Роберт Беннет - Foundryside

There was a long silence.

“I see, sir,” said Berenice. “But…not every young person is as passive as you may think.”

“Aren’t they?” said Orso. “Good. Very goo—”

“There!” said Berenice. “Look!”

She pointed at the walls. A tiny pool of shadow slipped along the bottom of the white walls, up to the huge towering gates.

“Is that…her?” said Orso, squinting.

The pool of shadow stayed at the base of the gates for a moment before slipping back down the way it came, disappearing behind a tall rookery.

“I don’t know,” said Berenice. “I think so though?”

They waited, and waited.

“Should something be happening now?” said Orso.

Then they both jumped in fright as a wall of shadow leapt at them out of an alley.

“Goddamn it!” said Sancia’s voice, floating out of the darkness. “It’s me! Calm down!” She was panting hard. “Damn…That was a lot of walls, and a lot of gates.” She climbed inside — or Orso thought she did, it was so dark it was hard to tell — and collapsed in the back of the carriage.

“Is it done?” said Orso.

“Yeah,” gasped Sancia.

“And when does your clever plan start?”

“Simple,” said Sancia. “When you hear the explosions.”

Claudia and Giovanni crouched in the shadows of the street, watching the Candiano gates. Then they heard a sound — a clattering, a clanking.

“What’s that?” said Gio.

Claudia pointed, dumbstruck. “It’s the gates, Gio.”

They watched as the huge gate doors…trembled. They quivered , like they were the skin of a drum that had just received a powerful blow. Then they began rattling, at first quietly, then much, much louder, until it strained their ears, even from where they were.

“Sancia,” said Claudia. “What the hell did you do ?”

And then the gates broke.

The two halves erupted open, swinging outward with a force like a raging river, snapping all the locks along their middle. They pivoted a full 180 degrees, slamming into the campo walls and the watchtowers on either side of them, and they struck the walls hard enough to make them crack and start to crumble — a stunning feat, considering the campo walls had been scrived to be preternaturally durable. For a moment the two halves of the gates just stood there, smashed into the walls, before the reverberating momentum caused them to slowly, slowly topple forward, which pulled down a lot of the walls with them. They slammed into the ground hard enough to send a fine spray of mud and dust surging throughout the entire city block.

Claudia and Giovanni coughed and covered their faces. The Commons lit up with cries and shouts — but this wasn’t loud enough to cover up a new sound: a rattling and clattering from the next set of gates, just south of the fallen walls.

“Oh shit,” said Gio. “She did it to all of them, didn’t she?”

Orso and Berenice sat up, startled, as the immense crack echoed through the night skies.

“I told the gates opening outward didn’t count as opening,” said Sancia in the backseat. “The hard part was getting them to wait.” She sniffed. “Should be…oh, one every minute or so for a while.”

In the Mountain, Estelle Candiano heard the crash and looked up. “What in hell ?” she said aloud.

She looked down at herself. She’d finished covering her arm and chest in the appropriate sigils, and she did not want to smudge them any.

Still…That was worth investigating.

She walked over to the windows and looked out at the dark ramble of Tevanne. She immediately saw what had happened: one of the northeastern gates appeared to have totally collapsed. Which…should have been impossible. Those gates had been designed by her father. They should have withstood a damned monsoon.

“What in all th—”

Then, as she watched, there was a tremendous crack , and the gate south down the wall from that one suddenly burst outward. The walls around it cracked and began to crumble apart.

Her mouth twisted with rage. “Orso,” she spat. “This is you, isn’t it? What in hell are you trying to pull?”

The intense cracks shot through the Commons with a curiously steady rhythm, like a lightning storm touching down every minute. Orso flinched each time. Soon the sky above the eastern campo was a haze of dust, and the Commons were screaming in panic.

“Sancia,” said Orso quietly. “Did you take down the entire eastern walls ?”

“I should have, when this is all over with,” said Sancia. “Should give all those campo soldiers a lot to defend. And it’ll be somewhere far from here. A decent distraction.”

“A…a distraction ?” he cried. “Girl…girl, you’ve scrumming killed the Candiano campo! You’ve killed my old house in one night!”

“Eh,” said Sancia. “I just aired it out a bit.”

Estelle Candiano threw on a white shirt just as Captain Riggo threw open the door and charged in.

“What in hell is going on out there, Captain?” she demanded.

“I do not know, ma’am,” he said, “but I came to ask if I could mobilize our reserves in order to investigate and respond.”

There was another sharp crack and the rumble of falling walls. Captain Riggo cringed ever so slightly.

“But…but what do you think is happening, Captain?”

“In my professional estimation?” He thought about it. “It would appear to be a siege, ma’am. Many gates destroyed so that we have to split our forces.”

“Damn it all,” she said. She looked at the clock. She had just over thirty minutes until midnight. I’m so close , she thought. I’m so damned close!

“Ma’am?” said Captain Riggo. “The reserves?”

“Yes, yes!” she snapped. “Throw everything we have at them! Whatever the hell is happening, I want it stopped! Now!”

He bowed. “Yes, ma’am.” Then he turned and smartly strode away, shutting the door behind him.

Estelle walked over to the windows and stared out at the damage. The northeastern half of the campo was almost completely obscured with smoke now. She imagined she could hear screaming from somewhere out in the dark.

Whatever is happening , she thought, I just need it to last more than thirty minutes. After that — nothing else will matter.

The two Scrappers watched as the Candiano campo walls dissolved, bit by bit.