Роберт Беннет - Foundryside

What if he already had something like Clef? Something that could do…something else?

Smokestacks soared into the sky ahead of her like a cindery forest — the Michiel campo foundries. She had a sachet, but most of the entryways would be closed and locked by now, since it was well after nightfall.

Then she realized she had an easy solution.

said Clef.

She ran along the smooth, white campo wall until she came to a large iron door, tall and thick and elaborately decorated with the Michiel loggotipo. She took Clef out and was about to stuff him into the lock when suddenly things…changed.

There was a scrived lantern just on the other side of the wall. She hadn’t been able to see it before, because it’d been dark. Yet it had just come back on, flickering to life.

said Clef, suddenly articulate. was that?>

A whispering filled her mind. Sancia looked at the iron door. She reached out with her bare hand and touched it. The whispering filled her mind, as did a thousand other things about the door.

“Scriving’s back on,” she said out loud. “It’s back.”

It seemed as if the effects of…well, of whatever the campo man had done back there were fading. This was both good and bad. Good, because both she and Clef now had their abilities back. But also bad, because that meant the scrived lock in this door would now also be fully functional — and though she didn’t know how long it’d take for Clef to pick it, she could tell from the calls and shouts behind her that she didn’t have much time before her pursuers found her.

she said.

She didn’t let him finish the question. She slid Clef into the lock.

Just like with the Candiano door, a thousand questions and thoughts poured into her mind, all of them directed at Clef.

the door shouted.

asked Clef.

said the door.

Sancia glanced down the alley as she listened. She somewhat understood this: apparently after nightfall, only someone with a specific scrived key — one with an important seventeenth tooth — was allowed to unlock and open the door.

asked Clef.

A huge exchange of information took place between Clef and the door. The distant sounds of shouts were drifting toward her. “Come on,” she whispered. “Come on…”

said the door.

said Clef.

< Yep. Yep. So, uh, go ahead and open, okay?>

Silence. Then there was a click , and the door opened. Sancia slipped through and slowly shut it behind her. She crouched behind the wall, listening. Her ankles ached, her feet ached, her hands ached, her back ached — but at least for once her head didn’t hurt much.

she said.

She heard footsteps on the other side, someone walking, slowing down…and then they tried the handle of the iron door.

Sancia stared at the handle, fervently praying that the handle didn’t keep moving — but it didn’t. It moved just a tiny, tiny bit — and then it stopped.

The person on the other side grunted. Then they walked away.

Sancia waited for a long time. Then she let out a slow breath, and turned to face the gray spires and domes and smokestacks of the Michiel campo.

said Clef.

said Sancia.

Sancia rubbed her eyes. She had to get out of the city, but this presented a familiar problem.

She needed money. She always needed money. Money to bribe someone, money to buy tools to get more money, money to get a safe place to store her damned money. Life was cheap, and cash, as ever, remained dauntingly expensive.

Her normal source of money had been Sark. But Sark wasn’t an option anymore.

Then she had an idea, and slowly cocked her head. But his house — that might be a different case.

she said to Clef.

this ?>

She sighed and rubbed her eyes.

She turned left, through the foundry yards.

Sancia tried to think about how to phrase these words, as they were essentially incomprehensible to any Tevanni.

that what you think happened back there?>

Sancia grimaced.

She glanced to the east, where the giant cloud of dust was drifting toward the moon.

said Clef.

Sancia kept to the rooftops as she made her way through Foundryside to Old Ditch. Her hands hurt like hell and her head wasn’t much better, but she had to make do. Every once in a while she’d peer down into the warrens and spy someone who looked large, well fed, well armed, and quite mean — and she’d know she wasn’t out of danger yet.

She briefly stopped in Old Ditch to hit up a once-favorite stop of hers: the Bibbona Wine Brewery. Everyone said the cane wine made there was atrocious, but they still did a brisk business — brisk enough to be worth her robbing the place every once in a while, back in the day. But then some clever bastard had not only installed a reinforced door in the brewery, but they’d also rigged up a timing system: three Miranda Brass locks that had to be unlocked within twenty seconds of each other — otherwise, they’d all re-lock. Even with Sancia’s talents, the hassle hadn’t been worth the payout.

But with Clef, it was easy — one, two, three, and suddenly she had two hundred duvots in her pocket.

asked Clef as she crept away.

She quickly scaled the side of a rookery and scrambled onto the rooftop.

Luckily, the Scrappers were in the first place she looked — an abandoned loft in Old Ditch. To her surprise, they weren’t in their workshop, but were instead standing on the balcony, staring out at the distant chaos in Foundryside. Sancia peered over the rooftop at them, then carefully started climbing down.

Giovanni screamed in surprise and fell backward into the other Scrappers as Sancia dropped down to the balcony. “For the love of God!” she said, standing. “Could you keep it down!”

“San?” said Claudia. “What the hell are you doing here?” She looked up along the wall. “Why were you on the roof?”

“I’m here to buy,” said Sancia. “And buy fast. And I had to take a safe route.” She glanced at the street below. “Can we go indoors?”

“No,” said Claudia. “All our lights are off. Nothing works, that’s why we’re out here.”

“Have you checked recently?” asked Sancia.

“Why?” said Giovanni suspiciously.

“We haven’t,” said Claudia. “Because the second we came outside, some scrumming buildings started falling down! The whole neighborhood’s gone mad!”

“Oh,” said Sancia. She coughed. “Ah. Very strange, that. But — can we, uh, light a candle, and go inside anyway?

Giovanni narrowed his eyes at her. “Sancia…I suddenly feel that your arrival, and all these disasters, seems terribly coincidental.”

Sancia spied someone in a steel cap walking down the alley below. “Can we please just go inside ?” she begged.

Claudia and Giovanni exchanged a glance. Then Claudia said to the rest of the Scrappers, “Stay out here. Let me know if anything…I don’t know, explodes or something.”

Inside, Sancia quickly told them what had happened — or tried to. The more she talked, the madder it all felt. As she spoke, she washed her hands in the candlelight and wrapped her palms and wrists in chalk cloth. She didn’t like it much — she didn’t like any new clothing — but she knew she had to do a lot more climbing soon.