Foundryside: A Novel (The Founders Trilogy) by Bennett Robert Jackson

Author:Bennett, Robert Jackson [Bennett, Robert Jackson]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: Crown/Archetype
Published: 2018-08-20T16:00:00+00:00

* * *

Silence filled the library. Nobody moved.

“How did you come to Tevanne?” asked Gregor.

“Snuck aboard a ship,” Sancia said softly. “Easy to stow away when you have the floorboards and the walls to tell you who’s coming and going. When I got off, I stole the name ‘Grado’ from a winery sign I saw, since everyone just expected me to have a last name. Hardest thing was figuring out the limits of what I could do. Touching everything, being everything…it nearly killed me.”

“What’s the nature of your augmentation?” asked Orso.

She tried to describe it—knowing what objects were feeling, what they’d felt, the sheer avalanche of sensation that she constantly fought to keep at bay. “I try to…to touch as few things as possible,” she said. “I can’t touch people. That’s too much. And if the scrivings in my skull get overtaxed, they burn, just burn, like hot lead in my bones. When I first came to Tevanne, I had to wrap myself in rags like a leper. It didn’t take me long to realize that what had been done to me was some kind of scriving. So I tried to find out how to get fixed. How to make me human again. But nothing in Tevanne is cheap.”

“That was why you stole the key?” asked Berenice. “To pay for a physiquere?”

“A physiquere who wouldn’t turn and sell me out to a merchant house,” said Sancia. “Yeah.”

“What?” said Orso, startled. “A what?”

“A…a physiquere,” she said. “One that can fix me.”

“A physiquere…who can fix you?” he said faintly. “Sancia…My God. You are aware that you are probably the only one of your kind alive, yes? I know I’ve never seen a scrumming scrived human in my life, and I’ve seen boatloads of mad shit! The idea of a physiquere who can just, I don’t know, patch you up—it’s preposterous!”

She stared at him. “But…but I’d been told that…that they’d found a physiquere who knew what to do.”

“Then either they were lying,” said Orso, “or being lied to. No one knows how to do what was done to you, let alone reverse it! They were probably going to either take your money and cut your throat, or take your money and sell you to the closest house!”

<Shit,> said Clef, dismayed.

Sancia was trembling. “So…so what are you saying? Are you saying I’m stuck like this…forever?”

“How should I know?” said Orso. “I told you, I’ve never even seen this before.”

“Sir,” hissed Berenice. “Some…tact? Please?”

Orso looked at her, and then Sancia, who was now white and quivering. “Oh, hell…Listen. After all this, you can stay here. With me, and Berenice. And maaaybe I try to figure out how in the hell they made you, and how to reverse it.”

“Really?” said Gregor. “That’s charitable of you, Orso.”

“It damned well isn’t!” he said. “The girl’s a goddamn marvel, who knows what kind of secrets she’s literally carrying around in her head!”

Gregor rolled his eyes. “Of course.”

“Do you think you could actually figure it out?” said Sancia.

“I think I have a better chance than every other dumb bastard in this city,” said Orso.

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