Foundryside (The Founders Trilogy #1) - Robert Jackson Bennett Page 0,25

yes,” said Claudia. “If there’s a whole new scriving language out there, and they get ahold of it, they…they…” She trailed off. Then she looked at Giovanni, troubled.

“What?” said Sancia.

“I was thinking the same thing,” said Giovanni to her quietly.

“What?” said Sancia. “Thinking what?”

The two of them sat in silence, staring at each other and occasionally glancing at Sancia.

“Thinking what?” she demanded.

Claudia glanced nervously around the workshop. “Let’s…take this somewhere private.”

* * *

Sancia followed Claudia and Giovanni into the back office, stuffing Clef back down her jerkin as she did so. The back office was filled with tomes and books of sigil strings and scriving commands, reams and reams and reams of papers covered in symbols that made no sense to Sancia.

She watched as Claudia shut the door behind them and locked it.

said Clef.

Giovanni pulled out a bottle of a potent, noxious cane wine, poured three glasses, and picked up two. “Drink?” he said, extending one to Sancia.

“No.”

“Sure?”

“Yes,” she said testily.

“You never have fun, San. You deserve some. Especially now.”

“Fun is a luxury. What I deserve is to know how big of a pot of shit I’m in.”

“How long have you lived in Tevanne now?” asked Giovanni.

“A bit over three years. Why?”

“Mm…Well.” Giovanni tossed one glass back, then the other. “This will take some explaining, then.”

Claudia took a seat behind a stack of tomes. “Ever heard of the Occidentals, Sancia?” she asked quietly.

“Yeah,” said Sancia. “The fairy giants. They built the ruins across the Durazzo, in the Daulo countries. Aqueducts and the like. Right?”

“Hm. Kind of,” said Giovanni. “To put it plainly, they were the people who invented scriving, long, long, long ago. Though no one’s even sure if they really were people. Some say they were angels, or something a lot like angels. They were also called hierophants, and in most of the old stories they’re regarded as priests or monks or prophets. The first of them—the most notable of them—was Crasedes the Great. They weren’t giants, though. They just used their scriving to do some very, very big things.”

“Like what?” asked Sancia.

“Like move mountains,” said Claudia. “Carve out oceans. And annihilate cities, and build a massive, massive empire.”

“Really?” said Sancia.

“Yes,” said Giovanni. “One that makes the merchant house empire we’ve got today look like a piddling pile of shit.”

“This was a long time ago, mind,” said Claudia. “A thousand years or so.”

“What happened to this empire?” she asked.

“It all fell apart,” said Claudia. “Nobody knows how, or why. But when it fell, it fell hard. Almost nothing survived. No one even knows the real name of the empire. We just call it the Occidental Empire because it was to the west. Like, everything to the west. The hierophants owned all of it.”

“Supposedly Tevanne was just a backwater jungle port for this empire, ages and ages and ages ago,” said Giovanni, pouring himself another drink.

Claudia frowned at him. “You’ve got work tonight, Gio.”

He sniffed. “Makes my hands steadier.”

“That’s not what the Morsinis said when they tossed you out on your ass.”

“They misunderstood the nature of my genius,” he said airily. He slurped down cane wine. Claudia rolled her eyes. “Anyways. Apparently Tevanne was far-flung enough that when the Occidental Empire collapsed, and all the hierophants died out, it escaped the damage.”

“And it just stuck around,” said Claudia. “Until about eighty years ago, when some Tevanni found a hidden cache of Occidental records in the cliffs east of here, detailing in vague terms the art of scriving.”

“And that,” said Giovanni with a theatrical flourish, “is how the Tevanne of today was born!”

There was a moment of silence as this sank in.

“Wait…what?” said Sancia. “Really? You’re saying that what the merchant houses do today is based on some notes from some ancient, dead civilization?”

“Not even good notes,” said Giovanni. “Boggles the mind, doesn’t it?”

“It boggles a whole hell of a lot more than that,” said Claudia. “Because the merchant houses today can do a lot of stuff with scriving—but they don’t hold a scrumming candle to what the hierophants could do. Like fly or make things float.”

“Or walk on water,” said Giovanni.

“Make a door in the sky,” said Claudia.

“Crasedes the Great would point his magic wand…”—Giovanni mimed the action—“and—poof!—the seas themselves would part.”

“They say Crasedes even kept a genie in a basket at his waist,” said Claudia. “He’d open it up and let it out and it’d build a castle for him, or tear down walls, or…You get the idea.”

Suddenly Sancia recalled a