Foundryside: A Novel (The Founders Trilogy)
Page 19
Gregor glared at her. Then he pulled the release key out of the stock of his espringal and used it to free her. “I assume you haven’t ever dealt with assailants such as this before,” he said as she shook off the cords.
“No. No, I have not tangled with a bunch of flying assholes before. How many of them are there?”
“I counted nine.”
She peered up as another assassin danced over the carriage. There was a thunk as the bolt struck the door above. Gregor noticed the girl did not flinch. “They like us out in the open,” she said softly. “Where we’re exposed.”
“So how do we get to someplace confined where their tools will offer less advantage?”
The girl cocked her head, thought, and then scrambled up to the top window, gripping the edges of the seat. She readied herself, then leapt up with a swift, measured grace, popping up through the window before falling back down to the mud. A chorus of thunks echoed throughout the carriage as she landed.
“Shit,” she said. “They’re fast. But at least I know where we are now. You drove the carriage into the Zorzi Building, which is lucky.”
“I did not drive it into the building,” he said, indignant. “We crashed.”
“Whatever. It used to be a paper mill or something. It stretches across the whole block. A bunch of vagrants live there now, but the top floor is big and open, with lots of windows—and the street on the other side is pretty narrow.”
“How does that help us?”
“It doesn’t help us,” said Sancia. “It helps me, though.”
He frowned at her. “What exactly are you planning, here?”
She explained. And Gregor listened.
When she was done, he considered what she was asking of him. It was not a bad plan. He’d heard worse ones.
“Think you can do it?” she asked.
“I know I can,” said Gregor. “Do you think you can get into the building?”
“That won’t be a problem,” she said. “Just give me that big goddamn crossbow.” He handed it over, and she slung it across her back. “I just point and shoot like a normal espringal, right?”
“Essentially. The cords will wrap around their target, and then they should start amplifying their densities—the more the target moves, of course.”
“Terrific.” She pulled two small, black balls out of a pocket on her side. “You ready?”
He climbed up to the open window, looked down, and nodded.
“Here we go.” She took one of the balls in her hand and pressed a small plate on its side. Then she threw one of the balls out the window, waited a beat, and then threw the other. The instant the streets lit up with that incredible, bright flashing light, Gregor leapt out of the carriage and made a run for it.
Despite the fact that he’d witnessed this phenomenon before, the flash and sound of the stun bombs was no less stupefying for Gregor. He caught the barest glimpse of the Foundryside street, and then it was all wiped away in a flash of illumination brighter than a lightning strike, followed by a tooth-rattling bang. He staggered blindly for the alley ahead, hands outstretched. He tripped on a porch, crashed into the wooden slats, and crawled forward until he felt a corner of wood.
He crawled around the corner, shakily stood, and pressed his back to the wall. There. I’m there.
He stood up and began to wobble down the alley, one hand on the wall, the other outstretched before him, the sounds of the stun bombs still ringing in his ears.
Eventually the world took shape around him. He was stumbling down a dark, decrepit alley, lined with refuse and rags. He looked over his shoulder and saw the lights of the stun bombs were fading. Then six silhouettes emerged in between the building faces of the alley—and, bizarrely, began bounding back and forth among the shop fronts like leaves on the wind.
Gregor stepped into a shadowed doorway. Remarkably odd to see, he thought, watching them drift gracefully through the air like acrobats on wires. After a moment, a seventh man joined them.
That’s two of them unaccounted for, thought Gregor. Then he took Whip out. Still. Time to test the limits of gravity.
He watched their progression, calculated their arcs, and flicked Whip forward.
His shot was true. The truncheon’s head caught the man directly in the chest—and, since the man’s reality had apparently been rearranged to believe he was as light as a feather, he went hurtling off into the sky like he’d been fired out of a cannon.
His comrades paused on a linen shop’s roof to watch him sail off into the night sky. Then they raised their espringals and fired.
Gregor leapt back into the doorway as the bolts thudded around him. Whip came zipping back to its shaft. He waited a beat, then dashed out and started running.
One down, he thought. Eight to go.
* * *
Sancia waited quietly underneath the carriage, the big espringal on her back. She tried to ignore her rapid heartbeat and the trembling in her hands. When the stun bombs had gone off, she’d leapt out and hidden in the gap between the carriage and the base of the building. She could hear one of the assassins standing on the top of the carriage, peering down into the empty vehicle. Then she watched, relieved, as he joined his comrades in chasing Gregor down the side alley.
There was a thud, a cry of pain, and then one of the men came rocketing out of the alley, tumbling ass-over-head.
said Sancia.
She wormed her way out from underneath the carriage, pulled Clef off her neck, and stuck him in the side door to the Zorzi Building. There was the usual click, and Sancia darted inside.
The place reeked of sulfur and whatever other chemicals they’d used to make paper back in the day—as well as a variety of other, more human smells, because the bottom floor appeared to have been totally taken over by vagrants. Piles of rags and straw and refuse were everywhere. A few of the occupants cried out at the sight of her, a huge espringal slung over her shoulder.
Sancia knelt, touched a bare finger to the ground, and let the layout of the building unscroll in her mind. Once she felt the stairs, she popped up, leapt over one of the shrieking vagrants, and darted over to the hallway that led to the stairs. she thought.
* * *
Gregor turned the corner on the fairway, then turned again, until he was headed toward the other side of the Zorzi Building—but hopefully his attackers didn’t realize that. He looked ahead and saw a welcome sight: there were dozens of clotheslines strung up over the narrow fairway beside the old paper mill, running about four stories up, old dresses and gray undergarments and bedsheets drifting in the night breeze.
Ah, he thought. Cover. That should do nicely.
He ran to the left, finding shelter under a thick set of off-white bedsheets, and looked up. With the clotheslines above, he was much less exposed.
And hopefully, he thought, glancing up, the girl will be getting into position sometime soon…
He saw an iron baluster on a balcony across the street, which gave him an idea. He took Whip out, aimed carefully, and flicked it at the baluster…
With a loud clang, Whip’s head caught on the iron railing. Gregor pulled the cable taut, hid in a doorway, and waited.
He couldn’t see them coming through the clothes above. He could only hear the soft scrape of their boots on the building fronts, echoing all around him. He imagined them dancing from rooftop to rooftop, weaving through the hanging clothes, drifting like dust motes on a gentle breeze. But then, as if he were fishing, his line suddenly gave a great leap…
There was a gagging sound, and a cough. Gregor peeked around the corner and saw one of their attackers spinning wildly through the air, havin
g apparently been caught on Whip’s cable. The man sailed through the clotheslines, flying end-over-end, the lines and clothes wrapping around his form as he coughed. Finally he crashed into the street below, trailing tangles of clothing like some kind of bizarre kite, and was still.
Gregor nodded, pleased. That worked nicely. He hit the switch to retract Whip’s head from the baluster. It took a jerk or two from him, but soon the truncheon’s head came zipping down—and accidentally pulled a string of clothes with it.
Which, he realized, told his attackers exactly where he was.
He looked up as a black-clad man did a flip over the clotheslines, tumbling like an acrobat. Then the man adjusted something on his stomach, which caused him to fall rapidly back toward the building face opposite Gregor. Once the man’s feet were steady, he looked up at Gregor, and raised his espringal.
Gregor started to flick Whip forward, but he knew it was too late. He could see it happening, see the bolt whipping down at him, see its black tip glinting in the moonlight. He tried to withdraw farther into the doorway, but then his arm lit up with pain.
He cried out and looked at his left arm. He immediately saw that he’d been lucky: the bolt had caught him on the inside bottom of his forearm, slashing it open. The unnatural momentum of the bolt meant it’d shredded his flesh as it passed directly through, but it had not speared his arm, or hit the bone. Scrived bolts did tremendous damage to the human body.
Cursing, Gregor looked up just in time to see a second assassin join the one who’d just fired—and this one, he suspected, would not miss.
Gregor fumbled to get Whip ready.
The attacker raised his espringal…
But then a silvery, strange rope came hurtling from above to wrap itself around the second man’s legs.
The second attacker staggered as the ropes struck him—at least, he staggered as much as anyone could while defying gravity and standing on a wall.
Praise God, thought Gregor. The girl came through. He looked up, but the windows above were lost in the fluttering storm of laundry. Presumably she was somewhere up there, firing away.
The bound man tried to leap off the building front—but this quickly proved to have been a bad idea: the density cords wrapped around the man’s shins believed that, as long as the target they were bound to was not at rest, they would keep increasing their density until it was.
However, the man’s gravity rig—whatever it was—allowed him to circumnavigate gravity itself: the one force that allowed objects to come to a resting state.
So, because of his rig, he could not be at rest. And because he could not be at rest, the bonds got denser, and denser…
The man started shrieking in surprise and pain, and he slapped at something on his chest, some kind of control mechanism for his gravity rig, probably. This caused him to just float in the middle of the air over the street—but that did not amend his situation, it seemed.
His shrieking got higher-pitched, and louder…
There was a sound like a tree root cracking in half, or fabric being torn. Then came a horrific spray of blood—and then the man’s legs separated from the rest of his body at the knees.
* * *
Sancia stared over the sights of her espringal as the man screamed in agony, floating above the street, pouring blood from his knees. She was crouched on the remnants of a wooden walkway that ran the perimeter of the Zorzi’s upstairs, peering through the old windows. She’d assumed that shooting the flying men with the espringal would just weigh them down until they couldn’t fly anymore—she certainly hadn’t thought it would do that.
She swallowed her nausea.
* * *
Gregor watched in dull surprise as the man’s feet and calves crashed into the earth, still wearing the density bonds. Then the man just hung there in the air, screaming as blood poured out of him onto the ground like a horrific water feature of the neighborhood…
And that, thought Gregor, is why scrivers so rarely fool with gravity.
Understandably, such a phenomenon got one’s attention. It certainly seemed to have distracted the man who’d injured Gregor—he was still standing on the building face across the fairway, staring at the sight, having seemingly forgotten all about Gregor.
Narrowing his eyes, Gregor took aim with Whip and flung the truncheon’s head forward at the man. There was a dull plonk! sound, and the thick weight cleanly connected with the man’s left temple.
The man’s body went slack and he dropped the espringal. Then, slowly, his legs slipped off the wall and his unconscious body started drifting over the street. It seemed his rig was set to keep him at a specific level—he neither rose nor fell. It looked like he was slowly skating over an invisible ice pond.
Gregor peered at the espringal lying in the mud. Then he got an idea. It was one of his favorite tactics: when outnumbered and outmatched, clutter up the battlefield as much as you can. Only this battlefield, he thought, is the very air above our heads.
He took aim at the unconscious, floating man, and hurled Whip forward. The truncheon’s head caught the man’s body in the chest and—just as Gregor had hoped—the momentum sent the man ricocheting off the building fronts, hurtling through hanging clothes, bouncing off his dying colleague, and generally wreaking havoc.
Gregor watched, satisfied, as the chaos unfolded. One of the men tried to get out of the way and leap across the alley, but the growing tangle of clotheslines caught him like a fish in a net.
Gregor scrambled forward, grabbed the espringal, raised it, and shot the tangled man, all in one smooth motion. The man cried out and went still.
Five down, said Gregor. Four left.
He looked up, reloaded, and saw two attackers flit across the street and twirl in midair. Gregor tried to draw a bead on one of them—but then both of them gracefully tumbled through the upstairs windows of the Zorzi Building.
Gregor lowered the espringal. “Oh hell,” he sighed.
* * *
Sancia saw them coming. She pointed the big espringal at one of the attackers just as they passed through the windows, and fired. But the shot went wide, and the density cords tangled around a rafter—which was, of course, already at rest, so that didn’t do much.
“Shit!” she cried. She leapt forward as a scrived bolt hurtled toward her. As she fell she reached into her pocket, grabbed a stun bomb, pressed its plate, and tossed it into the rafters.
She knew, of course, that in this terribly dark place it would blind her as well, along with whichever vagrants were still in there with her. But Sancia was pretty good at getting around without seeing.
The flash of the bomb was tremendous, as was the pop from its charge. For a moment she just lay there on the walkway, her head ringing and her eyes aching. Clef’s voice cut through all her sensory overload.
Sancia was keenly aware that wouldn’t last forever—though the effects might likely last unusually long, given the dark environment. Yet she found she could hear her attackers, or at least their rigs—there was a faint chanting in the blistering, flashing darkness, from their gravity rigs. I guess I don’t hear scrivings with my ears, she thought, which was a curious revelation. She also realized that these rigs must be terribly powerful for her to be able to hear them from so far away.
That gave her an idea. She slipped out her bamboo pipe, which was loaded with a single dolorspina dart.
Clef seemed to not understand this was disturbing, since it suggested his method o
f seeing things was different from human eyes. She lifted the pipe to her lips.
Sancia took a deep breath in through her nose and blew as hard as she could.
She had no idea what happened—she still couldn’t see or hear much. It was like firing the dart into the blackest of nights in here. But then Clef said,
She could see blurs in the darkness—her vision was coming back, but only slightly.
She touched her bare hand to the wall beside her, then the rafter above her, and she listened to both of them. She let all the rafters and the supports and the beams overhead pour into her.
It was too much, far, far, too much. Her head felt like it was going to break open. I’m going to pay for this later, she thought. But she kept going until every inch of the ceiling had made an impression in her thoughts, every beam of wood and every brick fixed in her mind.
Then, still mostly blind and deaf, Sancia leapt up, grabbed a rafter, lifted herself up, and started crawling through the rafters of the Zorzi Building with her eyes closed.