Shorefall (The Founders Trilogy #2) - Robert Jackson Bennett

I

THE LIBRARIAN AND THE MUSES

1

“The gates are just ahead,” said Gregor. “Get ready.”

Sancia took a breath and steeled herself as their carriage lumbered through the pouring rain. She could see the lights atop the campo walls from here, bright and sharp and cold, but little more than that. She rubbed her hands together, her fingertips trailing over the calluses on her palms and knuckles, now a shadow of what they’d been during the prime of her thieving days.

Berenice reached over, grabbed her hands, and gave them both a squeeze. “Just remember the plan,” she said. “Remember that, and nothing will go wrong.”

“I remember the plan,” said Sancia. “I just also remember there’s a lot of spots in the plan that say, ‘Sancia improvises a bunch of shit.’ Which is not, you know, comforting.”

“We aren’t getting nervous back there, are we?” said Orso from the pilot’s cockpit. He turned around to look at them, his faded blue eyes wide and wild in his dark, craggy face.

“A little anxiety,” said Berenice, “is understandable under these circumstances.”

“But being as we’ve worked our asses off for the better part of six months to get here,” said Orso, “I’m a lot less willing to understand it.”

“Orso…” said Gregor.

“We are just scrivers going to make a deal with a merchant house,” said Orso, turning back around. “Just four grubby scrivers looking to sell our designs and make some quick cash. That’s all. Nothing to worry about.”

“I see the walls,” said Gregor. He adjusted the wheel of the carriage and slowed its progress to a crawl.

Orso peered forward. “Uh. Well. I will admit that is a little worrying.”

The walls of the Michiel Body Corporate campo emerged from the driving rain. It looked like the Michiels had made some substantial additions since Sancia had last seen them. For starters, the walls were now about forty feet taller, spackled with new gray masonry—that must have taken some work. But it was what sat on top of the new masonry that caught her attention: a series of large, long bronze boxes, installed on the walls about every hundred feet, each one sitting on some kind of swivel stand.

“That is a shitload of espringal batteries,” muttered Orso.

Sancia studied the espringal batteries, still and dark in the rain. She watched as a bird flew close to one, and it snapped up, the end of the long box tracking the bird’s flight like a cat might watch a passing bat. The box apparently decided the bird was no cause for concern, and returned to its original position.

She knew how such rigs worked: the batteries were filled with scrived bolts—arrows that had been convinced to fly preternaturally fast and hard—but the critical bit was that the batteries had been scrived to sense blood. If a battery sensed a bit of blood that it didn’t recognize, it would point its bolts at whoever happened to contain that blood, loose them all, and shred the target to pieces—though the scrivers who designed them had been forced to work quite hard to get them to stop wasting ammunition on stray animals. Especially the gray monkeys, which confused the batteries a great deal.

It was not an elegant solution. But it worked—people did not approach any campo wall at all anymore.

“What guarantees do we have, Orso,” said Gregor, “that those things will not shoot us to pieces?”

Their carriage hit a bump, and gray-brown water sloshed up the sides, spilling into the floorboards.

“I guess we’re about to find out,” said Orso.

The gates of the Michiel campo were just ahead now. Sancia could see guards emerging from their stalls, weapons at the ready.

“Here they come,” said Gregor.

Their carriage rolled to a stop at a checkpoint before the gates. Two guards approached, both heavily armored, one carrying a very advanced espringal. The armed Michiel guard stood about twenty feet away from the carriage with his espringal lowered, while the other approached and gestured to Gregor. Gregor opened the door and climbed out, which made the Michiel guard a little nervous—Gregor was about a head taller than him, and wearing