Foundryside (The Founders Trilogy #1) - Robert Jackson Bennett Page 0,185

gravity rig was incomprehensibly powerful—probably more powerful than Estelle’s version, since Berenice had left out all the calibrated controls. If Sancia screwed up the directions or the power too much, the thing would basically be a devastating weapon.

But then, she had been counting on that.

Quietly, gently, she sailed toward the Mountain.

* * *

“Ma’am!” called a soldier. “Something’s coming!”

Surrounded by a dozen soldiers, Estelle Candiano peered through the gaps in their shoulders at the office windows. “Something?” she said.

“Yes, ma’am! I…I think I saw something flying through the sky?”

Estelle glanced at the clock on the wall—twenty minutes to go. She’d need only one minute to do this, the lost minute between one day and the next. That was what her research had indicated—you made yourself powerful while the world had its back turned on you.

“That might be them,” she said. “Get ready.”

The soldiers prepared themselves, checking their weapons, unsheathing their swords. Estelle looked down at her father, lying in the bed beside her. Her fingers gripped the golden dagger, sweat running down her temples. She was so close. Soon her knife would pierce the breast of this wretched, thoughtless man, and start a chain reaction that would…

She cringed. She knew what would happen—it would kill most of the people on the Candiano campo. All the scrivers, all the merchants, all the workers who’d labored under Tomas, and, before him, her father…

They could have stopped this, she thought angrily. They knew what Tomas was, what my father was. They knew what these men had done to me, to the world. And yet they did nothing.

She looked up through the round window in the roof of her father’s office, and then she saw it—a tiny black dot, sailing across the face of the moon

“That’s it!” she cried. “There it is! I’ve no idea what it is, but it’s got to be them!”

The soldiers looked up and took positions around her.

“Come on,” said Estelle, staring up. “Come on! We’re ready for you, Orso. We’re ready for y—”

Then the doors to the office exploded behind them, and all hell broke loose.

Estelle did not initially understand what was happening. She just heard a scream, and then droplets of something warm rained down on her. She blinked, looked down at herself, and saw she was covered in blood—apparently blood from someone on the other side of the room.

She dumbly turned, and saw something had erupted into the office…maybe. It was hard to see in all the darkness, which seemed to cling to the thing like moss to a tree branch. But she thought she saw a man-form in there—and she definitely saw a huge black polearm snap out from the depths of that darkness and slash one of her soldiers from shoulder to chest, sending another wave of blood splashing over her.

Her soldiers shouted in rage and charged the shadow-man. The shadow-man leapt toward them with terrifying speed and grace—and as he did, Estelle saw the hallways beyond. She saw they were covered in blood, and the headless corpse of Captain Riggo lay ravaged and mutilated on the floor.

“Oh hell,” said Estelle. She dropped to the floor and crawled to the desk with the artifacts.

* * *

Gregor Dandolo did not think. He could not think. He did not need to think. He only moved.

He moved within the lorica, directing its momentum, its gravity, allowing it to hurtle him through the huge office. He flicked his right arm out, the telescoping polearm extending with a liquid grace, like the tongue of a frog stretching for a dragonfly in midflight. Its huge, thick blade cut through a soldier’s raised arm and the top half of his head like they were made of grass, and the man collapsed.

Get to the Mountain, said the words in Gregor’s mind. Kill the woman. Get the box. Get the key. Destroy anything that tries to stop you. The words echoed over and over again inside of him, until they became him, forming the sum of his soul.

Gregor was still flying through the air, so he twisted his body, reaching down with his leg to scrape the toes of one boot along the floor. He artfully drew himself to a stop, standing in the middle of the office, surrounded by soldiers. He stood in the huge war machine, breathing hard, felt scrived bolts clacking and clicking as they uselessly bit into his armor. He knew that the greatest threat to a soldier in a lorica was the lorica itself: use it poorly,