Shorefall (The Founders Trilogy #2) - Robert Jackson Bennett Page 0,90

a few yards away.

“There!” he said. “That one!”

They scrambled inside. The room was dark and reeking, full of bags and crates of ancient, spoiled food—but a lantern was flashing frantically on the far wall.

“I believe that’s it,” said Gregor. He pulled out his rapier. “Let’s do this fast before anyone notices us…”

But Orso realized pretty quickly that someone had already noticed them: there was the sound of footfalls in the hallway, and he glimpsed lamplight on the walls outside.

“Just do it now!” he snapped. He reached into his pack and pulled out another one of Claudia’s plates, placed it on the ground outside the doorway, and turned it on.

Gregor approached the wall, gauged where best to strike, and stabbed a seam of masonry with his scrived rapier. It slid into the wall about halfway up the blade. When he withdrew it, there was a tiny, focused leak that doused him with water. But the wall did not crumble—it held fast.

“I shall have to make many of these,” he said as he wiped his face. “I think…”

The sound of footfalls outside increased. Orso turned back around and caught the highly unusual sight of a snarling Dandolo soldier running face-first into the invisible wall blocking the door. He was so close Orso even saw his nose burst with blood as it broke on the steel surface.

The soldier fell back, gasping with surprise. Then two more arrived and helped him to his feet. “Another one of your damned walls?” said the first soldier, his nose now bleeding heavily.

The three soldiers began hacking at the invisible wall with their scrived rapiers.

Orso stepped back. “Gregor…”

“I’m going!” said Gregor. He was stabbing little perforations across the wall, one after another, all at the seams of the masonry. “This damned thing has to give sometime…”

The soldiers looked to be making quick work of the steel wall. Orso swallowed and slapped the button on the left shoulder of his cuirass—which should have put the invisible steel box around him. Yet he couldn’t quite tell if it had actually worked, for there was nothing to see.

Then he heard Gregor say, “Orso? Orso! Watch ou—”

Orso turned to see the leaks in the walls had turned to geysers, which then quickly became floods—and then the stones came crumbling down, and a huge wall of water rushed toward him.

“Oh, shit!” cried Orso. He felt himself being lifted off the ground, and a sharp pain in his armpits, and he shut his eyes and braced himself, expecting to be doused with water…but though the water hit his legs, his face was spared.

He opened his eyes, and saw why: his invisible box had indeed been activated, creating a nice little buffer around him, though the water had shoved him toward the door, very hard.

Then he looked over his shoulder—he seemed to be trapped facing one way, like the cuirass was fixed in one position within the invisible box—and gasped in horror. It appeared his invisible box had been smashed up against the invisible wall he’d just set up at the doorway—right when one Dandolo soldier had been trying to climb through the hole they’d made in it.

Orso stared at the ruined face and skull of the soldier, which seemed to be crushed between two panes of glass. Then there came an alarmingly loud whine of straining metal…

He looked back and saw the room was now almost completely filled with water. Too much pressure, he realized. The wall I set up is about to collap—

Then there was a crack of metal breaking, and he was suddenly flying end over end, and then he knew no more.

* * *

—

“They did it!” shouted Berenice. “Look, look!”

Sancia turned and saw the water was rapidly retreating, allowing them to descend the stairs into the lexicon chamber.

They started down, slipping a little on the slick stone steps, and waded forward as the water receded. Both of them produced scrived lanterns to light the way.

Sancia flexed her scrived sight, but was unsurprised to see that