Foundryside: A Novel (The Founders Trilogy)

by Robert Jackson Bennett

  “What…what is that?” asked Gregor.

  Ofelia didn’t answer. She strode across the warehouse to a panel of bronze dials and switches on the walls. She flipped one, and the circle of shadow vanished.

  A wooden frame in the outline of a person stood in the exact center of where the ball of darkness had been—and hanging on this frame was a scrived suit of armor.

  But it was a tremendously strange suit of armor. Built into one arm was a black, glittering polearm, half massive ax, half giant spear. Built into the other was a huge round shield, and installed behind it a scrived bolt caster. But the strangest thing about it was the curious black plate situated on the front of its cuirass.

  “Is this a…a lorica?” asked Gregor.

  “No,” said Ofelia. “A lorica is a big, loud, ugly armament of open warfare, a scrived suit intended solely for slaughter. It is also illegal, since it augments gravity in manners that violate our unspoken laws. But this…this is different.” She touched the black plate on its front with a finger. “The rig is fast, graceful—and difficult to see coming. It absorbs light to a phenomenal degree—making it almost impossible to discern with the eyes. Something Orso designed.”

  “Orso made this?”

  “He made the method. But this method is critical to our house’s survival.”

  Gregor frowned at the suit as an uncomfortable idea entered his mind. “This…this is a tool of assassins,” he said.

  “You’ve heard the rumors as well as I have,” said Ofelia. “Flying men with espringals, leaping over campo walls. Sieges and bloodshed in the Commons. We enter a dangerous era now, Gregor—an age of escalation and broken promises. The houses have grown complacent, and ambitious men have gained seats of power. It is inevitable—one day, some bright young man will say, ‘We’re quite skilled at waging war abroad—so why not do it here?’ And when that happens, we must be ready to respond.”

  Gregor knew she was right—whether she knew it or not, that description perfectly fit Tomas Ziani—but the words filled him with horror. “Respond how?”

  She steeled herself, her face serious. A moth flitted around her head in a lazy circle before meandering away. “We must leave them leaderless,” she said, “and unable to respond. A single, quick strike.”

  “You’re not serious.”

  “If you think the Morsinis or the Michiels or even the Candianos aren’t doing the same, you’re being foolish, Gregor,” she said. “They are. I’ve seen the intelligence reports. And when it happens, Gregor…I want for you to lead our forces.”

  His mouth fell open. “What?”

  “You have more experience in the field than any living Tevanni,” she said. “You have spent your life in war, as your city asked you to. Your war was harder than others, and I regret that. But now, I ask you, as…as your mother, Gregor. Please. Please, leave all these diversions of yours, and come back to me.”

  Gregor swallowed. He looked at his mother, then at the shadowy armor, and thought for a long time.

  “I don’t remember Domenico,” he said suddenly. “Did you know that?”

  She blinked, surprised. “W-what?”

  “I don’t remember my brother. I remember him dying. But that’s all. Of Father, I have nothing. No memory at all. Both of them are lost to me, since the accident.” He turned back to her. “I want to miss them, but I don’t know how. Because I never really knew them. To me, Mother, they are both just creatures in a painting that hangs outside your office. Noble ghosts I can never quite live up to. But do you grieve them? Does their loss wound you, Mother?”

  “Gregor…”

  “You lost Domenico and Father,” he said, voice shaking. “And you lost me. I nearly died in Dantua. Would you risk me again? Again? Is that how you think of me? As something so expendable?”

  “I did not lose you in Dantua,” she said fiercely. “You survived. As I knew you would, Gregor. As I know you always will.”

  “Why? Why this certainty?”

  Yet his mother could not answer. It seemed, for the first time, like Gregor had deeply wounded her. And curiously, he felt no regrets.

  “I have lived my life in war,” he said to her. “I returned to Tevanne to find civilization. It was not as civilized as I liked, Mother. So I shall focus on amending that, and nothing more.” Then he turned and walked away.

  24

  On the third day, they finished their preparations, hastily crafting each tool and each design. Orso oversaw their efforts, pacing around the capsule, reviewing the chalkboards and scriving blocks, carefully eyeing every string of sigils. He twitched and groaned and huffed, but though the designs were not up to his standards, he felt they would work.

  The stone door creaked open and Gregor strode in. “A fine time to pop in!” snapped Orso. “We’ve had some last-minute changes that have thrown everything into goddamn chaos, and we damned sure could’ve used you!”

  “I need to talk to you, Orso,” he said. He pulled him aside.

  “What the hell’s the matter, Captain?” asked Orso.

  Gregor leaned close. “Did you develop some kind of light-absorbing rig for my mother, Orso?”

  “What! How the hell did you know about that?”

  Gregor told him about the meeting with his mother. Orso was stunned. “She’s making some…some kind of assassin’s lorica?”

  “In essence.”

  “But…but, my God, Ofelia Dandolo never struck me as the type at all for plots and coups and revolutions!”

  “So you knew nothing of this?” asked Gregor.

  “Not a word.”

  Gregor nodded, his face grave. “It’s nothing I can do much about right now. I’m not even sure what to do, frankly. But it makes me wonder…”

  “Wonder what?”

  “If her house hypatus had no idea this was happening—what other secrets is she keeping?”

  “What’s that?” asked Sancia loudly. She pointed at a rig on the far table.

  Orso looked over his shoulder. “Oh, that. We’ll get to that in a minute.”

  “It looks like an air-sailing rig,” said Sancia.

  “We’ll get to that.”

  “And you haven’t mentioned an air-sailing rig yet.”

  “I said we’ll get to that!”

  They applied the last few finishing touches. Then they regrouped around the map and Orso reviewed the plan, step by step.

  “First, we bring the capsule to this part of the Commons,” he said. He pointed at a stretch of canal on the map. “The delivery canal passes through there. Sancia will enter the capsule, it will submerge, and as the barge passes through, Berenice will plant the marker. Got it?”

  “Yes, sir,” said Berenice.

  “The barge then pulls Sancia”—he traced the canal with a finger—“right up to the Mountain’s dock. It’s a big dock, and well guarded—which is why the marker will put a hundred feet between the capsule and the barge. That should give Sancia enough distance to safely surface and slip out without anyone noticing. Yes?”

  Sancia said nothing.

  “Sancia then goes to here.” He pointed at a spot outside the Mountain. “The sculpture gardens. That’s where Tribuno’s secret entrance is hidden. It’s apparently been cleverly concealed underneath a small white stone bridge—it’s literally invisible unless you have this.” He pointed at a small, bronze box on the table. The smooth metal was covered in condensation. “It’s a cooling casket—and inside is a vial of Tribuno’s blood. Procured by his daughter.”

  Everyone stared at the bronze box. Gregor wrinkled his nose.

  “The secret entrance will react to Tribuno’s blood, and open up for Sancia,” said Orso. “She then enters, goes through the passageway—and then she’ll be in the Mountain.”

  Sancia cleared her throat and said, “Where in the Mountain, exact
ly?”

  “On the fourth floor,” said Orso.

  “Where on the fourth floor?”

  “That I don’t know.”

  “You don’t know.”

  “No. But you’ll need to get up to the thirty-fifth floor. That’s where Ziani’s office is. And that’s where the imperiat almost certainly is as well.”

  “What’s the process for getting to the thirty-fifth floor?” asked Sancia.

  Orso considered what to say.

  “You don’t know,” said Sancia.

  “No,” he said honestly. “I don’t. But whatever’s in your way, Tribuno’s blood should trump it. It’ll be a candle in the dark for you, girl.”

  Sancia took a slow breath in. “And…once I have the imperiat, I just walk out—yes?”

  Orso hesitated. Claudia, Berenice, and Gio suddenly looked tense. “Well…We’ve had some change of plans there.”

  “Have you,” said Sancia.

  “Yes. Because there’s a good chance the Mountain will eventually figure out you’re not Tribuno. Which means getting out might be a lot trickier than getting in. Hence the, ah, the sailing rig.”

  Sancia stared at them. “You…you want me to fly off the side of the Mountain?”

  “There’s a balcony in Tribuno’s office,” said Orso. “You grab the imperiat, hop out, tear off this bronze tab here”—he pointed on the rig—“and off you go. The parachute activates, and you’re pulled to safety. There’s also a hardened cask secured to the rig—you can put the imperiat in there to make sure it doesn’t see any harm.”

  “And you can’t make a hardened cask that could hold me?”

  “Ah. Well. No. That would be heavy. Now, we can’t fabricate an anchor with the range to pull you completely out of the campo, but…we can get someone onto the Candiano campo to create a sort of landing zone close to one of the gates.” He looked at Gregor. “Are you amenable to this task, Captain?”

  Gregor considered it. “So…I just take the anchor onto the campo, plant it somewhere in range, and catch Sancia as she lands?”

  “Basically. Then you both make a mad dash off the campo into the safety of the Commons.”

  Sancia cleared her throat again. “So…to review,” she said slowly, “I am floating up the canal…”

  “Yes,” said Orso.

  “In a submerged capsule you all have built in three days…”

  “Yes.”

  “And using Tribuno’s blood to enter the Mountain…”

  “Yes.”

  “And I am then navigating a completely unknown set of obstacles to get to the thirty-fifth floor, where I am then stealing the imperiat…”

  “Yes.”

  “And then I hop off the Mountain and fly to Gregor. Because the Mountain will probably figure out something’s wrong, and try to trap me.”

  “Ahh…”

  “And once I land, we run off the campo while probably being chased by some armed people who noticed me flying through the sky like a bird.”

  “Uh. Probably. Yes.”

  “And then I give the imperiat to you, and you…”

  “Take down Tomas,” said Orso. He coughed. “And possibly use it to reinvent the nature of scriving as we know it.”

  “Yes. Well, then. I see.” She took a breath, nodded, and sat up. “I’m out.”

  Orso blinked. “You…you what? Out?”

  “Yeah. I’m out.” She stood. “Every time we talk about this it gets more and more preposterous. And no one’s asked me once if I’m game for any of this. I’m not doing this mad shit. I’m not. I’m out.” She walked away.

  There was a long, awkward silence.

  Orso stared around at everyone, flabbergasted. “Did…did she just say she’s out?”

  “She did,” said Claudia.

  “Like—not going to do it?”

  “That’s what out generally means,” said Gio.

  “But…but she can’t…She can’t just…Oh, son of a bitch!” He chased after Sancia, and caught her just as she was slipping out into the tunnel. “Hey! Come back here!”

  “No,” said Sancia.

  “We did a hell of a lot of work for you!” snarled Orso. “We worked our goddamn asses off to set this all up! You can’t just walk out now!”

  “And yet,” said Sancia, “that’s what I’m doing.”

  “But…but this is our only chance! If we don’t steal the imperiat now, then Tomas Ziani could raise an army, and…”

  “And what?” spat Sancia, marching up to him. “Do to Tevanne what Tevanne has done to the entire rest of the world?”

  “You don’t know what the hell you’re talking about!”

  “The problem is that I actually do. You’re not the one in the capsule, in the Mountain, the one risking your goddamn neck! You know what this is, what this really is?”

  “What?” said Orso, fuming.

  “This is a rich man’s fight,” said Sancia. “A rich man’s game. And we’re all just pieces on the board to you. You think you’re different, Orso, but you’re just like all the rest of them!” She put her finger in his face. “My life’s not a hell of a lot better since I escaped the plantation. I still starve a lot and I still get beaten occasionally. But at least now I get to say no when I want to. And I’m saying it now.” She turned and walked out.

  25

  Sancia sat on the hilltop next to the Gulf, staring out at the ramshackle tent city, rambling and gray in the watery, late-morning light. She’d felt alone many times since she’d found Clef, but she hadn’t felt truly abandoned until now, burdened with secrets, and surrounded with people all too willing to either kill her or put her in harm’s way.

  said Clef.

 

  Sancia watched a group of children playing in the Gulf, running back and forth with sticks. Skinny things, undernourished and filthy. Her childhood had been much the same. Even in the greatest city on earth, she thought, children go hungry, every day.

  said Clef.

 

 

 

 

  She buried her face in her hands. “Damn it,” she whispered. “Damn it all…”

  said Clef.

  she thought.

  She watched as his lumbering form emerged from the tall weeds. He did not look at her. He just walked over and sat, about ten feet away.

  “Dangerous to be out in the day,” he said.

  “It’s dangerous to be in there too,” said Sancia. “Since you people want to get me killed.”

  “I don’t want to get you killed, Sancia.”

  “You said to me once that you were not afraid to die. You meant it, didn’t you?”

  He thought about it, and nodded.

  “Yeah. A guy who’s not afraid to die likely isn’t too torn up about getting other people killed. You might not want it, but it’s a responsibility you’re willing to accept, isn’t it?”

  “Responsibility…” he echoed. “You know, I talked to my mother yesterday.”

  “That’s why you ducked out? Just to chat up your mother?”

  “Yes. I asked her about Silici
o. And she admitted that, once, Dandolo Chartered had indeed been involved in trying to scrive human beings. In trying to scrive slaves, I mean.”

  She glanced at him. His face was fixed in a look of quiet puzzlement. “Really?”

  “Yes,” he said quietly. “Odd thing, to learn of your family’s complicity in such monstrosities. But like you said—it’s not like there weren’t plenty of other tragedies and monstrosities to begin with. That particular one is not especially unusual. So now, today, I think about responsibilities.” He looked out at the cityscape of Tevanne. “It won’t change on its own, will it?”

  “What? The city?”

  “Yes. I’d hoped to civilize it. To show it the way. But I no longer think it will change of its own accord. It must have change forced upon it.”

  “Is this about justice again?” asked Sancia.

  “Of course. It’s my responsibility to deliver it.”

  “Why you, Captain?”

  “Because of what I’ve seen.”

  “And what’s that?”

  He sat back. “You…you know they call me the Revenant of Dantua, yes?”

  She nodded.

  “People call me that. But they don’t know what it means. Dantua…It was a Daulo city we took. In the north of the Durazzo. But the Daulos in the city had stockpiles of flash powder,” he said. “I’ve no idea how they’d gotten it. But one day some boy, no older than ten, snuck into our camp with a box of it on his back. And he ran up to our lexicon, and set off the charge. Killed himself. Set fire to the camp. And worse, he damaged the lexicon. So all our rigs failed. So we were just stuck there, with the Daulo armies out beyond. They couldn’t penetrate the fortress, even with us helpless—but they could starve us out.

  “So. We starved. For days. For weeks. We knew they’d kill us if we surrendered, so we just starved and hoped someone would come. We ate rats and boiled corncobs and mixed dirt with our rice. I just sat and watched it all happen. I was their commander, but there was nothing I could do. I watched them die. Of starvation. Of suicide. I watched these proud sons turn to anguished skeletons, and I buried them in the meager earth.