Роберт Беннет - Foundryside

“You don’t need to,” said Sancia. “You just need to understand the results I get you.”

“No,” said Orso. “I need a lot more than that. For example — how do I know you’re telling the truth about any of this?”

“Huh?” she said.

“You go into the dark, say you found the rig, but we can’t get close to it. If we go down there and look ourselves, we die. There’s no way to check. That all seems convenient to me.”

“I’ve helped you before,” she said. “I found the damn rig in the statue!”

“But how did you do that ? You never told us. You haven’t told us a damned thing!”

“Orso,” said Gregor. “I believe we can trust her.”

“How can we trust her if we don’t know how she’s doing what she’s doing? Finding a rig is one thing, but seeing through walls, finding the trapdoor…I mean, she went straight to it like a dog on the hunt!”

said Clef.

Orso turned to her. “You figured all this out just by listening ?”

“Yeah?”

“And touching the walls?”

“Yeah? What of it?”

He stared at her for a long, long time. “Where are you from, Sancia?” he demanded.

“Foundryside,” she said defiantly.

“But where originally?”

“Back east.”

“But where east?”

“Go east enough and you’ll find it.”

“Why are you so evasive?”

“Because it’s none of your damn business.”

“But it is my business. You made yourself my business when you stole my key.” He stepped closer, squinting at her, his eye tracing over the scar on the side of her head. “I don’t need you to tell me,” he said quietly. “I don’t need you to tell me anything. I already know.”

She tensed up. Her heart was beating so fast it felt like a murmur.

“Silicio,” said Orso. “The Silicio Plantation. That’s where you’re from, isn’t it?”

The next thing she knew, Sancia had her hands around his throat.

She hadn’t meant to do it. She’d barely even understood what was happening. One moment, she’d been sitting on the floor. Then Orso spoke that name, and suddenly she smelled the sting of alcohol, heard the whine of flies, and the side of her head was bright with pain — and then she was screaming and throttling a terrified Orso Ignacio, trying to crush his already-bruised windpipe with her bare hands.

She was screaming something, over and over again. It took her a moment to realize she was saying, “ Was it you? Was it you? Was it, was it? ”

Berenice was suddenly on top of her, trying to haul her off of him, with little success. Then Gregor was there, and since he was two if not three times Sancia’s size, he had much more success.

Gregor Dandolo hugged Sancia tight to his body, his big arms holding her still.

“ Let me go! ” she screamed. “ Let me go, let me go, let me go! ”

“Sancia,” said Gregor, surprisingly calm. “Stop. Be still.”

Orso was coughing and gagging and trying to sit up. “What in all the damned world …”

“ I’ll kill him! ” screamed Sancia. “ I’ll kill you, you scrumming bastard! ”

“Sancia,” said Gregor. “You are not where you think you are.”

“What’s the matter with her?” said Berenice, terrified.

“She’s having a reaction,” said Gregor. “I’ve seen this among veterans, and experienced it myself.”

“ He did it! ” shrieked Sancia. She kicked uselessly at Gregor’s legs. “ It was him, it was him, it was him! ”

“She’s reliving a memory,” he said, grunting slightly. “A bad one.”

“It was him !” she screamed. She felt the blood vessels standing out on her forehead, felt the hot, muggy air on her skin, heard the songs in the fields, the whimpering in the dark. “It was, it was !”

Orso coughed, shook himself, and shouted, “It wasn’t me !”

Sancia struggled against Gregor’s arms. Her back and neck burned with fatigue, but still she struggled.

said Clef in her ear. please !>

Sancia slowed as she heard Clef’s words. The many sensations of the plantation retreated from her mind. Then she went limp, exhausted.

Orso sat on the ground, panting, and then said, “It was not me, Sancia. I had nothing to do with Silicio. Nothing! I swear!”

Sancia said nothing. Her breath was ragged, and she was spent.

Gregor slowly lowered her to sit on the floor. Then he cleared his throat like they’d all had a loud disagreement at the breakfast table. “I must ask — what is this Silicio?”

Orso looked at Sancia. Sancia glared back, but did not speak.

“To me, it was no more than a rumor,” said Orso. “A rumor of a slave plantation where…where scrivers practiced the one art we are strictly forbidden to pursue.”

Berenice turned to stare at him, horrified. Gregor said, “You mean…”

“Yes,” said Orso, sighing. “The scriving of human beings. And to look at Sancia…it seems like it worked, at least once.”

“Barely anyone remembers the first days, when they tried scriving humans,” Orso said darkly, sitting at the head of one of the big wooden tables in the scriving library. “Nor would they wish to. I was hardly out of school when they outlawed it. But I saw the cases. I know what happened. I know why they abandoned it.”

Sancia sat silent at the other end of the table, gently rocking back and forth. Gregor and Berenice glanced between her and Orso, waiting to hear more.

“We know how to change an object’s reality,” said Orso carefully. “We speak the language of objects. To speak this language to people, to try to command our bodies with our sigils…It doesn’t work.”

“Why?” asked Gregor.

“On one level, it’s because we’re just not good enough,” said Orso. “It’s kind of like safely scriving gravity, only worse. It would take a huge amount of effort to do — three, four, five lexicons, all to alter one person.”

“But on another level?”

“On another level, it doesn’t work because objects are dumb ,” said Orso. “Scriving is all about careful, precise definition, and objects are easy there. Iron is iron. Stone is stone. Wood is wood. Objects have an uncomplicated sense of self, so to speak. People, though, and living things…their sense of self is…complicated. Mutable. It changes . People don’t think of themselves as just a bag of flesh and blood and bones, even if that’s what they basically are. They think of themselves as soldiers, as kings, as wives and husbands and children…People can convince themselves to be anything, and because of that, the scrivings you bind them with can’t stay anchored. To try to bind a person is like writing in the ocean.”

“So what happened to the people the scrivers tried to alter?” asked Gregor.

Orso was quiet for a long while. “Even I won’t speak of such things. Not now. Not ever, if I can help it.”