Foundryside_A Novel

by Robert Jackson Bennett

  “No one’s gotten close. Until recently.”

  “What’s happened recently?” asked Sancia.

  “About a year ago, a band of pirates stumbled across a tiny island in the western Durazzo,” said Giovanni, “and found it covered with Occidental ruins.”

  “The nearby town of Vialto went absolutely barking mad with treasure hunters,” said Claudia.

  “Agents of the merchant houses,” said Giovanni, “or anyone who wanted to be a merchant house.”

  “Because if you can find more records, more notes…” said Claudia.

  “Or, better yet, a real, whole, functional Occidental tool…” said Giovanni.

  “Well, then,” said Claudia quietly. “You’d change the future of scriving forever. You’d make the merchant houses themselves obsolete.”

  “You’d make our whole damn civilization obsolete,” said Giovanni.

  Sancia felt nauseous. She suddenly remembered Clef saying: There’s nothing before the dark. There’s just the dark. I was always in the dark, as…as far as I can recall.

  And it would, after all, be very dark in an ancient ruin.

  “And…” she said slowly. “And you think Clef…”

  “I…I think Clef doesn’t use any language that the houses use,” said Claudia. “And if what you say is true, he can do some pretty amazing things. And I think if you nabbed him from the waterfront…Which would be, of course, where people would ship in anything from Vialto…” She trailed off.

  “Then you might be walking around with a million-duvot key hanging from your neck,” said Giovanni. “Feel heavy?”

  Sancia stood there, totally still. she said.

  But Clef was silent.

  * * *

  They said nothing for a while. Then there was a knock at the door—another Scrapper, asking for Giovanni’s assistance. He apologized and departed, leaving Claudia and Sancia alone in the back office.

  “You…seem to be dealing with this well,” said Claudia.

  Sancia said nothing. She’d barely moved.

  “Most people…they would have had an absolute nervous breakdown if—”

  “I don’t have time for nervous breakdowns,” said Sancia, quietly and coldly. She looked away, rubbing the side of her head. “Damn it. I was going to get this payout, and then…”

  “Get yourself fixed?”

  “Yeah. But I don’t see that happening now.”

  Claudia absently fingered a scar on her forearm. “Do I need to say that you shouldn’t have taken the job?”

  Sancia glared at her. “Claudia. Not now.”

  “I warned you about merchant house work. I told you they’d scrum you in the end.”

  “Enough.”

  “But you kept doing it.”

  Sancia went silent.

  “Why don’t you hate them?” said Claudia, frustrated. “Why don’t you despise them, for what they did to you?” There was a brittle fury in her eyes. Claudia was an immensely talented scriver, but after the house academies had stopped accepting women, all her prospects had vanished. She’d been forced to join the Scrappers and spend her days working in dank basements and abandoned lofts. Despite her cheerful demeanor, she’d never been able to forgive the merchant houses for that.

  “Grudges,” said Sancia, “are a privilege I can’t afford.”

  Claudia sank back in her chair and scoffed. “Sometimes I admire how you can be so bloodlessly practical, Sancia,” she said. “But then I remember that it doesn’t look very pleasant.”

  Sancia said nothing.

  “Does Sark know?” asked Claudia.

  She shook her head. “Don’t think so.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “Tell Sark when I go to debrief with him in two days. Then we skip town. Grab the first boat out of here and go somewhere far, far away.”

  “Really?”

  Sancia nodded. “I don’t see another way around it. Not if Clef is what you say he is.”

  “And you’re taking him with you?”

  “I’m not leaving him behind. I’m not going to be the asshole who lets the merchant houses assume godlike powers out of sheer scrumming negligence.”

  “You can’t get to Sark earlier?”

  “I know one of his apartments, but Sark’s even more paranoid than I am. Getting tortured has that effect on you. He vanishes after I’ve done a job for him. Even I don’t know where he goes.”

  “Well—not to make your options any more complicated—but leaving Tevanne might not be quite as easy as you think.”

  Sancia raised an eyebrow.

  “There’s all the stuff with Clef,” said Claudia. “That’s one thing. But…there’s also the fact that you burned down the waterfront, Sancia. Or at least a lot of it. I have no doubt that some powerful people are looking for you right now. And if they find out who you are…no ship’s captain in Tevanne is going to take you anywhere. Not for all the cane wine and roses on this earth.”

  7

  Captain Gregor Dandolo of the Tevanni Waterwatch held his head high as he walked through the throngs of Foundryside. He did not really know another way to walk: his posture was, at all times, absolutely pristine, back arched and shoulders thrown back. Between this, his large size, and his Waterwatch sash, everyone in the Commons tended to get out of his way. They didn’t know what he was here for, but they wanted no part of it.

  Gregor knew it was odd to feel so jaunty. He was a thoroughly disgraced man, having allowed nearly half the waterfront to burn down under his watch, and he was now facing suspension from the Waterwatch, if not outright expulsion.

  Yet this was a situation that Gregor was quite comfortable with: a wrong had been done, and he intended to set it right. As quickly and as efficiently as possible.

  A musty wine-bar door opened on his right up ahead, and a soused woman with smeared face paint staggered out onto the creaky wooden walkway in front of him.

  He stopped, bowed, and extended an arm. “After you, ma’am.”

  The drunken woman stared at him like he was mad. “After what?”

  “Ah. You, ma’am. After you.”

  “Oh. I see.” She blinked drunkenly, but did not move.

  Gregor, realizing she had no idea what the phrase meant, sighed slightly. “You may walk ahead of me,” he said gently.

  “Oh. Oh! Well, then. Thanks to you.”

  “Certainly, ma’am.” Again, he bowed.

  She tottered ahead of him. Gregor walked up beside her, and the wooden walkway bent slightly under his sizeable bulk, which made her stumble. “Pardon me,” he said, “but I had a question.”

  She looked him over. “I’m off duty,” she said. “Least till I find someplace quiet to spew up a bit and dab my nose.”

  “I see. But no. I wanted to ask—would the taverna the Perch and Lark be somewhere nearby?”

  She gaped at him. “The Perch and Lark?”

  “Indeed, ma’am.”

  “You want to go there?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Well. S’up thataway.” She pointed down a filthy alley.

  He bowed once more. “Excellent. Thank you so much. Good evening to you.”

  “Wait,” she said. “A fine man such as y’self won’t want to go there! That place is a damn snake pit! Antonin’s boys will chew you up and spit you out soon as look at you!”

  “Thank you!” sang Gregor, and he strode off into the evening mist.

  It had been three days since the waterfront fiasco. Three days since all of Gregor’s efforts to make a decent, functional, law-abiding civilian police force—the first of its kind in Tevanne—had quite literally gone up in smoke. There’d been a lot of finger pointing and accusations in that handful of days since, but only Gregor had had
a mind to actually do some investigating.

  What he’d found was that his initial instincts on the night of the fiasco had been correct: there had been a bad actor on the premises, they had indeed targeted the safes of the Waterwatch, and they’d even successfully stolen something. Specifically, a small, bland box from safe 23D had gone missing. How they’d managed to do that, Gregor couldn’t imagine—every safe was outfitted with a Miranda Brass tumbler lock, and Gregor himself changed the combinations on a fixed schedule. They must have been a master safe cracker to pull it off.

  But a theft and a fire, on the same night? That was no coincidence. Whoever had done one had also done the other.

  Gregor had checked the Waterwatch logs regarding the box, hoping that the owner might suggest the identity of the thief. But that had been a dead end—the owner’s name had been submitted just as “Berenice,” nothing more, with no contact information included. He could find nothing more about this Berenice, either.

  But he was well acquainted with the criminal element in Tevanne. If he could find nothing about the box’s owner, then he would start making headway on potential thieves. And this evening, here in the south end of Foundryside, he could get started.

  He stopped at one thoroughfare, squinting through the mist, which turned mottled colors from the lanterns hanging overhead. Then he saw his destination.

  The sign hanging above the taverna door read THE PERCH AND LARK. He didn’t really need to see the sign, however—the large, scarred, threatening-looking men loitering outside the door were enough to tell him he was in the right place.

  The Perch and Lark was base of operations for one of the most preeminent crime lords in Foundryside, if not all the Commons: Antonin di Nove. Gregor knew this because his own reforms at the waterfront had directly affected the economics of Antonin’s ventures, which had displeased Antonin to the point that he’d sent some hired steel out after Gregor—though Gregor had sent them back very quickly, with many broken fingers and one shattered jaw.

  He had no doubt that Antonin still harbored lots of bad feelings about this. Which was why Gregor had brought five hundred duvots of his own money, and Whip, his scrived truncheon. Hopefully the duvots would entice Antonin into giving Gregor some information about what thief could have hit the waterfront. And hopefully Whip would keep Gregor alive long enough to ask.

  He marched up to the four glowering heavies before the taverna entrance. “Good evening, gentlemen!” he said. “I’d like to see Mr. di Nove, please.”

  The heavies glanced at each other, somewhat baffled by Gregor’s politeness. Then one—who was missing quite a lot of teeth—said, “Not with that, you aren’t.” He nodded at Whip, which was hanging by Gregor’s side.

  “Certainly,” he said. He unbuckled Whip and held it out. One of them took it and tossed it into a box, where it had company with a simply staggering number of knives, rapiers, swords, and other, grislier armaments.

  “May I enter now, please?” asked Gregor.

  “Fifty duvots,” said the toothless heavy.

  “I beg your pardon,” said Gregor. “Fifty?”

  “Fifty if we haven’t seen your face afore. And I don’t know your face, sir.”

  “I see. Well.” Gregor glanced at their weapons. Spears, knives, and one even had an espringal—a sort of mechanized, heavy crossbow that you had to crank—though its gears hadn’t been set correctly.

  He made a note of it. Gregor always made a note of such things.

  He reached into his satchel, took out a handful of duvots, and handed them over. “Now may I enter?”

  The heavies exchanged another glance. “What’s your business with Antonin?” asked the toothless one.

  “My business is both pressing and private,” said Gregor.

  The toothless guard grinned at him. “Oh, very professional. We don’t see too many professional types here, do we, chaps? Not unless they’ve come down here to scrum the night lads, eh?” The others laughed.

  Gregor waited calmly, meeting the man’s gaze.

  “Fair enough,” said the toothless heavy. He opened the door. “Back table. But move slow.”

  Gregor smiled curtly, said, “Thank you,” and walked inside.

  Immediately inside was a short flight of steps. He bounced up the steps, and as he did the air got smokier, louder, and much, much more pungent. At the top of the steps was a blue drape, and he shoved it aside and walked into the taverna.

  Gregor glanced around. “Hum,” he said.

  As a former career soldier, Gregor was accustomed to tavernas, even ones as filthy as this. Reeking candles burned on all the tabletops. The floor was little more than a loose grid of wooden slats, so that if someone spilled anything—cane wine, grain alcohol, or any number of bodily fluids—it would drain right through to the mud below. Someone was playing a set of box pipes in the back, albeit very badly, and the music was loud enough to drown out most conversation.

  But then, people did not come to tavernas like this for conversation. They came to fill their skulls up with so much cane wine that they forgot for one brief moment that they lived in shit-spattered, muddy ditches clinging to the clean white walls of the campos, that they shared their living quarters with animals, that they awoke every morning to fresh insect bites or shrieking monkeys or the putrid scent of rotting striper shells in the alleys—if they awoke at all, that is.

  Gregor barely blinked at the sight. He had seen many horrors in war, and he did not count the sight of the impoverished among them. He himself had once been far more desperate than any of these people.

  He glanced through the crowd, looking for Antonin’s men. He counted four straightaway, taking up positions at the edges of the taverna. All of them had rapiers, except for the one in the far corner, who was huge and thickset, and leaned against the wall with a threatening black ax strapped to his back.

  A Daulo ax, Gregor saw. He’d seen many of their like in the Enlightenment Wars.

  He crossed the taverna, spied a table in the back, and approached—slowly.

  He could tell which one of them was Antonin right away, because the man’s clothes were clean, his skin unblemished, his thin hair combed neatly back, and he was hugely, hugely fat—a rarity in the Commons. He was also reading a book, something Gregor had never seen anyone do in such a place. Antonin had another guard sitting beside him, this one with two stilettos stuffed in his belt, and the guard tensed as Gregor neared.

  Antonin’s brow furrowed slightly and he looked up from his book. He glanced at Gregor’s face, then his belt—which held no weapons—and then his sash. “Waterwatch,” he remarked aloud. “What’s Waterwatch doing in a place where the only waters to watch are wine and piss?” Then he peered closer at Gregor’s face. “Ahh…I know you. It’s Dandolo, isn’t it?”

  “You are a knowledgeable man, sir,” said Gregor. He bowed slightly. “I am indeed Captain Gregor Dandolo of the Waterwatch, Mr. Antonin.”

  “Mr. Antonin…” he echoed. Antonin laughed, showing off black teeth. “Such a well-mannered gent here among us! I’d have wiped myself better this morn if I’d known you’d deign to bless us with your presence. If I recall, I tried to have you killed once…Didn’t I?”

  “You did.”

  “Ahh. Here to return the favor?”

  The thickset guard with the ax wandered over to take up a position behind Gregor.

  “No, sir,” said Gregor. “I’ve come to ask you a question.”

  “Huh.” His gaze lingered on Gregor’s Waterwatch sash. “I will assume your question has something to do with your waterfront disaster?”

  Gregor smiled humorlessly. “It would, sir.”

  “Yes. It would.” Antonin gestured to the seat across him with one pudgy finger. “Please. Do me the honor of sitting.”

  Gregor bowed lightly and did so.

  “Now—w
hy would you come to me to ask about that?” said Antonin. “I gave up the waterfront a long time ago. Thanks to you, of course.” His black eyes glittered.

  “Because it was an independent,” said Gregor. “And you know independents.”

  “What makes you so sure?”

  “They used an improvised sailing rig. They planted a construction scriving on one of the carriages—something used for adhesives and mortars—and this acted as a rudimentary arrangement to power their rig. It was shoddily made, and did not seem to work well.”

  “Something no real canal operator would ever use, then.”

  “Correct. A real one could get the real thing. So. An independent. And independents tend to live in one place—Foundryside. Or close to it. Which is your domain, unless I’m mistaken.”

  “Makes sense. Very clever. But the real question is…why would I help you?” He smiled. “Your Waterwatch experiment seems to have failed. Wouldn’t it be in my interests to make sure it stays that way, and reclaim the waterfront?”

  “It has not failed,” said Gregor. “That remains to be seen.”

  “I don’t need to see,” said Antonin with a laugh. “So long as the merchant houses run their campos like kings, Tevanne won’t ever have anything resembling a policing system—no matter how excellent you make the Waterwatch. And that will fail too, in time. So, my noble captain, I really just need to wait. And then I’ll find my way back in—won’t I?”

  Gregor blinked slowly, but did not react—though Antonin was now needling a sensitive wound of his. He had done a lot of work to build up the Waterwatch, and he did not appreciate hearing it threatened. “I can pay,” he said.

  Antonin smirked. “How much?”

  “Four hundred and fifty duvots.”

  Antonin glanced at his satchel. “Which, I assume, you’ve brought yourself. Because I wouldn’t believe you’d pay if you hadn’t.”

  “Yes.”

  “So what’s keeping me from putting some steel in your ribs and taking it now?” asked Antonin.

  “My last name,” said Gregor.