Foundryside (The Founders Trilogy #1) - Robert Jackson Bennett Page 0,17

shadows of the reeking building—and to her surprise, he’d been grinning.

I’ve got a corker for you, San, he’d rasped. I’ve got a big fish on the line and no mistake.

Marino Sarccolini, her fence, agent, and the closest thing she had to a friend in this world. Though few would have thought to befriend Sark—for he was one of the most disfigured people Sancia had ever seen.

Sark had one foot, no ears, no nose, and he was missing every other finger on his hands. Sometimes it seemed about half his body was scar tissue. It took him hours to get around the city, especially if he had to take any stairs—but his mind was still quick and cunning. He was a former “canal man” for Company Candiano, an officer who’d organized theft, espionage, and sabotage against the other three merchant houses. The position was called such because the work, like Tevanne’s canals, was filthy. But then the founder of Company Candiano had gone mysteriously mad, the company had almost collapsed, and nearly everyone had gotten fired except for the most valuable scrivers. Suddenly all kinds of people who’d been used to campo life found themselves living in the Commons.

And there, Sark had tried to keep doing what he’d always done: thieving, sabotaging, and spying on the four main merchant houses.

Except in the Commons he hadn’t had the protection of a merchant house. So when he’d finally gotten sniffed out by agents of Morsini House after one daring raid, they’d taken him and ruined him beyond repair.

Such were the rules of life in the Commons.

When she finally saw him that day in the fishery, Sancia had been taken aback by the look on Sark’s face—for she’d never seen him…delighted. A person like Sark had little to be delighted about. It was unsettling.

He’d started talking. He’d vaguely described the job. She’d listened. When he’d told her the price tag, she’d scoffed and told him that the whole thing had to be a scam—no one was going to pay them that much.

At that, he’d tossed her a leather envelope. She’d glanced in it, and gasped.

Inside had been nearly three thousand in paper duvots—an absurd rarity in the Commons.

An advance, said Sark.

What! We never get advances.

I know.

Especially not in…in paper money!

I know.

She’d looked at him, wary. Is this a design job, Sark? I don’t deal in scriving designs, you know that. That shit will get us both harpered.

And that’s not what this is, if you can believe it. The job is just a box. A small box. And since scriving designs are usually dozens of pages long, if not hundreds, then I think we can rule that out.

Then what is in the box?

We don’t know.

And who owns the box?

We don’t know.

And who wants the box?

Someone with twenty thousand duvots.

She’d considered it. This hadn’t been terribly unusual for their line of work—usually it was better for all parties involved to know as little as possible about one another.

So, she’d said. How are we supposed to get the box?

He’d grinned wider, flashing crooked teeth. I’m glad you asked…

And they’d sat and hashed it all out right then and there.

Afterward, though—after the glee of planning it out, preparing it, discussing it there in the dark of the fishery—a queer dread had seeped into Sancia’s stomach. There anything I should be worried about here, Sark?

Anything I know? No.

Okay. Then anything you suspect?

I think it’s house work, he’d said. That’s the only people who could toss around three thousand in paper. But we’ve done work for the houses before, when they need deniability. So in some ways, it’s familiar—do as they ask, and they’ll pay well, and let you keep your guts where they are.

So why is this different?

He’d thought for a moment, and said, With this price tag…well, it’s got to be coming from the top, yeah? A founder, or a founderkin. People who live behind walls and walls and walls. And the higher you go in the houses, the richer and madder and stupider these people get. We could be stealing some princeling’s plaything. Or we could be stealing the wand of Crasedes the Great himself, for all I know.

Comforting.

Yeah. So we need to play this right, Sancia.

I always play it right.

I know. You’re a professional. But if this is coming from the echelons, we need to be extra cautious. He’d held out his arms. I mean, look at me. You can see what happens when you cross them. And you…

She’d looked at him, eyes hard.