Foundryside (The Founders Trilogy #1) - Robert Jackson Bennett Page 0,46

a knife, lockpicks, and other unseemly tools. He’s definitely the fence, he thought. And the man was ready to run in a heartbeat.

He searched the rest of the hidden safe. It contained small sacks of gemstones, jewelry, and the like. On the bottom shelf was a small book. Gregor grabbed it and flipped through it, and found it was full of dates, plans, and tactics for Sark’s many jobs.

At first the notes were extremely detailed—methods of entry and escape, tools required for breaking a specific lock or safe—but at one point, about two years ago, the jobs suddenly got a lot more frequent and the payouts a lot higher, but the notes became far sparser. Gregor got the impression that Sark had made a connection with someone good enough that they didn’t need much of his help.

He flipped to the last entry and found Sark’s notes on the waterfront job. He felt a bit pleased to see that his defenses had frustrated this Sark immensely—one scribbled line read: This bastard Dandolo is going to make S work double-time!!

Gregor made a note of that—“S.” He doubted it stood for “Sark.”

That must be the thief—whoever they are.

But there was another note at the end that he found deeply curious—scrawled in the margins of the paper were two words: Dandolo Hyp??

Gregor stared at the words.

He knew that they did not refer to him—they had to be shorthand for “Dandolo Hypatus.” And that was very, very troubling.

A hypatus was a merchant house officer who acted as something akin to a head of research, experimenting with sigillums to dream up new methods, techniques, and tools. Most hypati were madder than a speared striper, mostly because they often didn’t survive long—experimental scrivings had a tendency to inflict gruesome death on anyone involved with them. And then there was the backstabbing the position attracted: since every scriver on a campo wanted to be a hypatus, betrayals and even assassinations were common hazards of the job.

But the Dandolo Chartered hypatus was Orso Ignacio—and Orso Ignacio was notorious, if not legendary, for being an amoral, arrogant, duplicitous, and fiendishly clever campo operator. He’d lasted nearly a decade as hypatus, which had to be a record in Tevanne. And he hadn’t risen from within the ranks of Dandolo Chartered—he’d originally been employed at Company Candiano, though Gregor had heard rumors he’d departed that house under leery terms. It was a known fact that the whole damned merchant house had almost collapsed mere weeks after his departure.

Yet as unsavory as Orso Ignacio’s reputation might be—would he be willing to hire an independent thief to rob Gregor’s waterfront? Since Gregor was the son of Ofelia Dandolo—the head of the entire Dandolo Chartered merchant house—this seemed totally insane. But then, hypati were generally agreed to be insane, or close enough to it.

Gregor considered what he knew. Only one thing had been stolen that night—a box, entered into the safes under the name of “Berenice.” Which could have been a false name, for all Gregor knew.

So—was Orso Ignacio the buyer? Or was he the one being robbed? Or is this small note here just nonsense, a complete coincidence?

He wasn’t sure. But he now intended to find out.

Gregor heard something, and sat up. There were footfalls in the hallway—all heavy boots. And it sounded like there were a lot of them.

He didn’t wait to listen and see if the new arrivals came to Sark’s door. Instead he took Whip out and walked quietly into the bedroom, where he hid behind the open door, peering through the crack in the hinge at the living room beyond.

Could this be Sark? Has he returned?

There was a tremendous crack as someone kicked the door down.

Ah, no, he thought. Probably not Sark.

Gregor watched as two men in dark-brown clothing and black cloth masks walked into Sark’s rooms. But what really caught Gregor’s eye were their weapons.

One bore a stiletto, the other a rapier—and both were scrived. He could see the sigils running along the lengths of the blades, even from where he was.

He sighed inwardly. Well. That’s going to be a problem.

* * *

Gregor was familiar with scrived weapons. Scrived armaments, though prohibitively expensive, were the primary reason why the city of Tevanne had been so successful in warfare. But you couldn’t just glance at a scrived weapon and know what it was scrived to do. It could be anything.

For example, the common blades used in the Enlightenment Wars were scrived so that they’d automatically target the weakest