“No. I’ve barely lived here three years, and I’ve mostly been trying to survive, not sharing work gossip.”
“Tribuno Candiano was like a god in this city,” said Berenice, “He was probably the greatest scriver of our era. But then they found out he’d been doctoring the financials, spending fortunes on archaeological digs and supposedly hierophantic artifacts. Then the company came crashing down. They lost a huge amount of talent after that,” said Berenice. “Including the hypatus.”
“You can just call him Orso, you know.”
“Thank you. I am well aware of that. Anyway, nearly everything got bought up by the Ziani family, but not many people stuck around to make sure the ship would still float. That tremendous exodus was a great boon to the other merchant houses, but Company Candiano has never really recovered.”
Sancia looked around. There were a lot fewer lights here, no floating lanterns, and almost no scrived carriages. The only impressive thing in sight was the Mountain of the Candianos, which loomed in the distance like a vast whale parting the seas. “No shit.”
Berenice watched the group of men skulking through the streets of the campo. They seemed to be following the outer wall. “Why aren’t they going deeper in? If this is as secretive as it’s supposed to be—why aren’t they headed straight for the Mountain?”
“You either hide secrets close to your heart,” said Sancia, “or out in the hinterlands. It must be somewhere close, though—otherwise they’d have grabbed a carriage, yes?”
They followed the men along the campo wall. Evening was coming on now, and the mist thickened as the sun withdrew. The pale lights of the Candiano campo were a brittle white—not at all the pleasant rosy or yellow hues of the other campos. They looked spectral and strange in the fog.
Then a constellation of lights emerged ahead—a tall, sprawling construct that Sancia had trouble making out. “Is that a…”
“Yes,” said Berenice quietly. “It’s a foundry.”
Finally the man came to the foundry gates. Sancia could read the stone sign above—CATTANEO FOUNDRY. Yet unlike most of the foundries she’d encountered in her life, this one did not seem to be operating: there was no stream of smoke, no quiet roar of equipment, no chatter or cries from the yards beyond.
They watched as the men entered through the gates. The guards out front were heavily armored, and heavily armed—yet they also seemed to be the only people around.
“The Cattaneo Foundry…” said Berenice. “I thought that one was closed when the house went bankrupt. What in hell is going on?”
Sancia spied a tall townhouse next to the foundry walls. “I’ll get a better look.”
“You’ll get a…Wait!” said Berenice.
Sancia trotted over, took off her gloves, and slowly scaled the side of the townhouse. As she climbed, Sancia could hear Berenice fretting down below, muttering, “Oh my God…Oh my God…”
Sancia nimbly pulled herself up onto the slate roof. From here she could see the whole of the foundry yards…and they were empty. Just yards and yards of blank mud or stone. It was a queer sight. Yet she could spy the men in the distance, filing into the foundry main facilities ahead, a huge, fortresslike structure of dark stone, with tiny windows, a copper roof, and dozens and dozens of smokestacks—though only one seemed to be operating, a small one on the west side, which sighed a narrow thread of gray smoke.
So the question is, thought Sancia, what are they making?
She watched the walls and yards of the foundry, and saw that although the facility appeared empty, it was not deserted. There were a handful of men standing along the walls or the ramparts of the foundry, and though it was hard to make out from this distance, she could see the gleam of scrived armor on their shoulders.
<This place gives me the creeps,> said Clef.
<Me too,> said Sancia. She took stock of the defenses, counting the guards, their positions, and the doors and gates throughout the facility. Then she looked at the main building, and she saw a handful of windows had light in them—there, in the corner rooms, on the third floor on the northwestern side. <But I think we need to get in there.>
Clef sighed. <I was worried you were going to say that.>
Sancia carefully climbed back down to the street level, where Berenice stood fuming. “Next time, at least consider asking me before you do that!”
“It’s not shut down,” said Sancia.
“What?”
“The foundry’s not shut down. There’s smoke or steam coming from some of the stacks. So it’s still forging something. Do you have any idea what?”
“Not at all. But the hypatus might. We can go back and consult with him, and then perhaps we can come up with a plan to—”
“No,” said Sancia. “There are twelve guards patrolling the foundry walls tonight. If this bastard listens to the captured sounds from the workshop and gets spooked, there could be fifty tomorrow—or they could move out altogether.”
“So what? Wait…” Berenice stared at her. “You surely aren’t proposing what I think you are—are you?”
“We’ve caught him unawares,” said Sancia. “We take advantage of the opportunity, or we lose it.”
“You want to break into a foundry? Right now? We don’t even know if anything’s going on in there!”
“There is. There are lights on the third floor in the northwest corner.”
Berenice narrowed her eyes. “The third floor…then the administrative offices, possibly?”
“So you know something about foundries. Do you know how to get into a foundry?”
“Well, certainly, but there are countless sachets required,” said Berenice. “But worse, there are only a few ways in, and even a skeleton crew can watch them all, unless you can…” Then she trailed off, staring into the distance.
“Unless you can what?”
Berenice glowered like she’d just had a thought she dearly didn’t want to have.
“Does this have anything to do with all the rigs you’re carrying with you?” asked Sancia.
Her mouth fell open. “How did you know about those?” Then a sheepish look crossed her face. “Oh. Right. You can, uh, hear them. I was going to say—unless you can make your own door somewhere.”
“And…can you do that?”
She squirmed. “I…Well. It’s all, ah…very experimental. And it will depend on finding the right bit of stone wall.”
19
Berenice led Sancia down to the canal running along the foundry. There they came upon a clutch of huge tunnels and pipes sticking out of the canal walls.
“Intake,” muttered Berenice as they reviewed them. “Outtake…Intake, intake, intake…and outtake.”
“These all look like iron,” said Sancia. “Not stone wall.”
“Yes, thank you, that’s clear.” She pointed at one, a huge, gaping iron pipe with a thick grate across its mouth. “That’s it. That’s the one—the metallurgical outtake pipe.”
“What are we going to do about the grate?”
“Go through it,” said Berenice. She walked to the closest tunnel and tried to climb onto its top, but despite her height, she rather pathetically slid back down the side. “Ah—little help?”
Sancia shook her head and gave her a boost. “I guess fabs and scrivers don’t get out much,” she muttered.
Together they crawled across the tunnel tops to the big outtake pipe. Berenice sat and took out a case of what appeared to be a dozen small, scrived components, and many small plates covered with complicated sigils. She selected one component—a slim metal wand whose rounded, bulbous tip looked like molten glass—and looked it over.
“What’s that?” asked Sancia.
“I’d made it to be a small spotlight, but we obviously need something a bit more now. Hmm.” She reviewed her components, selected a rounded handle with a bronze knob on the side, and slid the small end of the wand inside until there was a click. Then she took a long, thin plate, and slotted it into the side of the handle. “There. A heating element. That should do.”
“Do what?”
“Help me down. I’m going to get the grate out of the way.”
Sancia lowered Berenice down until the girl delicately balanced on the lip of the pipe. Then she lifted the wand to one of the big rivets holding up the grate, adjusted the knob on the side, and…
<Crap!> said Clef. <Shut your eyes, kid.>
<Why?>
The tip of the wand flared bright hot, like a shooting star had plummeted down to land in the scummy pipe. Sancia cringed and looked away, eyes watering. There was a loud, furious hissing sound. She looked back when it stopped, and saw the rivet was now a glowing blob of smoking, molten metal.
Berenice coughed and waved her hand in front of her face. “I’ll do the sides and the tops, and leave one rivet on the bottom. Then you pull me back up and I’ll attach an anchor to the top—like the one the captain used to weigh you down. This should pry the grate open, and we can slip inside.”