Foundryside (The Founders Trilogy #1) - Robert Jackson Bennett Page 0,120

sat there, watching Orso dart around their quarters with terrified looks, like a panther had broken into their home as they slept.

He walked over and looked at the sigils scrawled on a blackboard. “You’re…making a way to control carriages remotely,” he said slowly. It wasn’t a question.

“Uh,” said Giovanni. “Yes?”

Orso nodded. “But it’s not expressing right. Is it, Berenice?”

Berenice stood and joined him. “The orientation’s wrong.”

“Yes,” said Orso.

“Their calibration tools are far too complicated,” she said.

“Yes.”

“The rig probably gets confused, isn’t sure which way it’s facing. So it likely just shuts down after a couple dozen feet or so.”

“Yes.” Orso looked at Giovanni. “Doesn’t it?”

Gio looked at Claudia, who shrugged. “Um. Yes. So far. More or less.”

Orso nodded again. “But just because it doesn’t work…that doesn’t mean it’s bad.”

Claudia and Gio blinked and looked at each other. They slowly realized that Orso Ignacio, legendary hypatus of Dandolo Chartered, had just given them a compliment.

“It’s…something I’ve worked on for a long time,” said Gio.

“Yes,” said Orso. He looked around the room, taking it all in. “Worked on with crude tools, secondhand knowledge, fragments of designs…You’ve improvised fixes to problems no campo scriver’s ever had to deal with. You’ve had to reinvent fire every day.” He looked at Sancia. “You were right.”

“Told you so,” said Sancia.

“Right about what?” said Claudia.

“She said you were good,” said Orso. “And you might be good enough for this. Maybe. What did she tell you about the job?”

Claudia glanced at Sancia, and Sancia thought she could detect a hint of wrath there, which she couldn’t blame her for. “She said you needed us,” said Claudia. “And a workshop of your own. And materials.”

“Good,” said Orso. “Let’s try to keep things that simple.”

“They can’t possibly stay that simple,” said Claudia. “You’re disrupting everything we do here. We’ve got to know more to get on board with this!”

“Fine,” said Orso. “We’re going to break into the Mountain.”

They stared at him, incredulous.

“The Mountain?” Giovanni looked at Sancia. “San, are you mad?”

“Yes,” said Orso. “That’s why we’re here.”

“But…but why?” said Claudia.

“Doesn’t matter,” said Orso. “Just know that someone wants us dead—including, yes, me. The only way for us to stop them is to get into the Mountain. Help us, and you get paid.”

“And what’s the payment?” said Claudia.

“Well, that depends,” said Orso. “Originally I was going to pay you some huge sum of money…but having seen what you’re doing here, some alternate options seem available. You’re working with spotty, secondhand knowledge. So…perhaps some of the third- and fourth-tier sigil strings from Dandolo Chartered and Company Candiano would be more valuable to you.”

Sancia didn’t understand what that meant, but both Claudia’s and Giovanni’s eyes shot wide. They froze, and both seemed to do some rapid calculations.

“We’d want fifth tier too,” said Claudia.

“Absolutely not,” said Orso.

“Half the Dandolo fourth-tier fundamentals are intended to function with fifth-tier strings,” said Giovanni. “They’d be useless without them.”

Orso burst out laughing. “Those combinations are all for massive designs! What are you trying to do, build a bridge across the Durazzo, or a ladder to the moon?”

“Not all of them,” said Giovanni, stung.

“I’ll give you some Candiano fifth-tier strings,” said Orso. “But none from Dandolo.”

“Any Candiano string from you is going to be outdated,” said Claudia. “You haven’t worked there in a decade.”

“Possibly. But it’s all you’re going to get,” said Orso. “Select Candiano fifth-tier strings, and the fifty most-used third- and fourth-tier strings for both Dandolo and Candiano. Plus whatever proprietary knowledge you gain during the planning process, plus a sum to be agreed upon later.”

Claudia and Giovanni exchanged a glance. “Deal,” they said at the same time.

Orso grinned. Sancia found it a distinctly unpleasant sight. “Excellent. Now. Where the hell are we going to be headquartered?”

* * *

Most of the canals in Tevanne were either full or close to it most of the time—but not all.

Every fourth year in the Durazzo was a monsoon year, when the warm waters bred monstrous storms, and although Tevanne lacked any central authority, water cared not a whit about which campo it flowed into. So, eventually, the merchant houses had decided they were obliged to do something about it.

Their solution was “the Gulf”—a massive, stone-lined flood reservoir in the north of the city, which could store and dump floodwater into the lower canals as needed. The Gulf was empty most of the time, essentially a mile-wide, artificial desert of gray, molded stone and dotted with drains. Sancia knew it was prone to shantytowns and vagrants and stray