Роберт Беннет - Foundryside

If something in here is a traitor, she thought, I don’t know how I’m going to identify it. She wished Clef were awake. He’d sniff it out right away.

Then she glimpsed something on the wall, and stopped.

Hanging on the wall between two bookcases was a large charcoal sketch of Clef. It wasn’t perfect — the tooth was all wrong — but the head, with its odd butterfly-shaped hole, was perfect.

Sancia walked closer to it, and saw there was a handwritten note scrawled at the bottom:

What could it open? For what grand lock was this designed??

This guy has been thinking about Clef for a lot longer than I have , she thought. Maybe he knows more than he’s letting on — just as I do.

Then she saw there was a smudge at the bottom of the sketch, at the bottom, where the paper was crinkled. Someone must have pinched the paper there repeatedly.

She reached out, grabbed the paper, and lifted it — and saw there was something behind the sketch of Clef.

It was a large engraving. And the sight disturbed her.

The engraving depicted a group of men standing in a hall. They looked like monks, wearing plain robes, though each robe bore a curious insignia — perhaps the outline of a butterfly, she couldn’t quite tell. She found she did not like the sight of the hall: it was a massive, ornate stone chamber, huge and blocky with angles in all the wrong places. It felt like light bent in the wrong ways in that room.

At the end of the hall was a box, like a giant casket or treasure chest. The group looked on as one man stood before the box, raised his hands, and seemed to open it by will alone. Emerging from this open box was…

Something. A person, perhaps. Perhaps a woman, or perhaps a statue, though there was something indistinct about the figure, like the artist had not been sure what they were depicting.

Sancia looked at the print at the bottom of the engraving. It read:

CRASEDES THE GREAT IN THE CHAMBER AT THE CENTER OF THE WORLD: The hierophants are recorded as believing the world is a machine, wrought by God, and somewhere at its heart it is a chamber which was once His seat. Crasedes, finding the seat of God vacant, attempted to install a god of his own making in the chamber to oversee the world. This engraving, like so many sources, suggests he was successful. But if he was, it does not explain why his grand empire fell to ash and ruin.

She shivered, looking at the engraving. She remembered what Claudia and Giovanni had said the hierophants could do. Then she remembered what Clef did to the gravity rig — the vision of the man in the desert, turning out the stars.

She imagined what a man like Orso Ignacio could do with Clef, and shivered again.

Then she heard it — a chattering, a murmuring. But this one was louder than the others.

That’s…unusual.

She shut her eyes, listening to it, and walked to the back of the room. The sound was much louder here.

Just like the gravity plates , she thought. So maybe…it’s either really powerful, or made by the same person?

She realized the noise was coming from a desk at the back, some kind of drafting table where Orso scrawled out strings of sigils. She tilted her head to it, listening to the pencils, the inkpots, the blocks of stone, and then…

A small, golden statue of a bird sat on the corner of the desk. Sweating, Sancia picked it up and held it up to her ear. The sound of it was almost deafening to her.

If it’s anything in this room , she thought, it’s this. She set it back down, feeling quite pleased. She’d never used her talents like this before. As she walked back to the office, she wondered — ever so briefly — what else she could do.

Ten minutes later they all huddled around a table in Orso’s workshop, watching as he turned the golden statue over. There was a small, copper plate on the bottom with a large screw in the center. Orso glanced around at them, held a finger to his lips, picked up a screwdriver, and began to unscrew it. He gently, gently plucked the screw out, and then, with a tiny, flat tool, pried out the plate.

Orso’s mouth fell open in a silent gasp. Inside the statue was a device — but a device so tiny, so fragile, it was like it was made of spider webs and mouse bones.

He grabbed a light and a magnifying glass and peered carefully at it. His eyes shot wide, and he gestured to Berenice, who also took a look. She blinked, startled, and looked at Orso, who nodded, his face serious.

Finally the inspection was finished. Orso gingerly placed the device on the table, and they all crept back into the office.

Orso shut the door to his workshop — and then he erupted. “I’ve been a goddamn fool!” he shouted. “I’ve been a slack-jawed, crotch-pawing fool! ”

“So…it seems your suspicion was correct?” asked Gregor.

“Of course!” cried Orso. “God, we’re in a state. Who knows what they’ve heard? What have I said in front of that stupid little bird? And I never, never, never would have known!”

“You’re welcome,” said Sancia.

“That statue is an exact copy of one that once sat on my desk,” he continued, ignoring her. “I suppose they must have replaced it long ago with an altered version.”

“By flying up using those rigs,” said Gregor.

“Yes,” said Berenice, shaken. “And whoever made that thing is…good.”

“Damned good,” said Orso. “ Amazingly good. That’s top-rate work, there! I feel sure if someone was that good in this city, we’d all know about it. Everyone would be lining up to lick his candle, I’ve no doubt!”

Gregor pulled a face. “Thank you for that elaboration.”

“Have you ever seen anything like it, Captain?” asked Orso. “You’re more well traveled than I am, and the houses have used a lot of experimental stuff during the wars. Have you seen any military faction using rigs like this ?”

He shook his head. “No. And the only thing I’ve ever seen that was similar to the gravity rigs is a lorica — and those rigs far outclassed any lorica.”

“What’s a lorica?” asked Sancia.

“It’s a scrived suit of armor,” said Gregor. “But unlike the armor we have here in Tevanne, which is scrived to be both preternaturally light and preternaturally strong, a lorica also augments the movements of the person within it. It amplifies their gravity, in other words, making them faster and stronger than a normal person.”

“I thought scriving gravity was illegal,” said Sancia.

“It is,” said Gregor. “Which is why loricas are only used abroad in the wars, and in limited numbers, at that.” He rubbed his face. “Now. Can we focus on the consequential conclusions, please?”

“Yeah,” said Sancia. “What the hell do we do about this? Can’t you look at that thing and figure out…I don’t know, something?”

Berenice took a breath. “Well. What I believe we saw in there was an advanced version of twinning.”

“What, like the explosive I used at the waterfront? And that plate of yours?” asked Sancia.

“Exactly. But what’s been twinned is a tiny, tiny, tiny needle, in the center of the device. A delicate one that’s somehow terribly sensitive to noise.”