Foundryside (The Founders Trilogy #1) - Robert Jackson Bennett Page 0,169

think soon I’ll learn how to do a whole lot more…”

“You might be changed,” said Orso. “And you might have escaped Estelle. But you can’t do much against a couple of cohorts of soldiers shooting at you, Sancia. One person, no matter how augmented, can’t fight an army.”

“We don’t even know where we want to attack,” said Giovanni.

“Yes, we do,” said Sancia. She looked at Orso. “And you do too. Estelle needs to start her ritual with the death of one person—just one. She hated Tomas—but there’s someone else she hates even more. Someone who’s still alive. And I can think of only one place she’d choose for her transformation.”

Orso frowned at her for a moment. Then he went white and said, “Oh my God…”

* * *

“Is this where you want him, ma’am?” asked the attendant.

Estelle Candiano stared around her father’s office. It was as she’d remembered it, all grim gray stone, all walls with far too many angles. A huge window on the far side stared out at the city of Tevanne, and a second small circular window stared up at the sky—these were the only reminder that this large room existed in any semblance of reality.

She remembered being here, once. As a child, when her father had first built it—she’d played before his desk, drawing on the stone floor with chalk. She’d been a child then, but when she’d gotten older, and become a woman, she’d been disinvited from such places, where powerful men made powerful decisions. Women, she’d understood, were unfit for inclusion among those ranks.

“Ma’am?” asked the attendant again.

“Mm?” said Estelle. “What?”

“Do you want him there?” asked the attendant. “By the wall?”

“Yes. Yes, that will do.”

“All right. They should have him here shortly.”

“Good. And the rest of my things—from the abandoned foundry—they’re on the way, yes?”

“I believe so, ma’am.”

“Good.”

She looked around at the office again. My workshop, she thought. Mine. And soon, I shall have the tools here to make wonders the world cannot imagine…

Estelle looked at her left hand. Within a few hours the skin there, as well as the skin on her wrist, her arm, her shoulder and breast, would all be marked with delicately drawn sigils, a chain leading from her palm—which would be holding the dagger, of course—to her heart. Ancient sigils of containment, of transference, capable of directing huge amounts of energies into her body, her soul.

There was the sound of squeaking, rattling wheels in the hall outside.

Estelle Candiano considered that she was likely the only person alive who knew of those ancient sigils, and how to use them.

The sound of squeaking wheels grew closer.

She was the only one, she thought—except possibly the person being wheeled to her right now.

Estelle turned to face the door as the two attendants directed the rolling bed into the office. She looked at the shrunken, frail figure nestled in its sheets, face covered in sores, eyes tiny and bleary and red and thoughtless.

She smiled. “Hello, Father.”

34

“Is a direct attack even possible?” said Claudia. “If you all are right about this imperiat thing, couldn’t Estelle shut down any assault?”

“The imperiat isn’t all-powerful,” said Sancia. “It has a limited range, and I don’t think it’s easy to operate. If Estelle screws it up, it could kill all the scrivings in the Mountain—which would send the whole place down on her head. I think she knows that. She’ll be cautious.”

“So a quick strike,” said Gio. “Fast, before she can prepare.”

“Right, but fast is a problem,” said Sancia. “I don’t see how we get to the Mountain without a fight. There’s hundreds of soldiers between us and them.”

“Direct confrontation, though…” said Claudia. “I always advise against it.”

“Like we say, you’ve always got three options,” said Gio. “Across, under, or over. No tunnels to go under. No way across through all those mercenaries. And I doubt if we can go over. You’d have to plant an anchor to make an air-sailing rig go—and that means getting to the Mountain, which is kind of our problem.”

“It’s mad to ask, but can we develop a way to fly without an anchor?” said Claudia.

Berenice, Orso, and Sancia grew still. They slowly looked at one another.

“What?” said Claudia.

“We’ve seen people fly,” said Berenice.

“And do it scrumming well!” said Orso. “Brilliant!”

Claudia stared at them. “Uh, you have?”

Berenice leapt up and ran to a large trunk in the corner. She opened it, hauled something out, and brought it back to the table.

It looked like two iron plates, tied together with fine, strong ropes,