Роберт Беннет - Foundryside

Sancia walked along the Anafesto, eyeing the dark, decrepit fisheries ahead. She kept looking to her left, toward the lanes of the Greens. This area was a lot quieter than Foundryside, but she took no chances. Every time she spied someone, she stopped and watched their movements, sensitive to any suggestion that they might be there looking for her, and she didn’t move on until satisfied.

She was anxious because she had Clef, of course, and knew all the threats that invited. But she also had her life savings in the pack on her back — three thousand duvots, almost entirely in coinage. She’d need every penny of it to get out of Tevanne, provided she even got that far. And though she carried her usual thieving kit, this offered little in the way of defense beyond her stiletto. It would be darkly funny if, after all she’d been through, she wound up getting mugged in the Greens by the luckiest street urchin of all time.

Once she got close enough she took the back way to the fishery, crawling across crumbling stone foundations and rusting pipes until she approached it from a narrow, shadowy passage. Probably no one thought she’d approach from this angle, including Sark. The fishery was a two-story moldy stone structure, a place so rotted and decayed it was hard to tell its original purpose anymore. Sark was waiting on the second floor, she knew, and the first floor would be riddled with traps — his usual “insurance.”

She looked at the dark windows, thinking. How in hell am I going to convince Sark to run?

said Clef.

She started toward it, feeling somewhat comfortable for the first time that night.

She silently crept around the corner, then past the big iron doors — which she knew she shouldn’t use, since Sark had trapped them — and slipped through a broken window. She landed softly, took off her gloves, and touched her bare hands to the stone floor and the wall beside her.

Bones, blood, and viscera flooded her mind. The fishery had been the site of so much fish gutting that it almost always bowled her over every time, all the accumulated sensations of so much gore. There were still piles of fish bones here and there throughout the first floor, delicate tangles of tiny, translucent skeletons, and the scent still lingered, of course.

Sancia concentrated, and soon the traps lit up in her mind like fireworks, three trip wires running across the room to three hidden espringals that were almost certainly loaded up with fléchettes: paper packets of razor blades that would turn into a lethal cloud when fired.

She sighed in relief.

better ?> said Clef.

She moved forward to delicately step over the first trip wire…

Then she stopped.

She thought for a moment, and peered throughout the darkness of the room. She thought she could spy the trip wires in the dim light — tiny, dark filaments stretching across the shadows.

One , she counted. Two. Three…

She frowned. Then she knelt to touch the floor and wall again with her bare hands.

asked Clef.

said Sancia. She waited until her talents confirmed it once more.

She didn’t answer. She looked around the first floor again. It was dark, but she couldn’t see anything unusual.

She looked out the windows at the building fronts beyond. No movement, nothing strange.

She cocked her head and listened. She could hear the lapping of waves, the sigh of the wind, the creaking and crackling as the building flexed in the breeze — but nothing else.

Perhaps he’s forgotten it , she thought. Perhaps he overlooked it, just this one time.

But that was not like Sark. After his torture at the hands of the Morsinis, he’d become wildly paranoid and cautious. It was not in his nature to forget a safeguard.

She looked around again, just to be sure…

Then she spied something.

Was that a glint of metal, there in the wooden beam across the room? She narrowed her eyes, and thought it was.

A fléchette? Buried there in the wood?

She stared at it, and felt her heart beating faster.

She knelt again and touched her hands to the floor for a third time.

Again, the stone told her of bones and blood and viscera, as they always did. Yet now she focused to find out…

Was any of that blood new ?

And she found it was. There was a big splotch of new blood just a few feet from her. It was almost impossible to see with the naked eye, since its stain blended in with the much older, larger stain of ancient fish blood. And her talents hadn’t initially spotted it, as it’d been lost in the larger memory of so much gore.

She took her hands away as her scar began to throb. She felt cold sweat prickling across her back and belly. She turned again to the windows, staring out at the streets. Still nothing.

said Clef.

She felt faint.

Sancia slowly lifted her eyes to stare at the ceiling. She took a deep breath, and slowed her thoughts.

It was obvious what was happening now. The question was what to do next.

What resources do I have? What tools are available?

Not much, she knew. All she had was a stiletto. But she looked around, thinking.

She silently crept along one trip wire, and found its espringal hidden in the corner — yet it was unloaded. Normally it would have had a fléchette pack sitting in its pocket, ready to be hurled forward — but now it was gone. Just a cocked espringal with nothing to shoot.

She grimaced. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. She silently dismantled the trap and slung the espringal across her back.

Clef asked.

> she said. She crept along a second trip wire and started disarming it, but she didn’t completely dismantle it.

said Clef, astonished.

She did the same to the third trip wire. Then she set them both up so they ran across the base of the stairs, and positioned the espringals so they were pointed right at the stairway.

she said.

She looked around. I need a weapon , she thought. Or a distraction. Anything . But one stiletto and three espringals with no ammunition didn’t get her very far.

Then she had an idea. Grimacing — for she no longer had any idea how much she’d have to use her talents tonight — she touched her bare hands to the wooden beam above her.

Saltwater, rot, termites, and dust…but then she found it: the crackling old bones of the beams were shot through with iron spikes in a few places…and several of them were quite loose.

She quietly paced over to one loose nail, took out her stiletto, and waited for the breeze to rise. When it did, and the creaking and groaning of the old building rose with it, she gently pried the nail out of the soft wood.

She held it in her hands, letting it spill into her thoughts, iron and rust and slow corruption. It was big, about four or five inches long, and about a pound in weight.

Not aerodynamic , she thought. But it wouldn’t need to be, over short distances.

She pocketed it, then pried out two more nails and carefully, carefully placed them in the pockets of the two espringals pointed at the stairwell door.

Maybe this will kill , she thought. Or disable. Or something. I just need to slow them down.

Again, she looked at the street outside. Still no movement. But that didn’t necessarily mean much. These people were prepared.