“Son of a bitch,” snapped Sancia. “I’m not your hostage! I’m not doing this for nothing!”
“You would be doing it because you owe it to me. And for the good of the city.”
“It’s not my damned city! It’s yours! I just live here, or try to! But you people are making it goddamn hard!”
He looked surprised by her ferocity. He considered it. “Find the rig, if you can,” he said. “Then we’ll talk. I am not unreasonable when it comes to these things.”
“Could have scrumming fooled me,” said Sancia. She stood, opened the door to the workshop, and walked inside.
“Hey,” Orso called after her. “Hey—don’t touch anything in there, all right?”
* * *
Walking into Orso Ignacio’s workshop would have been startling to anyone. The amount of stuff—the sheer, ungodly avalanche of so many things—was awe-inspiring.
The workshop was a large, long room, containing six long tables piled up with bowls of cooled metals, as well as styli, wooden buttons, and dozens and dozens of machines, devices, contraptions—or parts of them. Some of the rigs were moving, twirling ever so slowly or arrhythmically clunking away. Where the walls weren’t covered with bookcases, they were covered with papers, drawings, engravings, sigil strings, and maps. The oddest device sat in the back, some kind of giant metal can full of discs covered in scrivings. It sat on rails that would slide it back into what appeared to be some kind of oven set in the wall, like the one they made pies in at the Greens. She supposed it was a test lexicon—a tiny version of the real thing. She’d heard of them from the Scrappers, but she’d certainly never seen one before.
It was a lot to see. But to Sancia, it was deafening.
The room echoed and swarmed with quiet chanting, all these scrived devices muttering like a rookery of uneasy crows. Sancia’s mind was still weak after saving Orso, so it was like rubbing sand on a sunburn.
One thing’s for sure, she thought. These people are doing a hell of a lot more than the Scrappers ever were.
She started stalking through the room, listening carefully. She walked past the innards of some component, dissected and laid out on a piece of linen; then a set of bizarre, scrived tools, which all seemed to be vibrating softly; then rows and rows of blank black boxes that were curiously veiled in shadow, as if they sucked up light itself.
If something in here is a traitor, she thought, I don’t know how I’m going to identify it. She wished Clef were awake. He’d sniff it out right away.
Then she glimpsed something on the wall, and stopped.
Hanging on the wall between two bookcases was a large charcoal sketch of Clef. It wasn’t perfect—the tooth was all wrong—but the head, with its odd butterfly-shaped hole, was perfect.
Sancia walked closer to it, and saw there was a handwritten note scrawled at the bottom:
What could it open? For what grand lock was this designed??
This guy has been thinking about Clef for a lot longer than I have, she thought. Maybe he knows more than he’s letting on—just as I do.
Then she saw there was a smudge at the bottom of the sketch, at the bottom, where the paper was crinkled. Someone must have pinched the paper there repeatedly.
She reached out, grabbed the paper, and lifted it—and saw there was something behind the sketch of Clef.
It was a large engraving. And the sight disturbed her.
The engraving depicted a group of men standing in a hall. They looked like monks, wearing plain robes, though each robe bore a curious insignia—perhaps the outline of a butterfly, she couldn’t quite tell. She found she did not like the sight of the hall: it was a massive, ornate stone chamber, huge and blocky with angles in all the wrong places. It felt like light bent in the wrong ways in that room.
At the end of the hall was a box, like a giant casket or treasure chest. The group looked on as one man stood before the box, raised his hands, and seemed to open it by will alone. Emerging from this open box was…
Something. A person, perhaps. Perhaps a woman, or perhaps a statue, though there was something indistinct about the figure, like the artist had not been sure what they were depicting.
Sancia looked at the print at the bottom of the engraving. It read:
CRASEDES THE GREAT IN THE CHAMBER AT THE CENTER OF THE WORLD: The hierophants are recorded as believing the world is a machine, wrought by God, and somewhere at its heart it is a chamber which was once His seat. Crasedes, finding the seat of God vacant, attempted to install a god of his own making in the chamber to oversee the world. This engraving, like so many sources, suggests he was successful. But if he was, it does not explain why his grand empire fell to ash and ruin.
She shivered, looking at the engraving. She remembered what Claudia and Giovanni had said the hierophants could do. Then she remembered what Clef did to the gravity rig—the vision of the man in the desert, turning out the stars.
She imagined what a man like Orso Ignacio could do with Clef, and shivered again.
Then she heard it—a chattering, a murmuring. But this one was louder than the others.
That’s…unusual.
She shut her eyes, listening to it, and walked to the back of the room. The sound was much louder here.
Just like the gravity plates, she thought. So maybe…it’s either really powerful, or made by the same person?
She realized the noise was coming from a desk at the back, some kind of drafting table where Orso scrawled out strings of sigils. She tilted her head to it, listening to the pencils, the inkpots, the blocks of stone, and then…
A small, golden statue of a bird sat on the corner of the desk. Sweating, Sancia picked it up and held it up to her ear. The sound of it was almost deafening to her.
If it’s anything in this room, she thought, it’s this. She set it back down, feeling quite pleased. She’d never used her talents like this before. As she walked back to the office, she wondered—ever so briefly—what else she could do.
* * *
Ten minutes later they all huddled around a table in Orso’s workshop, watching as he turned the golden statue over. There was a small, copper plate on the bottom with a large screw in the center. Orso glanced around at them, held a finger to his lips, picked up a screwdriver, and began to unscrew it. He gently, gently plucked the screw out, and then, with a tiny, flat tool, pried out the plate.
Orso’s mouth fell open in a silent gasp. Inside the statue was a device—but a device so tiny, so fragile, it was like it was made of spider webs and mouse bones.
He grabbed a light and a magnifying glass and peered carefully at it. His eyes shot wide, and he gestured to Berenice, who also took a look. She blinked, startled, and looked at Orso, who nodded, his face serious.
Finally the inspection was finished. Orso gingerly placed the device on the table, and they all crept back into the office.
Orso shut the door to his workshop—and then he erupted. “I’ve been a goddamn fool!” he shouted. “I’ve been a slack-jawed, crotch-pawing fool!”
“So…it seems your suspicion was correct?” asked Gregor.
“Of course!” cried Orso. “God, we’re in a state. Who knows what they’ve heard? What have I said in front of that stupid little bird? And I never, never, never would have known!”
“You’re welcome,” said Sancia.
“That statue is an exact copy of one that once sat on my desk,” he continued, ignoring her. “I suppose they must have replaced it long ago with an altered version.”
“By flying up using those rigs,” said Gregor.
“Yes,” said Berenice, shaken. “And whoever made that thing is…good.”
“Damned good,” said Orso. “Amazingly good. That’s top-rate work, there! I feel sure if someone was that good in this city, we’d all know about it. Everyone would be lining up to lick his candle, I’ve no doubt!�
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Gregor pulled a face. “Thank you for that elaboration.”
“Have you ever seen anything like it, Captain?” asked Orso. “You’re more well traveled than I am, and the houses have used a lot of experimental stuff during the wars. Have you seen any military faction using rigs like this?”
He shook his head. “No. And the only thing I’ve ever seen that was similar to the gravity rigs is a lorica—and those rigs far outclassed any lorica.”
“What’s a lorica?” asked Sancia.
“It’s a scrived suit of armor,” said Gregor. “But unlike the armor we have here in Tevanne, which is scrived to be both preternaturally light and preternaturally strong, a lorica also augments the movements of the person within it. It amplifies their gravity, in other words, making them faster and stronger than a normal person.”
“I thought scriving gravity was illegal,” said Sancia.
“It is,” said Gregor. “Which is why loricas are only used abroad in the wars, and in limited numbers, at that.” He rubbed his face. “Now. Can we focus on the consequential conclusions, please?”
“Yeah,” said Sancia. “What the hell do we do about this? Can’t you look at that thing and figure out…I don’t know, something?”
Berenice took a breath. “Well. What I believe we saw in there was an advanced version of twinning.”
“What, like the explosive I used at the waterfront? And that plate of yours?” asked Sancia.
“Exactly. But what’s been twinned is a tiny, tiny, tiny needle, in the center of the device. A delicate one that’s somehow terribly sensitive to noise.”
“How is a needle sensitive to noise?” asked Gregor.
“Because sound travels through the air,” said Berenice. “In waves.”
Sancia and Gregor stared at her.
“It does?” said Sancia.
“Like…the ocean?” said Gregor.
“We don’t have time to amend your dogshit educations!” said Orso. “Assume that yes, it does! The sound hits the needle, and it shakes it. The needle vibrates. But it’s twinned, so there’s another needle that vibrates with it—somewhere.”
“And that’s the tricky part,” said Berenice. “What then? This second needle vibrates, and then…”
“Oh, come on, Berenice,” said Orso. “It’s obvious! The second needle scratches its vibrations into a soft surface—tar, or rubber, or wax of some kind. Then that surface hardens…”
Her eyes grew wide. “Then you can run another needle through the surface, through all the scratches…and it’ll duplicate the noise.”
“Right. It’d be a shitty rendition, but it’d be enough to catch words.”
“Wait,” said Gregor, holding up a hand. “Are you really saying someone has come up with a scrived method of capturing sounds out of the air?”
“That’s crazy,” said Sancia. “So you could make the same sound or conversation over and over and over again?”
“You just used some magic-ear bullshit to find that damn thing!” said Orso angrily, pointing at the door. “And a flying man just tried to throw me off the roof! Our idea of ‘crazy’ is obviously in need of some updates!”
“But this is some delicate twinning,” said Berenice.
“How is that significant?” asked Gregor.
“Twinning is a proximal effect,” she said. “Usually the two twinned items don’t have to be too close, since the effects you want to twin often aren’t complicated. Like a detonator—it’s motion, friction, and heat. You can twin those effects over miles. But this…This is much more complicated.”
Orso stopped pacing. “So the second needle has to be very close!” he said. “You’re right, Berenice! The apparatus that writes down the sound, that engraves the vibrations in wax—it has to be somewhere near for it to accurately capture all the sounds!”
“Somewhere on the property, sir,” said Berenice. “Probably somewhere in this very building. That’s the only way to make it work properly.”
“You!” Orso pointed at Sancia. “Do the thing again and find it!”
Sancia froze. That was far, far beyond her talents. Hearing a powerful device in a single room was one thing—but combing an entire building to find a specific rig was quite another. She’d need Clef for that—if he ever spoke again.
To her relief, Gregor cleared his throat. “That will have to wait,” he said.
“What!” said Orso. “Why, damn it?”
Gregor nodded to the window. “Because the sun is rising. People will be coming here soon. And when they do, it would probably be best if they did not find a blood-spattered girl wandering the halls with a blood-spattered hypatus.”
Orso sighed. “Goddamn it. We’re running out of time.”
“What do you mean?” said Gregor.
“I have a Tevanni council meeting tomorrow about the Commons blackouts. Tons of merchant-house officers from all four houses will be there, along with me and Ofelia. I’ll be seen by loads of people.”
“So word’ll get out that you’re not dead,” said Sancia. “Which will tip off whoever sent these assassins.”
“And they’ll come for the captured sounds, to see what happened,” said Berenice.
“Right,” said Orso. “We’ve got to get to it before them.”
“We’ll return as soon as we can,” said Gregor. “But for now, we need a place to clean up.”
Orso thought about it. Then he turned to Berenice and said, “Check out a carriage again, and take them to my house. Get them bathed and cleaned up. They can spend the day there. But this is not a permanent fix. Even the inner enclaves aren’t safe.”
15
Berenice checked out a small passenger carriage and drove them north, grumbling a touch about “not being a damned house servant.” Sancia stared out the windows as they drove. She hadn’t really been paying attention before, but now she couldn’t stop staring at the inner Dandolo enclaves.
The strangest thing about them was that almost all of them glowed. The entire enclaves glowed a soft, warm, rosy color that seemed to emanate from the corners of the huge towers, or from the bases, perhaps—it was hard to tell. She suspected that scrived lights had been built into the facades, lights that had been designed to cast indirect luminescence so no beams of light shone into anyone’s windows at night.
There were other wonders, of course. There were floating lanterns, like the ones her client had used to search for her: they floated in flocks above the main fairways like schools of jellyfish. There were also many narrow canals, full of needle-shaped boats with reclining seats. She imagined residents hopping in a boat and being zipped off across the waters to their destination.
It was unreal. To imagine that people lived in muddy alleys mere miles from here, that she herself had lived in a squalid rookery that shared the same rain clouds as this place…She glanced at Berenice and Gregor. Berenice was totally indifferent to it all. Gregor, on the other hand, had a faint scowl on his face.
Finally they came to a tall, gated mansion, the sort of place for a prestigious campo official. It was impossible to imagine Orso Ignacio living here—yet the copper gates silently parted before them.
“The hypatus bound them to respond to my blood,” said Berenice. She didn’t sound too happy about it. “Along with his own, of course. It’s a favorite trick of his. He rarely comes here.”
“Why wouldn’t he come to the goddamn mansion he owns?” asked Sancia.
“He gets the house as a condition of his position—he didn’t go out and buy the place. I don’t think he actually cares about it at all.”
This became apparent when they walked inside: the carpets, tables, and lanterns all bore a faint coating of dust. “Where does he sleep?” asked Sancia.
“In his office,” said Berenice, “I think. I’ve never actually seen him sleep.” She g
estured to the stairs. “The bedrooms are upstairs on the fourth floor, as are the bathing facilities. I suggest you both use them if you’re going to be on the campo, in case someone spots you—it would be wise if you looked the part.” She looked at them and wrinkled her nose. “And you don’t, right now.”
Gregor thanked her and Berenice departed. Sancia wandered upstairs to the third floor, where she found an immense set of windowed doors that opened onto the balcony. She opened them, stepped out, and looked.
The Dandolo inner enclaves curled out before her, bright and creamy and pink as a rose. There was a park across the cobblestone fairway, with a hedge maze and bursting flowers. People were walking the paths together. It was a stupefying idea to Sancia—in the Commons, if you were outdoors at night, there was a decent chance you’d die.
“They went a bit overboard, didn’t they,” said Gregor’s voice behind her.
“Eh?” said Sancia.
He stood beside her. “With the lights. The Daulos call us the glow-men, in their language, because we tend to put lights on everything.”
“Something you picked up in the Enlightenment Wars?”
“Yes.” He turned to her, leaning up against the balcony. “Now. Our deal.”
“You want my client,” said Sancia.
“I want your client,” he said. “Very much so. If you can give him to me.”
“In what condition? You want his name, his head, or what?”
“No, no,” said Gregor. “No heads. These are the stakes of our deal—you not only help me find him, but also get the evidence I need to expose him. I don’t want his name, his money, his company, or his blood. I want ramifications. I want consequences.”
“You want justice,” she said, sighing.
“I want justice. Yes.”
“And why do you think I can help you get it?”
“Because you have evaded nearly every effort to kill you or seize you. And you stole from me. You are—and this is not a compliment, mind—a very accomplished sneak. And I suspect we will need someone with your talents if we are to succeed.”
Foundryside: A Novel (The Founders Trilogy) Page 23