Foundryside (The Founders Trilogy #1) - Robert Jackson Bennett Page 0,13

a rounded head that sported an oddly carved hole. To Sancia, the hole faintly resembled the outline of a butterfly.

“What in hell?” she said aloud.

Sancia peered closely at it. It was a curious piece, but she couldn’t see why it would be worth all this…

Then she saw them—there, along the edge of the key, and curling around the tooth: etchings. The key was scrived, but the commands were so slender, so delicate, so complex…They were like nothing she’d ever seen before.

But what was stranger still—if this key was scrived, why couldn’t she hear it? Why didn’t it murmur in the back of her mind like every other scrived device she’d ever encountered?

This doesn’t make any sense, she thought.

She touched a single bare finger to the gold key.

And the second she did, she heard a voice in her mind—not the usual avalanche of sensations, but a real, actual voice, so clear it sounded like someone was standing right next to her, speaking rapidly in a bored tone:

Sancia let out a gasp and dropped the key. It fell to the floor, and she jumped back from it like it was a rabid mouse.

The key just sat there, much as any key would.

She stared around herself. She was—as she knew full well—completely alone in this room.

She crouched down and looked at the key. Then she reached down and carefully touched it…

Instantly, the voice sprang to life in her ear.

<…can’t have heard me. It’s impossible! But ah yeeaaahh she’s definitely looking at me like she heard me, and…Okay. Now she’s touching me again. Yeah. Yeah. This is probably bad.>

Sancia took her finger away like it had been burned. She looked around herself again, wondering if she were going mad.

“This is impossible,” she muttered.

Then, throwing caution to the wind, she picked up the key.

Nothing. Silence. Maybe she’d imagined it.

Then the voice said:

Sancia’s eyes shot wide.

She blinked, wondering what to do. She said aloud, “Uh. Yes.”

“This is impossible,” said Sancia for the second time.

said the voice.

“You’re a…a…”

“A…” She swallowed. “A key.”

“Right, but a…a talking key.”

said the voice in her ear.

Sancia laughed madly. “This is insane. It’s insane. That’s got to be it. I’ve gone insane.”

The voice cleared his throat.

4

Sancia put the key back in the false floor in her closet, slammed it shut, and then slammed the closet door closed.

She stared at the closet for a moment, breathing hard. Then she walked over to her apartment door, unlocked the six locks, and peered out into her hallway.

Empty. Which made sense, since it was probably three in the morning by now.

She shut the door, locked it, went to the shutters, unlocked them, and looked outside, panic fluttering in her rib cage like a trapped moth. Again, no movement in the street.

She didn’t know why she was doing this. Perhaps it was sheer compulsion: to have something so wild, so insane, so unbelievable happen to her had to invite danger.

Yet she could see none coming—not yet, at least.

She closed her shutters and locked them. Then she sat on her bed, holding her stiletto. She wasn’t sure what she was going to do with it—stab the key?—but it felt better to be holding it.

She stood, walked back to her closet door, and said, “I’m…I’m going to open the door and take you out now—all right?”

Silence.

She let out a shuddering breath. What the hell did we get mixed up in? She was used to scrived devices muttering things, sure, but to have one directly address her like an overcaffeinated street vendor…

She opened the closet door, opened the