Foundryside (The Founders Trilogy #1) - Robert Jackson Bennett Page 0,15

“harpering” referred to a method of public torture and execution in Tevanne: the subject was placed in a stockade, and the harper—a long, thin piece of extremely strong wire, attached to a small, scrived device—was placed in a loop around their neck, or perhaps their hands or feet or delicates. The scrived device would then, much to the subject’s distress, begin cheerily retracting the wire, tightening the loop inch by inch, until finally the wire bit into and completely amputated the chosen extremity.

It was an extremely popular spectacle in Tevanne, but Sancia had never attended a harpering. Mostly because she knew that, in her line of work, there was a not-insignificant chance it could be her bits in the loop.

“Right. So. You don’t know who owned you, do you?”

“Or who made you.”

“That’s insane, someone had to have made you!”

She couldn’t come up with a good answer to that. She was mainly trying to figure out exactly how much danger she was in. Clef was obviously, undoubtedly the most advanced scrived device she’d ever seen—and she was pretty sure he was a scrived device—but she wasn’t sure why someone would be willing to pay forty fortunes for him. A key that did little more than insult you in your mind would have pretty low value to the merchant houses.

Then she realized there was an obvious question she hadn’t asked yet.

“Clef,” she said, “since you’re a key and all…what exactly do you ope—”

Sancia dropped the key and backed away to the corner of her room.

She stared at Clef, thinking rapidly. She did not like the idea of a scrived item reading her mind, not one damned bit. She tried to remember all the things she’d thought since she’d started talking to him. Had she given away any secrets? Could Clef even hear the thoughts she hadn’t known she’d been thinking?

If there’s risk in exposing yourself to him, she thought, it’s a risk you’ve already taken.

Glowering, she walked back over, knelt, touched a digit to the key, and demanded, “What the hell do you mean, hear my thoughts?”

She picked him up. “What does that mean, think them hard enough?”

Sancia thought something very hard at Clef.

said Clef.

thought Sancia.

She wasn’t sure how she felt about this. It was as if Clef had moved into a room upstairs inside her mind, and was whispering to her through a hole in the ceiling. She struggled to remember what she’d been talking to him about.

she asked him.

There was a silence.

said Sancia.

asked Clef.

Sancia considered it, and had an idea. She walked over to her open closet. Sitting in the corner was her collection of practice locks, specimens she’d ripped out of doors or stolen from mechanists’ shops, which she labored over every other night, refining her skills.

she said,

said Clef.

Sancia picked up one of the locks, a Miranda Brass, which was generally considered to be one of the more formidable conventional locks—meaning not scrived—in Tevanne. Sancia herself, with all her talents, usually took about three to five minutes to pick it.

she asked.

Sancia lined Clef up, gave him a mistrustful glance, and slid the golden key into the lock.

Instantly, there was a loud click, and the Miranda Brass sprang open.

Sancia stared.

“Holy shit,” she whispered.