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Locklands
Locklands Read online
Locklands is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2022 by Robert Jackson Bennett
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Del Rey, an imprint of Random House, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.
Del Rey and the Circle colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.
Published in the United Kingdom by Jo Fletcher Books, an imprint of Quercus Editions Limited, London.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Bennett, Robert Jackson, author.
Title: Locklands / Robert Jackson Bennett.
Description: First Edition. | New York : Del Rey, [2022] | Series: The founders trilogy ; #3
Identifiers: LCCN 2021045838 (print) | LCCN 2021045839 (ebook) | ISBN 9781984820679 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781984820693 (ebook)
Subjects: GSAFD: Fantasy fiction.
Classification: LCC PS3602.E66455 L63 2022 (print) | LCC PS3602.E66455 (ebook) | DDC 813/.6—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021045838
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021045839
Ebook ISBN 9781984820693
randomhousebooks.com
Book design by Alexis Capitini, adapted for ebook
Title and part opener pages illustration by drawlab19/stock.adobe.com
Cover design and illustration: Will Staehle
ep_prh_6.0_140224945_c0_r0
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Epigraph
Part I: The Scriving Wars
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Part II: Cadence
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Part III: Jailbreak
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Part IV: The Door
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Part V: The Monsoon
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Epilogue: The Founders
Dedication
Acknowledgments
By Robert Jackson Bennett
About the Author
They say politics is the art of distributing pain. And scriving, of course, is the art of distributing intelligence.
I wonder—sometimes with excitement, other times with fear—what will happen when the two shall meet.
—Orso Ignacio, letter to Estelle Candiano
I
THE SCRIVING WARS
1
Are you ready?> whispered a voice.
Berenice opened her eyes. The morning sunlight reflected brightly off the ocean, and her vision adjusted slowly, the forms of the city walls and the ramparts and the coastal batteries calcifying in the glimmering light. She’d been meditating so deeply it took her a moment to remember—Am I in Old Tevanne? Or somewhere else?—but then her senses fully returned to her, and she saw.
Grattiara: a tiny fortress enclave balanced atop a thread of stone stretching into the Durazzo Sea, all ocean-gray walls and cloud-white towers and wheeling gulls. It wasn’t quite a town as much as a residue of civilization clinging to the battlements, the homes and huts like barnacles spreading across the hull of a ship. She watched as the little fishing boats trundled up to the piers, their sails pale and luminescent. They reminded her faintly of bat wings catching the first rays of dawn.
“Hell,” Berenice said quietly. “It’s almost pretty.”
Claudia picked her teeth with a length of wood.
&n
bsp; The winds shifted, and the reek of rot wormed into Berenice’s nostrils—undoubtedly from the refugee camp sprawling beyond the city’s fortifications. She slipped out her spyglass and glassed the camps on the hills to the northwest.
It all made for a cruelly pointed contrast: the town of Grattiara remained more or less impeccable, its scrived coastal batteries huge and hulking along the sea, the towers of the innermost fortifications still tall and elegant; but mere yards from them lay field upon field of ragged tents and improvised shelters and spoiled waters—a reminder of how much the world had changed beyond this tiny fortress town.
Claudia whispered:
Berenice turned to look. A small group of men were making their way down the stairs from the central keep’s gates, all colorfully dressed in shades of blue and red. She studied the keep above, its towers bedecked with espringal and shrieker batteries—scrived models she knew were at least four years out of date. And the walls, of course, weren’t scrived at all, just brick and mortar and decades of patching: no sigils, no strings, no arguments embedded in them to trick them into being preternaturally durable or strong.
“Once it gets here,” she murmured aloud, “it’s going to tear through this place like a hot knife through eel fat.”
Berenice wondered whether those estimates were accurate. If she had a massive army, and intended to use it to annihilate everything in its path—what road would she take, which rivers, and how fast would she move?
How tired I am, she thought, of such grisly questions.
“All good?” said Berenice.
whispered Vittorio in the back of her mind. He made eye contact with her, and his smile grew.
“They will,” she said. “Remember, both of you—this is purely a diplomatic operation. Just keep your eyes open, keep your gear tight and accessible—and if they make a move on us, remember your training.”
Diela blinked beside him, and Berenice felt a slow anxiety building in the back of the girl’s thoughts.
Diela nodded nervously, and said,
Berenice looked up. The men from the keep were close now. She put on her helmet, adjusting it so her eyes looked through its visor properly, and strapped it tight. Eight years I’ve waged this war, she thought, and I still can’t get one of these goddamned things to fit right.
She stood there, tall and assured in her dark armor, and watched as the Morsini men descended the stairs. Once men like this would have frightened or at least worried her, but those days were long since gone: there had been too many battles, and far too much death and horror, for merchant house men to haunt her thoughts.
I’m ready, she thought to herself. I’m ready for this.
Yet she felt a flicker of insecurity, sensing an absence like she’d forgotten something critical. She pulled her spyglass from her pocket and peered through it once more, though this time she glassed the distant ocean, far to the south.
At first she saw nothing but sea, yet then she spotted it—a tiny dot in the distance, just on the horizon.
Sancia and Clef, she thought. Keeping their distance. But they’re there. She’s there.
She heard footsteps, and quickly stowed the glass away.
God, my love. How I wish you were with me here today.
A voice from the stairs, prim and assured: “The governor will see you now, General Grimaldi.”
“Thank you,” Berenice said. “Please lead the way.”
* * *
—
As expected, they were forced to give up their arms before entering the keep proper, which they did without protest. Berenice watched as the Morsini sentries took their weapons and stored them in a large wooden crate beside the gate, which they fastened shut. Before Berenice could even voice the question, Claudia whispered,
“And that?” said one of the sentries, pointing at the crate in Vittorio’s arms.
“A gift for the governor,” explained Berenice.
“I’ll need to see it first,” said the man, “and I’ll be the one to take it.”
Berenice nodded to Vittorio, who placed the crate on the ground and opened it up.
The sentry peered in, then looked up at them in wary disbelief. “You sure you have the right box?”
“We do,” said Berenice.
The sentry sighed, shut the crate, and grunted as he picked it up. “If you say so,” he muttered.
They were admitted inside, the scrived doors falling back as their escorts led them on. Having been in many Morsini House installations in her time, Berenice found the keep vaguely familiar: the narrow, winding passageways, the walls of stained glass; and always there were guards, mercenaries, and contractors in all numbers of colors and armor types, though most of their armor was in some state of disrepair.
Finally the four of them were led to the main meeting chamber. It must have been a grand space in its zenith, but almost all the furniture had been removed to make way for a giant table covered in maps, which dominated the room. The sentries gestured, and Berenice walked to stand before it. She realized she knew the maps at a glance: they depicted the Daulo and Gothian nations just to the north. A massive blot of bright red was seeping through the territories there, so much so that it looked like the entire north was bleeding.
She recognized them, for she herself stared at such maps every day. Yet based on the colors and markings she was seeing, these maps were very out of date—much like the city’s defenses.
They think they’re hurrying, she thought. But they have no idea.
She studied the room. Mercenaries and administrators and scrivers sat in a row at the back of the room, waiting to be called upon. They glanced only momentarily at Berenice before looking to one man, who walked to stand above the maps at the far end of the table from her. He was well dressed and well arranged, with an elaborate scrived rapier sheathed at his side, but his face was pale and haggard, his eyes were sunken with exhaustion, and his beard was shot through with gray. Though Berenice had been informed that Governor Malti was only a decade or so older than her, the person before her looked much older.
Perhaps, she thought, this will be a very short conversation, and a lot of lives quickly saved.
The retinue of men in red and blue announced them: “General Grimaldi and the delegation from the Free State of Giva, Your Grace.”
Berenice removed her helmet and bo
wed. “Thank you for receiving us, Your Grace,” she said. Claudia, Vittorio, and Diela bowed as well, though they did not remove their helms.
Governor Malti slowly looked up from his maps, his eyebrows raised. He studied them with a mildly nonplussed expression. Berenice waited for him to talk, but he seemed in no rush.
Finally he simply said, “So. These are the mythical warriors of Giva.”
The statement hung in the musty air.
“We are, Your Grace,” said Berenice.
“I had almost thought Givans were a fairy story, like ghosts,” Malti said. His words were taut and merciless, like the twang of a bowstring. “Or perhaps the sky sprites my grandpa told me stood guard at the gates of Heaven itself.”
Berenice attempted a dignified smile. “I would much prefer that we were. Yet we are flesh and blood, and happy to talk to you here in the earthly realm, rather than in Heaven.”
Governor Malti returned the smile, but his was far chillier. “Of course. And you’ve come to discuss my situation here.”
“Yes, Your Grace. Concerning the refugees at your gates.”