Foundryside (The Founders Trilogy #1) - Robert Jackson Bennett Page 0,9

it, took the tumbler wheel in her other hand, and shut her eyes.

The safe blossomed to life in her mind, telling her of iron and darkness and oil, the chattering of its many toothed gears, the clinkings and clankings of its stupendously complicated mechanisms.

She slowly started turning the wheel, and felt instantly where it wanted to go. She slowed the combination wheel down, and…

Click. One tumbler fell into place.

Sancia breathed deep and started turning the wheel in the opposite direction, feeling the mechanisms clicking and clanking inside the door.

There was another boom out in the cargo yard.

Sancia opened her eyes. Pretty sure I didn’t do that one…

She looked back at the window on the western side of the offices, and saw that the greasy glass panes were dancing with greedy firelight. Something must have caught out there, something much more flammable than the paper crate she’d intended to set alight.

She heard shouting, screaming, and cries out in the yard. Ah, hell, she thought. I need to hurry before the whole damned place burns down!

She shut her eyes again and kept turning the wheel. She felt it clicking into place, felt that perfect little gap approaching…and the scar on her head burning hot, like a needle in her brain. I’m doing too much. I’m pushing myself too damned far…

Click.

She sucked her teeth. That’s two…

More screams from outside. Another soft boom.

She focused. She listened to the safe, letting it pour into her, feeling the anticipation of the mechanism within, feeling it wait with bated breath for that one final turn…

Click.

She opened her eyes and turned the handle on the safe. It opened with a clunk. She swung it open.

The safe was filled with an abundance of items: letters, scrolls, envelopes, and the like. But at the back was her prize: a wooden box, about eight inches long and four inches deep. A simple, dull box, unremarkable in nearly every way—and yet this bland thing was worth more than all the precious goods Sancia had ever stolen in her life combined.

She reached in and picked up the box with her bare fingers. Then she paused.

Her abilities had been so taxed by the evening’s excitement that she could tell something was curious about the box, but not immediately what—she got a hazy picture in her mind of pine wood walls within walls, but not much more. It was like trying to look at a painting in the dark during a lightning storm.

She knew that wasn’t important, though—she was just meant to get it, and not ask questions about its contents.

She stowed it away in a pouch on her chest. Then she shut the safe, locked it, and turned and ran for the door.

As she exited the Waterwatch offices, she saw that the little fire was now a full-on blaze. It looked like she’d set the entire damned cargo yard alight. Waterwatch officers sprinted around the inferno, trying to contain it—which meant likely all of the exits were now available for her to use.

She turned and ran. If they find out I did this, she thought, I’ll be harpered for sure.

She made it to the eastern exit of the waterfront. She slowed, hid behind a stack of crates, and confirmed that she was right—all the officers were tending to the blaze, which meant it was unguarded. She ran through, head aching, heart pounding, and the scar on the side of her head screaming in pain.

Yet just as she crossed, she looked back for one moment, watching the fire. The entire western fifth of the waterfront was now a wild blaze, and an unbelievably thick column of black smoke stretched up and curled about the moon above.

Sancia turned and ran.

3

A block away from the waterfront, Sancia slipped into an alley and changed clothing, wiping the mud from her face, rolling up her filthy thieving rig, and putting on a hooded doublet, gloves, and hosiery.

She cringed as she did so—she hated changing clothes. She stood in the alley and shut her eyes, wincing as the sensations of mud and smoke and soil and dark wool bled out of her thoughts, and bright, crunchy, crispy hemp fabric surged in to replace them. It was like stepping out of a nice warm bath and jumping into an icy lake, and it took some time for her mind to recalibrate.

Once this was done, she hurried away down the street, pausing twice to confirm she’d not been followed. She took a turn, then another. Soon the huge merchant house