Роберт Беннет - Foundryside

“The Morsinis had gotten to Dantua. They’d attacked. The Daulos had broken in through the walls in desperation, and somehow they’d set the city alight. And some Morsini sergeant saw me clawing my way out of the mass grave, covered in blood and mud and screaming…He thought I was a monster. And by that point, perhaps I was. The Revenant of Dantua.”

They were silent. The tall grasses danced in the wind around them.

“I’ve seen a lot of death, Sancia,” he said. “My father and brother died in a carriage accident when I was young. One I nearly died in myself. I joined the military to bring honor to their name, but instead I got so many young men killed — and, again, I survived. I keep surviving, it seems. It’s taught me many things. After Dantua…it was like a magic spell had been lifted from my eyes. We are making these horrors. We are doing this to ourselves. We have to change. We must change.”

“This is just what people are,” said Sancia. “We’re animals. We only care about survival.”

“But don’t you see?” he said. “Don’t you see that’s a bond they’ve placed upon you? Why did you work the fields as a slave, why did you sleep in miserable quarters and silently bear your suffering? Because if you didn’t, you’d be killed. Sancia…so long as you think only of survival, only of living to see the next day, you will always bear their chains. You will not be free. You’ll always remain a sla—”

“Shut your mouth!” she snarled.

“I will not.”

“You think because you’ve suffered, you know? You think you know what it’s like to live in fear?”

“I think I know what it’s like to die,” said Gregor. “It makes things so terribly clear once you stop worrying about survival, Sancia. If these people succeed — if these rich, vain fools do as they wish — then they will make slaves of the whole of the world. All men and women alive, and all generations after, will live in fear just as you did. I am willing to fight and die to free them. Are you?”

“How can you say that?” she said. “You, a Dandolo? You know more than anyone that this is what all merchant houses do .”

He stood, furious. “ Then help me cast them down! ” he cried.

She stared at him. “You…you would overthrow the merchant houses?” she asked. “Even your own?”

“Sometimes you need a little revolution to make a lot of good. Look at this place!” He gestured at the Gulf. “How can these people fix the world if they can’t fix their own city?” He bowed his head. “And look at us,” he said quietly. “Look at what they’ve made of us.”

“You’d really die for this?”

“Yes. I’d give away all that I value, Sancia, all, to ensure no one ever has to go through what you or I have ever again.”

She looked down at her wrists, at the scars there, where they’d bound her up before they’d lashed her. she asked.

She bowed her head, nodded, and stood. “Fine then. Let’s go.”

She marched down the hillside to the drainage tunnel, then into the crypt, with Gregor behind her. They all went silent as she walked in.

She stood in the crypt before a sarcophagus, her heart hammering like mad, not moving.

asked Clef.

She swallowed.

She reached up, grabbed the string around her neck, ripped Clef off, and placed him on the sarcophagus. “This is Clef,” she said aloud. “He’s my friend. He’s been helping me. Maybe now he can help you.”

Everyone stared at her.

Orso slowly stepped forward, mouth open. “Well, bend me over and scrum me blue,” he whispered. “Son of a bitch. Son of a bitch .”

“You’ve…you’ve lied to me!” Orso shouted. “You’ve been lying to me this whole time !”

“Well, yeah,” said Sancia. “I heard you telling Gregor to dump my unconscious body in a ditch. That doesn’t exactly inspire trust.”

“That’s not the point!” snapped Orso. “You’ve put everything at risk by lying to us!”

“I don’t recall your ass sneaking onto a foundry,” said Sancia, “or getting up to hop in an underwater coffin. Seems this risk hasn’t been distributed fairly.”

Clef asked.

So she did. And he was right: every fact that she’d been taking as a regular part of her life for the past few days sent Orso and Berenice careening off the walls in shock.

“He can sense scrived devices?” Orso said, boggled. “He can see what they are, what they do , at a distance ?”

“And he can change them?” said Berenice. “He can change scrivings ?”

“Not change,” said Sancia. “Just…make them reinterpret their instructions. Somewhat.”

“How is that any different from change!” cried Orso.

“I’m still hung up on this thing being a ‘he,’ ” said Gregor. “It…it is a key, yes? The key says it’s a him? Is that right?”

“Can we not bother with the dumb shit, please?” said Sancia.

She kept answering questions as best she could, but this proved difficult since she was essentially acting as a go-between in a conversation among six people. She kept asking everyone to slow down, slow down, and everyone kept saying, “Who was that answer for?” or “What? What’s that about, again?”

sighed Clef.

really, really important , you see? Right? Right?>

said I was sorry! But I had to tell them about you! If Gregor’s serious about sparking a goddamn revolution, they’re going to need all the help they can get! What do you want to do?>

Sancia looked around. Orso was still screaming questions at her, and it seemed like she’d missed two or three of them in just the past few seconds.

There was a warmth in the side of her head, a slight ache, and then suddenly her body felt far away, like it was not something she lived in every second of every day but was rather some curious extension she didn’t fully control.

Her jaw worked, a cough burbled up from within her chest, and her voice said, “All right. Can you guys, like, hear me?”