Foundryside (The Founders Trilogy #1) - Robert Jackson Bennett Page 0,84

go look, you find, that’s it, right?”

Sancia looked around at them. “If I do this…I’m not going to do it for free.”

“Ohh, fine,” said Orso dismissively. “You want money? I’m sure we can work out some kind of arrangement. Especially because I’m convinced you’ll fail.”

“No,” said Gregor. “Orso can promise you money all he likes. But he is not the person you are bargaining with. That would be me.” He held up the key to her bond.

“Son of a bitch,” snapped Sancia. “I’m not your hostage! I’m not doing this for nothing!”

“You would be doing it because you owe it to me. And for the good of the city.”

“It’s not my damned city! It’s yours! I just live here, or try to! But you people are making it goddamn hard!”

He looked surprised by her ferocity. He considered it. “Find the rig, if you can,” he said. “Then we’ll talk. I am not unreasonable when it comes to these things.”

“Could have scrumming fooled me,” said Sancia. She stood, opened the door to the workshop, and walked inside.

“Hey,” Orso called after her. “Hey—don’t touch anything in there, all right?”

* * *

Walking into Orso Ignacio’s workshop would have been startling to anyone. The amount of stuff—the sheer, ungodly avalanche of so many things—was awe-inspiring.

The workshop was a large, long room, containing six long tables piled up with bowls of cooled metals, as well as styli, wooden buttons, and dozens and dozens of machines, devices, contraptions—or parts of them. Some of the rigs were moving, twirling ever so slowly or arrhythmically clunking away. Where the walls weren’t covered with bookcases, they were covered with papers, drawings, engravings, sigil strings, and maps. The oddest device sat in the back, some kind of giant metal can full of discs covered in scrivings. It sat on rails that would slide it back into what appeared to be some kind of oven set in the wall, like the one they made pies in at the Greens. She supposed it was a test lexicon—a tiny version of the real thing. She’d heard of them from the Scrappers, but she’d certainly never seen one before.

It was a lot to see. But to Sancia, it was deafening.

The room echoed and swarmed with quiet chanting, all these scrived devices muttering like a rookery of uneasy crows. Sancia’s mind was still weak after saving Orso, so it was like rubbing sand on a sunburn.

One thing’s for sure, she thought. These people are doing a hell of a lot more than the Scrappers ever were.

She started stalking through the room, listening carefully. She walked past the innards of some component, dissected and laid out on a piece of linen; then a set of bizarre, scrived tools, which all seemed to be vibrating softly; then rows and rows of blank black boxes that were curiously veiled in shadow, as if they sucked up light itself.

If something in here is a traitor, she thought, I don’t know how I’m going to identify it. She wished Clef were awake. He’d sniff it out right away.

Then she glimpsed something on the wall, and stopped.

Hanging on the wall between two bookcases was a large charcoal sketch of Clef. It wasn’t perfect—the tooth was all wrong—but the head, with its odd butterfly-shaped hole, was perfect.

Sancia walked closer to it, and saw there was a handwritten note scrawled at the bottom:

What could it open? For what grand lock was this designed??

This guy has been thinking about Clef for a lot longer than I have, she thought. Maybe he knows more than he’s letting on—just as I do.

Then she saw there was a smudge at the bottom of the sketch, at the bottom, where the paper was crinkled. Someone must have pinched the paper there repeatedly.

She reached out, grabbed the paper, and lifted it—and saw there was something behind the sketch of Clef.

It was a large engraving. And the sight disturbed her.

The engraving depicted a group of men standing in a hall. They looked like monks, wearing plain robes, though each robe bore a curious insignia—perhaps the outline of a butterfly, she couldn’t quite tell. She found she did not like the sight of the hall: it was a massive, ornate stone chamber, huge and blocky with angles in all the wrong places. It felt like light bent in the wrong ways in that room.

At the end of the hall was a box, like a giant casket or treasure chest. The group looked on as one man stood before