Роберт Беннет - Foundryside

Many clicks. <���…very little. As a clerk, I was a…> Click. <���…functionary.>

Sancia said nothing.

said Valeria. Click. <���…world behind the world. The vast machinery that makes creation run.>

Sancia remembered the engraving in Orso’s workshop — the chamber at the center of the world.

Valeria was silent.

asked Sancia.

said Valeria quietly.

Another long silence.

Sancia shuddered, remembering her vision of the man in the desert, turning out the stars.

said Valeria.

Sancia’s heart jumped.

said Valeria.

There was a long silence.

asked Sancia.

said Valeria.

Sancia sat there, stupefied. head ?>

Sancia realized what she meant. Her insides turned to jelly, and she was so overcome with emotion she could hardly respond.

Sancia swallowed. off ?>

said Valeria.

Sancia closed her eyes, and tears ran down her face.

said Valeria.

sad . It’s just…I’ve always wanted this! I’ve wanted this for so, so long. And you’re saying — for sure — that you can give it to me? Right now?>

Clicks. More clicks.

More clicks — and these were harsh.

A cold disgust filled Sancia. feel items, and…>

A series of clicks so fast, they were almost a blur.

A rapid series of clicks. Click.

Sancia listened with a sense of mounting outrage.

Click.

She struggled to find the words. owned !>

screamed Sancia at her. She shut her eyes. free person .>

asked Valeria.

Tears streamed down her face. The guards looked at her curiously. said Sancia.

Valeria was silent. Sancia lay there, weeping.

said Valeria. Then, in a soft, slightly darker tone:

Sancia swallowed and tried to blink the tears away.

Valeria said nothing.

< So,> said Sancia.

Click.

said Valeria. this way, and not that way. This is no simple thing. Reality is a stubborn thing.>

Sancia wasn’t sure if she wanted to hear more — the more she learned about what Valeria could do, the more she terrified her.

Her stomach fluttered.

Sancia was breathing hard. She knew she needed every advantage she could get. But she wanted to ask more: to ask exactly what Valeria could do, what they’d made her to do, and how the Makers had made her to begin with.

Yet Valeria said,

Sancia gritted her teeth.

For a second, there was nothing. But then she heard it.

It was almost exactly like that time in Orso’s house, with Clef: there was a quiet, rhythmic tap-tap, tap, tap— a soft pulse, echoing through her mind.

Again, she listened to it, reached out, grasped it, and then…

The beats unfolded, expanded, and enveloped her, filling her thoughts.

And then Sancia was filled with pain.

She felt herself screaming. Felt her skull burn hot with fire, felt every tissue in her skull sizzling, and then the guards were beside her, shouting, trying to hold her down, but then…

She fell.

Sancia was falling, falling into a darkness, an endless, rippling black.

She heard a whispering, and she slowly realized: the darkness was filled with thoughts, with impulses, with desires.

She was not passing into emptiness. It was a mind —she was falling into a mind. But the mind of something huge, something incomprehensibly vast and alien…yet fragmented. Broken.

Valeria , she thought. You lied to me. You were no clerk, were you?

Darkness took her.

As midnight passed, a small, white boat slipped through the misty canals of the Commons. Seated within the boat were three people: two boatmen, wearing dark, unmarked clothes, and a tall woman, wearing a thick black cloak.

They passed a barge, quiet and dark, and rounded a bend in the canal. The two men slowed the boat and looked to the woman.

“Farther,” said Ofelia Dandolo.

The prow sloshed through the foul, dark waters as the boat beat on. The canals of the Commons were unspeakably filthy, scummed over with waste and rot and slurry. Yet Ofelia Dandolo peered through these waters like a fortune-teller parsing the leaves at the bottom of a teacup.

“Farther still,” she whispered.

The boat beat on, until they finally came to a sharp bend at the corner of the canal. A tiny flock of pale, white moths danced and circled over a patch in the bend — directly over something floating in the water.

She pointed. “There.” The boat sped over to the floating thing, and the two men took out wooden hooks and pulled it close.

It was a man, floating facedown in the water, stiff and still. The two men hauled the body into the boat and laid it in the bottom.

Ofelia Dandolo surveyed the body, her face pinched in an expression that could have been grief, or frustration, or dismay. “Oh dear,” she sighed. Then she glanced at the flock of moths, and she seemed to nod at them. “You were right,” she said.

The moths dispersed, flitting away into the city.

She sat back and gestured to the two men. “Let’s go.”

The boat turned around.

Alone, in the dark, for the second time in her life, Sancia slowly remade herself.

It was an agonizing, thoughtless experience, as endless and painful as a chick struggling against the confines of its egg. Slowly, bit by bit, Sancia felt the world around her. She felt the world as the operating table saw it, felt herself lying upon herself…And then, somehow, she felt more .

Or, rather, heard more.

She heard a voice: < Oh, to be bound, to be whole, to embrace, to join ourselves, the joy of being joined, of being one, of being together, or being loved…>

Sancia, her eyes shut and her head pounding, furrowed her brow. What the hell? Who’s saying that?

The voice in her ear continued, a warbling, neurotic chant: < Oh, how I rejoice to reach out and grasp you, a circle unbroken, a heart complete…How lovely, how lovely, how lovely. I shall never part with you, not ever…>

Sancia opened her left eye the tiniest crack, and saw the two Candiano guards standing over her. They looked worried.

“Think she’s dead?” said one.

“She’s breathing,” said the other. “I…think.”

“God. She was bleeding out of her eyes. What the hell happened to her?”

“I don’t know. But Ziani said not to hurt her. She was supposed to be in one piece.”

The two shared a nervous glance.

“What do we do?” asked the first.

“We keep a lookout for Ziani,” said the other. “And make sure we tell Ziani the exact same thing.” The two withdrew to the door and started talking quietly.