Foundryside (The Founders Trilogy #1) - Robert Jackson Bennett Page 0,94

my father.”

“Bad blood,” he said, “is still blood. How is Tribuno these days?”

“Still dying,” Estelle said curtly. “And still mad. So. About as bad as one can get.”

“I…see,” he said quietly.

She peered at him. “My God,” she said. “My God! Could that be pity crossing the once-handsome face of the infamous Orso Ignacio? Could it be regret? Could it be sorrow? I’d never have believed it!”

“Stop.”

“I never saw this tenderness when you were with us, Orso.”

“That isn’t true,” said Orso sharply.

“I…apologize. I meant tenderness for him.”

“That isn’t true, either.” Orso thought carefully about what to say. “Your father was and probably still is the most brilliant scriver in all the history of Tevanne. He practically built this damned city. A lot of his designs are still keeping everything standing. That means something, even if the man himself changed a lot.”

“Changed…” she said. “Is that the word for it? To watch him decay…To watch him rot, and corrupt himself, chasing after these Occidental vanities, spending hundreds of thousands of duvots on decadent fantasy…I am not sure I’d just call that change. We still haven’t recovered, you know.” She glanced at the crowd behind her. “Look at us. Just a handful of servants, dressed like clerks. We used to practically own the council. We’d walk through these halls like gods and angels. How far we’ve fallen.”

“I know. And you’re not scriving anymore. Are you?”

Estelle seemed to deflate. “N…no. How did you know?”

“Because you were a damn clever scriver back when I knew you.”

They exchanged a look, and both understood there were unspoken words there—Even if your father never recognized it. For though Tribuno Candiano had been a wildly brilliant man, he’d been supremely disinterested in his daughter, and had made it well known that he’d have preferred a son.

And perhaps that was why he’d treated her as he had. For when Tribuno Candiano’s Occidental obsessions had bankrupted his merchant house, he’d essentially auctioned off his daughter’s hand in marriage to pay off his debts—and young Tomas Ziani, scion of the outrageously wealthy Ziani family, had been only too keen to buy the rights.

“What do you mean?” she asked.

“If Tomas was letting you work,” said Orso, “you’d have turned Company Candiano around, I bet. You were good. Damned good.”

“That’s not the place of a chief officer’s wife, though.”

“No. Seems like an officer’s wife’s place is here, waiting in the halls, and being seen waiting in the halls, meek and obedient.”

She glared at him. “Why did you come talk to me, Orso? Just to dig your fingers in old wounds?”

“No.”

“Then what?”

He took a breath. “Listen, Estelle…there’s some shit going on.”

“Are you sure you can talk about this? Or will Ofelia Dandolo have your balls braised for it?”

“She probably would,” he said, “but I’m going to say it anyway. Regarding your father’s materials…His Occidental collection, I mean, all that stuff he bought. Are those still at Company Candiano? Or were those auctioned away?”

“Why?” she demanded.

He remembered how Tomas Ziani had looked at him, smirking. “Just curious.”

“I don’t know,” she said. “All of that is under Tomas’s control now. I’m nowhere close to management, Orso.”

He thought about this. Tomas Ziani was sinfully rich, and had a reputation as a cunning merchant—but a scriver he wasn’t. When it came to sigils, he probably couldn’t tell his ass from a hole in the ground. The idea of him making something as powerful as the listening rig or the gravity plates was laughable.

But Tomas had resources, and ambition. What he couldn’t make himself, he could perhaps buy.

And he might still have access, thought Orso, to the smartest scriver in all of Tevanne.

“Does Tomas ever see Tribuno?” he asked.

“Sometimes,” said Estelle, now deeply suspicious.

“Does he talk to him? And, if so, what about?”

“This is now thoroughly out of line,” she said. “What’s going on, Orso?”

“I told you. There’s some shit going on in the city. Estelle…If Tomas was going to…to make a play at me, to come at me—you’d tell me, wouldn’t you?”

“What do you mean, come at you?”

Orso pulled down the edge of his scarf with a finger and allowed her a glimpse of his bruised neck.

Her eyes opened wide. “My God, Orso…Who…who did that to you?”

“That’s what I’m trying to find out. So. If Tomas was going to make a play like this for me—would you warn me?”

“Do…do you really think Tomas could have done that?”

“I’ve had some civilized and proper people try to kill me over the years. Do you know anything, Estelle? And, again,