<Ugh.>
She took off a glove and felt the wall, then the ceiling. The foundry was so alive with scrivings that this felt like walking under a powerful waterfall—the sudden pressure almost knocked her over. But she held on, walking along the walls, her bare fingers trailing over the stone and the metal, until she felt a long, narrow, vertical cavity just ahead…
A hatch. A shaft.
She took her hand away, shook herself, and withdrew back down the hallway until she found a small door. A sign on the front read: LEXICON MAINTENANCE ACCESS. The lock on the front was deeply forbidding.
She took Clef out and stuck him in the keyhole. There was a burst of information, and Clef batted the lock’s defenses away like it was a wall of straw.
<That seemed easy,> she said, opening the door. The shaft within was narrow and ran perfectly straight, up and down, with ladder bars on the opposite side. It was dark within, so she couldn’t see what was above or below.
<It was. But…>
<But what?>
<There’s…something down there.>
<Yeah. The lexicon.> She reached out and started climbing up.
<Right. But it feels…familiar.>
<How do you mean?>
<I don’t know. It’s like…if you smelled the perfume of someone you hadn’t smelled in a long, long time. It’s weird. I’m not sure why.>
Sancia climbed until she came to the third floor. She turned until she was facing the door, and blindly found the handle. <Anyone out there?>
<Oh, hell yeah. This place is crawling with armed men. Go to the fourth floor. It’s deserted.>
She did as he asked, came to the fourth floor, and opened the hatch. This floor, unlike the others, had windows. Slashes of moonlight lay scattered across the blank stone floor. It looked like this area was mostly storage—lots of boxes, but not much else.
She glanced out a nearby window, got her bearings, and started off toward the administrative offices. <I’m guessing there aren’t any other unguarded passageways down to the next floor.>
<None.>
<Great. How secure are the windows?>
<Well…They’re basically scrived to be unbreakable, so no one, you know, tries to shoot bolts into the foundry. But it looks like they do swing open, at the tops, to let out heat or smoke.> There was a pause. <Uh, before you ask, they do open wide enough to let you in or out, probably.>
She smiled. <Excellent.>
* * *
Berenice huddled in a doorway beyond the foundry walls, squinting at the windows through a spyglass. She found it hard to focus. Despite her occasional dabbling in campo intrigue, she was not at all accustomed to such high-stakes trickery. She certainly hadn’t expected anyone to climb any buildings tonight, let alone break into a damned foundry.
Still, it seemed Sancia was right: something was going on, there on the third floor. She could make out a handful of people inside—but they seemed to be slowly gravitating toward the administrative offices.
That’s less than optimal, she thought. How will Sancia manage to get i—
She stopped.
Was that a window opening? There on the dark fourth floor?
She watched, openmouthed, as a small figure in black slipped out of the fourth-floor window and clung to the corner of the building.
“Ohhh my God,” said Berenice.
* * *
Sancia hung tight to the corner of the foundry, her fingers digging into the narrow gaps in the stones. She’d held on to trickier places in her time—but not many.
She slipped down inch by inch to the next floor. She found a dark window, which meant no one would be inside, hopefully. She wedged her boots into the stone, then reached out with her stiletto and inserted its tip into the gap at the top of the closed window. She gently pushed the handle of the blade until the window started opening. Once she’d gotten it open a crack, she pulled back until it was wide open. Then she climbed up and lowered herself down into the gap.
Clef said, <That was…>
<Amazing?> She was hanging by the inside lip of the window—she suddenly felt grateful about them being unbreakable—and she lowered herself until she stood on a desk.
<Amazingly stupid, maybe. Watch out, now. There are guards almost all around you, in the big area outside the door.>
She slipped off the desk and got her bearings. This seemed to be a large, empty meeting room, one that hadn’t been used in some time. She walked over to the door opposite the window and squinted through the keyhole. There was some kind of a wide, open area beyond, with four armored Candiano guards standing around, looking bored and tired.
“Whoof,” she said quietly. She stepped back and looked around. There were two other doors on the left and right, presumably leading to adjoining offices.
She walked over to the door on the right and tried the handle. It was unlocked. She silently opened it and looked in. Another office, empty and dark.
She closed it and went to the final door. Yet as she approached…
She stopped. <Was that a moan I just heard?> she said.
<Yeah,> said Clef. <And…it sure sounded to me like the fun kind of moan.>
Sancia got close to the door, knelt, and pressed a hand to the floor. She let the floor pour into her mind—a difficult thing, since there were so many scrivings wearing her stamina thin. Yet soon she felt it…
A bare foot. Just one, the ball of the foot pressed into the floor. And it was pumping, up and down.
<Yep,> said Clef. <Yep, yep. What I thought.>
Sancia peered through the keyhole. This office was somewhat grand. There were scrived lanterns inside, a long desk covered with old, wrinkled papers, and a set of wooden boxes. There was also a bed in the far corner, and there were two people on the bed, a man and a woman—and they were quite naked and obviously coupling, the man keeping one foot on the floor and his other knee on the bed.
Due to her condition, Sancia did not know a great deal about sex, but she got the impression that this was not particularly good sex. The woman was quite young, about her own age, and terribly pretty, and though her face was fixed in an expression of pleasure there was something anxious and artificial about it, like she was dreading the displeasure of the man more than she was enjoying the experience. And though the man had his back turned to her—his skinny, pale back—there was a mechanical and determined quality to his thrusting, like he’d set his mind to do a job and was hell-bent on doing it.
Sancia watched them, wondering what to do now. She didn’t think she could sneak out and snatch the papers off the desk. The girl kept looking around, anxious and yet bored, like she’d prefer to look at anything else than what was being done to her.
Then there was a knock from somewhere within the office—there must be another door there, she guessed, also leading to the open area beyond.
“Just a minute!” shouted the man, somewhat angrily. He doubled the pace of his thrusting. The girl cringed.
Another knock. “Sir?” said a muffled voice. “Mr. Ziani? It’s done.”
The man continued his endeavors.
“You said to notify you immediately,” said the voice.
The man stopped and bowed his head in frustration. The girl watched him warily.
<So…that’s Tomas Ziani?> said Sancia. <The guy who bought out all of Company Candiano?>
<I guess,> said Clef.
“Just a second!” shouted the man, louder. Then he turned and dug around on the floor for his clothes.
Sancia’s eyes shot wide. Though it wasn’t particularly bright in the room, she knew that face—the curls, the scraggly beard, the narrow cheeks.
It was her client. The man who’d turned on the imperiat that night in the Greens, and caused the blackouts—and the man who’d almost certainly had Sark killed.
* * *
She stared at him, trying not to move.
<Holy hell!> said Clef. <That…That’s the guy, isn’t it?>
<Yeah. That’s the guy,> she thought. The sight of him filled her with a raging mix of terror, fury, and confusion. She briefly considered leaping in and planting her stiletto in his gut. That seemed an appropriate way for him to die, naked and confused and sexually frustrated. But then she remembered the guards mere feet away from them, and thought better of it.
<So…this Ziani guy is who’s behind all this?> asked Clef.
<Shut up and let’s listen, Clef!>
Ziani pulled on a pair of hose. Then he sighed and barked, “Come in!”
A door opened somewhere in the office, and bright light spilled in. The nude girl in the bed pulled the sheets up to cover herself, glaring at them sullenly.
“Ignore her,” snapped Ziani. “And come in.”
A man entered the room and shut the door behind him. He appeared to be a clerk of some sorts, dressed in Candiano colors, and he carried a small wooden box with him.
“I assume if it was a success,” said Ziani, sitting at the desk, “you’d be looking much happier.”
“Did you expect a success, sir?” said the clerk, surprised.
Ziani impatiently waved a hand. “Just bring it over.”