Роберт Беннет - Foundryside

Sancia slowly leaned back against the wall. The world felt wobbly and distant to her as she tried to process all of this.

To begin with, it now seemed abundantly clear that Clef was suffering from some kind of memory loss. It felt odd to diagnose a key with a mental affliction, given that Sancia still didn’t understand how or even if he possessed something resembling a mind. But if he did have a mind, that long time spent trapped in the dark — decades, if not centuries — would have been more than enough to break it.

Perhaps Clef was damaged. Either way, it seemed Clef did not know his own potential — and that was troubling, since Clef already seemed stupefyingly powerful.

Because though few understood how scriving worked, everyone in the world understood that it was both powerful and reliable . When merchant house ships — scrived to part the waters with incredible ease, and sporting altered sails that always billowed with the perfect breeze at the perfect angle — pulled up in front of your city and pointed their vast, scrived weaponry at you, you understood that all those weapons would work perfectly well, and you’d promptly surrender.

The alternative — the idea that those ships might malfunction, or fail — was inconceivable.

But it wasn’t anymore. Not to Sancia, clutching Clef in her hand.

Scriving formed the foundation of the Tevanni empire. It had won countless cities, built up an army of slaves, and sent them to work in the plantation isles. But now, in Sancia’s mind, that foundation was beginning to shift, and crack…

Then her skin went cold. If I were a merchant house, she thought to herself, I’d do everything in my power to destroy Clef, and make sure no one ever, ever knew he’d existed.

said Clef cheerily.

She was wondering that herself.

think it means that you and I and probably Sark are in a shitload of mortal peril, Clef.>

She rubbed her mouth. Then she stood up, hung Clef back around her neck, and started off.

Sancia slipped down alleys and passageways and crossed the carriage fairways of Foundryside until she came to the next Commons neighborhood — Old Ditch. Foundryside might have been unpleasant to live in because of the residents — the neighborhood was notorious for its dense concentration of criminals — but Old Ditch was unpleasant due to its environment: since it was situated next to the Tevanni tanneries, the whole area smelled like death and rot.

Sancia did not mind such odors, however, and she wandered down a meandering alley, peering through the staggered rookeries and wooden shacks. The alley ended in a small, bland door, but hanging above it were four lit colored lanterns — three red, one blue.

Not here , she thought.

She returned to the main street, then walked around a block until she came to a basement door. Four lanterns hung outside — again, three red, one blue.

Not here, either. She walked back to the main thoroughfare.

asked Clef.

she said.

She peered through a leaning iron fence at a crumbling stone courtyard. At the very back was a long stairwell down, and hanging above it were four lanterns — yet unlike the others, these were three blue, one red.

Sancia hopped the fence and crossed the courtyard. She walked down the dark stairwell to a thick wooden door and knocked three times.

A slot in the door opened. A pair of eyes peered out, narrowed in suspicion. Then they saw Sancia and crinkled into a smile. “Back so soon?” said a woman’s voice.

“Not by choice,” said Sancia.

The door fell open and Sancia walked in. Instantly, the murmuring of hundreds of scrived objects filled up her ears.

said Clef.

The basement within was long, low, and strangely lit. Most of the luminescence came from the ten or so scrived glass lights that had been carelessly laid down on the stone floor. The corners were stuffed with books and piles of paper, all of them covered with instructions and diagrams. In between the lights were rolling carts that would, to the untrained eye, appear to be covered with rubbish: ingots of metals, loops of leather bands, strips of wood, and so on.

The room was also incredibly hot, thanks to the large scrived bowls at the back that heated copper and bronze and other metals into a broiling liquid, though someone had set up a fan to circulate the hot air out — cleverly powered, Sancia saw, by stolen carriage wheels, which ran and ran in place, operating the fans. About a half dozen people sat around the bowls of molten metals, plucking at the metals with long, stylus-like tools, which they then used to paint symbols on…Well. All kinds of things. Small, bronze balls. Wooden boards. Shoes. Shirt collars. Carriage wheels. Hammers. Knives. Anything and everything.

The door shut behind Sancia, revealing a tall, thin, dark-skinned woman with a pair of magnifying goggles on top of her head. “If you’re looking for a custom job, San, you’ll have to wait,” she said. “We’ve got a rush order.”

“What’s happening?” asked Sancia.

“The Candianos are mixing up their sachet procedures,” said the woman. “Totally redoing everything. So a lot of our clients are desperate.”

“When are your clients ever not desperate?” asked Sancia.

She smiled, but Claudia was always smiling a little. This mystified Sancia, since in her own estimation Claudia didn’t have much to smile about: scriving in such circumstances — hot, dark, and cramped — was not only uncomfortable, but also incredibly dangerous. Claudia’s fingers and forearms, for instance, were spotted with shiny, bubbly burn scars.

But that was what the Scrappers had to do. To do their work in open environs would be to invite violence, if not death.

Scriving was a difficult practice. Painting dozens and hundreds of sigillums upon objects, all carefully forming commands and logic that would reshape that object’s reality, required not only years of study but also a mind both calculating and creative. Lots of scrivers failed to secure employment at a merchant house campo, and many others washed out. And there’d been recent changes in the scriving culture that had made it suddenly quite difficult for a woman to find employment on the campos. Most merchant-house applicants who didn’t make it went to other Tevanni fealty states to do undignified, dull work out in the backwaters.

But not all. Some moved to the Tevanni Commons and went independent: forging, adjusting, and stealing the designs of the four prime merchant houses.

This wasn’t easy — but everyone had their contacts. Some were corrupt campo officials who could pass along the right designs and strings. Others were thieves like Sancia, who could steal merchant house instructions on how to make a sigil just right. But bit by bit, people had begun to share knowledge, until a small, nebulous group of dilettantes, ex-campo employees, and frustrated scrivers had built up a library of information in the Commons, and trade had flourished.

That was how the Scrappers got started.

If you needed a lock fixed, or a door reinforced, or a blade altered, or if you just wanted light or clean water, the Scrappers would sell you rigs that could do that — for a fee, of course. And that fee was usually pretty high. But it was the only way for a Commoner to get the tools and creature comforts reserved for the campos — though the quality was never totally reliable.