Foundryside (The Founders Trilogy #1) - Robert Jackson Bennett Page 0,4

got close to a scrived item, or touched one, she could hear it muttering its commands in her head.

That didn’t mean she could understand what the scrivings were saying. She just knew something was being said.

Sancia’s talents could be used in a number of ways. A quick, light touch with any object would let its most immediate sensations spill into her. Longer contact would give her a physical sense of the thing she was touching—where its handholds were, where it was weak or soft or hollow, or what it contained. And if she kept her hands on something for long enough—a process which was deeply painful for her—it would give her near-perfect spatial awareness: if she held her hand to a brick in the floor of a room, for example, she’d eventually sense the floor, the walls, the ceiling, and anything touching them. Provided she didn’t pass out or vomit from the pain, that is.

Because there were downsides to these abilities. Sancia had to keep a lot of her skin concealed at all times, for it’s difficult to, say, eat a meal with the fork you’re holding spilling into your mind.

But there were upsides, too. A facility with items is a tremendous boon if you’re looking to steal those items. And it meant Sancia was phenomenally talented at scaling walls, navigating dark passageways, and picking locks—because picking locks is easy if the lock is actually telling you how to pick it.

The one thing she tried hard not to think about was where her talents came from. For Sancia had gotten her abilities in the same place she’d gotten the lurid white scar that ran down the right side of her skull, the scar that burned hot whenever she overextended her talents.

Sancia did not exactly like her talents: they were as restrictive and punishing as they were powerful. But they’d helped her stay alive. And tonight, hopefully, they would make her rich.

* * *

The next step was the Fernezzi complex, a nine story building across from the Tevanni waterfront. It was an old structure, built for customs officers and brokers to manage their accounts back before the merchant houses took over almost all of Tevanne’s trade. But its age and ornate designs were useful for Sancia, offering many sturdy handholds.

It says something, she thought, grunting as she climbed, that scaling this big goddamn building is the easiest part of this job.

Finally she came to the roof. She gripped the granite cornices, clambered onto the top of the building, ran to the western side, and looked out, panting with exhaustion.

Below her was a wide bay, a bridge crossing it, and, on the other side, the Tevanni waterfront. Huge carriages trundled across the bridge, their tops quaking on the wet cobblestones. Almost all of them were certainly merchant house carriages, carrying goods back and forth from the foundries.

One of the carriages should be the one she’d marked with the guiding plate. I scrumming well hope so, she thought. Otherwise I hauled my stupid ass through a river of shit and up a building for no damned reason at all.

For ages the waterfront had been as corrupt and dangerous as any other part of Tevanne that wasn’t under direct control of the merchant houses—which was to say, incredibly, flagrantly, unbelievably corrupt. But a few months ago they’d gone and hired some hero from the Enlightenment Wars, and he’d booted out all the crooks, hired a bunch of professional guards, and installed security wards all over the waterfront—including scrived, defensive walls, just like those at the merchant houses, which wouldn’t let you in or out without the proper identification.

Suddenly it’d become difficult to do illegal things on the waterfront. Which was quite inconvenient for Sancia. So she’d needed to find an alternate way into the waterfront for her job tonight.

She kneeled, unbuttoned a pouch on her chest, and took out what was likely her most important tool of the night. It looked like a roll of cloth, but as she unfolded it, it gained a somewhat cuplike shape.

When she was finished, Sancia looked at the little black parachute lying on the rooftop.

“This is going to kill me, isn’t it?” she said.

She took out the final piece of the parachute: a telescoping steel rod. Set into the ends of this rod were two small, scrived plates—she could hear them chanting and whispering in her head. Like all scrived devices, she had no idea what they were saying, but her black-market contacts had given her