Foundryside (The Founders Trilogy #1) - Robert Jackson Bennett Page 0,139

and bubbling all around her, the sounds magnified in the tiny, tiny capsule. “Shit, shit, shit!”

said Clef.

She shut her eyes and tried to breathe calmly.

asked Clef, excited.

Sancia sighed as she heard the barge drifting through the waters above them.

There was a gentle tug, and the capsule started slowly trundling forward, scraping along the bottom of the canal.

she said.

Sancia lay there, listening to the sound of the capsule scraping along the mud and stone, and waited.

An hour passed, maybe two. She idly wondered if this was what being dead was like—If this thing sprang a leak, and I died in here, would I even notice?

Finally the capsule came to a stop. She said,

She hit the switch on the door of the capsule. The metal canister slowly, awkwardly bobbed to the surface.

Sancia cracked the hatch and took a quick look around. They were floating next to a stone walkway running along the canal, just south of the Mountain’s dock. She flung the hatch open, scrambled onto the stone walkway, shut the door behind her, and hit a switch on the front. The capsule silently sank back down to the bottom.

She looked around. No one was screaming or raising any alarms. She was dressed in Candiano colors, so she didn’t look unusual, and there was only the barge crew nearby, unloading on the dock.

Then she saw the Mountain.

“Oh…Oh my God,” she whispered.

The Mountain bloomed into the night sky just ahead of her, surging up like smoke from a forest fire. The thing was lit up brighter than a magnesium torch, spotlights shooting up along its curving black skin, which was dotted with tiny circular windows, like portholes on a ship. The sight set her guts fluttering.

Somewhere up there is the thirty-fifth floor, she thought. That’s what I’ve got to break into. And that’s where I’ll fly from. Soon.

said Clef.

Sancia walked up to the street level and moved down the fairway until she spotted the garden entrance, a big white stone gateway stretching above a somewhat tattered-looking hedge wall. White floating lanterns made lazy circles above the garden. She glanced around and slipped inside.

The garden skirted the edge of the Mountain’s walls, which gave it the feeling of a quaint courtyard built next to a cliff. The trimmed hedges and noble statues and stone follies looked queer and disturbing on the rolling green lawns, lit by washes of brittle white light from the lanterns.

Clef said.

The garden was theoretically open to any enclave resident, but she didn’t risk it. With Clef’s direction, she evaded their slow circuits until she found the stone bridge, which arched above a small babbling stream. She touched the cold metal casket, hidden in her pocket. This would be the first test of the blood Estelle Candiano had given them.

She waited until the way was clear, then paced up the stream to the bridge. As she neared it, a perfectly round seam formed in the smooth stone face. Then, without making a sound, the round plug of stone sank into the bridge and rolled aside.

said Clef.

She slipped through the round door. It silently shut behind her. She now stood at the top of a set of stairs, and she walked down until they ended in a straight, smooth, gray stone tunnel, lined with bright white lights, which stretched forward so far it confused the eye.

She descended and started down the hall.