Shorefall is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2020 by Robert Jackson Bennett
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Del Rey, an imprint of Random House, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.
DEL REY and the HOUSE colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Bennett, Robert Jackson, 1984– author.
Title: Shorefall : a novel / Robert Jackson Bennett.
Description: First Edition. | New York : Del Rey Books, [2020] | Series: The founders trilogy; 2
Identifiers: LCCN 2019047377 (print) | LCCN 2019047378 (ebook) | ISBN 9781524760380 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781524760397 (ebk)
Subjects: LCSH: Magic—Fiction. | GSAFD: Fantasy fiction.
Classification: LCC PS3602.E66455 S56 2020 (print) | LCC PS3602.E66455 (ebook) | DDC 813/.6—dc23
LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2019047377
LC ebook record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2019047378
Ebook ISBN 9781524760397
randomhousebooks.com
Book design by Andrea Lau, adapted for ebook
Cover design: Will Staehle
Cover photographs: Koi88/Shutterstock (candles), Oleskalashnik/Shutterstock (hat), Irina Alexandrovna/Shutterstock (throne), Simona Bottone/Shutterstock (candles), Poludziber/Shutterstock (gate), Kostenko Maxim/Shuttstock (figure), Iurii Stepanov/ Shutterstock (hands)
ep_prh_5.5.0_c0_r0
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Epigraph
Part I: The Librarian and the Muses
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Part II: The Veiled King
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Part III: The Last Problem
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Part IV: Shorefall Night
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Part V: Always Someone Mightier
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Dedication
By Robert Jackson Bennett
About the Author
If there be a person alive with more power than myself, then over time circumstances shall eventually degrade until, inevitably, I am their slave. And if our situations were to be reversed, then they shall inevitably become mine.
—Crasedes Magnus
I
THE LIBRARIAN AND THE MUSES
1
“The gates are just ahead,” said Gregor. “Get ready.”
Sancia took a breath and steeled herself as their carriage lumbered through the pouring rain. She could see the lights atop the campo walls from here, bright and sharp and cold, but little more than that. She rubbed her hands together, her fingertips trailing over the calluses on her palms and knuckles, now a shadow of what they’d been during the prime of her thieving days.
Berenice reached over, grabbed her hands, and gave them both a squeeze. “Just remember the plan,” she said. “Remember that, and nothing will go wrong.”
“I remember the plan,” said Sancia. “I just also remember there’s a lot of spots in the plan that say, ‘Sancia improvises a bunch of shit.’ Which is not, you know, comforting.”
“We aren’t getting nervous back there, are we?” said Orso from the pilot’s cockpit. He turned around to look at them, his faded blue eyes wide and wild in his dark, craggy face.
“A little anxiety,” said Berenice, “is understandable under these circumstances.”
“But being as we’ve worked our asses off for the better part of six months to get here,” said Orso, “I’m a lot less willing to understand it.”
“Orso…” said Gregor.
“We are just scrivers going to make a deal with a merchant house,” said Orso, turning back around. “Just four grubby scrivers looking to sell our designs and make some quick cash. That’s all. Nothing to worry about.”
“I see the walls,” said Gregor. He adjusted the wheel of the carriage and slowed its progress to a crawl.
Orso peered forward. “Uh. Well. I will admit that is a little worrying.”
The walls of the Michiel Body Corporate campo emerged from the driving rain. It looked like the Michiels had made some substantial additions since Sancia had last seen them. For starters, the walls were now about forty feet taller, spackled with new gray masonry—that must have taken some work. But it was what sat on top of the new masonry that caught her attention: a series of large, long bronze boxes, installed on the walls about every hundred feet, each one sitting on some kind of swivel stand.
“That is a shitload of espringal batteries,” muttered Orso.
Sancia studied the espringal batteries, still and dark in the rain. She watched as a bird flew close to one, and it snapped up, the end of the long box tracking the bird’s flight like a cat might watch a passing bat. The box apparently decided the bird was no cause for concern, and returned to its original position.
She knew how such rigs worked: the batteries were filled with scrived bolts—arrows that had been convinced to fly preternaturally fast and hard—but the critical bit was that the batteries had been scrived to sense blood. If a battery sensed a bit of blood that it didn’t recognize, it would point its bolts at whoever happened to contain that blood, loose them all, and shred the target to pieces—though the scrivers who designed them had been forced to work quite hard to get them to stop wasting ammunition on stray animals. Especially the gray monkeys, which confused the batteries a great deal.
It was not an elegant solution. But it worked—people did not approach any campo wall at all anymore.
“What guarantees do we have, Orso,” said Gregor, “that those things will not shoot us to pieces?”
Their carriage hit a bump, and gray-brown water sloshed up the sides, spilling into the floorboards.
“I guess we’re about to find out,” said Orso.
The gates of the Michiel campo were just ahead now
. Sancia could see guards emerging from their stalls, weapons at the ready.
“Here they come,” said Gregor.
Their carriage rolled to a stop at a checkpoint before the gates. Two guards approached, both heavily armored, one carrying a very advanced espringal. The armed Michiel guard stood about twenty feet away from the carriage with his espringal lowered, while the other approached and gestured to Gregor. Gregor opened the door and climbed out, which made the Michiel guard a little nervous—Gregor was about a head taller than him, and wearing light leather armor embossed with the Foundryside loggotipo.
“You lot Foundryside?” asked the guard.
“We are,” said Gregor.
“I am under orders that you must all be searched before you are permitted into the campo.”
“Understood.”
They exited the carriage one by one and stood in the rain while the guard patted them down. After this, he checked the carriage. It was a rather shabby scrived carriage, one Gregor had rented from an iron trader—its wheels sometimes forgot which way they were supposed to roll—but this had been a strategic choice: the more they looked like a firm down on their luck, the more the Michiels would believe it.
The guard opened the compartment in the back. Inside was a large wooden chest, which was sealed shut with a bronze lock.
“And this,” said the guard, “would be the agreed-upon…goods?”
“Obviously,” sniffed Orso.
“I must examine them.”
Orso shrugged, unlocked the chest, and opened it. Inside were some bronze plates covered with sigils, a few scriving tools, lots of very large books, and nothing else.
“That’s it?” said the guard.
“Intellectual property is never terribly interesting to look at,” said Orso.
The guard shut the compartment. “Very well. You may proceed.” He handed them each a sachet—a small bronze button with a set of sigils engraved on it. “These will make sure the wall batteries and the other measures won’t consider you a threat. These expire in five hours, mind—after that, all the campo defenses will begin targeting you.”
Orso sighed. “And here I thought I’d missed life on the campo.”
They climbed back into the carriage. The bronzed gates cracked and slowly swung open, and Gregor nudged their tiny, shabby carriage through.
“Part one’s done,” said Orso from the front seat. “We’re in.”
But Sancia knew this was the easy bit. Very soon, everything would get a lot harder—especially for her.
Berenice squeezed her hand again. “Move thoughtfully,” she whispered. “And bring freedom to others. That’s what we’re doing, right?”
“Yeah,” said Sancia. “I guess it’s just that normally when I try to rob a merchant house, I break in—not make a goddamn appointment and dance through the front gate.”
Their carriage rattled on into the campo.
* * *
—
Sancia had never been to the inner enclaves of the Michiel campo, so she hadn’t been sure what to expect. She was aware that the Michiels, who were known for being the most accomplished at manipulating heat and light—as well as for being insufferably artsy snobs in general—had one of the most impressive campos in Tevanne. But as Gregor drove their carriage into the depths of the campo, she found she had not expected…this.
Buildings wrought of glass blossomed out of the streetscapes, and twisted and rose and ran together, their innards glimmering with a warm, entrancing luminescence. Whole walls had apparently been converted into art displays, their surfaces shifting and changing to show beautiful, looping designs that moved.
And then there were the suns.
She stared at one as it came close. Most campos used floating lanterns as the preferred method of illumination, but it seemed the Michiels had not been satisfied with this. Instead, they had created some kind of giant, glittering, glowing orb that slowly drifted about three hundred feet above the city streets like a miniature sun, bathing everything below it in something very close to daylight. It would have been an astounding sight at any time, but it was especially striking now, drifting along in the pouring rain.
“Scrumming hell,” said Sancia.
“Yes,” said Berenice. “You can see the tops of the suns from certain towers in the city, I’ve been told.”
“Self-indulgent bullshit,” grumbled Orso. “Absolute twaddle.”
They rumbled on through the towers until they were stopped again at the next gate. There they were instructed to get out of their carriage and into another one—this one a Michiel carriage, full of Michiel guards. The Foundrysiders obeyed, Gregor carrying their locked box, and the carriage took off for the innermost sanctum of the Michiel campo, close to the illustris—the head building of the entire merchant house.
This was not their destination, however. Instead their carriage rumbled toward a tall, violet, shimmering structure studded with tiny round windows—the Michiel Hypatus Building, where the house scrivers experimented with sigils and logic, finding new ways to reshape reality to their liking.
They stopped at the front steps and climbed out, the Michiel guards carrying their locked box behind them. No one was there to greet them. Instead they were ushered inside, through chambers of glass and glowing walls and up the stairs, until they finally came to a tall, spacious room that felt like something of a performance venue, with a stage and lights—though the audience area was piled up with couches, cushions, and plates and plates of food.
Sancia stared at the food as they walked in. It had been a long time since she’d starved, but she still couldn’t believe the sight before her: pies and stews and chocolates and cuts of smoked meats, all delicately arranged on tiered, golden plates. There were also jugs and jugs of wine—she noticed Orso looking at these with a very interested look on his face.
“I thought the slave rebellions in the plantations meant everyone was tightening their belts,” said Sancia.
“These will be the senior hypati officers of the campo,” said Berenice quietly. “They will not lack for anything, no matter the circumstances.”
“You can begin setting up there,” said a Michiel guard, pointing at the table on the stage. “The hypatus will be here shortly.”
Sancia watched as the guards took up posts in the corners of the room. She wasn’t surprised—she’d known that every second of their time here they would be closely observed.
“This will work, yes?” said Orso, approaching the table. He was pointing to something sitting on it that to most would have looked like a large, curious metal kiln; but even the most novice scriver would have recognized it as a large heating chamber containing a test lexicon—a much smaller, simpler version of the giant lexicons they used to run the foundries all over Tevanne.
“It’s much more advanced than what we’re working with now,” said Berenice, studying the rig’s casing.
Orso snorted. “ ’Course it is. We haven’t got a million duvots to toss around out in the Commons.”
“But…I think we can make it work, yes?” Berenice said, looking at Sancia.
Sancia stooped and studied the heating chamber containing the test lexicon. Mostly she was checking the thing’s seams and boundaries—because if they were going to showcase their technology for the Michiels, the whole thing had to be airtight.
“We need to seal it up here and here,” she said, pointing to two seams she thought looked weak. “But otherwise it should be good.”
“Check again,” said Orso. “We need our designs to work.”
Sighing, Berenice and Sancia opened their wooden crate, took out a few scrived magnifying loupes, and began measuring and testing the heating chamber, confirming there were no flaws. It was monotonous work. Sancia felt like a physiquere inspecting a patient for plague lesions.
She glanced up at Bereni
ce, whose loupe was wedged tight in her eye. “You have any plans after this?” she asked.
Berenice blinked and looked up at her, puzzled. “Eh?”
“I was thinking we could go to a puppeting show. Pasqual’s got some kind of scrived giraffe puppet that I’ve heard is quite amazing.”
Berenice allowed a sardonic smile. “Is that so?”
“It is. Thought we could swing by a tavern…”
“Try the latest cane wine…”
“A bowl of saffron rice…”
“Sugared redtail, maybe.”
“Yes,” said Sancia. “And then go see the puppets. Sound good?”
“Sounds wonderful,” said Berenice. She refixed her loupe and went back to work. “Wouldn’t miss it for the world. But! Maybe…”
“Maybe tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow would be better, yes. Though now that I think of it, the day after that…”
“Is even better.”
“Right in one.”
Sancia laughed grimly. “Of course.”
This was an old joke of theirs. Despite their desire to get out of their workshops and enjoy themselves, Sancia and Berenice both knew they almost certainly wouldn’t get it. They’d probably spend another night working till dawn over scriving definition plates and blackboards, and nursing their tottering old lexicon back to health.
One day, thought Sancia, I will be a person who has a girlfriend all the time and a job when I have to, rather than someone with a job all the time and a girlfriend whenever time allows.
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