Foundryside (The Founders Trilogy #1) - Robert Jackson Bennett Page 0,23

or if you just wanted light or clean water, the Scrappers would sell you rigs that could do that—for a fee, of course. And that fee was usually pretty high. But it was the only way for a Commoner to get the tools and creature comforts reserved for the campos—though the quality was never totally reliable.

This was not illegal—as there were no laws in the Commons, it couldn’t be. But it was also not illegal for the merchant houses to organize raids to kick down your door, destroy everything you’d made, and also maybe break your fingers or your face in the process.

So you had to stay quiet. Stay underground. And keep moving.

Clef said in Sancia’s ear as they walked through the messy workshop.

said Sancia.

Claudia led Sancia to the back of the room, where Giovanni, a veteran Scrapper, was seated before a small desk and was carefully painting sigils onto a wooden button. He glanced up from his work, ever so briefly. “Evening, San.” He smiled at her, his graying beard crinkling. He’d been a venerated scriver before he’d washed out of Morsini House, and the other Scrappers tended to defer to him. “How’d the goods hold up? You seem all in one piece.”

“Somewhat.”

“Somewhat what?”

Sancia walked around and, with an air of quaint civility, moved his desk aside. Then she sat down in front of him and smiled into his face, her muddy eye squinting unpleasantly. “They somewhat worked. Right up until your goddamn sailing rig nearly fell apart, and dumped me over the waterfront bridge.”

“It what?”

“Yeah. If it were anyone else, Gio, anyone else, I’d gut you stern to crotch for what happened out there.”

Giovanni blinked, then smiled. “Discount next time? Twenty percent?”

“Fifty.”

“Twenty-five.”

“Fifty.”

“Thirty?”

“Fifty.”

“All right, all right! Fifty it is…”

“Good,” said Sancia. “Get stronger material for the parachute next time. And you overdid it on the flashbox.”

Giovanni’s eyebrows rose. “Oh. Oh. So that’s what caused the waterfront fire?”

“Too much magnesium in the box,” said Claudia. She tsked. “I told you so, Gio.”

“Duly noted,” he said. “And…my apologies, dear Sancia. I shall correct the formulas accordingly for future rigs.” He moved his desk back and returned to the wooden button.

Sancia watched. “So, what’s going on? Your customers need new sachets that quick?”

“Yes,” said Claudia. “Apparently the Candiano campo is…an unusually promiscuous one.”

“Promiscuous.”

“Yes. There is, how shall I say, a strong appetite there for discreet arrangements.”

“Ahh,” said Sancia, understanding. “Night ladies, then.”

“And men,” added Giovanni.

“Yes,” said Claudia. “Them too.”

This was well-trodden ground for Sancia. Merchant-house walls were scrived so that the entrances only allowed in people with specific identifying markers called sachets—wooden buttons with scrived permissions on them. If you walked through the wrong door with the wrong sachet or no sachet at all, you’d get accosted by guards, or even killed by them; or, in some of the inner walls of the campos, where the richest, most protected people lived, rumor had it you could spontaneously explode.

As someone who frequently needed illegitimate access to the campos, Sancia usually had to go to the Scrappers for forged sachets. But their biggest customers were undoubtedly prostitutes, who just wanted to go where the money was—though the Scrappers could usually only get you past the first wall or two. It was a lot harder to steal or forge the more elite credentials.

“Why’d the Candianos change up their sachets?” she asked. “Did someone spook them?”

“No idea,” said Claudia. “Rumor has it mad old Tribuno Candiano is finally about to pull up the eternal blanket and begin his final sleep.”

Giovanni clucked his tongue. “The Conqueror himself, about to be conquered by old age. How tragic.”

“Maybe it’s that,” said Claudia. “Elite deaths often cause some campo shuffling. If so, with everything in flux, there’s probably a lot of easy targets on the Candiano campo…If you were willing to take a side job, we’d pay.”

“Not market rates,” said Giovanni pointedly. “But we’d pay.”

“Not this time,” Sancia said. “I’ve got some pressing