Foundryside (The Founders Trilogy #1) - Robert Jackson Bennett Page 0,40

this Sark before the man heard he was looking for him.

He stopped in his tracks when he heard the thump beside him. He looked down to see that Whip’s dense metal head had just fallen off its shaft, and its metal cable was unspooling beside it.

“What?” he said, confused. He hit Whip’s lever to retract it.

Nothing happened.

“What the devil?” he said.

* * *

In an abandoned loft in Old Ditch, the Scrappers were carefully testing out a new scrived device, one that Giovanni hoped would be his masterpiece: a rig that, when attached to a scrived carriage, would give them remote control of the wheels—or it should, in theory, but it was persistently failing to work.

“Something’s wrong with the commands again,” said Claudia, sighing.

“What’s not expressing correctly?” asked Giovanni. “Where have we made the wrong ste—”

Then all the scrived lights in the loft blinked off.

There was total silence. Even the hums from the fans were gone.

“Uhhh,” said Giovanni. “Did we do that?”

* * *

People did not have many scrived devices in Foundryside and the Greens, and those who did kept them secret. But as some of the residents checked on their hidden treasures, they found something…strange.

Lights went out. Machines that had previously worked just up and died. Musical trinkets went silent. And a few of the larger scrivings simply failed—some with disastrous results.

Like the Zoagli rookery in Foundryside. Though the residents didn’t know it, the supports beneath the building that kept it upright were actually scrived with commands that convinced the wooden pieces they were dark stone, immune to the rotting effects of moisture and waste.

But when those scrivings stopped, the wooden beams remembered what they really were…

The wood creaked. Groaned. Moaned.

And then snapped.

In an instant, the entire Zoagli Building collapsed, bringing all the roofs and all the floors down on its residents before they could even understand what was happening.

* * *

Sancia looked up when she heard the enormous crack from Foundryside, and stared as a building collapsed. It was like watching a big stack of books slowly slump to the side and then tumble to pieces—yet she knew that dozens and dozens of people had to be inside that structure.

“Holy shit,” she whispered.

said Clef drunkenly.

She looked back at the campo man. He looked surprised by the sound of the building’s collapse, even nervous, and stowed the golden pocket watch away in his vest—a curiously guilty gesture.

Sancia looked at the dead lanterns lying in the street.

Clef muttered.

Her bare hand was pressed into the rooftop, but the rooftop was still silent to her.

A mad idea wriggled into her thoughts.

No, said Sancia, horrified. That can’t be…

Then a voice to her left: “Scrumming little bastard!” She looked up, and saw the man in the rookery window lifting up an espringal.

“Shit!” she cried.

She sprang to her feet and started to run toward the building behind the warehouse.

said Clef.

A bolt thudded into the rooftop just ahead of her. She screamed and covered her head as she ran—not like that would stop the next shot—but in some calm, distant corner of her mind, she recognized that it had not been a scrived bolt. A scrived bolt likely would have punched right through the poorly built roof.

Sancia ran faster, faster. She took note of the stone shingles of the rooftop beyond, imagining how she’d land on them, how the soles of her boots would grip them.

I really goddamn hope, she thought as she madly pumped her arms, that I was right about it being twenty feet…

She came to the corner and jumped.

The alley soared beneath her, dark and yawning, passing ever so slowly like a cloud traversing the face of the sun. She’d pushed off with her left foot and stretched out with her right, pointing the arch of her foot at the edge of the distant rooftop, every tendon in her leg and hip and back extending to connect with that one spot, like a sprouting plant reaching toward a sunbeam.

She lifted her arms as she leapt and pumped them back down, maximizing her propulsion. She lifted her left foot to join her right. She pulled her knees up. The edge of the roof flew closer to her.

The man in the rookery screamed, “No scrumming way!”

And then…

She compressed her legs as she landed, lessening the impact. She’d made it—almost. For one splinter of a moment she seemed to hang here, the