Роберт Беннет - Foundryside

It was an extremely popular spectacle in Tevanne, but Sancia had never attended a harpering. Mostly because she knew that, in her line of work, there was a not-insignificant chance it could be her bits in the loop.

“Right. So. You don’t know who owned you, do you?”

“Or who made you.”

“That’s insane, someone had to have made you!”

She couldn’t come up with a good answer to that. She was mainly trying to figure out exactly how much danger she was in. Clef was obviously, undoubtedly the most advanced scrived device she’d ever seen — and she was pretty sure he was a scrived device — but she wasn’t sure why someone would be willing to pay forty fortunes for him. A key that did little more than insult you in your mind would have pretty low value to the merchant houses.

Then she realized there was an obvious question she hadn’t asked yet.

“Clef,” she said, “since you’re a key and all…what exactly do you ope—”

Sancia dropped the key and backed away to the corner of her room.

She stared at Clef, thinking rapidly. She did not like the idea of a scrived item reading her mind, not one damned bit. She tried to remember all the things she’d thought since she’d started talking to him. Had she given away any secrets? Could Clef even hear the thoughts she hadn’t known she’d been thinking?

If there’s risk in exposing yourself to him, she thought, it’s a risk you’ve already taken.

Glowering, she walked back over, knelt, touched a digit to the key, and demanded, “What the hell do you mean, hear my thoughts?”

some of your thoughts. I can hear them if — if! — you think them hard enough.>

She picked him up. “What does that mean, think them hard enough?”

Sancia thought something very hard at Clef.

said Clef.

thought Sancia.

She wasn’t sure how she felt about this. It was as if Clef had moved into a room upstairs inside her mind, and was whispering to her through a hole in the ceiling. She struggled to remember what she’d been talking to him about.

she asked him.

There was a silence.

said Sancia.

asked Clef.

Sancia considered it, and had an idea. She walked over to her open closet. Sitting in the corner was her collection of practice locks, specimens she’d ripped out of doors or stolen from mechanists’ shops, which she labored over every other night, refining her skills.

she said,

said Clef.

Sancia picked up one of the locks, a Miranda Brass, which was generally considered to be one of the more formidable conventional locks — meaning not scrived — in Tevanne. Sancia herself, with all her talents, usually took about three to five minutes to pick it.

she asked.

Sancia lined Clef up, gave him a mistrustful glance, and slid the golden key into the lock.

Instantly, there was a loud click , and the Miranda Brass sprang open.

Sancia stared.

“Holy shit,” she whispered.

said Clef.

Sancia dropped the Miranda Brass, picked up another — this one a Genzetti, not as durable as a Miranda, but more complicated — and popped Clef in.

Click.

“Oh my God,” said Sancia. “What in all harpering hell…how are you doing that?”

made to open. They’re just made to be really reluctant about it. It’s a matter of asking them from the right way, from inside themselves.>

They went through the rest of the locks, one by one. Every time, the second Clef penetrated the keyhole, the lock sprang open.

said Sancia.

said Clef.

She stared into space, thinking. And an inevitable idea quickly captured her thoughts.

With Clef in her hands, she could rob the Commons absolutely blind, build up the savings to pay the black-market physiqueres to make her normal again, and skip town. Maybe she didn’t even need the twenty thousand her client was dangling in front of her.

But Sancia was pretty sure her client was from one of the four merchant houses, since that was who dealt in scrived items. And she couldn’t exactly use a lockpick to fend off a dozen bounty hunters all looking to lop her to pieces, and that was precisely what the houses would send her way. Sancia was good at running, and with Clef in her hand, she could maybe run quite far — but outrunning the merchant houses was difficult to ponder.

said Clef.

Sancia snapped out of her reverie.

Sancia pulled a face and wondered how in the hell to explain scriving.

really different. So they can make locks that only open for one key in the whole world, and they’re completely unpickable. It’s not a matter of pressing and pulling on the right lever, or something — the lock knows there’s only one key it’s supposed to open for.>

said Clef.

that !> said Clef, disgusted.

Sancia had never heard of a rig that was capable of picking scrived locks — but then, she’d never heard of one that could see and talk either.

<���’Course I can. You want me to prove that too?> he said, smug.

Sancia looked out her window. It was almost dawn, the sun crawling over the edge of the distant campo walls and spilling across the leaning rooftops of the Commons.

she said. She put him in her false floor, shut the door, and lay on her bed.

Alone in her room, Sancia thought back to her last meeting with Sark, at the abandoned fishery building on the Anafesto Channel.

She remembered navigating all the tripwires and traps that Sark had set for her—“insurance,” Sark had called it, since he’d known that Sancia, with all her talents, would be the only one who could safely circumvent them. As she’d gingerly stepped over the last tripwire and trotted upstairs, she’d glimpsed his gnarled, scarred face emerging from the shadows of the reeking building — and to her surprise, he’d been grinning.

I’ve got a corker for you, San , he’d rasped. I’ve got a big fish on the line and no mistake .

Marino Sarccolini, her fence, agent, and the closest thing she had to a friend in this world. Though few would have thought to befriend Sark — for he was one of the most disfigured people Sancia had ever seen.

Sark had one foot, no ears, no nose, and he was missing every other finger on his hands. Sometimes it seemed about half his body was scar tissue. It took him hours to get around the city, especially if he had to take any stairs — but his mind was still quick and cunning. He was a former “canal man” for Company Candiano, an officer who’d organized theft, espionage, and sabotage against the other three merchant houses. The position was called such because the work, like Tevanne’s canals, was filthy. But then the founder of Company Candiano had gone mysteriously mad, the company had almost collapsed, and nearly everyone had gotten fired except for the most valuable scrivers. Suddenly all kinds of people who’d been used to campo life found themselves living in the Commons.

And there, Sark had tried to keep doing what he’d always done: thieving, sabotaging, and spying on the four main merchant houses.