Роберт Беннет - Foundryside

They entered the basement. And then, abruptly, the trail ended before a blank wall.

asked Sancia.

Another pause, and then she heard it, mumbling behind the walls: <���…still no dance…still no sounds. Silence. Nothing to dance to, no steps and twirls to scrawl in the clay…>

said Sancia. She stepped back and looked at the wall. She sighed, and said, “Anyone know what’s behind this wall?”

“More wall, I would assume,” said Orso.

“It’s not. The thing’s back there.”

“You found the rig?” Gregor asked. “You’re sure?”

“Yes. Now we just have to figure out how they access it.” She grimaced, then pulled off her gloves. “Hold on a second.” She took a breath, focused, shut her eyes, and placed her palms against the wall.

Instantly, the wall bloomed inside her mind, all those old, pale stones and layers of plaster leaping into her thoughts. The wall told her of age and pressure, decades spent bearing all the weight of the building above and transferring it to the foundation below. Except…

In one place, the foundation wasn’t there.

A passageway , she thought.

Keeping her eyes shut, she walked along the wall, bare palm pressed to its surface. Finally she came to it — the gap in the foundation was just below her. She opened her eyes, knelt, and pressed her palms to the floor.

The floorboards crackled to life inside of her, creaking and groaning, telling her of thousands of footfalls, leather soles and wooden soles and, sometimes, bare feet. Her skull tickled as termites and ants and other tiny insects roved through her splintering bones.

But one part of the floor was different — it was separate, and it had something screwed into it.

Hinges , thought Sancia. A door. She followed the feeling in her mind until she came to the far corner of a dusty blue rug. She pulled it aside. Underneath was an old and scarred trapdoor.

“A basement?” said Gregor.

“When the hell did we get a basement?” asked Orso.

“The scriving library was renovated years ago,” said Berenice. “Much of the old walls were torn down and built over. Artifacts are still around — doors that go nowhere, things like that.”

“Well, this goes somewhere,” said Sancia. She wedged her fingers underneath it and lifted the trapdoor up.

Below was a short flight of musty stairs, which ended in a small tunnel that ran behind the wall. It was completely dark at the bottom.

“Here,” said Berenice, holding out her light to Sancia.

Sancia put her glove back on — aware, suddenly, of Orso’s careful gaze — and took it from her. “Thanks,” she said, and she dropped down, holding the scrived light.

She touched a bare hand to the wall. The tunnel spoke to her, darkness and dust and cool, stale moisture. She followed its path to a small, rickety ladder, which led to an old crawlspace, an interstitial segment of an older floor plan, walled off and forgotten. And at the far back was…

<���…await to trace my path in the pool of clay and wax…When will my mate begin to dance again? When shall we move, when shall we sway?>

said Sancia. She crawled forward.

said Clef.

She stopped.

She did so.

said Clef.

Again, a voice emerged from the mutterings — but this one was not the recording rig.

<���…I wait. I wait for the signal, for the token, for the sign,> said this new rig.

asked Sancia.

said Clef.

Sancia held the scrived light up, but she couldn’t see that far back into the crawlspace. She thought about it, then pressed a bare hand into the wood.

She felt wood, and nails, and dust, and termites…and she felt the rig back there, or what she thought was the rig. It was some kind of iron stand that was quite heavy — she guessed the roll of wax or clay or whatever it wrote on was big.

But beside it was something else quite heavy. A barrel, she thought…Wooden and round and filled with something…

She smelled the air, and thought she smelled something sulfurous.

She froze.

said Clef.

There was a pause.

said Clef.

said Sancia.

Another pause.

said Sancia.

said Clef.

She slowly withdrew back down the passageway. she said.

said Clef.

She sighed.

“So we can’t get close to it,” said Gregor. “We’re stuck here.”

“Right,” said Sancia, sitting on the floor in the dark, brushing dust off of her arms and knees.

Orso stood in silence, staring down into the dark passageway. Ever since she’d returned, he hadn’t said a word.

“Surely there must be a way around the device?” said Berenice.

Gregor shook his head. “I’ve dealt with scrived mines in the wars. Unless you have the right signaling device on you, you’ll be pulped.”

“So we can’t get to the listening rig,” said Berenice. “But that can’t be that critical, yes? I mean, we generally know all the things we’ve divulged to these people, right, sir?”

Orso didn’t answer. He just kept staring down into the passageway.

said Clef.

“Uh,” said Berenice, disconcerted. “Well. I meant we could try to look at the rig itself to identify the person who made it — but I’ve been working on the gravity plates all afternoon, and I still have nothing.”

“Then we focus on what we know,” said Sancia. “We know the rig’s down there. We know it’s working. We know everyone got to see Orso at this damn meeting, and they know he’s alive now. So someone will be coming. Soon.”

“And when they come,” said Gregor, “we either capture them or follow them. Following them is my preference — it can reveal so many more things…” He sighed. “But I suppose capturing and questioning them is our only choice. We’ve no idea what campo this agent of theirs would return to, nor which enclave within the campo itself! We’d need sachets and keys and all sorts of credentials…”

said Clef.

“I…I can talk to my black market contacts,” said Sancia. “I can get sachets to get into the campos.”

“You can get that many sachets?” asked Gregor, surprised.

The idea was preposterous. But maybe they didn’t know that. “Yeah.”

“And credentials?” asked Berenice.

“If you pay me enough,” said Sancia, “I can get you into the campos.”

Clef laughed.

“Then I think it’s settled,” said Gregor. “You get your sachets, we set our trap, and wait. Right?”

“Right,” said Berenice.

“Right,” said Sancia.

They all waited, and turned to Orso.

“Sir?” asked Berenice.

Finally, Orso moved, turning to look at Sancia. “That was…quite some performance,” he said quietly.

“Thanks?” she said.

He looked her over. “There’s a simple way to stay alive as a hypatus, you know — never include a scriving in your designs that you don’t completely understand. And, girl…I must admit, I don’t understand you at all.”