Foundryside (The Founders Trilogy #1) - Robert Jackson Bennett Page 0,68

the umpteenth disaster, the merchant houses had made a rare, diplomatic agreement: they’d all decided that trying to scrive a body or its gravity was to be banned, and never trifled with. Humans had enough danger just handling altered items—they didn’t need to worry about their own limbs or torsos going haywire on them too.

And that was why Gregor Dandolo simply could not believe what he was seeing as he peeked out the top of the carriage: nine men, all dressed in black, running across the building faces with impossibly balletic grace. Some even ran upside down along the overhangs of roofs.

Such a thing was not only illegal, as much as anything could be in Tevanne—it was also, as far as he was aware, technologically impossible.

Three of the men stopped and pointed their espringals at him. Gregor ducked back down as bolts punched into the carriage just where he’d been peeking out.

“They’re good shots too,” he muttered. “Of course.” He considered what to do—but there was little he could accomplish, being stuck in a box in the middle of the road.

“Do you want to live?” asked the girl.

“What?” he said, irritated.

“Do you want to live?” she said again. “Because if you do, you should let me go.”

“Why would I do that?”

“Because I can help you get out of this.”

“If I let you go, you’ll run off the first second you can get! Or you’ll stab me in the back and leave me to get shot full of bolts.”

“Maybe,” she said. “But they’re here for me, not you. It wouldn’t hurt my feelings if you put those bastards in the ground, Captain. I’d be happy to help you do that.”

“And what could you do to help me?”

“Something. Which is better than nothing. Besides, Captain, you owe me one—I saved your life, remember?”

Scowling, Gregor rubbed his mouth. He hated this. He’d worked ceaselessly to get here, to capture this girl who’d been the source of all his problems, and now he was either going to die for having her, or have to let her go.

But then, slowly, Gregor’s priorities shifted.

The men flying around up there almost certainly worked for a merchant house—only a house could have outfitted them with such rigs.

A merchant house is trying to kill me to get the girl, he thought. So they almost certainly also commissioned the theft, of course.

And it was one thing to catch a grubby thief and make a show of her as the cause of great evils in Tevanne—but it was quite another to expose massive misconduct, conspiracy, and death being perpetrated by a merchant house faction right here in the city. The merchant houses did conduct espionage and sabotage against one another, everyone knew that—but there was a bright, unspoken line they did not cross.

They did not make war upon one another. War in Tevanne would be disastrous, everyone knew that.

But a bunch of flying assassins, Gregor thought, certainly looks a lot like war.

He reached into the front seat, rummaged around, and brought back a thick metal cord. He quickly fastened it to the girl’s left foot with a small, scrived key, which had a dial on the head.

“I said to let me go!” she said. “Not tie me up more.”

“This thing works the same way as the cords on you right now.” He held up the key and pointed to it. “I turn up the dial, and it gets heavier, and heavier. You try to run or kill me, and you’ll find yourself stuck in one spot out in the open. Or it could crush your foot. So I recommend you behave.”

To his frustration, this didn’t seem to intimidate her much. “Yeah, yeah. Just get the rest of these things off me, all right?”

Gregor glared at her. Then he pulled the release key out of the stock of his espringal and used it to free her. “I assume you haven’t ever dealt with assailants such as this before,” he said as she shook off the cords.

“No. No, I have not tangled with a bunch of flying assholes before. How many of them are there?”

“I counted nine.”

She peered up as another assassin danced over the carriage. There was a thunk as the bolt struck the door above. Gregor noticed the girl did not flinch. “They like us out in the open,” she said softly. “Where we’re exposed.”

“So how do we get to someplace confined where their tools will offer less advantage?”

The girl cocked her head, thought, and then scrambled up