Foundryside_A Novel
Page 10
They sat in silence.
* * *
She moved from Foundryside to Old Ditch, and then on to the Greens, which earned its name due to a curious fungus that merrily feasted on all the wood in this neighborhood, turning it a dull lime color. The Greens ran along the Anafesto, one of the main shipping channels, and the area had once been the thriving heart of Tevanne’s fishing industry. But then the merchant houses had built up a surplus of scrived ships for the wars, and they’d started to use them to fish instead, which drove everyone else out of business, since they were about a hundred times more efficient. The Greens looked a lot like Foundryside—lots of rookeries, lots of low-slung slums and shops—but rather than being constrained by the campo walls, all the housing came to a sharp stop at the decaying industrial ramble running beside the channel.
Sancia walked along the Anafesto, eyeing the dark, decrepit fisheries ahead. She kept looking to her left, toward the lanes of the Greens. This area was a lot quieter than Foundryside, but she took no chances. Every time she spied someone, she stopped and watched their movements, sensitive to any suggestion that they might be there looking for her, and she didn’t move on until satisfied.
She was anxious because she had Clef, of course, and knew all the threats that invited. But she also had her life savings in the pack on her back—three thousand duvots, almost entirely in coinage. She’d need every penny of it to get out of Tevanne, provided she even got that far. And though she carried her usual thieving kit, this offered little in the way of defense beyond her stiletto. It would be darkly funny if, after all she’d been through, she wound up getting mugged in the Greens by the luckiest street urchin of all time.
Once she got close enough she took the back way to the fishery, crawling across crumbling stone foundations and rusting pipes until she approached it from a narrow, shadowy passage. Probably no one thought she’d approach from this angle, including Sark. The fishery was a two-story moldy stone structure, a place so rotted and decayed it was hard to tell its original purpose anymore. Sark was waiting on the second floor, she knew, and the first floor would be riddled with traps—his usual “insurance.”
She looked at the dark windows, thinking. How in hell am I going to convince Sark to run?
She silently crept around the corner, then past the big iron doors—which she knew she shouldn’t use, since Sark had trapped them—and slipped through a broken window. She landed softly, took off her gloves, and touched her bare hands to the stone floor and the wall beside her.
Bones, blood, and viscera flooded her mind. The fishery had been the site of so much fish gutting that it almost always bowled her over every time, all the accumulated sensations of so much gore. There were still piles of fish bones here and there throughout the first floor, delicate tangles of tiny, translucent skeletons, and the scent still lingered, of course.
Sancia concentrated, and soon the traps lit up in her mind like fireworks, three trip wires running across the room to three hidden espringals that were almost certainly loaded up with fléchettes: paper packets of razor blades that would turn into a lethal cloud when fired.
She sighed in relief.
She moved forward to delicately step over the first trip wire…
Then she stopped.
She thought for a moment, and peered throughout the darkness of the room. She thought she could spy the trip wires in the dim light—tiny, dark filaments stretching across the shadows.
One, she counted. Two. Three…
She frowned. Then she knelt to touch the floor and wall again with her bare hands.
She didn’t answer. She looked around the first floor again. It was dark, but she couldn’t see anything unusual.
She looked out the windows at the building fronts beyond. No movement, nothing strange.
She cocked her head and listened. She could hear the lapping of waves, the sigh of the wind, the creaking and crackling as the building flexed in the breeze—but nothing else.
Perhaps he’s forgotten it, she thought. Perhaps he overlooked it, just this one time.
But that was not like Sark. After his torture at the hands of the Morsinis, he’d become wildly paranoid and cautious. It was not in his nature to forget a safeguard.
She looked around again, just to be sure…
Then she spied something.
Was that a glint of metal, there in the wooden beam across the room? She narrowed her eyes, and thought it was.
A fléchette? Buried there in the wood?
She stared at it, and felt her heart beating faster.
She knelt again and touched her hands to the floor for a third time.
Again, the stone told her of bones and blood and viscera, as they always did. Yet now she focused to find out…
Was any of that blood new?
And she found it was. There was a big splotch of new blood just a few feet from her. It was almost impossible to see with the naked eye, since its stain blended in with the much older, larger stain of ancient fish blood. And her talents hadn’t initially spotted it, as it’d been lost in the larger memory of so much gore.
She took her hands away as her scar began to throb. She felt cold sweat prickling across her back and belly. She turned again to the windows
, staring out at the streets. Still nothing.
She felt faint.
Sancia slowly lifted her eyes to stare at the ceiling. She took a deep breath, and slowed her thoughts.
It was obvious what was happening now. The question was what to do next.
What resources do I have? What tools are available?
Not much, she knew. All she had was a stiletto. But she looked around, thinking.
She silently crept along one trip wire, and found its espringal hidden in the corner—yet it was unloaded. Normally it would have had a fléchette pack sitting in its pocket, ready to be hurled forward—but now it was gone. Just a cocked espringal with nothing to shoot.
She grimaced. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. She silently dismantled the trap and slung the espringal across her back.
She looked around. I need a weapon, she thought. Or a distraction. Anything. But one stiletto and three espringals with no ammunition didn’t get her very far.
Then she had an idea. Grimacing—for she no longer had any idea how much she’d have to use her talents tonight—she touched her bare hands to the wooden beam above her.
Saltwater, rot, termites, and dust…but then she found it: the crackling old bones of the beams were shot through with iron spikes in a few places…and several of them were quite loose.
She quietly paced over to one loose nail, took out her stiletto, and waited for the breeze to rise. When it did, and the creaking and groaning of the old building rose with it, she gently pried the nail out of the soft wood.
She held it in her hands, letting it spill into her thoughts, iron and rust and slow corruption. It was big, about four or five inches long, and about a pound in weight.
Not aerodynamic, she thought. But it wouldn’t need to be, over short distances.
She pocketed it, then pried out two more nails and carefully, carefully placed them in the pockets of the two espringals pointed at the stairwell door.
Maybe this will kill, she thought. Or disable. Or something. I just need to slow them down.
Again, she looked at the street outside. Still no movement. But that didn’t necessarily mean much. These people were prepared.
Sancia listened to this closely.
She took her espringal and huddled at the window at the back, but did not exit yet.
said Clef.
She did some quick thinking. She knew there was a window just above this one.
She’d reviewed her weapon. The espringal was a clunky, powerful weapon, one of the old models you had to crank four or five times. And a big, rusty iron nail was not the best ammunition to use. She’d have to be close.
She slipped the iron nail in her espringal’s pocket.
She did her best to convince herself she was going to do what she needed to do.
It felt insane. She was no soldier, and she knew it. But she knew there were no other options.
Don’t miss, she thought.
Then she leapt out, raised the espringal at the window above her, and fired.
* * *
The espringal kicked far harder than she thought it would, and it responded so fast. She thought there’d be some delay when she squeezed the lever on the bottom, some moment before the gears would engage—but at the slightest pressure, the espringal’s cords snapped forward like a crocodile trying to snag a fish.
There was a dark blur as the iron nail hurtled up at the window, then a wet thud—and the dark window exploded with agonized screams.
said Clef, excited.
Sancia shrank back up against the wall.
Someone upstairs cried, “She’s here! She’s downstairs!” Then there was the sound of rapid footfalls.
Sancia hugged the wall, heart beating like mad. The screaming above her kept going on and on. It was an awful sound, and she tried her best to ignore it.
She waited, not even breathing. The man above kept shrieking and howling in pain.
Then there was a harsh snap from somewhere inside the first floor, and the interior lit up with fresh screams—but these tapered off pretty quickly. Probably because those traps had delivered more of a direct hit, which was likely lethal.
One left—but it was dark. She’d have to risk it.
She dropped the espringal and ran, sprinting through the passageways back to the channel, dodging through all the crumbling buildings and rotting wood, her satchel of duvots bouncing on her back. Finally her feet hit soft mud and she picked up the pace, frantically running along the water’s edge.
A voice echoed out from behind her: “She’s loose! She’s gone, she’s gone!”
She glanced to her right, up the street, and saw a dozen men pouring out of two buildings and sprinting for the channel. It looked like they were fanning out, so maybe they didn’t know exactly where she was. Maybe.
They were waiting for me, she thought as she ran. It’s a whole damn army. They called out a whole damn army for m—
Then the bolt hit her square in the back, and she fell forward.
* * *
The first thing she knew was the taste of blood and earth in her mouth. The rest of the world was dark and smeared and indistinct, noise and screams and distant lights.
Clef’s voice cut through the blur:
Sancia groaned. Her back hurt like it’d been kicked by a horse. Her mouth was thick with blood—she must have bitten her lip as she fell. She stirred, pulled her face from the mud, and sat up, faintly aware of a tinkling sound.
She looked at her back, and saw her satchel of duvots was now little more than a rag. The mud around her was covered in shiny coins. She stared at this, trying to understand what had happened.
But it didn’t feel like a miracle to Sancia. This glittering metal in the channel mud represented the whole of her life’s savings.