Роберт Беннет - Foundryside

Orso said nothing. He just stared out at the Gulf and the Commons beyond.

“Is something the matter, sir?” she asked.

“I didn’t think it would be like this, you know,” he said. “Twenty, thirty years ago, when I first started working for Tribuno…We all genuinely thought we were going to make the world a better place. End poverty. End slavery. We thought we could rise above all the ugly human things that held the world back, and…and…Well. Here I am. Standing in a sewer, paying a bunch of rogues and renegades to break into the place where I used to live.”

“Might I ask, sir,” said Berenice, “if you could change anything — what would it be?”

“Hell, I don’t know. I suppose if I thought I had a chance, I’d start my own merchant house.”

“Really, sir?” she said.

“Sure. It’s not like there’s any law forbidding it. You just have to file papers with the Tevanni council. But no one bothers anymore. Everyone knows the four prime houses would crush you instantly if you tried. There used to be dozens when I was young…and now, only four, and four forever, it seems.” He sighed. “I’ll be back tomorrow evening, Berenice. If I’m still alive, that is. Good night.”

She watched as he strolled down the tunnel and slipped out the iron grate. Her words echoed faintly after him: “Good night, sir.”

“This is nuts,” whispered Claudia in the dark. “It’s insane. It’s madness , Sancia!”

“It’s lucrative,” said Sancia. “And keep your voice down.”

Claudia peered down the warrens of the crypt, and confirmed they were alone. “You’ve got him on you now, don’t you?” she asked. “Don’t you?”

“I told you to forget about him,” said Sancia.

Claudia miserably rubbed her face. “Even if you didn’t have Clef, this is beyond foolish! How can you trust these people?”

“I don’t,” said Sancia. “Not Orso at least. Berenice is…well, normal, but she reports to Orso. And Gregor…Well, Gregor seems…” She struggled for the right word. She was unused to complimenting men of the law. “Decent.”

“Decent? Decent? Don’t you know who he is? And I don’t mean him being Ofelia’s son!”

“Then what?”

Claudia sighed. “There was a fortress city in the Daulo states, called Dantua. Five years ago a Dandolo house mercenary army captured it — a big victory for the entire region. But something went wrong, and their scrived devices failed. They were helpless, trapped in the fortress. A siege followed, with the Dandolos inside. Things went from bad to worse — starvation and plague and fire. When the Morsinis sailed in to rescue them all, they found only one survivor — just one. Gregor Dandolo.”

Sancia stared at her as she listened to this. “I…I don’t believe you.”

“It’s true. I swear to God, it’s true.”

“How? How did he survive?”

“No one knows. But he did. The Revenant of Dantua, they call him. That’s your decent man for you. You’ve gone and surrounded yourself with lunatics, Sancia. I hope you know what you’re doing. Especially because you’ve got us mixed in with them too.”

The next night they stared at a map of the Candiano campo and brainstormed.

“You all only need to worry about getting Sancia to and from the Mountain,” said Orso. “I’ve got my own ideas about maneuvering through the thing itself.”

“There are always three ways,” Claudia said. “You can go under, over, or through.”

“Over’s not an option,” said Giovanni. “She can’t fly to the Mountain. To do that, she’d have to plant an anchor or a construction scriving that would pull her to it — and you’d have to get in to plant one.”

“And through is out,” said Gregor. He walked up to the map of the Candiano campo and traced the main road running up to the huge dome. “There are eleven gates from the outer wall to the Mountain. The last two will be under constant watch, and you need all kinds of papers and scrived credentials to get through.”

Everyone stared at the map in silence.

“What’s that?” asked Sancia. She pointed to a long, winding blue streak that led from the shipping channel to the Mountain.

“That’s the delivery canal,” said Orso. “It’s used by barges full of wine and, hell, whatever else they need in the Mountain. It’s got the exact same problem as the roads, though — the last two gates are intensely guarded. Every delivery is stopped and thoroughly searched before it’s allowed to proceed.”

Sancia thought about it. “Could I cling to the side of a barge? Just below the waterline? And you all could give me some way to breathe air?”

They all looked surprised by that idea.

“The canal gates check sachets just like the rest of the walls,” said Orso slowly. “But…I believe they only pass things that go through them. Under them…that might be a different story.”

“I bet the underside of the barge would trigger the check too,” said Claudia. “But if Sancia was walking along the bottom of the canal…”

“Whoa,” said Sancia. “I didn’t say that.”

“How deep are the canals?” asked Gregor.

“Forty, fifty feet?” said Gio. “The walls definitely wouldn’t check that far down.”

“I never suggested anything like this ,” said Sancia, now alarmed.

“We can’t scrive a way for a human to breathe air,” said Orso. “That’s impossible.”

Sancia sighed with relief, since it sounded like they were abandoning this train of thought.

“But…” He glanced around, and laid one hand on a sarcophagus. “There are other options.”

Claudia frowned at the sarcophagus for a moment. Then her mouth dropped open. “A vessel. A casket!”

“Yes,” said Orso. “One that’s waterproof, and small, but capable of holding a person. We plant a weak anchor on one of the barges, and it drags the casket along the bottom of the canal behind it. Simple!”

“With…with me in it?” asked Sancia weakly. “You’re saying I’m in this casket? Being dragged along? Under the water?”

Orso waved a hand at her. “Oh, we can make it safe. Probably.”

“Certainly safer than sneaking around the guards or whatever,” said Claudia. “The barge would secret you up the entire length of the canal, and you wouldn’t risk catching a bolt in the face this way.”

“No,” said Sancia. “I’d just risk hitting a rock too hard and drowning.”

“I told you, we can make it safe!” insisted Orso. “Probably!”

“Oh my God,” said Sancia. She buried her face in her hands.

“Is there any other proposed way of getting Sancia to the Mountain?” asked Gregor.

There was a long silence.

“Well,” said Gregor. “It seems this is our choice, for now.”

Sancia sighed. “Can we at least call it something besides a casket , then?”

“This just leaves the issue of the Mountain itself,” said Gregor. “Getting Sancia up to Ziani’s office.”