Foundryside (The Founders Trilogy #1) - Robert Jackson Bennett Page 0,63

Clef.

said Sancia. She tried to start crawling away, but found she couldn’t. The rope suddenly seemed impossibly heavy, as if it were not made of fibers but rather lead, and no matter how she heaved she could barely drag the coil of rope any farther than half an inch.

said Clef.

She never finished, because then there was a second crack. She looked up in time to see a silvery rope hurtling toward her from a rooftop nearly a block away. It stretched out like someone opening their arms for an embrace before slamming into her chest, knocking her back onto the roof.

She started to heave at it, but stopped.

she said. She looked down at the cords—there seemed to be a locking mechanism on the side, awaiting a scrived key.

Sancia tried to pull him out of her shirt, but the second rope kept her arms tied fast to her body.

Sancia stared up at the night sky.

They waited there, looking up, the chants of the scrived ropes echoing in Sancia’s ears. Then, after a long while, she heard footsteps coming close. Heavy ones.

The bruised, scratched face of Captain Gregor Dandolo leaned overhead, a huge espringal on his back. He smiled politely. “Good evening again.”

* * *

Apparently Captain Dandolo had the control for the ropes: after adjusting something on his espringal, he was able to reduce their density enough that he could flip her over. He kept her bound, of course. “Something we used back in the wars, when capturing trespassers,” he said merrily. He grabbed the ropes with each hand, and picked her up much as one would a bound pig. “I’d know the smell of the Michiel foundry smoke like I would the scent of jasmine. I had to come here all the time to commission armaments. Flame and heat, as one would expect, are useful when making war.”

“Let me go, you dumb bastard!” she said. “Let me go!”

“No.” He somehow packed an infuriating amount of cheer into that one word.

“You put me in prison and they’ll kill me!”

“Who, your client?” he said, making his way for the stairs down. “They won’t be able to get at you. We’ll put you in the Dandolo jailhouse, which is quite safe. Your only concern will be me, young lady.”

Sancia bucked and kicked and snarled, but Dandolo was quite strong, and seemingly indifferent to her countless swears. He hummed happily as they started down the stairs.

He exited the stairs and hauled her across the street to a scrived carriage bearing the Dandolo loggotipo—the quill and the gear. “Our chariot awaits!” he said. He opened up the back, set her down on the floor, and reactivated the scrivings on the rope—there was some kind of dial on the side of the espringal—until she was pinned to the floor. “I hope this will be comfortable during our short ride.” Then he looked her over, took a breath, and said, “But first, I must ask…where is it?”

“Where’s what?”

“The item you stole,” he said. “The box.”

said Clef.

“I don’t have it!” said Sancia, inventing a story as fast as she could. “I gave it over to my client!”

“Did you,” he said flatly.

said Clef.

“Yes!” she said.

“Then why is your client trying to kill you, if you did as they asked? That is why you’re trying to escape the city—yes?”

“Yes,” said Sancia honestly. “And I don’t know why they’re out for me, or why they killed Sark.”

That gave him pause. “Sark is dead?”

“Yes.”

“Your client killed him?”

“Yes. Yes!”

He scratched his beard at his chin. “And I suppose you don’t know who your client is.”

“No. We were never to know names, and never to look in the box.”

“What did you do with it, then?”

Sancia decided on a story that was close to the truth. “Sark and I took the box to an appointed place and time—an abandoned