Foundryside (The Founders Trilogy #1) - Robert Jackson Bennett Page 0,38

up to a side door, and stuck Clef into the lock.

There was a click. She shoved the door open, darted inside, and locked it behind her.

She glanced around. It was dark in the building, but it seemed to be some kind of clothier’s warehouse, full of musty rolls of cloth and flittering moths. It also appeared to be empty, thankfully.

asked Sancia.

said Sancia.

She knelt, touched a hand to the floor, and shut her eyes, letting the building tell her the layout. This was pushing her abilities—her head felt like it was full of molten iron—but she didn’t have a choice.

She found the stairs and started climbing until she came to the top window. She opened it, felt the wall outside, let it bleed into her thoughts. Then she slipped out the window and climbed up until she rolled onto the roof. The roof was rickety, old, and not well built—but it was the safest place she’d been yet. It might as well have been paradise.

She lay on the roof, chest heaving, and slowly pulled her gloves on. Every part of her hurt. The scrived bolt might not have penetrated her flesh, but it’d hit her so hard it felt like she’d strained muscles she didn’t even know she had. Still, she knew she couldn’t relax now.

She crawled to the edge and peered out. She was about three floors up, she saw—and the streets were crawling with heavily armed men, all waving and signaling to one another as they scoured the neighborhoods. It was the sort of thing professional soldiers did, which didn’t reassure her.

She tried to count their number. Twelve? Twenty? A lot more than three, and she’d barely escaped three.

Some of the men were being followed by a curious type of rig she’d heard about, but never seen: floating paper lanterns, which had been scrived so they levitated about ten feet off the ground, glowing softly. They were scrived so they knew to follow specific markers, like a sachet—you put one in your pocket and the lantern would follow you around like a puppy. She’d heard they used them as streetlights in the inner enclaves of the campos.

Sancia watched as the lanterns bobbed through the air like jellyfish in the deep, following the men and spilling rosy luminescence into the dark corners. She supposed they’d brought them in case she was hiding in the shadows. They were prepared for her, in other words.

“Shit,” she whispered.

said Clef.

She looked at the remnants of her pack. Not only were the coins gone, but so was her thieving kit. It must have fallen out as she ran.

She poked her head up and took stock of her surroundings. The rooftop was bordered by three rookery buildings, one on either side and one behind. The two on the sides were both too tall and too far away, but the building behind was doable—about the same height as the warehouse, with a stone tile roof.

She looked out farther, and spied the white campo walls and smokestacks of a campo a few blocks beyond.

That was a good question. She knew that a merchant house had to be behind this—that was the only force that could deploy a small army in the Commons just to find her. But which one? None of the assassins she’d seen had worn a house loggotipo—but it would have been supremely stupid for them to do that.

All this meant she could go to ground in the Michiel campo only to find out that the men down there were Michiel house guards, or someone employed by the Michiels. There was no place she could deem truly safe.

Sancia shut her eyes and rested her forehead against the roof. Sark…damn you. What in hell