Foundryside (The Founders Trilogy, #1)

by Robert Jackson Bennett

“You said to me once that you were not afraid to die. You meant it, didn’t you?” He thought about it, and nodded. “Yeah. A guy who’s not afraid to die likely isn’t too torn up about getting other people killed. You might not want it, but it’s a responsibility you’re willing to accept, isn’t it?”

“I’ve seen a lot of death, Sancia,” he said. “My father and brother died in a carriage accident when I was young. One I nearly died in myself. I joined the military to bring honor to their name, but instead I got so many young men killed—and, again, I survived. I keep surviving, it seems. It’s taught me many things. After Dantua…it was like a magic spell had been lifted from my eyes. We are making these horrors. We are doing this to ourselves. We have to change. We must change.”

“How can you say that?” she said. “You, a Dandolo? You know more than anyone that this is what all merchant houses do.” He stood, furious. “Then help me cast them down!” he cried. She stared at him. “You…you would overthrow the merchant houses?” she asked. “Even your own?” “Sometimes you need a little revolution to make a lot of good. Look at this place!” He gestured at the Gulf. “How can these people fix the world if they can’t fix their own city?” He bowed his head. “And look at us,” he said quietly. “Look at what they’ve made of us.”

“It makes you think you’re a thing. It makes you resign yourself to becoming a crude good. It makes things out of people so thoroughly, they…they don’t even know that they’ve become things. Even after you’re free, you don’t even know how to be free! It changes your reality, and you don’t know how to change it back!” Another step. “It’s a system,” she said. “A…device. Tevanne and the world it builds for us…it’s a machine.”