sancia did not truly understand her talents. She did not know how they worked, what their limits were, or even if they were all that dependable. She just knew what they did, and how they could help her. When she touched an object with her bare skin, she understood it. She understood its nature, its makeup, its shape. If it had been somewhere or tou

Even though she was stunned and terrified, she couldn’t help but think: They use water – clean water – as decoration? Clean water was impossibly rare in the Commons, and most people drank weak cane wine instead. To just have it bubbling away in the streets for no reason was incomprehensible.

<To know myself. I’m a device, Sancia. They took me and they put me inside this thing, and rigs aren’t supposed to be self-aware. It’s like you said when we first met. I sat in the dark for so long. I wasn’t supposed to wait that long.> A pause. <You know what that means, don’t you? I’m a machine that’s falling apart. And eventually, I won

<Why frightened?> <Because when I dreamed, I . . . I remembered my making. I can show you, if you like.> <What do you mean, show me?> <Here. I’m going to put something into your mind now. Something small. Think of it like you’re in the water, swimming, and I’m going to throw you a line. Focus, and grab on to it.>

Sancia had no training in scriving, but the way scrived carriages worked was common knowledge in Tevanne: the commands written upon the wheels convinced them that they were on an incline, and so the wheels, absolutely believing this, would feel obliged to roll downhill – even if there was actually no hill at all, and the carriage was actually just

Then words emerged among them – words she could hear. < . . . bring heat, bring it up, bubble it up, and store it away, there it goes, keep the heat there, oh, please, how I love to make the tank hot . . . > < . . . will NOT let anyone in, absolutely NO ONE, they CANNOT enter unless they possess KEY, key is VERY IMPORTANT, and I . . . >

‘You’ll soon learn to do many things, Sancia – and you’ll have to learn to do many things. Because war is coming. It’s already found you and the rest of this city. And when you decide how to respond, remember – the first few steps of your path will decide the rest of it.’ ‘What do you mean?’ ‘Think of the plantations, of slavery. It was to be a sho