Foundryside (The Founders Trilogy #1) - Robert Jackson Bennett Page 0,158

like tiny tangles of silvery light, like hot bundles of stars in distant constellations, and with a glance she could take in their color, their movement, or their shape, and understand what they did or what they wished to do.

Blinking, she analyzed what she was seeing. Each set of shackles was two half-circles of steel that were scrived to desire to hold each other, to embrace each other, and never let go. They dreaded being parted; they feared and detested the idea. The only way to break them up was to sate that anxious, fervent desire to be complete, to be held—and the only way to do that was to touch them with the right key. The key would, in a way, calm the scrivings down, placating their need like a sip of opium tea might quell a sailor’s thirsts.

It was like when Clef had allowed her to hear a scriving—but this time she was looking for herself. And there was so much more to it, so much nuance and meaning behind these compulsions. All of this information poured into her mind instantly, like a drop of blood spreading through a glass of water.

One thing she noticed, however, is that though she could now engage with the scrivings, she couldn’t hear much more: she could not feel what the table felt, and know instantly all of its cracks and crevices and nuances. It seemed that Valeria had shorn away her “object empathy,” as Clef had put it, and instead replaced it with…this. Whatever it was.

Can I see things just as Clef did? Did…did she make me like him?

She looked around the room surreptitiously, and stared in awe. She could see all the scrivings, all the augmentations, all the silvery little commands and arguments woven into the objects around her, demanding that these things be different, that they defy physics and reality in these specific ways. Some scrivings were gorgeous and delicate, some were harsh and ugly, others dull and monotonous. She could understand the overall nature of these things at a glance: what made light, what made heat, what made things hard or soft…

It was all right there, right there, written into the stones and the wood and the interstitial bits of the world. She’d once met a dockworker who’d claimed that certain sounds made him see colors and smell things, and she’d never understood that—though now she thought she did.

She couldn’t see forever, though—it wasn’t like she could see all the scrivings in Tevanne. She could only see the sigils in this one room, and perhaps the next one—through the walls, apparently. It seemed that, whatever extrasensory abilities Valeria had given her, they were only slightly less limited as common sight and sound.

For a moment she was too overcome to think. Then she remembered what Valeria had said: she’d be able to turn this ability off, and she’d be able to engage with scrivings herself, to argue with them just as Clef did.

Sancia sucked her teeth, wondering how in the hell to do either of these things.

She blinked hard, but the scrivings didn’t go away—her second sight (a stupid term, she thought, but she had no better one at the moment), it seemed, was not activated or deactivated by a physical movement.

Then she realized she felt a tautness in the side of her head, like that curious, slight displeasure you get when someone holds a finger close to your ear. She focused, trying to smooth it out, like relaxing an oft-forgotten muscle in your back…

The scrivings faded from view, and the world went totally, blessedly silent.

Sancia almost burst out laughing.

I can do it! I can turn it off! I can finally, finally, finally turn it all off!

Which was all well and good, but she was still trapped here.

She focused, and tensed that strange, abstract muscle in her mind. The silvery tangles of scrivings came back, and she heard the voice in her ear, whispering:

Sancia turned her attention to the shackles. She looked at the scrivings closely, or as closely as she could, since she was still pinned to the table. She had no idea what it was like to actually engage with scrivings. Perhaps it was like talking to Clef.

So she said to the shackles:

Immediately the shackles responded, with shocking fervor:

Sancia almost