Роберт Беннет - Foundryside

“So?”

“So…the lexicon will spike. It will definitely cause nausea for all of us, I expect.”

Ziani was still. “Do you think I’m stupid?” he asked.

The room grew tense. The girl shrank down below the sheets.

“C-certainly not, sir,” said the clerk.

“Because it feels like you might,” said Ziani. He turned to look at him. “Just because I’m not a scriver. Just because I don’t have as many certifications as you. Because of that —you think I don’t know these things?”

“Sir, I just…”

“It’s a risk,” said Ziani. “And an acceptable one. Do it. I’ll supervise the fabrication.” He pointed at the girl. “You stay there. It’s far too long since I waxed an agreeable cunny, and I won’t have this dull bit of business delay that, either.” He buttoned up his shirt, his face twisted in faint disdain. “I certainly won’t deign to go pawing around Estelle’s musty skirts for a bit of push.”

“And…sir?”

“Yes?” snapped Ziani.

“What should we do with the corpse?”

“The same thing we’ve done with all the others? I mean, why should I know? We have people for that, don’t we?”

Ziani and the clerk left the office and shut the door behind them. The girl slowly shut her eyes, sighing half in relief, half in dismay.

Sancia silently slid out her bamboo pipe and loaded it with a dart.

said Clef.

said Sancia.

Sancia waited for a few minutes, making sure they were really gone. Then she silently opened the door a crack, trained the pipe on the girl’s neck, and blew.

The girl made a soft, “Ah!” as the dart struck her neck. She tensed, drunkenly slapped at her neck, fell back, and was still.

Sancia slipped into the room and went to the other office door. She peered through the keyhole and confirmed no one was approaching. Then she looked at the papers and boxes on the desk.

She picked up the thing Ziani had called the “shell”—his term for the bronze imperiat, which apparently did not work. She found he was right: it was little more than a curiosity, a dull, dead hunk of metal. Though it bore many strange sigils, it was not a true scrived device.

said Clef. He sounded genuinely frightened.

hundred imperiats…God, can you scrumming imagine?>

She tried to, and shivered.

said Clef.

She looked at the papers on the desk, and saw most were yellow with age, and written in a strange, spidery hand, like the hand of someone who was either old, infirm, or both.

She looked at the top of one paper:

THEORIES ON THE INTENT OF HIEROPHANTIC TOOLS

The notes of Tribuno Candiano , she thought. The greatest scriver of our age… There were a lot of them, and she understood few at a glance.

But some of the papers were different. They appeared to be wax rubbings of stone engravings or tables or bas-reliefs…But what they depicted was confusing.

Each one showed an altar, always an altar, positioned at the center of each paper. Floating above the altar was the image of a prone, sexless human body — perhaps it was an artistic rendition of someone lying on the altar’s surface. Floating above the human body was always an oversized sword or blade, several times the size of the altar or the person. Written inside the blade were any number of complicated sigils, which varied from engraving to engraving, but all of them had these three things in common: the body, the altar, and the blade.

There was something gruesomely clinical to it all. They did not depict some religious rite, it felt. Instead, they seemed like…

she thought.

She scooped up all the papers, folded them, and stuffed them into her pockets.

Clef moaned, a sound suggesting both pain and epiphany.

he said dreamily.

Then her head lit up with agony.

It was like the world was dissolving, like a meteor had struck the earth, like the walls had been turned to ash and cinder…She was still in the office, still standing next to that sleeping girl, but there was a hot coal in her brain, burning it away, scorching the walls of her skull. She opened her mouth in silent pain and was surprised when smoke didn’t come pouring out.

Sancia fell to her knees and vomited. It’s the lexicon spiking , she tried to tell herself. That’s all it is…You’re just…sensitive to it…

Clef cried out joyously:

She felt warmth running down her face, and saw drops of blood on the floor below her.

said Clef. remember him, Sancia…>

Images leaked into her mind. The dusty smell of the office faded, and she smelled…

Desert hills. Cool night breezes.

Then she heard the hiss of sand, and the sound of millions of wings, and she was gone.

Berenice peered through the spyglass, watching for Sancia. The girl had abruptly sunk to the ground and fallen out of view — which seemed odd.

What is she doing? Why isn’t she getting out of there?

Then nausea hit her — a familiar sensation for her.

They’re spinning up the lexicon , she thought. Activating more scrivings. And maybe it’s done something to Sancia.

She watched for a moment, then glassed the big, open area beyond the office. She saw glints of metal, and realized guards in scrived armor were walking at a quick pace — not on patrol, then. They were looking for something. And they seemed to be heading straight for Sancia.

“Shit,” she whispered. She looked back at the office. She still couldn’t see Sancia. “Oh, shit .”

Sancia was no longer in the office, no longer in the foundry or the campo or even in Tevanne. She was gone from that place.

Now she stood atop creamy yellow sand dunes, the pale pink moon hanging fat and heavy in the sky. And standing on the dune across from her was…

A man. Or something man-shaped, facing away from her.

He was wrapped in black cloth, every inch of his body, his neck and face and feet. He wore a short black cloak that went down to about mid-thigh, and his arms and hands were lost in its folds. Next to the man-thing was a curious, ornate golden box, about three feet high and four feet long.

She knew this thing, she knew the box. She recognized them.

I can’t let him see me , she thought.

She heard a sound coming from somewhere in the sky…the sound of so many wings, tiny and delicate, like a giant flock of butterflies.

The man-thing’s head twitched ever so slightly, like he’d heard something. The sound of flapping wings grew louder.

No , she thought. No, no…

Then the man-thing rose up, just a touch, floating a foot above the dunes, and hung there, suspended in the night air.