Foundryside: A Novel (The Founders Trilogy)

by Robert Jackson Bennett

  But it didn’t feel like a miracle to Sancia. This glittering metal in the channel mud represented the whole of her life’s savings.

  asked Clef.

  she said wearily.

  She looked back and saw a dark figure running along the channel toward her—the third man from the fishery building, probably. He must have been the one to fire the shot. He cried, “She’s over there, over there!”

  “Damn it all,” said Sancia. She staggered to her feet and sprinted up the hill and off into the Greens.

  Sancia ran blindly, thoughtlessly, drunkenly, hurtling through the muddy lanes, her head still spinning from the scrived bolt. Clef chattered madly in her ear as she ran, spitting out directions:

  She dodged and turned to avoid them, running deeper and deeper into the Greens, her chest and legs aching with the effort. She knew she couldn’t run much farther. Eventually she’d stumble, or collapse, or they’d catch up to her. she thought. She was close to Foundryside by now, but that didn’t mean much. Foundryside Commoners would sell her out in a heartbeat.

  cried Clef.

  She realized what he meant. She glanced ahead, picked a building that looked secure and commercial—so hopefully it’d be empty in the middle of the night—ran up to a side door, and stuck Clef into the lock.

  There was a click. She shoved the door open, darted inside, and locked it behind her.

  She glanced around. It was dark in the building, but it seemed to be some kind of clothier’s warehouse, full of musty rolls of cloth and flittering moths. It also appeared to be empty, thankfully.

  asked Sancia.

 

  said Sancia.

  She knelt, touched a hand to the floor, and shut her eyes, letting the building tell her the layout. This was pushing her abilities—her head felt like it was full of molten iron—but she didn’t have a choice.

  She found the stairs and started climbing until she came to the top window. She opened it, felt the wall outside, let it bleed into her thoughts. Then she slipped out the window and climbed up until she rolled onto the roof. The roof was rickety, old, and not well built—but it was the safest place she’d been yet. It might as well have been paradise.

  She lay on the roof, chest heaving, and slowly pulled her gloves on. Every part of her hurt. The scrived bolt might not have penetrated her flesh, but it’d hit her so hard it felt like she’d strained muscles she didn’t even know she had. Still, she knew she couldn’t relax now.

  She crawled to the edge and peered out. She was about three floors up, she saw—and the streets were crawling with heavily armed men, all waving and signaling to one another as they scoured the neighborhoods. It was the sort of thing professional soldiers did, which didn’t reassure her.

  She tried to count their number. Twelve? Twenty? A lot more than three, and she’d barely escaped three.

  Some of the men were being followed by a curious type of rig she’d heard about, but never seen: floating paper lanterns, which had been scrived so they levitated about ten feet off the ground, glowing softly. They were scrived so they knew to follow specific markers, like a sachet—you put one in your pocket and the lantern would follow you around like a puppy. She’d heard they used them as streetlights in the inner enclaves of the campos.

  Sancia watched as the lanterns bobbed through the air like jellyfish in the deep, following the men and spilling rosy luminescence into the dark corners. She supposed they’d brought them in case she was hiding in the shadows. They were prepared for her, in other words.

  “Shit,” she whispered.

  said Clef.

  She looked at the remnants of her pack. Not only were the coins gone, but so was her thieving kit. It must have fallen out as she ran.

 

  She poked her head up and took stock of her surroundings. The rooftop was bordered by three rookery buildings, one on either side and one behind. The two on the sides were both too tall and too far away, but the building behind was doable—about the same height as the warehouse, with a stone tile roof.

 

  She looked out farther, and spied the white campo walls and smokestacks of a campo a few blocks beyond.

 

  That was a good question. She knew that a merchant house had to be behind this—that was the only force that could deploy a small army in the Commons just to find her. But which one? None of the assassins she’d seen had worn a house loggotipo—but it would have been supremely stupid for them to do that.

  All this meant she could go to ground in the Michiel campo only to find out that the men down there were Michiel house guards, or someone employed by the Michiels. There was no place she could deem truly safe.

  Sancia shut her eyes and rested her forehead against the roof. Sark…damn you. What in hell have you gotten me mixed up in?

  Though she knew she was just as much at fault as he was. He’d been upfront about the job, and she’d still taken it. The money had been too good, and despite all her care and caution, it’d made her stupid.

  But she likely wouldn’t have survived this long without Clef. If she hadn’t opened the box, she realized, she’d be trussed up like a hog right now, about to be butchered.

  she said to Clef.

  said Clef.

  Then she heard a rattling sound in the street below. She poked her head back over the edge of the roof.

  An unmarked, black scrived carriage was slowly trundling down the tiny mud pathway in the Greens. Such rigs were about as frequent as a yellow striper here—and the sight of it made her uneasy.

  Now what?

  She watched with growing dread as the carriage approached. Anxious, she pulled off one glove with her teeth and touched a bare palm to the rooftop. It told her of rain, mold, and piles and piles of bird shit, but nothing more—it seemed they were alone up here.

  The carriage finally stopped a few buildings down. The door opened, and a man climbed out. He was tall and thin, and not dressed ostentatiously. His posture was stooped—perhaps a man used to sitting, to indoors work. It was hard to see his face in the shifting lights of the floating lanterns, but he had curly locks that looked somewhat reddish.

  And clean. Clean hair, clean skin. That gave it away.

  He’s campo, she thought. Got to be.

  One of the soldiers ran up to the campo man and started talking. The campo man listened and nodded.

  And he’s the man running the show. Which meant he was probably the one who’d arranged the trap that had almost gotten her killed.

  She narrowed her eyes at him. Who are you, you son of a bitch? Which house do you work for? But she could glean nothing more about him.

  The campo man gestured at a rookery building to the left of the clothier’s warehouse—which Sancia didn’t like. But then he did something odd: he peered at the buildings around him, then reached into his pock
et and took out something…gold.

  She leaned forward slightly, straining to see. It looked like a round, golden device of some kind—like a big, awkward pocket watch, perhaps, slightly larger than his hand.

  A tool made of gold, she thought. Like…Clef?

  The campo man examined the gold pocket watch, and frowned. He kept looking at the tool, then up and around, and then back at the tool.

  asked Sancia.

  said Clef.

  She heard a shout, this one close, from the rookery to her left—someone crying, “Stop, stop, you can’t just come in here!” She looked up just as the window shutters of one room banged open, about three floors above her, and a glowering man wearing a steel cap stuck his head out.

  The man spied Sancia immediately, pointed, and cried, “There! She’s there, on the rooftop, sir!”

  Sancia looked back at the campo man in the street below. The campo man looked at the guard in the rookery—and then at her.

  Then he held up the golden pocket watch and appeared to hit a button on the side. And everything changed.

  * * *

  The first thing Sancia noticed was that all of the floating lanterns in the streets below abruptly went dark and fell to the ground.

  The other thing was that her mind went suddenly…quiet. A sort of quiet she hadn’t heard in a long, long time, like when you live in the city for years and then spend a night out in the country, and hear simply nothing at night.

  said Clef.

 

  He kept talking.

  But though she was frantic, Sancia couldn’t help noticing that her abilities had…changed.

  Her hand was still pressed to the rooftop—but now it told her nothing. Just silence.

  Then she heard the screaming.

  * * *

  Gregor Dandolo strode through the alley in the Greens, muttering, “Selvo Building, Selvo Building…” as he went. It was harder to find than he’d anticipated, since nothing in the Commons was properly labeled—there were no street names, nor signage of any kind. He needed to hurry—he had to get ahold of this Sark before the man heard he was looking for him.

  He stopped in his tracks when he heard the thump beside him. He looked down to see that Whip’s dense metal head had just fallen off its shaft, and its metal cable was unspooling beside it.

  “What?” he said, confused. He hit Whip’s lever to retract it.

  Nothing happened.

  “What the devil?” he said.

  * * *

  In an abandoned loft in Old Ditch, the Scrappers were carefully testing out a new scrived device, one that Giovanni hoped would be his masterpiece: a rig that, when attached to a scrived carriage, would give them remote control of the wheels—or it should, in theory, but it was persistently failing to work.

  “Something’s wrong with the commands again,” said Claudia, sighing.

  “What’s not expressing correctly?” asked Giovanni. “Where have we made the wrong ste—”

  Then all the scrived lights in the loft blinked off.

  There was total silence. Even the hums from the fans were gone.

  “Uhhh,” said Giovanni. “Did we do that?”

  * * *

  People did not have many scrived devices in Foundryside and the Greens, and those who did kept them secret. But as some of the residents checked on their hidden treasures, they found something…strange.

  Lights went out. Machines that had previously worked just up and died. Musical trinkets went silent. And a few of the larger scrivings simply failed—some with disastrous results.

  Like the Zoagli rookery in Foundryside. Though the residents didn’t know it, the supports beneath the building that kept it upright were actually scrived with commands that convinced the wooden pieces they were dark stone, immune to the rotting effects of moisture and waste.

  But when those scrivings stopped, the wooden beams remembered what they really were…

  The wood creaked. Groaned. Moaned.

  And then snapped.

  In an instant, the entire Zoagli Building collapsed, bringing all the roofs and all the floors down on its residents before they could even understand what was happening.

  * * *

  Sancia looked up when she heard the enormous crack from Foundryside, and stared as a building collapsed. It was like watching a big stack of books slowly slump to the side and then tumble to pieces—yet she knew that dozens and dozens of people had to be inside that structure.

  “Holy shit,” she whispered.

  said Clef drunkenly.

  She looked back at the campo man. He looked surprised by the sound of the building’s collapse, even nervous, and stowed the golden pocket watch away in his vest—a curiously guilty gesture.

  Sancia looked at the dead lanterns lying in the street.

  Clef muttered.

  Her bare hand was pressed into the rooftop, but the rooftop was still silent to her.

  A mad idea wriggled into her thoughts.

  No, said Sancia, horrified. That can’t be…

  Then a voice to her left: “Scrumming little bastard!” She looked up, and saw the man in the rookery window lifting up an espringal.

  “Shit!” she cried.

  She sprang to her feet and started to run toward the building behind the warehouse.

  said Clef.

 

  A bolt thudded into the rooftop just ahead of her. She screamed and covered her head as she ran—not like that would stop the next shot—but in some calm, distant corner of her mind, she recognized that it had not been a scrived bolt. A scrived bolt likely would have punched right through the poorly built roof.

  Sancia ran faster, faster. She took note of the stone shingles of the rooftop beyond, imagining how she’d land on them, how the soles of her boots would grip them.

  I really goddamn hope, she thought as she madly pumped her arms, that I was right about it being twenty feet…

  She came to the corner and jumped.

  The alley soared beneath her, dark and yawning, passing ever so slowly like a cloud traversing the face of the sun. She’d pushed off with her left foot and stretched out with her right, pointing the arch of her foot at the edge of the distant rooftop, every tendon in her leg and hip and back extending to connect with that one spot, like a sprouting plant reaching toward a sunbeam.

  She lifted her arms as she leapt and pumped them back down, maximizing her propulsion. She lifted her left foot to join her right. She pulled her knees up. The edge of the roof flew closer to her.

  The man in the rookery screamed, “No scrumming way!”

  And then…

  She compressed her legs as she landed, lessening the impact. She’d made it—almost. For one splinter of a moment she seemed to hang here, the edge of the roof biting into her feet, her ass dangling over the alley below.

  Then momentum, that oh-so-fickle friend of hers, carried her forward just a little, until…

  Sancia found her equilibrium, and stood up.

  Her body was still. She’d made it.

  A voice in the alley below shouted, “Shoot! Shoot her!”

  She started running as the bolts thudded into the wall below her, up from the alley—they must have surrounded the clothier’s warehouse. She leapt forward and skidded along the slimy stone roof until she came to a small raised hatch, leading down.

  The hatch was locked. She fumbled for Clef again, bu
t screamed as a bolt slammed into the roof right beside her shoulder.

  “She’s over there!” cried the man from the rookeries. She peeked over the hatch and saw him signaling to someone below as he reloaded, cranking his espringal once, twice. “On the roof, on the other roof!”

  She finally pulled Clef out and jammed him into the lock in the hatch.

  said Clef.

  Another bolt came hurtling down, this one a handful of feet away.

  she said.

 

  A sharp click. Sancia wrenched the hatch open and leapt down the dark stairs to the floor below, flying from floor to floor.

  But she wasn’t alone. Sancia could hear footsteps below.

  She came to the second floor. She glimpsed someone running up the stairwell just below her—a woman’s face, a dagger in her hand. She screamed, “Stop! Stop, you!”

  “Not a harpering chance,” whispered Sancia.

  She leapt herself through the door to the second floor, then slammed it shut behind her.

  said Clef drunkenly.

  Sancia threw her shoulder against it as she ripped Clef off the string around her neck. She tried to slip him into the lock, but then…

  Bang. Someone on the other side hit the door hard, almost knocking Sancia to the ground. She gritted her teeth, threw herself against the door again, and wriggled Clef into the lock…

  Click.

  Someone slammed into the door again. But this time, because it was locked, it didn’t move. A voice on the other side moaned in surprise and pain.

  She ran down the hallway as people poked their heads out their doors. She took a left, kicked down one door, and ran into the room.

  The apartment was small and filthy. A young couple was lying on a pallet, quite nude, and Sancia could not see much of the man’s face, as most of it was obscured by the woman’s thighs. Both of them screamed in abject terror as Sancia darted inside.