Foundryside: A Novel (The Founders Trilogy)
Page 29
Sancia looked around. There were a lot fewer lights here, no floating lanterns, and almost no scrived carriages. The only impressive thing in sight was the Mountain of the Candianos, which loomed in the distance like a vast whale parting the seas. “No shit.”
Berenice watched the group of men skulking through the streets of the campo. They seemed to be following the outer wall. “Why aren’t they going deeper in? If this is as secretive as it’s supposed to be—why aren’t they headed straight for the Mountain?”
“You either hide secrets close to your heart,” said Sancia, “or out in the hinterlands. It must be somewhere close, though—otherwise they’d have grabbed a carriage, yes?”
They followed the men along the campo wall. Evening was coming on now, and the mist thickened as the sun withdrew. The pale lights of the Candiano campo were a brittle white—not at all the pleasant rosy or yellow hues of the other campos. They looked spectral and strange in the fog.
Then a constellation of lights emerged ahead—a tall, sprawling construct that Sancia had trouble making out. “Is that a…”
“Yes,” said Berenice quietly. “It’s a foundry.”
Finally the man came to the foundry gates. Sancia could read the stone sign above—CATTANEO FOUNDRY. Yet unlike most of the foundries she’d encountered in her life, this one did not seem to be operating: there was no stream of smoke, no quiet roar of equipment, no chatter or cries from the yards beyond.
They watched as the men entered through the gates. The guards out front were heavily armored, and heavily armed—yet they also seemed to be the only people around.
“The Cattaneo Foundry…” said Berenice. “I thought that one was closed when the house went bankrupt. What in hell is going on?”
Sancia spied a tall townhouse next to the foundry walls. “I’ll get a better look.”
“You’ll get a…Wait!” said Berenice.
Sancia trotted over, took off her gloves, and slowly scaled the side of the townhouse. As she climbed, Sancia could hear Berenice fretting down below, muttering, “Oh my God…Oh my God…”
Sancia nimbly pulled herself up onto the slate roof. From here she could see the whole of the foundry yards…and they were empty. Just yards and yards of blank mud or stone. It was a queer sight. Yet she could spy the men in the distance, filing into the foundry main facilities ahead, a huge, fortresslike structure of dark stone, with tiny windows, a copper roof, and dozens and dozens of smokestacks—though only one seemed to be operating, a small one on the west side, which sighed a narrow thread of gray smoke.
So the question is, thought Sancia, what are they making?
She watched the walls and yards of the foundry, and saw that although the facility appeared empty, it was not deserted. There were a handful of men standing along the walls or the ramparts of the foundry, and though it was hard to make out from this distance, she could see the gleam of scrived armor on their shoulders.
Clef sighed.
Sancia carefully climbed back down to the street level, where Berenice stood fuming. “Next time, at least consider asking me before you do that!”
“It’s not shut down,” said Sancia.
“What?”
“The foundry’s not shut down. There’s smoke or steam coming from some of the stacks. So it’s still forging something. Do you have any idea what?”
“Not at all. But the hypatus might. We can go back and consult with him, and then perhaps we can come up with a plan to—”
“No,” said Sancia. “There are twelve guards patrolling the foundry walls tonight. If this bastard listens to the captured sounds from the workshop and gets spooked, there could be fifty tomorrow—or they could move out altogether.”
“So what? Wait…” Berenice stared at her. “You surely aren’t proposing what I think you are—are you?”
“We’ve caught him unawares,” said Sancia. “We take advantage of the opportunity, or we lose it.”
“You want to break into a foundry? Right now? We don’t even know if anything’s going on in there!”
“There is. There are lights on the third floor in the northwest corner.”
Berenice narrowed her eyes. “The third floor…then the administrative offices, possibly?”
“So you know something about foundries. Do you know how to get into a foundry?”
“Well, certainly, but there are countless sachets required,” said Berenice. “But worse, there are only a few ways in, and even a skeleton crew can watch them all, unless you can…” Then she trailed off, staring into the distance.
“Unless you can what?”
Berenice glowered like she’d just had a thought she dearly didn’t want to have.
“Does this have anything to do with all the rigs you’re carrying with you?” asked Sancia.
Her mouth fell open. “How did you know about those?” Then a sheepish look crossed her face. “Oh. Right. You can, uh, hear them. I was going to say—unless you can make your own door somewhere.”
“And…can you do that?”
She squirmed. “I…Well. It’s all, ah…very experimental. And it will depend on finding the right bit of stone wall.”
19
Berenice led Sancia down to the canal running along the foundry. There they came upon a clutch of huge tunnels and pipes sticking out of the canal walls.
“Intake,” muttered Berenice as they reviewed them. “Outtake…Intake, intake, intake…and outtake.”
“These all look like iron,” said Sancia. “Not stone wall.”
“Yes, thank you, that’s clear.” She pointed at one, a huge, gaping iron pipe with a thick grate across its mouth. “That’s it. That’s the one—the metallurgical outtake pipe.”
“What are we going to do about the grate?”
“Go through it,” said Berenice. She walked to the closest tunnel and tried to climb onto its top, but despite her height, she rather pathetically slid back down the side. “Ah—little help?”
Sancia shook her head and gave her a boost. “I guess fabs and scrivers don’t get out much,” she muttered.
Together they crawled across the tunnel tops to the big outtake pipe. Berenice sat and took out a case of what appeared to be a dozen small, scrived components, and many small plates covered with complicated sigils. She selected one component—a slim metal wand whose rounded, bulbous tip looked like molten glass—and looked it over.
“What’s that?” asked Sancia.
“I’d made it to be a small spotlight, but we obviously need something a bit more now. Hmm.” She reviewed her components, selected a rounded handle with a bronze knob on the side, and slid the small end of the wand inside until there was a click. Then she took a long, thin plate, and slotted it into the side of the handle. “There. A heating element. That should do.”
“Do what?”
“Help me down. I’m going to get the grate out of the way.”
Sancia lowered Berenice down until the girl delicately balanced on the lip of the pipe. Then she lifted the wand to one of the big rivets holding up the grate, adjusted the knob on the side, and…
The tip of the wand flared bright hot, like a shooting star had plummeted down to land in the scummy pipe. Sancia cringed and looked away, eyes watering. There was a loud, furious hissing sound. She looked back when it stopped, and saw the rivet was now a glowing
blob of smoking, molten metal.
Berenice coughed and waved her hand in front of her face. “I’ll do the sides and the tops, and leave one rivet on the bottom. Then you pull me back up and I’ll attach an anchor to the top—like the one the captain used to weigh you down. This should pry the grate open, and we can slip inside.”
“Shit,” said Sancia. “Why did you bring all this?”
Berenice touched the wand to another rivet. “I got shot at the other night. Rather a lot. I came prepared to prevent such a thing from happening again. A lot of components that can do a lot of different things—when combined the right way, that is.” The wand flared bright.
When Berenice was finished, Sancia hauled her back up. Berenice took out the anchor—a small bronze ball that was covered in shiny brass sigils, with a shiny latch on its side—and chained it to the top of the grate. She slid the latch aside, revealing a wooden button, and touched it. Suddenly the grate groaned and creaked, until it slowly fell open, like a drawbridge.
“Inside,” said Berenice. “Quick.”
They dropped down into the mouth of the pipe and ran into the darkness. Sancia was about to touch a hand to the wall to see, but there was a click, and Berenice’s wand glowed bright again—yet she’d apparently removed whatever component made it capable of burning through iron, and it now only gave out light. “Keep your eyes out for any stone,” she said. She adjusted the light, turning down the brightness.
“Where the hell are we, again?”
“We’re in the metallurgical outtake tunnel of the foundry. Processing so much metal—iron, brass, bronze, lead—it takes a lot of water, which gets tainted and rendered unusable after the forging’s done. So they dump it all out into the canals. It’s a big pipe that runs through a lot of the foundry—and if we see any brick, I should be able to get you in.”
“How?”
“I’ll tell you once we find it.”
They kept walking, and walking, until finally Sancia saw it. “There. On the side.” She pointed. The iron walls of the pipe stopped short about ten feet ahead, and from there on out the walls were stone and brick, like an old sewer.
Berenice reviewed the stone wall and glanced back at the mouth of the tunnel. “Hum. This could work. I think we’re next to the storage bays. But I’m not sure—and I would really prefer to be sure.”
“Why?”
“Well, we could be next to the water reservoirs—which means the tunnel would flood and we’d drown.”
“Crap. Hold on.” Sancia slid off a glove, placed her hand to the bricks, and shut her eyes.
The wall was thick, at least two to three feet. She kept letting it pour into her mind, telling her what it felt, or at least what was on the other side…
She opened her eyes. “It’s just wall,” she said. “Nothing on the other side.”
“Is it thick?”
“Yeah. At least two feet.”
Berenice grimaced. “Well. Maybe it will still work, then…”
“Maybe what will work?”
She didn’t answer. She reached into her pocket and pulled out what looked like four small bronze spheres with sharp steel screws on their ends. She examined the wall, sucked her teeth, and started screwing the bronze spheres into the wall in the shape of a square, with one ball at each corner.
“Can you please just tell me what this is?” asked Sancia impatiently.
“You know about construction scrivings, right?” said Berenice, adjusting the bronze spheres.
“Yeah. They glue bricks together to make them think they’re all one thing instead of separate things.”
“Yes. But lots of foundries use the same kind of stone, or something close to it—which makes it a lot easier to twin.”
“Twin with…what?” asked Sancia.
“With a section of stone wall that’s back in my office,” said Berenice, standing up. “One that has a big hole in the middle.”
Sancia stared at the wall, then at Berenice. “What? Really?”
“Yes,” said Berenice. She scrunched her nose, reviewing her handiwork. “If it works, it should convince this section of wall that it’s the same as the one in my office. That’d then weaken all the Candiano construction scrivings in a circle, and basically carve a hole for you. But…I’ve really never tested this in the field before. Especially not on a wall this thick.”
“And if it doesn’t work?”
“Frankly, I don’t have a damned clue what will happen if it goes wrong.” She glanced at Sancia. “Still feeling experimental?”
“I’ve done dumber shit in the past few days.”
Berenice took a breath, and twisted the tops of all four brass spheres, one after another. Then she stepped back and slowly moved away, like she was preparing to run.
For a moment, nothing happened. Then the color of the brick changed, ever so slightly, growing just a tiny bit darker. Then came a creaking sound. The bricks shuddered and rippled—and then, suddenly, the wall fractured in the middle in a perfect circle, like someone had carved it with a saw.
“It works,” said Berenice. “It works!”
“Great,” said Sancia. “Now, how the hell do we get that big plug of stone out of the way?”
“Oh. Right.” Berenice pulled out yet another trinket from her pockets: this one appeared to be just a small iron handle with a button on the side. “Just a construction scriving. It’ll stick to the plug’s center.” She placed the handle in the center of the stone plug, confirmed it was stuck, and gave a mighty heave.
Nothing happened. She tugged again, her face turning pink, and stopped, gasping. “Well,” she said. “I didn’t quite anticipate this.”
“Here,” said Sancia. She knelt, gripped the handle, placed one foot against the wall, and pulled.
Slowly, with a low grinding noise, the short stone column slid a few inches out of the wall. Sancia took a breath and pulled again, and it finally fell to the tunnel floor with a plunk, leaving about a two-foot-wide hole in the wall.
“Good,” said Berenice, miffed. “Well done. Can you fit?”
“Keep your voice down. Yeah, I can fit.” She crouched and peered into the hole. The room on the other side was dark. “Do you know what that is over there?” she whispered.
Berenice turned up her scrived light and stuck it through the hole. They glimpsed a wide room with a steel walkway running around the edges, and a huge heap of twisted metals in the center. “It’s the waste bin, essentially—all the castoff bits of metals go here to be melted down and reused.”
“But I’ll really be inside the foundry—yes?”
“Yes?”
She shook her head. “Goddamn. I can’t believe we just broke into a foundry just with some random shit in your pockets.”
“I’ll take that as a compliment. But we’re not there yet. This is the basement. The administrative offices are on the third floor. If you want to find out what’s going on here, that’s the place to look.”
“Any advice for how to get up there?”
“No. I’ve no idea what doors will be locked or what passages will be blocked or guarded. You’ll be on your own. I…assume you don’t want me to come with you?”
“Two house-breakers makes for a quick trip to the loop,” said Sancia. “It’d be better if you kept a lookout.”
“Fine with me. I can go back to the streets outside, and if I see something I’ll try to think of some way to warn you.”
Sancia slipped her feet into the hole. “You wouldn’t happen to have any more useful rigs, would you?”
“I do. But they are destructive, and foundries are delicate—meaning if you cut through or break the wrong thing, you would die and probably take a lot of people with you.”
“Great. I sure as shit hope we get something out of this,” said Sancia, sliding forward.
&
nbsp; “Me too,” said Berenice. “Good luck.” Then she trotted back down the tunnel.
* * *
Sancia slipped through the hole in the wall, stood up, and tried to get her bearings. It was pitch-black in there now, and she was reluctant to use up her talents just to get around a room.
Using Clef, Sancia unlocked door after door as she penetrated the depths of the foundry. She was astounded at the sheer density of the thing, all tiny passageways that led to huge, complicated processing bays, full of giant loomlike devices or cranes that perched over tables or lathes like spiders weaving cocoons about their prey. The heat within the foundry was immense, but there was a constant wind in every hall and passage, carrying the hot air out to—well, somewhere, she assumed. It was like being trapped in the innards of some kind of giant, mindless creature.
Most of it was deserted. Which made sense, since only a portion of it was being used now. But then…
Sancia looked ahead. The passageway ended in a closed wooden door. Presumably there was some kind of hallway being guarded beyond it.
She took off a glove and felt the wall, then the ceiling. The foundry was so alive with scrivings that this felt like walking under a powerful waterfall—the sudden pressure almost knocked her over. But she held on, walking along the walls, her bare fingers trailing over the stone and the metal, until she felt a long, narrow, vertical cavity just ahead…