Foundryside (The Founders Trilogy #1) - Robert Jackson Bennett Page 0,62

a time…The light is bouncing, very softly, something’s jostling it. I think a couple is making love on a nearby bed, perhaps…Imagine it—these people sharing their love in light that could be days, weeks, even years old…It’s like making love under starlight, isn’t it?>

Sancia listened to his voice, her eyelids growing heavy.

She was glad to have him here. He was a friend when she had none.

he whispered.

She slept.

* * *

Sancia did not dream anymore, after the operation. Yet sometimes when she slept her memories returned to her, like bones bubbling up from the depths of a tar pit.

There on the roof, Sancia slept, and remembered.

She remembered the hot sun of the plantations, the bite and slash of the sugarcane leaves. She remembered the taste of old bread and the swarms of stinging flies and the tiny, hard cots in the shoddy huts.

She remembered the smell of shit and urine, festering in an open pit mere yards from where they slept. The sound of whimpering and weeping at night. The panicked cries from the woods as the guards hauled away a woman, or sometimes a man, and did as they pleased with them.

And she remembered the house on the hill, behind the plantation house, where the fancy men from Tevanne had worked.

She remembered the wagon that had trundled away from the house on the hill every day at dusk. And she remembered how the flies had followed that wagon so closely, its contents hidden beneath a thick tarp.

It hadn’t taken long for everyone to realize what was happening. One night, a slave would simply vanish—the next day, the wagon would trundle away from the house on the hill, a horrid reek following it.

Some had whispered that the missing slaves had escaped, but everyone had known this was a lie. Everyone had understood what was happening. Everyone knew about the screams they heard from the house on the hill, always at midnight. Always, always, always at midnight, every night.

Yet they’d been voiceless and helpless. Though they’d outnumbered the Tevannis eight to one on the island, the Tevannis bore armaments of terrifying power. They’d seen what happened when a slave raised a hand against their master, and wanted no part of it.

One night she’d tried to run away. They’d caught her easily. And perhaps because she’d tried to run away, they’d decided that she would be next.

Sancia remembered how the house had smelled. Alcohol and preservatives and putrefaction.

She remembered the white marble table in the middle of the basement, its shackles for her wrists and ankles. The thin, metal plates on the walls, covered with strange symbols, and the bright, sharp screws paired with them.

And she remembered the man down in that basement, short and thin and one eye just a blank socket, and she remembered how he was always dabbing at his brow, wiping away sweat.

She remembered how he’d looked at her, and smiled, and wearily said, “Well. Let’s see if this one works, then.”

That had been the first scriver Sancia had ever met.

She often remembered these things when she slept. And whenever she did, two things happened.

The first was that the scar on the side of her head would ache as if it were not a scar, but a brand.

And the second was that she forced herself to remember the one memory that made her feel safe.

Sancia remembered how everything had burned.

* * *

It was dark when she awoke. The first thing she did was slip her fingers out of her glove and touch the roof of the foundry.

The roof lit up in her mind. She felt the smoke coiling across it, felt the rain puddling at the base of the stacks, felt her own body, tiny and insignificant, pressing against its huge, stone skin. But most important, she felt she was alone. No one up here but her and Clef.

She started moving. She stood up, yawned, and rubbed her eyes.

said Clef.

There was a sharp crack from somewhere in the distance. Then something slammed into her knees, hard.

Sancia toppled over, crying out in surprise. As she did, she looked down and saw a strange, silvery rope was looping around her shins like a snare. She dimly realized that someone out on the rooftops across from her had hurled or fired this rope at her—whatever it was.

She crashed onto the stone roof. said