And, much like the wall in the passageway, the wheel answered.
The wheel told her of ash, of stone, of broiling flame, of sparks and iron.
Sancia thought, Nope. The carriage had probably come from a foundry—and she was not interested in foundries tonight.
She leaned around the back of the carriage, confirmed the guards hadn’t seen her, and slipped down the line to the next one.
She touched the carriage’s wheel with her fingertips, and asked it what it knew.
The wheel knew soft, loamy soil, the acrid smell of dung, the aroma of crushed greenery and vegetation.
A farm, probably. Nope. Not this one either.
She slipped down to the next carriage—this one your average, horse-drawn carriage—touched a wheel, and asked it what it knew.
The wheel knew of ash, and fire, and hot, and the hissing sparks of smelting ore…
This one came from another foundry, she thought. Same as the first. I hope Sark’s source was right. If all of these came from foundries or farmland, the whole plan’s over before it began.
She slipped down to the next carriage, the horse snuffling disapprovingly as she moved. This was the penultimate one in line, so she was running out of options.
She reached out, touched a wheel, and asked it what it knew.
This one spoke of gravel, of salt, of seaweed, of the tang of ocean spray, and wooden beams soaking above the waves…
Sancia nodded, relieved. That’s the one.
She reached into a pouch on her rig and pulled out a curious-looking object: a small bronze plate inscribed with many sigils. She took out a pot of tar, painted the back of the plate with it, and reached up into the carriage and stuck the little bronze plate to the bottom.
She paused, remembering what her black-market contacts had told her.
Stick the guiding plate to the thing you want to go to, and make sure it’s stuck hard. You don’t want it falling off.
So…what happens if it falls off in the street or something? Sancia had then asked.
Well. Then you’ll die. Pretty gruesomely, I expect.
Sancia pressed on the bronze plate harder. Don’t you scrumming get me killed, she thought, glaring at it. This job’s offering enough damned opportunities as it is. Then she slid out, slipped through the other carriages, and returned to the fairway and the foundry yards.
She was more careful this time, and made sure to stay upwind of any guards. She made it to the drainage tunnel quickly. Now she’d have to trudge back through those fetid waters and make straight for the waterfront.
Which was, of course, where the carriage she’d tampered with was also bound, since its wheels had spoken to her of sea spray and gravel and salty air—things a carriage would only encounter at the waterfront. Hopefully the carriage would help her get into that highly controlled site.
Because somewhere on the waterfront was a safe. And someone incomprehensibly wealthy had hired Sancia to steal one specific item inside it in exchange for a simply inconceivable amount of money.
Sancia liked stealing. She was good at it. But after tonight, she might never need to steal again.
“Twenty thousand,” she chanted softly. “Twenty thousand. Twenty thousand lovely, lovely duvots…”
She dropped down into the sewers.
2
Sancia did not truly understand her talents. She did not know how they worked, what their limits were, or even if they were all that dependable. She just knew what they did, and how they could help her.
When she touched an object with her bare skin, she understood it. She understood its nature, its makeup, its shape. If it had been somewhere or touched something recently, she could remember that sensation as if it had happened to her. And if she got close to a scrived item, or touched one, she could hear it muttering its commands in her head.
That didn’t mean she could understand what the scrivings were saying. She just knew something was being said.
Sancia’s talents could be used in a number of ways. A quick, light touch with any object would let its most immediate sensations spill into her. Longer contact would give her a physical sense of the thing she was touching—where its handholds were, where it was weak or soft or hollow, or what it contained. And if she kept her hands on something for long enough—a process which was deeply painful for her—it would give her near-perfect spatial awareness: if she held her hand to a brick in the floor of a room, for example, she’d eventually sense the floor, the walls, the ceiling, and anything touching them. Provided she didn’t pass out or vomit from the pain, that is.
Because there were downsides to these abilities. Sancia had to keep a lot of her skin concealed at all times, for it’s difficult to, say, eat a meal with the fork you’re holding spilling into your mind.
But there were upsides, too. A facility with items is a tremendous boon if you’re looking to steal those items. And it meant Sancia was phenomenally talented at scaling walls, navigating dark passageways, and picking locks—because picking locks is easy if the lock is actually telling you how to pick it.
The one thing she tried hard not to think about was where her talents came from. For Sancia had gotten her abilities in the same place she’d gotten the lurid white scar that ran down the right side of her skull, the scar that burned hot whenever she overextended her talents.
Sancia did not exactly like her talents: they were as restrictive and punishing as they were powerful. But they’d helped her stay alive. And tonight, hopefully, they would make her rich.
* * *
The next step was the Fernezzi complex, a nine story building across from the Tevanni waterfront. It was an old structure, built for customs officers and brokers to manage their accounts back before the merchant houses took over almost all of Tevanne’s trade. But its age and ornate designs were useful for Sancia, offering many sturdy handholds.
It says something, she thought, grunting as she climbed, that scaling this big goddamn building is the easiest part of this job.
Finally she came to the roof. She gripped the granite cornices, clambered onto the top of the building, ran to the western side, and looked out, panting with exhaustion.
Below her was a wide bay, a bridge crossing it, and, on the other side, the Tevanni waterfront. Huge carriages trundled across the bridge, their tops quaking on the wet cobblestones. Almost all of them were certainly merchant house carriages, carrying goods back and forth from the foundries.
One of the carriages should be the one she’d marked with the guiding plate. I scrumming well hope so, she thought. Otherwise I hauled my stupid ass through a river of shit and up a building for no damned reason at all.
For ages the waterfront had been as corrupt and dangerous as any other part of Tevanne that wasn’t under direct control of the merchant houses—which was to say, incredibly, flagrantly, unbelievably corrupt. But a few months ago they’d gone and hired some hero from the Enlightenment Wars, and he’d booted out all the crooks, hired a bunch of professional guards, and installed security wards all over the waterfront—including scrived, defensive walls, just like those at the merchant houses, which wouldn’t let you in or out without the proper identification.
Suddenly it’d become difficult to do illegal things on the waterfront. Which was quite inconvenient for Sancia. So she’d needed to find an alternate way into the waterfront for her job tonight.
She kneeled, unbuttoned a pouch on her chest, and took out what was likely her most important tool of the night. It looked like a roll of cloth, but as she unfolded it, it gained a somewhat cuplike shape.
When she was finished, Sancia looked at the little black parachute lying on the rooftop.
“This is going to kill me, isn’t it?” she said.
She took out the final piece of the parachute: a telescoping steel rod. Set into the ends of this rod were two small
, scrived plates—she could hear them chanting and whispering in her head. Like all scrived devices, she had no idea what they were saying, but her black-market contacts had given her strict instructions on how all this would work.
It’s a two-part system, Claudia had told her. You stick the guidance plate to the thing you want to go to. The guidance plate then says to the plates in the rod, “Hey, I know you think you’re your own thing, but you’re actually part of this thing that I’m attached to—so you need to get over here and be part of it, fast.” And the rod says, “Really? Oh gosh, what am I doing all the way over here? I need to go be a part of this other thing right away!” And when you hit the switch, it does. Really, really fast.
Sancia was vaguely familiar with this scriving technique. It was a version of the method the merchant houses used to stick bricks and other construction materials together, duping them into thinking they were all one object. But no one tried to use this method over distances—it was considered unstable to the point of being useless, and there were far safer methods of locomotion available.
But those methods were expensive. Too expensive for Sancia.
And the parachute keeps me from falling, Sancia had said when Claudia was done explaining it all.
Uh, no, Claudia had said. The parachute slows it down. Like I told you—this thing is going to go really, really fast. So you’re going to want to be high up when you turn it on. Just make sure the guidance plate is actually where you need it to be, and nothing’s blocking your path. Use the test piece first. If it’s all lined up, turn on the rod and go.
Sancia reached into yet another pocket and pulled out a small glass jar. In this glass jar was a bronze coin, and inscribed on this coin were sigils similar to the ones on the parachute rod.
She squinted at the coin. It was stuck firmly to the side of the glass facing the waterfront. She turned the glass over, and, as if magnetized, the coin zipped across the jar and stuck itself to the other side with a tinny tink!—again, the side facing the waterfront.
If this thing is attracted to the guiding plate, she thought, and if the guiding plate is on the carriage, then it means the carriage is at the waterfront. So I’m good.
She paused. Probably. Maybe.
She hesitated for a long time. “Shit,” she muttered.
Sancia hated this sort of thing. The logic behind scriving always seemed so stupidly simple—barely logic at all, really. But then, scriving more or less bent reality, or at least confused it.
She put the jar away and threaded the rod through the tapered end of the parachute.
Just think of what Sark told you, she thought. Just think of that number—twenty thousand duvots.
Enough money to fix herself. To make herself normal.
Sancia hit a lever on the side of the rod and jumped off the roof.
* * *
Instantly she was soaring through the air across the bay at a speed she’d never thought possible, hauled along by the steel rod, which, as far as she understood, was frantically trying to join the carriage down in the waterfront. She could hear the parachute whipping out behind her and finally catching the air, which slowed her down some—first not much at all, but then a little more, and a little more.
Her eyes watered and she gritted her teeth. The nightscape of Tevanne was a whirl around her. She could see water glittering in the bay below, the shifting forest of masts from the ships in the harbor, the shuddering roofs of the carriages as they made their way to the waterfront, the smoke unscrolling from the foundries clutched around the shipping channel…
Focus, she thought. Focus, idiot.
Then things…dipped.
Her stomach lurched. Something was wrong.
She looked back, and saw there was a tear in the parachute.
Shit.
She watched, horrified, as the tear began to widen.
Shit! Double shit!
The sailing rig lurched again, so hard that she barely noticed she’d flown over the waterfront walls. The rig started speeding up, faster and faster.
I need to get off this thing. Now. Now!
She saw she was sailing over the waterfront cargo stacks, huge towers of boxes and crates, and some of the stacks looked high indeed. High enough for her to fall and catch herself. Maybe.
She blinked tears out of her eyes, focused on one tall stack of crates, angled the rig, and then…
She hit the lever on the side of the rod.
Instantly, she started losing momentum. She was no longer flying but was instead drifting down toward the crates, which were about twenty feet below. She was slowed somewhat by the rapidly dissolving parachute—but not enough to make her comfortable.
She watched as the giant crates flew up to her.
Ah, hell.
She hit the corner of the crate so hard that it knocked the wind out of her, yet she still retained sense to reach out and snag the wooden corner, grabbing hold and clutching to its side. The sailing rig caught some wind, and was ripped out of her hands and went drifting away.
She hung fast to the side of the crate, breathing hard. She’d trained herself to fall, to catch onto walls in an instant, or bounce or slide off of surfaces—but she’d rarely had to use such training.
There was a clank from somewhere to her right as the sailing rig fell to the ground. She froze and just hung there for a moment, listening for any alarms being raised.
Nothing. Silence.
The waterfront was a big place. One noise was easy to disregard.
Hopefully.
Sancia took her left hand away from the crate, dangling by just one hold, and used her teeth to pull off her glove. Then she pressed her bare left hand to the crate, and listened.
The crate told her of water, and rain, and oil, and straw, and the tiny bite of many nails…
And also how to climb down it.
Step two—getting in the waterfront—had not gone quite as planned.
Now on to step three, she thought wearily, climbing down. Let’s see if I can avoid screwing that one up.
* * *
When Sancia made it to the ground, at first all she did was breathe hard and rub her bruised side.
I made it. I’m inside. I’m there.
She peered through the cargo stacks at the building on the far side of the waterfront: the Waterwatch offices—the police force for the waterfront.
Well. Almost there.
She pulled off her other glove, stuffed both of them in her pockets, and placed her hands on the stone surface at her feet. Then she shut her eyes and listened to the stone.
This was a hard trick, for Sancia: the ground around her was a wide area, so it was a lot to listen to all at once. But she could still listen, still let the stones spill into her mind, still feel the vibrations and trembling all around her as people…
Walked. Stood. Ran. Shifted feet. Sancia could feel all of them just as one could feel fingers running down one’s own bare back.
Nine guards nearby, she thought. Heavy ones—big men. Two stationary, seven on patrols. There were doubtlessly many more than that on the waterfront, but her abilities could only see so far through the stones.
She noted their positions, their directions, their speed. For the ones close to her she could even feel their heels on the stones—so she knew which way they were facing.
The scar on the side of her head started getting painfully warm. She winced and took her hands away—but the memory of the guards remained. Which meant this would be like trying to navigate a familiar room in the dark.
Sancia took a breath, slipped out of the shadows, and started off, dodging through crates, slipping under carts, pausing always just-so as guards made their rounds. She tried not to look at the crates as she moved. Most bore markings from the plantations, far out in the Durazzo Sea, and Sancia was well acquainted wi
th such places. She knew that these raw goods—hemp, sugar, tar, coffee—had not been harvested or produced with anything resembling consensual labor.
Bastards, thought Sancia as she slipped through the crates. Bunch of rotten, scrumming bastards…
She paused at one crate. She couldn’t read its label in the dark, but she placed a bare finger against a wooden slat, listened carefully, and saw within it…
Paper. Lots of it. Blank, raw paper. Which should do nicely.
Time to prepare an exit strategy, she thought.
Sancia pulled her gloves on, untied one pocket on her thigh, and pulled out her final scrived tool for the evening: a small wooden box. The box had cost her more than she’d ever spent on a job in her life, but without it, her life wouldn’t be worth a fig tonight.
She placed the box on top of the crate. This should work well enough. She hoped so. Getting out of the waterfront would be a hell of a lot harder if it didn’t.
She reached back into her pocket and pulled out what looked like a simple knot of twine, running through a thick ball of lead. In the center of this ball was a tiny, perfect clutch of sigils—and as she held it, she heard a soft whispering in her ear.
She looked at the ball of lead, then the box on the crates. This scrumming box, she thought, putting the lead ball back in her pocket, had damned well better work. Or I’ll be trapped here like a fish in a pot.
* * *
Sancia jumped the short fence around the Waterwatch offices and ran to the wall. She crept to the corner of the building, then ducked her head out. No one. But there was a large, thick doorframe. It stuck out about four or five inches from the wall—plenty of room for Sancia to work with.
She leapt up and grabbed the top of the doorframe, then pulled herself up, paused to rebalance, and placed her right foot on the top of the frame. Then she hauled herself up until she stood on the doorframe.
Foundryside_A Novel Page 2