Роберт Беннет - Foundryside

“I suppose I need to thank you, girl,” she said.

“Why?” said Sancia.

“When Orso came to me and said he needed a way to sneak a thief into the Mountain, I realized right away that if Tomas caught this thief, he’d likely take them somewhere safe. And the safest place would likely also be where he’d hidden my father’s collection.” She turned to the table covered in artifacts. “Which I’d been seeking for some time. Looks like it’s all here.”

“It…it was you who backstabbed us,” said Sancia. “You tipped Tomas off that I’d be coming.”

“I told a person to tell a person to tell a person close to Tomas to be on alert,” said Estelle. “It wasn’t personal — surely you understand that. But a creature such as you must be accustomed to being used as a tool by your betters. I’d have hoped Tomas would have given you a quick death, though.” She sighed, slightly put out. “Now I’ll have to decide how to deal with you.”

At the mention of her death, Sancia focused back on the shackles, asking,

“He thought so much of himself, you know,” Estelle said, looking at Tomas. “He thought scrivers were pale, weak fools. He hated how much he depended on them. He wished to operate in a world of conquest and conflict, a savage world that substituted gold for blood.” She tutted. “Not a man of reflection, then. And when he started finding such valuable designs in Tribuno’s chambers, strings of sigils that just mysteriously appeared overnight, he rejoiced…And he never reflected on where they came from.”

“Y-you made the gravity plates?” asked Sancia, surprised.

“I made it all,” said Estelle, eyes locked on Tomas’s. “I did everything for him. Through hints and nudges, over years and years, I led him to my father’s Occidental collection. I used my father to feed him my scriving innovations — listening rigs, gravity plates, and much, much more. I got him to do everything I could not, everything that I was not allowed to do.” She leaned close to Tomas’s frozen face. “I have done more than you, so much more than you, with you acting as an obstacle every step of the way. With you castigating me, and ignoring me, and grabbing me and…and…”

She paused, and swallowed.

This Sancia understood well. “He thought you his property,” she said.

“A regrettable heirloom, perhaps,” said Estelle quietly. “But no matter. I took that and made an advantage of it as best I could. I’ve rarely had the luxury of pride. So perhaps it didn’t hurt quite as much as it should have.”

Sancia looked at Tomas, and saw he was now strangely bent in places. He was like an iron drum that had been crinkled and crumpled after a few years of hard use.

“What…what the hell are you doing to him?” asked Sancia.

“I am subjecting him to the same thing he and my father subjected me to,” said Estelle. “Pressure.”

Sancia pulled a face, watching as Tomas appeared to…retract. Just ever so slightly. “So his gravity…”

“Every thirty seconds, it increases by a tenth,” said Estelle. “So as it accelerates, its acceleration accelerates…”

“And he still feels…”

“Everything,” said Estelle softly.

“Oh my God,” said Sancia, appalled.

“Why do you react with such horror? Don’t you wish this man dead for what he did to you? For capturing you, for beating you, for slashing your head open?”

“Sure I do,” said Sancia. “Man’s a shit. But that doesn’t mean you’re decent. I mean, even though I might sympathize with you, that doesn’t mean you’re going to let me go, does it? I’d ruin your chance to get at all that money.”

“For money ?” said Estelle. “Oh, girl…This isn’t for money.”

“Besides that and killing Tomas, what could it have been about? Or…is a Candiano a Candiano? You think you can make Occidental tools? You’ll succeed where your father failed?”

Estelle smiled coldly. “Forget Occidental tools. What no one knows is — who were the hierophants? How did they get to be what they were? The answer was there in front of my father’s face, the whole time. And I’d solved it ages ago. He never listened to me. And I knew Tomas wouldn’t. Yet I needed the resources to prove it.” She paced around Tomas again. “A collection of energies. All thoughts captured in one person’s being . And the grand privileges of the lingai divina —these are reserved for the deathless, for those who take and give life.” She grinned and looked at Sancia. “Don’t you see? Don’t you understand?”

Sancia’s skin crawled. “You…you mean…”

“The hierophants made themselves the same way they made their devices,” said Estelle. “They took the minds and souls of others — and invested them in their very bodies .”

Sancia watched, sickened, as Tomas’s form began to shudder, as if it were being liquefied. Then his eyes began to fill with blood. “Oh God…”

“A single human form!” cried Estelle, triumphant. “Yet within it, dozens, hundreds, thousands of minds and thoughts…A person brimming over with vitality, with meaning, with power, swirling reality around themselves, able to not just patch over reality but change it with a whim…”

Tomas’s body crumpled inward, collapsing in on itself, his shattering arms and chest erupting with blood that then, in full defiance of physics, shrank back into his body, forced in by his unnatural gravity.

“You’re scrumming insane,” Sancia said.

“No!” Estelle laughed. “I’m just well read. I waited for so long for Tomas to collect all the tools and resources I need, all the ancient sigils. I was so patient. But then old Orso presented a wonderful opportunity. And, as they say, you never turn down an opportunity…” She reached into her robes and took out something glimmering and gold — a long, oddly-toothed key.

Sancia stared. “Clef…”

“Clef?” said Estelle. “You have a name for it? That’s rather pathetic, isn’t it?”

“You…you scrumming bitch !” said Sancia, furious. “How did you get him? How did you…” Then she stopped. “Where’s…Where’s Gregor?”

Estelle turned to look at her husband.

“What did you do?” demanded Sancia. “What did you do to Gregor? What did you do to him?”

“I did what was necessary,” said Estelle, “to gain my freedom. Wouldn’t you?”

Sancia stared, disgusted and terrified, as Tomas’s body slowly lost form and shape, turning into a boiling ball of blood and viscera, which shrank, and shrank, and shrank…

“If you hurt him,” said Sancia. “If you hurt him, you, you…”

“It could have been worse.” She gestured at the monstrous sight before her. “I could have put him through this.”

Tomas’s body was now about the size of a small cannonball. It was shuddering slightly in the air, as if it could no longer bear the pressure.

Estelle stood up tall, and despite her mussed hair and her smeared makeup, her eyes were bright and hard and commanding, and suddenly Sancia understood why people had thought Tribuno Candiano a king. “Tomorrow I shall do what my father always dreamt of, but never accomplished. And at the same time, I will take away all he valued, and all you valued as well, husband. I will become Company Candiano. And then I will collect all that I have been denied !”