Foundryside (The Founders Trilogy #1) - Robert Jackson Bennett Page 0,125

if to say something. Then he seemed to think better of it, and he shut his mouth and was silent for the rest of the night.

* * *

Much later, they slept. And Sancia’s dreams were filled with old memories.

She had never known her parents. Either she or they had been sold before she could know them, and instead she’d become, like so many slave children, a communal burden on the shifting assortment of women all crammed together in the quarters on the plantation. In some ways, Sancia’d had not one mother but thirty, all indistinct.

Except one. Ardita, a Gothian woman. She was a ghost to Sancia now, and all she retained were flashes of the woman’s dark eyes, the wrinkles of her olive-colored skin on her hard, scarred hands, her jet-black ringlets, and the way her smile showed the far back teeth in her wide mouth.

There are many dangers here, child, she’d said once. Many. Many ugly things you’re going to have to do. It will be a great contest for you. And you’re going to think: How do I win? And the answer is—so long as you are alive, you are winning. The only hope you should ever have is to see the next day, and the next. Some here will whisper of liberty—but you can’t be free if you aren’t alive.

And then, one day, Ardita had been gone. It had not been commented upon in the quarters. Perhaps because such things were common and forgettable, or perhaps because nothing needed to be said.

Sometime later, Sancia and the other children had been led to a new field to work, and they’d walked by a tree full of corpses hanging from ropes—slaves who had been executed for any number of crimes. The overseer called out, “Look well, little ones! Look well, and see what’s done to those who disobey.” And Sancia had looked up into the canopy of leaves and seen a woman suspended in the branches, her feet and hands hacked off, and Sancia had thought she’d spied jet-black ringlets on the corpse’s shoulders, and a wide, toothy mouth.

In the darkness of the crypt, Sancia awoke. She heard snores and soft sighs from the others. She stared at the dark stone ceiling, and thought about what these people were proposing she do, the enormous risks they were asking her to take. Is this survival? Is this liberty?

said Clef’s voice, soft and sad.

22

Orso stood in front of the closed-down taverna and tried not to sweat. He had many reasons to—for one, he was wearing quite a lot of clothes, in a clumsy attempt to disguise himself. For another, he was on the Candiano campo using a false sachet that Claudia and Giovanni had supplied him with. And for another, there was a significant chance that none of this ploy could work. She might not come—and then they’d have wasted another day.

He turned around and looked at the taverna. It was old and crumbling, its moss clay cracking, its windows broken or gone. The canal it overlooked was not the blossoming, picturesque stream Orso remembered, but a fetid, reeking mire. Nearly all of the balconies were gone, apparently fallen away—but one remained.

Orso stared at the balcony. He remembered how it had looked twenty years ago—the lights around it bright and beautiful, the smell of wine and flowers. And how beautiful she’d looked that night, until he’d spoken his heart.

That’s not true, he thought. She was still beautiful, even after that.

He sighed and leaned against the fence.

She won’t come, he thought. Why would she come to this painful memory? Why am I even here?

Then he heard footsteps in the alley behind.

He turned and saw a woman approaching, dressed like a house servant, wearing a muddy-colored dress and a dull, unadorned wimple that covered most of her face. She walked right up to him, her eyes steady and still.

“The theatrics of youth,” she said, “are unbecoming to aged folk such as we.”

“I’m a hell of a lot more aged than you are,” he said. “I think I have more right to say what’s unbecoming and what isn’t. I’m amazed you’re here. I can’t believe you still had it, that it worked!”

“I kept the hand-harp for lots of reasons, Orso,” said Estelle. “Some sentimental. But also because I made it, and I think I did a good job.” She was referring to the twinned hand-harps she’d scrived, back when she and Orso had been young