Foundryside (The Founders Trilogy #1) - Robert Jackson Bennett Page 0,113

of these slippery bastards to it just because I wanted to check notes.” He tapped the bronze imperiat before him. “We’re doing something wrong. Something on these is being made improperly…”

“So…what would you suggest we do, sir?”

“Experiment.” Ziani stood and started getting dressed. “I want a hundred of the shells made before morning and sent to the Mountain,” he said. “Enough for us to experiment on and adjust, comparing it with the original.”

The clerk stared at him. “A hundred? Before morning? But…sir, the Cattaneo’s lexicon is at a reduced state right now. To produce that many, we’d have to spin it up quickly.”

“So?”

“So…the lexicon will spike. It will definitely cause nausea for all of us, I expect.”

Ziani was still. “Do you think I’m stupid?” he asked.

The room grew tense. The girl shrank down below the sheets.

“C-certainly not, sir,” said the clerk.

“Because it feels like you might,” said Ziani. He turned to look at him. “Just because I’m not a scriver. Just because I don’t have as many certifications as you. Because of that—you think I don’t know these things?”

“Sir, I just…”

“It’s a risk,” said Ziani. “And an acceptable one. Do it. I’ll supervise the fabrication.” He pointed at the girl. “You stay there. It’s far too long since I waxed an agreeable cunny, and I won’t have this dull bit of business delay that, either.” He buttoned up his shirt, his face twisted in faint disdain. “I certainly won’t deign to go pawing around Estelle’s musty skirts for a bit of push.”

“And…sir?”

“Yes?” snapped Ziani.

“What should we do with the corpse?”

“The same thing we’ve done with all the others? I mean, why should I know? We have people for that, don’t we?”

Ziani and the clerk left the office and shut the door behind them. The girl slowly shut her eyes, sighing half in relief, half in dismay.

Sancia silently slid out her bamboo pipe and loaded it with a dart.

said Clef.

said Sancia.

Sancia waited for a few minutes, making sure they were really gone. Then she silently opened the door a crack, trained the pipe on the girl’s neck, and blew.

The girl made a soft, “Ah!” as the dart struck her neck. She tensed, drunkenly slapped at her neck, fell back, and was still.

Sancia slipped into the room and went to the other office door. She peered through the keyhole and confirmed no one was approaching. Then she looked at the papers and boxes on the desk.

She picked up the thing Ziani had called the “shell”—his term for the bronze imperiat, which apparently did not work. She found he was right: it was little more than a curiosity, a dull, dead hunk of metal. Though it bore many strange sigils, it was not a true scrived device.

said Clef. He sounded genuinely frightened.

She tried to, and shivered.

said Clef.

She looked at the papers on the desk, and saw most were yellow with age, and written in a strange, spidery hand, like the hand of someone who was either old, infirm, or both.

She looked at the top of one paper:

THEORIES ON THE INTENT OF HIEROPHANTIC TOOLS

The notes of Tribuno Candiano, she thought. The greatest scriver of our age…There were a lot of them, and she understood few at a glance.

But some of the papers were different. They appeared to be wax rubbings of stone engravings or tables or bas-reliefs…But what they depicted was confusing.

Each one showed an altar, always an altar, positioned at the center of each paper. Floating above the altar was the image of a prone, sexless human body—perhaps it was an artistic rendition of someone lying on the altar’s surface. Floating above the human body was always an oversized sword or blade, several times the size of the altar or the person. Written inside the blade were any number of complicated sigils, which varied from engraving to engraving, but all of them had these three things in common: the body, the altar, and the blade.

There was something gruesomely clinical to it all. They did not depict some religious rite, it felt. Instead, they seemed like…

she thought.