Foundryside_A Novel

by Robert Jackson Bennett

Antonin sighed. “Ah, yes. Were we to expire the sole progeny of Ofelia Dandolo, I’ve no doubt that all hell would come down on us.”

  “Yes.” Gregor tried to swallow his self-disgust. His mother was a direct descendant of the founder of Dandolo Chartered, which made them something akin to royalty in Tevanne—but he thoroughly disdained leveraging his family’s reputation for his own ends. “And I would not give up the money easily. You would have to kill me, Antonin.”

  “Yes, yes, the good soldier,” said Antonin. “But not the best strategist.” He smiled wickedly. “You were at the siege of Dantua—weren’t you, Captain?”

  Gregor was silent.

  “You were,” said Antonin. “I know. They call you the Revenant of Dantua—have you heard that?”

  Again, he said nothing.

  “And I’m told they called you that,” said Antonin, “because you died there. Or came damn close. They even had a memorial service here in the city for you. Thought you were rotting in a mass grave somewhere in the north.”

  “I’ve heard the same,” said Gregor. “They were wrong.”

  “So I see. I get a lot of veterans working for me, you know,” said Antonin. “And they tell me so many stories.” He leaned closer. “They told me that when your cohorts were holed up in Dantua, with all your scrived armaments ruined…Why, they say you resorted to eating rats and garbage. And worse things besides.” He grinned wide. “Tell me, Captain Dandolo—how does Tevanni long pig taste?”

  There was a long silence.

  “I would not know,” said Gregor calmly. “What does this have to do with my proposal?”

  “I suppose I’m just a filthy gossip,” said Antonin. “Or maybe I like telling you you’re not as righteous as you act. You killed my profit from the waterfront, brave Captain Dandolo. But no fear, friend—I’ve made up the difference. Any enterprising man must. Would you like to know how?”

  “Would this involve our independent thief?”

  Antonin stood, ignoring him, and gestured to a set of rickety wooden stalls in the back, with drapes drawn across their entrances. “Come with me, sir. Yes, yes, come on.”

  Gregor grudgingly obliged, following him.

  “Tough economy, these days,” said Antonin. “Tough market. That’s what the campos talk about all day long, market conditions. We all play the same game. One opportunity dries up, so one must look for another.” He walked over to one stall, grabbed a drape, and pulled it open.

  Gregor looked inside. The stall was dark, but he could see a pallet on the floor, and a single burning candle. At the far back was a boy, wearing a short tunic, legs and feet bared. The boy stood when the drape opened. He was maybe thirteen. Maybe.

  Gregor looked at the soft pallet on the floor, and then at the boy. Then he understood.

  “You take away my waterfront work,” said Antonin merrily, “so I expand my enterprise into a new market. But this market is so much more profitable than the waterfront. High margins, low capital. I just needed the nudge to give it a go.” He stepped closer to Gregor. The scent of his rotting teeth was overwhelming. “So, Captain Dandolo…I don’t need a single duvot of your damned money.”

  Gregor turned to look at Antonin, his fists trembling.

  “Welcome back to Tevanne,” said Antonin. “The only law in the Commons is might, and success. Those who win are the ones who make the rules. Perhaps an elite child such as yourself forgot.” He grinned, his greasy teeth glimmering. “Now. Get the hell out of my taverna.”

  * * *

  Gregor Dandolo walked out of the Perch and Lark in a daze. He retrieved Whip from the toothless thug at the door, ignoring the other guards as they cackled at him.

  “Fruitful meeting?” asked the toothless heavy. “Did he give you a handful of minutes in the stalls? Was there any pull left when you pushed?”

  Gregor walked away without a word, buckling Whip back to his belt. He walked a bit down the alley, and stopped.

  He thought for a moment.

  He took a breath, and thought some more.

  Gregor Dandolo did his utmost to follow the laws: both the laws of the city, and his own moral laws of the universe. But more and more these days, one seemed to disagree with the other.

  He took off his Waterwatch sash, folded it up, and carefully placed it on a nearby windowsill. Then he took Whip off his belt, and began the process of securely buckling its many leather straps to his forearm. Then he turned and marched back toward the taverna.

  The toothless heavy saw him coming and squared himself. Then he cawed out a laugh, and whooped. “Look here, lads! We’ve got one who thinks he ca—”

  But he never finished his sentence. Because then Gregor used Whip.

  * * *

  Gregor had made sure that when he’d had Whip commissioned, all of its sigils were carefully concealed, so no one who looked at it would know it was altered in any way. With the sole exception of the straps for buckling it to your wrist, it mostly looked like an ordinary truncheon—with a shaft of about three and a half feet, and a ridged, four-pound steel head at the end—but in truth, it was much more than that.

  For when Gregor pressed a button on Whip and snapped it forward, the four-pound head would detach and fly forward, connected to the shaft of the truncheon by a thin but strong metal cable. The truncheon’s head had been scrived to believe that, when it was detached from the shaft, it was actually falling straight down toward the earth, and so was simply obeying gravity—unaware that it was actually flying in whatever direction Gregor had tossed it. It would smash into anything in its path before Gregor clicked a small lever on the side of Whip’s handle, at which point Whip’s head would remember how gravity actually worked, the cable would start rapidly retracting, and the head would come zipping back to the shaft with tremendous speed.

  This is what Gregor did as he approached the taverna. He was so familiar with Whip that he almost didn’t have to think while he was doing it: he just made the motion, and then the toothless heavy was lying on the ground, screaming through a bloody, ravaged mouth.

  He hit the lever, and the straps tugged against his forearm as Whip’s head came hurtling back to Gregor with a soft, rabid zzzzip. His arm shook as it connected with the shaft, but his attention was fixed on the thug on his right, a short, pockmarked man with a black-bladed machete, who looked down at his fallen comrade, looked up at Gregor, and screamed and sprinted at him.

  Gregor, still marching down the alley, flicked Whip forward again, aiming for the man’s legs. The head of the truncheon connected soundly with his kneecap, and the man fell to the ground, howling in pain. Gregor retracted Whip, and as he passed him he brought the truncheon down sharply on the man’s forearm, either bruising or breaking his radius or ulna, which made him howl quite a bit louder.

  There were two left, one on each side of the taverna door. One had the espringal, though he looked shocked when he pulled the trigger and nothing happened—ignorant, of course, that he’d prepared it wrong. Before he could do anything else, Gregor hurled Whip forward, and the dense, heavy head of the weapon went crashing into the guard’s right hand, smashing his fingers. He dropped the weapon, cursing and screaming.

  This left the fourth and final guard, who had picked up a battered steel shield and a small spear. The guard crouched low and advanced on Gregor down the alley, hiding almost all of his body behind the shield.

  Served in the wars, Gregor thought. He’d had training, certainly. But not enough.

  Gregor flicked Whip out again, and the head of the truncheon sailed over the guard’s head, landing behind him, and brought the metal cable down with it. The cable fell over the top of the guard’s shield, which made the man pause—until Gregor pressed the lever to retract it.

  The head of the truncheon hurtled back with its usual enthusiastic zzzip!, cracking into the guard’s shoulder along the way, which sent
him tumbling forward, sprawling facedown in the alley. He groaned as he looked up at Gregor, who walked up and kicked the guard in the face.

  Gregor Dandolo picked up the shield. The guard with the espringal tossed away his weapon and pulled out a stiletto with his good hand. He assumed a fighting position, crouching low. Then he seemed to reconsider his position, and turned and ran away.

  Gregor watched him go. Then, with the air of someone on a quick errand, Gregor walked up the stairs of the taverna, lifted his shield, brushed aside the drape, and waged war on the Perch and Lark.

  It helped that there were only five guards. It helped more that they hadn’t moved since he’d left, so he knew exactly where they would be. It helped even more that it was dark and loud, and Whip’s attack was fairly quiet, so Gregor took down two of his opponents before anyone in the room even understood what was happening.

  When the second guard hit the floor, blood streaming from his nose and mouth, the whole taverna erupted into chaos. Gregor lowered his shield, which made him an obvious target, and skirted the edges of the screaming, drunken crowd until he came up on the flank of a guard with a spear. The guard saw him at the last minute, eyes widening. He thrust his spear forward, but Gregor had already raised his shield, deflecting the blow. Then he thrust Whip forward, smashing in the man’s jaw. The man crumpled to the ground.

  Two left. The guard with the Daulo ax and one with an espringal—and this latter one, he could tell, had been trained properly with the weapon. Which was bad.

  Gregor raised the shield and sought cover behind a table just as a bolt slammed into his shield. The point of the bolt actually pierced the damn thing, penetrating three inches through—any more and it would have almost certainly punched through Gregor’s neck. Muttering discontentedly, Gregor strafed to the right and flung Whip forward. He missed his target, but the head of the truncheon smashed through the wall just over the guard’s shoulder, which sent the man diving for cover behind the bar.

  The two of them stayed low, waiting for the screaming crowd to evacuate. Gregor glanced up and saw a shelf of bottles above the bar, and, above that, a flickering oil lamp. He estimated the distance, and flicked Whip forward twice: once to smash the bottles of alcohol, and again to shatter the oil lamp.

  Hot, burning oil rained down, which quickly set the pools of alcohol alight. There was a shriek, and the guard with the espringal came sprinting out from behind the bar, slapping at his smoking clothes. He never even saw Whip hurtling toward his face.

  Once the man was down, Gregor crouched low and looked around. Antonin was still there, cowering in the back, but the guard with the Daulo ax was nowhere to be seen…

  Gregor felt footsteps through the floorboards on his right. Without thinking, he turned and raised his shield.

  There was a loud scream, and then his shield arm lit up with pain. It had been a long time since he’d been hit with a Daulo ax, and he found he didn’t enjoy it any more now than he had back during the wars.

  Gregor rolled out from the bar and raised his shield again, just in time to catch another blow from the guard with the ax. His whole arm went numb with the strike, and he heard a snap—but it turned out to be the wooden slats under his feet, which could hardly bear the pressure.

  Which gave Gregor an idea.

  Keeping his shield up, he backed away. The guard with the ax charged at him—but before he could bring the ax down, Gregor flicked Whip at the slats at his feet.

  The head of the truncheon punched through the wooden slats like they were water reeds. Before the guard could even realize what had happened, he’d put his foot in the gaping hole that Whip had created. Then he slipped, crashed down, and as he did, the entire floor collapsed underneath him.

  Gregor leapt back as the wooden slats gave way. When the creaking stopped, he retracted Whip and peeked over the edge of the hole, wrinkling his nose. He couldn’t see the guard in the muddy darkness below—but he knew that the taverna latrines emptied into the filthy space under the building.

  Gregor took stock of the situation. The taverna was now mostly empty except for the moaning guards—and the large, fat man trying to hide behind a chair.

  Gregor grinned, stood up straight, and marched over. “Antonin di Nove!” he called.

  Antonin shrieked in terror as Gregor approached.

  “How did you like my experiment?” Gregor asked. “You said that might makes right in the Commons.” He ripped the chair away, and Antonin quailed in the corner. “But might is so often illusory, isn’t it?”

  “I’ll tell you anything you want!” shrieked Antonin. “Anything!”

  “I want the thief,” said Gregor.

  “Ask…ask Sark!” said Antonin.

  “Who?”

  “An independent! Former canal man! He’s a fence, he sets up jobs and I’m almost positive he did the waterfront!”

  “And why would that be?” asked Gregor.

  “Because only a damned canal man would think of trying to use a damned sailing rig!”

  Gregor nodded. “I see. So. This Sark. Where would he reside?”

  “The Greens! Selvo Building! Third floor!”

  “Greens,” said Gregor quietly. “Selvo. Third floor. Sark.”

  “R-right!” said Antonin. Face quivering, he cringed and looked up at Gregor. “So. Will you…Will you let me go?”

  “I was always going to let you go, Antonin,” said Gregor, sheathing Whip. “This is Tevanne. We have no prisons, no courts. And I am not going to kill you. I try hard not to do that anymore.”

  Antonin sighed with relief.

  “But,” said Gregor, clenching a fist and cracking his knuckles, “I do not like you. I do not like what you do here, Antonin. And I will show you how much I dislike it, using the only language men like you understand.”

  His eyes shot wide. “N-no!”

  Gregor raised his fist. “Yes.”

  * * *

  Gregor turned, shaking his hand, and walked back to the rickety stalls with the drapes. He pulled them aside, one by one.

  Four girls, two boys. None of them older than seventeen.

  “Come on, then,” said Gregor gently to them. “Come on.”

  He led the children down the hallway, across the battered, broken taverna, and down the stairs to the alley, where the three guards were still whimpering. The children watched as Gregor searched the body of the unconscious, toothless guard for his fifty duvots.

  “Now what?” asked a boy.

  “You have nowhere else to go, I assume?” said Gregor.

  The line of children stared at him. This question, clearly, was preposterous.

  He wondered what to do. He wished there were some charity or home he could send them to. But the Commons, of course, had no such thing.

  He nodded, and pulled out his satchel. “Here. This is five hundred duvots. You lot could put this to far better use than Antonin ever could. If we divide it evenly, we ca—”

  But he never finished, because then one of the youngest girls snatched the satchel out of his hand and ran for it.

  In a blink of an eye, all the other children were chasing her, screaming threats: “Pietra, if you think you’re keeping all that, we’ll cut your damned throat!”

  “Try and catch me, you worthless stripers!” the girl howled back.

  Gregor watched, stunned, as the children ran away. He started after them, about to shout at them to stop, when he remembered he had other things to do tonight.

  He sighed deeply, listened to the fading sounds of these bickering children, so monstrously abused. He liked to imagine he was accustomed to such horrors, but sometimes the futility of it all overwhelmed him. No matter how I try, Tevanne remains Tevanne.

  Then he walked down the alley to where he’d hung up his Waterwatch sash. He unfolded it, then slid it back over his head. As he
adjusted it, he noticed a splotch of blood on his shoulder. Frowning, he licked a finger and rubbed it clean.

  His shield arm hurt. A lot. And it was likely he’d made a good deal of enemies tonight. But it was wisest to move before word could spread.

  Now, thought Gregor, on to this Sark.

  8

  Sancia sat on her building’s rooftop and stared out at the crooked Foundryside streets below. She came up here only occasionally, usually to make sure she wasn’t being watched. And tonight, she needed to be sure, since tonight was her night to meet Sark at the fishery and tell him they needed to get the hell out of Tevanne.

  She wondered how she’d explain Clef to him. Despite all the Scrappers had told her, she still didn’t know much about him—about what he really was, or could do, or why. And Clef had not spoken to her since that night. She almost wondered if she’d imagined their conversations.

  She looked out at the city. All of Tevanne was smeared with starlit smoke and steam, a ghostly cityscape sinking into the fog. The huge white campo walls surfaced among the ramble of the Commons like the bones of a beached whale. Behind them stood the towers of the campos, which glowed with soft, colorful luminescence. Among them was the Michiel clock tower, its face a bright, cheery pink, and beyond that was the Mountain of the Candianos, the biggest structure in all of Tevanne, a huge dome that reminded her of a fat, swollen tick, sitting in the center of the Candiano campo.

  She felt lonely, and small. Sancia had always been alone. But feeling lonely was different from just being alone.

 

  Sancia sat up.

  He sounded sullen.