Foundryside (The Founders Trilogy #1) - Robert Jackson Bennett Page 0,91

where did all these stones come from?

Some sources suggest that Crasedes had assistance in the construction of the cairn. These renditions claim that before he began, Crasedes took out a small metal box, and opened it—though the box appeared to be empty to onlookers. However, the stories say that the people of Apamea then saw footprints forming in the dust around the cairn, footprints far larger than a person’s. These versions would suggest that Crasedes had held some kind of invisible sprite or entity within the box, which he released to aid him. Yet such tales hew close to some of the more fantastical stories regarding the hierophants—fables of Crasedes making the stars dance with his magic wand, and so on—and thus must be treated with skepticism.

Regardless of the particulars, Crasedes began to build the cairn, and did not stop. And as night fell, and as they watched this curious display, the people of Apamea suddenly grew fearful, and left.

In the morning, when they returned to the city square, Crasedes was seated in the dust, still waiting patiently, and the cairn was gone—as were, the people later discovered, all the kings and wealthy landowners of Apamea, along with their families, old and young, and all their livestock, and the very buildings they’d lived and worked in. All had vanished overnight without a sound—perhaps taken to the place that the cairn had also gone.

The purpose of the cairn remains unknown, as does the final destination of those who resisted Crasedes in Apamea, who are still lost to history. Apamea, of course, no longer resisted Crasedes, and submitted to the rule of the hierophants—though it, like all of the lands of the Occidental Empire, was eventually totally destroyed. As is well documented, it is unknown if a civil war was the source of this conflict, or if, perhaps, the hierophants battled against another, greater force.

Such an idea troubles me—and yet, it must be considered.

—GIANCAMO ADORNI, DEPUTY HYPATUS OF THE HOUSE OF GUARCO, COLLECTED TALES OF THE OCCIDENTAL EMPIRE

16

Orso ground his teeth, rubbed his forehead, and sighed. “I swear,” he murmured, “if I hear one more insipid shitting word…”

“Quiet,” whispered Ofelia Dandolo.

Orso rested his head on the table before him. He was talented at putting abstract concepts together. That was essentially his entire profession: he wrote essays and arguments that convinced reality to do some new and interesting things.

So if there was one thing he truly despised—one thing that absolutely, positively drove him mad—it was when someone just could not get to the scrumming point. To observe someone fumbling around with words and ideas like a schoolboy trying to navigate a woman’s under-robes was akin to swallowing shards of glass.

“The point is thusly,” said the speaker—a Morsini deputy hypatus, some overdressed asshole whose name Orso couldn’t be bothered to remember. “The point is—is it possible to develop criteria by which we can measure, analyze, and establish the possibility that the Commons blackouts were a natural occurrence—by which I mean some by-product of a storm or meteorological fluctuation in the atmosphere—as opposed to being anthropological—by which I mean, human-caused?”

“Little shit probably just learned the word,” growled Orso. Ofelia Dandolo glanced at him. Orso cleared his throat as if the comment had been a cough.

This was now hour four of this Tevanni council meeting on the blackouts. To his surprise, they’d somehow managed to drag both Eferizo Michiel and Torino Morsini out of their campo cradles. You almost never saw either house head at all, let alone in the same place. Eferizo was trying to sit up and look nobly concerned, whereas Torino was nakedly emanating boredom. Ofelia, as always, comported herself quite well, in Orso’s opinion—but he could see even her stamina was flagging.

Yet Orso was quite alert. He kept looking from face to face, thinking. This room contained some of the most powerful men in the city—and many of them were founder lineage. If anyone acted surprised to see him alive—well. That would be a helpful indication.

Ofelia cleared her throat. “There is no recorded natural occurrence of scriving blackouts,” she said. “Not like a typhoon or some such, anyways—neither in our history, nor that of the Occidentals. So, why don’t we cut to the chase, and simply ask—was this the product of something we did here, in Tevanne?”

The room swelled up with muttering.

“Are you accusing another merchant house of this act, Founder?” demanded a Morsini representative.

“I accuse no one,” said Ofelia, “for I understand nothing. Could it not have been an