Foundryside: A Novel (The Founders Trilogy)

by Robert Jackson Bennett

  “I will dispense with all pretenses,” said Gregor, sighing. “I’ve neither the time nor the energy for them.” He sat in a chair opposite Orso. “You broke my mother’s ban on the purchase of Occidental items. You tried to buy something valuable. This item was stored at my waterfront, for it could not be stored at the Dandolo campo. While it was there, young Sancia here was hired to steal it. Her partner, Sark, dutifully passed it along to their client—and was murdered for his troubles. And since then, this person has tried to kill anyone who’s had the remotest of interactions with that item—Sancia, you, Berenice, and me. And I suspect that such efforts will not end tonight—because the item must be incredibly important. As Occidental tools generally are. After all, they say Crasedes built his own god out of metals and stones—and a tool that could do that would be beyond value. Yes?”

  Orso started rocking back and forth.

  “What was in the box, Orso?” asked Gregor. “You need to tell me. It appears our lives depend on it.”

  Orso rubbed his mouth, then suddenly turned to Sancia and spat, “Where is it now? What did you do with it, damn you?”

  “No,” said Gregor. “First tell me what could be so valuable that it drove someone to try to kill us all tonight.”

  Orso grumbled for a moment. Then he said, “It was…It was a key.”

  Sancia did her utmost not to emote, but her heart was suddenly thrumming. Or maybe she should emote, she thought. She tried her best to look confused.

  Gregor raised an eyebrow. “A key?”

  “Yes. A key. Just a key. A golden key.”

  “And did this key do anything?” asked Gregor.

  “No one knew for certain. Grave robbers tend to lack the proper testing experience, you see. They found it in some giant, musty, collapsed fortress in Vialto. It was one of several Occidental tools they and the pirates and all the rest discovered.”

  “You’d already tried to purchase one such tool, hadn’t you?” asked Gregor.

  “Yes,” said Orso through gritted teeth. “I assume your mother told you about that. It was something like a lexicon. A big, ancient box. We paid dearly for it, and it vanished between Vialto and here.”

  “How dear is dearly?” asked Gregor.

  “A lot.”

  Gregor rolled his eyes and looked at Berenice.

  “Sixty thousand duvots,” said Berenice quietly.

  Sancia coughed. “Holy shit.”

  “Yes,” said Orso. “Hence Ofelia Dandolo’s frustration. But the key…It was worth trying again. There are all kinds of stories about the hierophants using scrived tools to navigate the barriers of reality—barriers we ourselves barely understand!”

  “So you just wanted to make more powerful tools,” said Gregor.

  “No,” said Orso. “Not just. Listen—when we inscribe an item with sigillums, we alter its reality, as anyone knows. But if you wipe the sigillums away or move beyond a lexicon, then those alterations vanish. The Occidentals not only developed tools that didn’t need lexicons—when the Occidentals altered reality, it was permanent.”

  “Permanent?” said Sancia.

  “Yes. So, say you have a scrived hierophantic tool that, oh, can make a stream burble up from the ground. Sure, you’d need sigillums to make the tool—but if you use the tool on the ground, then that water is there forever. It will have edited reality in a direct, instantaneous, and everlasting fashion. Supposedly the wand of Crasedes could unthread reality and tie it all back together again, if the stories are to be believed.”

  “Whoa,” said Sancia quietly.

  “Whoa is right,” said Orso.

  “How is that possible?” asked Gregor.

  “That’s one of the giant goddamn mysteries I was trying to solve!” said Orso. “There are some theories. A few hierophantic texts call the basic sigils we use the lingai terrora—the language of the earth, of creation. But the Occidental sigils were the lingai divina—the language of God.”

  “Meaning?” said Sancia.

  “Meaning our sigils are the language of reality, of trees and grass and, hell, I don’t know, fish. But Occidental sigils are the language God used to fashion that reality. So—use God’s coded commands, and reality is your plaything. Still, just a theory. The key would have helped me figure out how true all that was.”

  said Sancia. But Clef remained silent, stuffed down the side of her boot. She wondered if his efforts had broken him, just as her own had almost broken her tonight.

  “But the key was stolen as well…” said Gregor.

  “Well, originally I thought the damned thing had gotten burned to bits in the waterfront fire.” He scowled at Sancia. “But the fire was you as well?”

  Sancia shrugged. “Shit got out of hand.”

  “I’ll say,” said Orso. “But what happened next? What did you do with it?”

  Sancia then reiterated the story she’d told Gregor—bringing it to the fishery, Sark’s death, the fight, the escape.

  “So you gave it over,” said Orso.

  “I did,” she said.

  “And your Sark said he suspected founder lineage behind this.”

  “It’s what he said.”

  Orso looked at Gregor.

  “I might be founder lineage,” said Gregor, “but I think we can count me out, yes?”

  “That’s not what I was looking at you for, idiot!” snapped Orso. “Do you believe her or not?”

  Gregor thought about it. “No,” he said. “I don’t. Not entirely. I think there’s something she’s not telling us.”

  Shit, thought Sancia.

  “Have you searched her?” said Orso.

  Sancia’s heart leapt in her chest. Shit!

  “I’ve not had the time,” said Gregor. “Nor am I, ah, willing to submit a woman to my touch without her conse—”

  Orso rolled his eyes. “Oh, for the love of God…Berenice! Would you please search Miss Sancia here for us?”

  Berenice hesitated. “Uh. Really, sir?”

  “You’ve already been shot at,” said Orso, “so you know this won’t be the worst thing to have happened to you tonight. Just wash your hands well afterwards.” He nodded at Sancia. “Go on. Stand up.”

  Sighing, Sancia stood and raised her arms above her head. Berenice quickly patted her down. She was about a head taller than Sancia, so she had to stoop to do it. She paused at Sancia’s hips, and pulled out the last remaining stun bomb, a handful of old lockpicks, and nothing else.

  Sancia tried to suppress the relief in her face. Thank God she didn’t make me take my scrumming boots off.

  “That’s it,” said Berenice as she stood. The girl turned away quickly, but oddly enough, she was blushing.

  Gregor looked at Sancia hard. “Really,” he said.

  “Really,” said Sancia with as much defiance as she could muster.

  “Terrific,” said Orso. “So we have a thief with a dull story, and no treasure. Is there anything else? Anything else?”

  Sancia thought rapidly. She knew there was quite a lot more. The problem was what to keep, and what to give up.

  Her current problem was that despite saving Orso’s life, her own still offered no value to these men. One bore the authorities assigned to him by the city, the other carried with him all the privileges of the merchant houses—and she was just a Commons thief who, as far as they were aware, no longer possessed the treasure everyone was seeking. Either one of them could have her killed, if they wished.

  But she knew things they didn’t. And that was worth something.

  “There’s more,” she said.

  “Is there?” asked Gregor. “You omitted something from what you told me?”

  “Yeah,” she said. “I didn’t tell you the part about how my client is the one who shut down all the scrivings
in the Commons.”

  * * *

  The room fell silent. Everyone stared at her.

  “What?” sputtered Orso. “What do you mean?”

  “Your client?” said Gregor.

  “Yeah,” said Sancia.

  “One man did all that?” asked Gregor.

  “Yeah,” said Sancia.

  “Yeah?” said Orso, exasperated. “You can’t say something like that and then just keep saying yeah!”

  “Yes. Please explain yourself,” said Gregor.

  She told them about the escape, how she’d fled the fisheries and hidden in the Greens—omitting, of course, the bit about how Clef had helped her—and then she told them about the campo man, and his odd golden pocket watch.

  Orso raised his hands, shaking his head. “Stop. Stop! This is insane. You’re telling me your client used one device, just one, and it somehow dampened or negated all the scrivings in the Greens, and Foundryside, and half a dozen other places to boot?”

  “Basically,” said Sancia.

  “One button, and all the commands and all the bindings and all the etchings just stopped?”

  “Basically.”

  He laughed. “It’s madness. It’s idiotic! It’s…”

  “It’s like the Battle of Armiedes,” said Berenice suddenly.

  “Eh?” said Orso. “What? What’s that?”

  She cleared her throat. “The Battle of Armiedes, from the Occidental Empire. Long, long ago. There was a giant fleet of scrived ships, threatening to overthrow the empire. The hierophants met the fleet with but one boat—but that boat had a weapon on it, and when this weapon was used, all the ships…”

  “Simply sank to the bottom,” said Orso slowly. “That’s right. I remember now. When did you learn about that, Berenice?”

  “When you made me read those eighteen tomes of hierophantic history while we were negotiating with our people in Vialto.”

  “Ah. Now that I think about it, it seems a bit cruel that I made you do that, Berenice.”

  “That is because it was, sir.” She turned, looked at a bookcase behind her, and found one huge tome. She hauled it out, flipped it open, and scanned the lines. “Here’s the passage. ‘…but by focusing the influences of the imperiat, the hierophants were able to wrest control of all the sigillums of their foes, and discard them as if they were chaff among the wheat. And so the king of Cambysius and all his men sank to the bottom of the bay, and drowned, and were never heard from again.’ ” She looked around at them. “That description always puzzled me…but if they were describing an actual tool, it might make sense.”

  Orso cocked his head and half closed his eyes. “By focusing the influences of the imperiat…Hm.”

  “So it doesn’t say if it looked like a big, weird pocket watch?” asked Sancia. “Because what I saw looked like a big, weird pocket watch.”

  “It doesn’t,” said Berenice. “But if the key survived, then I suppose other tools could have as well.”

  “How does knowing this help us?” asked Gregor.

  “It doesn’t,” said Sancia. “But I saw him. I saw his face. And he’s got to be the man running the whole crew, from the men who ambushed me at the fishery to the ones who tried to kill us just tonight. If this gold pocket watch—this imperiat, if that’s the word for it—if it’s anything like the key, he probably spent fortunes getting it. You don’t hand that off to your lieutenant. You keep it in your own damn pocket. So that must have been him.”

  “What did he look like, Sancia?” asked Gregor.

  “Like campo sort,” said Sancia. “Clean. Clean skin. Clean clothes. Proper clothes. Like you, I guess,” she said, pointing at Berenice. “Not like you,” she said to Orso.

  “Hey,” said Orso, offended.

  “What else?” said Gregor.

  “Tall,” she said. “Curly hair. Stooped posture. An indoor man for indoor work. Measly beard. But he didn’t have a loggotipo, or crest, or anything so simple.”

  “That is a vague description,” said Gregor. “I suspect you will now say that if you saw him, you’d recognize him. Which would be useful for you—since we’d then need to look after you.”

  “If I had more, I’d tell you more,” said Sancia.

  “But it could be anyone!” said Orso. “Any house! Morsini, Michiel, Candiano—or even our own, I suppose! And we’ve no way of winnowing down our options!”

  “The gravity rig doesn’t tell you anything, Orso?” asked Gregor.

  “No,” said Orso. “Because that thing is some unprecedented, groundbreaking work! It’s some truly genius shit, of a kind I’ve never seen before. Whoever’s made this rig has been keeping their talent a dead secret, it seems.”

  At that, Berenice cleared her throat. “There is another unanswered question, sir. Whoever this man is—how did he find out about the Occidental lexicon? About the key? About Captain Dandolo going to capture Sancia, and my following them? How did he know all that?”

  “That’s, like, six unanswered questions!” said Orso. “And the answer is simple! There’s a leak, or a mole, or a spy somewhere here on the campo!”

  Berenice shook her head. “We only talked about the key to each other, sir. And there was no one around when you told me to follow Captain Dandolo, just today. But there is a commonality, sir.”

  “There is?” said Gregor.

  “There is. They all took place in the same location—your workshop.”

  “So?” said Orso.

  Berenice sighed. She then reached into a desk, produced a large sheaf of paper, dipped a pen in some ink, and then drew at least twenty elaborate, complicated, beautiful symbols onto the paper, dazzlingly, dazzlingly fast. It was like a party trick, effortlessly creating these gorgeous designs in the blink of an eye.

  Berenice showed the piece of paper to Orso. They had no meaning to Sancia—but he gasped at the sight of it. “No!” he said.

  “I think so, sir,” she said.

  He turned and stared at his workshop door, his jaw slack. “It couldn’t be…”

  “What just happened?” asked Gregor. “What is that you drew there, Berenice?”

  “An old scriving problem,” said Berenice. “An incomplete design, created to make students wonder—how do you make a rig that captures sounds of the air?”

  “Someone’s solved it,” said Orso faintly. “It’s a rig. A rig! It’s all just a rig, isn’t it?”

  “I suspect so, sir,” said Berenice. “A device, a secret one, planted in your workshop that somehow reports our conversations.”

  For once, Gregor and Sancia seemed to be on the same side—both of them glanced at each other, bewildered.

  “You think a rig is spying on you?” said Sancia.

  “Isn’t that impossible?” said Gregor. “I thought scriving mostly moved things around or made them light or heavy.”

  “That’s true,” said Berenice. “Scriving is good at big, simple processes, huge exchanges done on a grand scale. It makes things get fast, get hot, get cold. But little things, delicate things, complicated things…those are trickier.”

  “Trickier,” said Orso. “But not impossible. A sound rig—one that makes or captures noise—is a favorite theory problem for scrivers to toy with. But no one’s ever actually done it.”

  “But if these people have scrived gravity,” said Berenice, looking at the plates on Orso’s desk, “who knows what other barriers they’ve broken?”

  “Assuming they could make such a rig—how could they get it in there?” asked Gregor.

  “They can fly, asshole,” said Sancia. “And this place has windows.”

  “Oh,” said Gregor. “Right.”

  “Still,” said Berenice. “This is all just a theory I have. I could be totally wrong.”

  “But if my client did put that thing in there,” sa
id Sancia, “now we just go in and get it—right? And then, I don’t know, smash it or something, yeah?”

  “Think,” said Orso. “If the rig were obvious, we’d have already spotted the damn thing!”

  “We’ve no idea how such a rig would even look,” said Berenice. “It could look like anything. A plate. A pencil. A coin. Or it could be hidden in the walls, or floor, or ceiling.”

  “And if we go digging around for it, and they hear us,” said Orso, “then we’ll have given the game away.”

  Gregor looked at Sancia. “But Sancia—you can hear scrivings, can’t you?”

  The room went quiet.

  “Uh,” said Sancia. “Y-yeah.” Of course, it’d been Clef who’d heard the gravity rigs converging on them before. Sancia had just told him a half truth. It was getting hard to keep up with all her lies.

  “So you can just go in to the workshop and listen for it, yes?” said Gregor.

  “Yes, can’t you?” said Orso, sitting forward. He was looking at her a little too intensely.

  “I can try,” said Sancia. “But there’s a lot of noise around here…” This was true. The campo was echoing with whispered commands, muttered scripts, quiet chanting. Every once in a while they would spike, growing loud as some vast, invisible infrastructure performed some task, and her brain could hardly bear it.

  “Is there?” demanded Orso. “And how can you hear this noise? How does this process work?”

  “It just does. You want my help or not?”

  “That depends on whether you can actually give it.”

  Sancia didn’t move.

  “What’s the problem here?” asked Orso. “You go look, you find, that’s it, right?”

  Sancia looked around at them. “If I do this…I’m not going to do it for free.”

  “Ohh, fine,” said Orso dismissively. “You want money? I’m sure we can work out some kind of arrangement. Especially because I’m convinced you’ll fail.”

  “No,” said Gregor. “Orso can promise you money all he likes. But he is not the person you are bargaining with. That would be me.” He held up the key to her bond.