Foundryside (The Founders Trilogy #1) - Robert Jackson Bennett Page 0,24

matters. I need you to look at something.”

“Like I said,” Claudia told her, “we’ve got a rush job here.”

“I don’t need you to copy the scrivings,” said Sancia. “And I’m not sure you can. I just need…advice.”

Claudia and Giovanni exchanged a glance. “What do you mean, we can’t copy the scrivings?” asked Claudia.

“And since when do you ever ask for advice?” asked Giovanni.

said Clef in her ear.

* * *

“Neat,” said Claudia. She peered at Clef over the scrived lights, her pale eyes huge and enlarged by her magnifying goggles. “But also…very weird.”

Giovanni looked over her shoulder. “I’ve never seen anything like it. Never, in all my days.”

Claudia glanced sideways at Sancia. “You say it…talks to you?”

“Yeah,” said Sancia.

“And it’s not your…” She tapped the side of her head.

“I think that’s why I can hear him—when I’m touching him, that is,” said Sancia. Besides Sark, Claudia and Giovanni were the only people who knew that Sancia was a scrived human. They’d had to know, since they were the ones who’d put her in touch with the black-market physiqueres. But she trusted them. Mostly because the Scrappers were just as hated and hunted by the merchant houses as she herself would be, if they ever found out what she was. If the Scrappers gave her up, she could give them up in turn.

“What does it say?” asked Giovanni.

“Mostly he asks what all of our swears mean. Have you ever heard of anything like this?”

“I’ve seen scrived keys before,” said Claudia. “I tinkered with a few myself. Yet these etchings, these sigils…They’re totally unfamiliar to me.” She looked up at Giovanni. “Sieve?”

Giovanni nodded. “Sieve.”

“Huh?” said Sancia. She watched as Giovanni unrolled what appeared to be a largish sheet of leather. She saw it had buttons sewn into the corners, brass ones, with faint, complicated sigils on their faces. He picked up Clef as if the key were a small, dying bird, and gently placed him in the center of the leather.

“Whatever this is…this isn’t going to hurt him, is it?” asked Sancia.

Giovanni blinked at her through his spectacles. “Him? You’re suddenly sounding very attached to this object, San.”

“That object is worth a whole harpering heap of money,” she said, feeling suddenly defensive about Clef.

“One of Sark’s jobs?” asked Giovanni.

Sancia said nothing.

“Stoic little San,” he said. He began slowly folding up the leather around Clef. “Our grim, tiny specter of the night. One day I will get a smile out of you.”

“What is this thing?” Sancia asked.

“A scriving sieve,” said Claudia. “Place the object within it, and it’ll identify some—but usually not all—of the major sigils being used to shape the object’s nature.”

“Why not all?” said Sancia.

Giovanni laughed as he placed a thick plate of iron on top of the wrapped-up leather. “One of these days, San, I will teach you something about the tiers of scriving. It’s not one language, so it’s not like you can just translate each sigillum individually. Rather, each sigil is its own command—which calls up a whole string of other sigils on the nearby lexico—”

“Yeah, I didn’t ask you to give me a degree in this stuff,” said Sancia.

Giovanni paused, miffed. “One might imagine, Sancia, that you’d show more interest in the languages that power everything around y—”

“One also might imagine my ass getting to bed at a reasonable time.”

Grumbling, Giovanni grabbed a pinch of iron filings from a small cup and sprinkled them over the face of the plate. “Now, let’s see what we’ve got…”

They sat there, watching.

And watching. Nothing seemed to be happening.

“Did you do it right?” asked Sancia.

“Of course I damned well did it right!” snapped Giovanni.

“So what should we be seeing?” asked Sancia.

“The filings should be rearranging themselves into the shapes of the primary commands being used in the object,” said Claudia. “But—if we are to believe this—it’d imply there are none.”

“Which, unless I’m mistaken,” said Giovanni, “is impossible…”

Giovanni and Claudia looked at the iron plate for a while before turning to stare at each other, bewildered.

“So, uh, right,” said Claudia. She cleared her throat, then knelt and began wiping the plate clean. “So…it seems like there are, somehow, no sigils or commands on Clef that our methods can identify. Like, none.”

“Meaning what?” asked Sancia.

“Meaning we don’t know what the hell it—or he, or whatever—really is,” said Giovanni. “His sigils are talking a language we don’t know, in other words.”

“Would a merchant house be interested in this?” said Sancia.

“Oh, holy monkeys,