Роберт Беннет - Foundryside

“Eh?” said Sancia.

He stood beside her. “With the lights. The Daulos call us the glow-men, in their language, because we tend to put lights on everything.”

“Something you picked up in the Enlightenment Wars?”

“Yes.” He turned to her, leaning up against the balcony. “Now. Our deal.”

“You want my client,” said Sancia.

“I want your client,” he said. “Very much so. If you can give him to me.”

“In what condition? You want his name, his head, or what?”

“No, no,” said Gregor. “No heads. These are the stakes of our deal — you not only help me find him, but also get the evidence I need to expose him. I don’t want his name, his money, his company, or his blood. I want ramifications . I want consequences .”

“You want justice,” she said, sighing.

“I want justice. Yes.”

“And why do you think I can help you get it?”

“Because you have evaded nearly every effort to kill you or seize you. And you stole from me. You are — and this is not a compliment, mind — a very accomplished sneak. And I suspect we will need someone with your talents if we are to succeed.”

“But this is a tall goddamn order!” said Sancia. “Sark said he thought our client was founder lineage, just like you, or someone close to it. That means me working in places like this.” She nodded at the city below. “In the enclaves. The places that are basically designed to make sure people like me die the second I step foot in them.”

“I’ll help you. And Orso will too.”

“Why would Orso help me?”

“To get back his key, of course,” said Gregor. “Along with any other Occidental treasures the man’s been hoarding. Our opponent has stolen two items from Orso, and seems to have acquired a third — this imperiat. No doubt there’s more.”

“No doubt.” She suppressed the flicker of anxiety in her belly. She wasn’t sure what seemed harder — delivering founderkin to Gregor, or returning a treasure she wasn’t supposed to have. “So I help you get this…this justice of yours, and then you let me go?”

“In essence.”

She shook her head. “Justice…God. Why are you doing all this? Why are you out here risking your life?”

“Is justice such an odd thing to desire?”

“Justice is a luxury.”

“No,” said Gregor. “It is not. It is a right. And it is a right that has long been denied.” He stared out at the city. “The chance for reform…for real, genuine reform for this city…I would shed every drop of blood in my body for such a thing. And then, of course, there is the fact that if we fail, then a vicious person will possess tools of near-divine power. Which I, personally, would find quite bad.” He took out the key to her bond and held it out. “You can do the honors yourself, I believe.”

“I thought Orso was crazy,” she said, unlocking the bond. “But you’re really crazy.”

“I’d thought you would be more amenable to the idea than others,” he said lightly.

“And why’s that?”

“For the same reason I think wearing that bond irked you so, Sancia,” he said. “And the same reason you conceal the scars on your back.”

She froze and slowly turned to stare at him. “What?” she said softly.

“I am a traveled man, Sancia,” he said. “I know the look of you. I have seen such things before. Though I hope I never will agai—”

She stepped forward, sticking her finger in his face. “No,” she said fiercely. “ No .”

He drew back, startled.

“I am not having this conversation with you,” she said. “Not now. Maybe not ever.”

He blinked. “All right.”

She slowly lowered her finger. “You don’t know a goddamn thing about me,” she said. Then she walked back indoors.

She stalked upstairs, found a bedroom, and shut and locked the door. She stood there in the darkened room, breathing hard.

Then a voice spoke up in her mind:

she said.

She sat down in the middle of the floor, hauled her boot off, and held him in her bare hands. Then she pummeled him with questions.

He was silent for a long time. he said in a quiet voice.

She tried to catch him up as fast as she could.

he said.

Clef said nothing for a bit. A flock of floating lanterns trickled through the street below, casting pulsing pink light on the ceiling.

she asked.

he said, sighing.

vague . It gave me a lot to work with. Even though the device itself couldn’t stand the strain — because the more a rig pushes against its boundaries, the more it falls apart. And when I made it do that, I…I remembered something. And then I fell asleep, and dreamed.>

His voice took on a dreamy cadence.

Sancia’s skin crawled.

She didn’t know what to say to that.

he asked.

he said quietly.

There was a pause. And then…she felt it.

Or, rather, she heard it: it was a quiet, rhythmic tap-tap, tap, tap— a soft series of beats and pulses, echoing through her mind. She listened to it, reached out, grasped it, and then…

The beats unfolded, expanded, and enveloped her, filling her thoughts.

And then the memory took her.

Sand. Darkness. Quiet, anxious mutterings from somewhere nearby. She was lying on a stone surface, staring up into the darkness.

Midnight , she thought to herself. When the world grinds to a stop, and then restarts. She knew that — but she didn’t know how she knew it.

Then a flame, bright and hot, molten metal glowing in the shadows. She felt pain, fierce and terrible, piercing her, running her through, and she heard herself cry out — but it wasn’t her, she was someone else, she knew that — and then, suddenly, she felt herself fill this form, this function, this design.

She felt her mind flooding into the shaft, the teeth, the notches, the tip. She became the key, became this thing, this apparatus. Yet she now understood that she was to be much, much more than a key.

A compendium, a compilation. A device filled with so, so much knowledge of scrivings, of sigils, of the language and makeup of the world. A tool, bright and terrible. Just like a blade is meant to part wood or flesh, she was meant to part…

Sancia gasped and the memory released her. It was too much, too much. She was back in the bedroom, yet she was so stunned she nearly collapsed.

Clef asked.

She tried to catch her breath.

More silence. Then: He laughed sadly.

A pause.

She sat there for a moment, stunned.

Sancia swallowed. She’d imagined many horrors when it came to Clef — mostly that he might fall into the wrong hands, or she might lose him — but the idea of him dying had never occurred to her.

he said firmly. want you to use me, Sancia. I want to…to do things with you. To be alive with you, to help you. You’re the only person I can remember ever truly knowing. I’m not even sure if I want to be fixed, to be honest, even if someone could fix me — because then I’d go back to my original state. A device with no mind at all.>