by Aidan Harte
“Tell him I’d consider it a favor.”
She chuckled skeptically as she signaled back.
After a moment, she said, “Well, fancy that! In return, he wants to know how the angel works.”
“Tell him it’s a deal.”
Sofia relayed the message, then said, “I’ve got to go tell the Doc what’s up. There’s an emergency Signoria meeting this evening. Guess you’re the emergency.”
He smiled. “This should be ready when you return.”
“I’ll believe that when I see it.”
“Trust me,” he said.
Typical Concordian presumption . . . Strangely, she did.
CHAPTER 7
Girolamo Bernoulli’s origins are, inevitably, surrounded by the clutter of legend. None dared broach the subject after the Re-Formation, and he never discussed them. The folktales agree with each other as rarely as they match the historical record, and that occasional scholar courageous enough to eschew hagiography’s siren song is obliged to discard these several picturesque versions.2
The Engineers emerged in the last decades of the thirteenth century from a controversy soon forgotten,3 and the stage was clear for an actor of genius. The innocent lad we meet in the early thirteen twenties, dazzling the Curia’s preeminent Natural Philosophers with his mathematical gifts, is all but unrecognizable. While the man was solitary and secretive, the boy was noted for his friendships with the great theological and philosophical minds of the day. He cultivated many masters.4
CHAPTER 8
Before the Wave overturned Rasenna, the city was already upside down, its poor packed into high towers looking down on the nobility in their thick-walled palazzi. There was one exception, in the heart of old Rasenna, where the palazzi clustered around Tower Scaligeri like worshippers praying to an idol. The family name derived from the dizzying stairway to the tower’s only entrance on its uppermost floor.
The Morello family grew up on the southern periphery of the center of power. They were the Bardini’s only real rivals in Art Banderia, but they were ambitious to be more than mere soldiers, and on the back of their growing wealth they gilded the scales of their Dragon crest and descended from their towers to a palazzo more suited to their rising status. Their abandoned towers went to poorer cousins, bodyguards for the new palazzo, betraying an insecurity that names of longer standing and surer footing had outgrown.
This was obvious to those Rasenneisi who remembered life before the Wave, but there were few of those left. To everyone else, Palazzo Morello was simply the finest building in Rasenna, and Lord Morello the city’s first citizen—excepting, of course, the Contessa, the last of the Scaligeri.
Gaetano Morello was a broad-shouldered youth combining strength with restless agility, as balanced as a good sword should be. So why did he never feel sure of his footing in his father’s study? It was a refined, high-ceilinged chamber of wood with too much varnish lined with scrolls with too much ink, and he hated it.
Gaetano knew his father was waiting for him to go. The old man’s jealous fingers were fondling the seal on his ring, fearful even of those of his own blood. Gaetano did not shout or pound the desk with his fist. He did something more foolish: he attempted reason. “Say what you must in the Signoria, it doesn’t matter anyway, but afterward we should make terms,” he said quietly.
“What for?”
Gaetano groaned and put his hands on his head, which was shaven, like every bandieratoro’s. He was still beardless, and his dark brows framed gentle, sincere, and now pleading eyes. “If we stop now, we can consolidate. If we keep pushing, Doc will push back.”
The very martial qualities that made Gaetano a leader on the streets as well as in the workshop somehow disqualified him from being taken seriously in his father’s study. Ordinarily, he didn’t care—he’d never envied Valentino’s influence—but now, when their father’s unrealistic ambition was making more bloodshed inevitable, he wished for just a portion of his brother’s glib verbal facility.
Quintus Morello pushed back his chair with a beleaguered air, retreated to the window, and sighed. “I miss Valentino, don’t you?”
Valentino’s mischievous counsel would only acerbate their problems, but suggesting that would be a complete waste of time. “I do, Father. His delay is strange.”
“Stranger still that he hasn’t written to explain.” As usual, Quintus Morello’s attention was fixed on Tower Bardini. The old man was a contradiction. The hair that had once curled up like a tower fire at night was now graying, and just as his pale skin became more wine-blotched, so the expensive gonfaloniere robes had faded to the colors of wilting autumn. But he was still a Morello, descended from fearless bandieratori, and such blood would never be water. He had the bearing of a patrician; his brow was noble, his nose Grecian—but beneath these assets, his face crumpled into skeptical lip and timid chin.
“Gaetano, everywhere I look I see Bardini reversals,” he said. “You say it’s different on the streets, but look! There is the smoke of another burnout, proof writ large that we are winning. What do you see that I cannot?”
“We’re winning because Bardini hasn’t struck back.”
“Because he can’t,” Quintus said blithely.
“Because he’s strong enough to wait!” Gaetano took a breath and regained his composure. “The bridge will let them use that strength. If it goes ahead, we are undone. If you let this become a war, we lose, either way—they beat us, or Concord makes us an example to enforce peace.”
“Perhaps.”
Gaetano watched his arguments running aground against willful blindness. His father had never stooped to study the Art Banderia even though it was the means by which the Morello had risen. Gaetano had been taught by an uncle he promptly succeeded as workshop maestro. History had repeated itself in Quintus’s sons: while Gaetano dutifully trained the Morello bandieratori, Valentino pursued politics and power.
That was the real reason Quintus missed Valentino. Deciding was difficult. It was easier to let his sons fight it out and then choose a middle path.
Quintus lifted his chin and straightened his neck against the tall collar, as he always did when he had to exercise authority. “I will,” he announced with gravity, “see what comes from the meeting.”
Gaetano sighed. This ambiguous commitment was obviously the best he could hope for.
A strangely smiling servant opened the door suddenly, and Quintus became suddenly lordly. “How dare you enter here without knocking?” he barked. “I should have you—” He stopped suddenly. “Why the devil are you grinning, man?”
“Your Lordship’s son has returned!”
“At last!” cried Quintus, and flew past Gaetano to the door.
Draped still in his ambassador’s cloak, Valentino Morello climbed the stairway slowly. In the great hall below, servants and bandieratori alike looked on in disbelief as his father and brother simultaneously backed away. The young man was much changed. His hair, once dark and neatly coiffed, had grown long and wild and was streaked with white. His pallid skin stretched insubstantially over a bruised skeleton.
Quintus strove to fill the uncomfortable silence with babble. “What timing! Arriving the very hour you’re most needed, Valentino. The prospect of victory makes Gaetano nervous. Could you credit it? He counsels me to make peace with the Doctor.”
Valentino ignored Gaetano. “Father, I have seen the future in our enemy’s face. If we do not pacify Rasenna, Concord will do it for us. With fire.”
“I am so glad to have you back!” Quintus exclaimed, drawing his older son into the room. “Gaetano, that will be all.”
As the door slammed behind him, Gaetano felt the small influence he’d built in the last few weeks collapse like a burning tower, but as he walked down the steps to join his bandieratori, he discovered he felt unburdened, not disappointed. He did not belong in that room. Servitude was more congenial for a sword. “Back to your sets!” he shouted, clapping his hands.
Quintu
s quickly released Valentino from an awkward embrace. “Barely there at all, son. You’ve left the better part behind in Concord!”
“I have just been exhumed.”
Quintus choose to treat this as a joke. “We shall fatten you up as we talk. The Signoria meets in an hour.”
Valentino’s face was ashen like the faces of the damned in the murals of Hell’s torment, though he did not grimace or weep like those doomed souls. His smile was that of one who had retreated from flesh too far to find the way back to the common symmetry.
“I may accompany you?” he asked.
“Of course—you must tell us all of Concord’s answer.”
For an instant Valentino’s courtier smile warped into a bestial snarl before he mastered himself. “I must show you,” he whispered.
CHAPTER 9
The condottieri rode through the north gate, knowing that eyes were watching from every window of every tower, though this pair would have been noticed even if Rasenneisi were more accustomed to strangers—each man and his horse, draped in the same gaudy patterns, looked and moved like one great beast.
Condottieri did not pretend to chivalry, and when knights of Europa said mercenaries were beasts, condottieri laughed at their deluded hypocrisy; obviously they were all beasts together.
After a while the steeply winding streets so confused the condottieri that they dismounted, allowing the faces behind the dark windows better study. The first was a big fellow, arranged in a dignified, sensible hierarchy: broad chest and shoulders supporting a stout neck and manfully frowning face, capped with a squared-off, proudly plumed helmet. Like his piebald charger he was groomed fastidiously, and his armor caught bolts of light that fell between towers and sent them shimmering back blindingly.
The other was skinny and ragged like a scarecrow, a poorly gotten-together specimen beside his colleague, yet quicker in most respects, and certainly quicker to smile, which made him the mob’s first target. All condottieri were tanned by life in the saddle, but the darkness of this man’s skin must have originated in the peninsula’s southern extreme, perhaps even farther. His armor was older than his partner’s or perhaps just less well polished, and it was softened by a floral-patterned green kerchief that wound around his long neck like ivy.
“We’re under attack!” he cried as young beggars squeezed out of impossibly narrow crevasses and dropped from unbelievably high windows. He scattered coins, but that only left a gap for the next bombardment, making their progress slow. They were relieved to finally find a particularly tall tower draped with black banners and the crest depicting two flags crossed in front of a charging hog emblazoned with the robust motto:
Who Shall Divide Us?
“Thank the Virgin,” the Scarecrow laughed, “this must be Tower Bardini. I’m almost out of ammunition.”
The Doctor was watching from the workshop entrance while Sofia told him about this morning’s events. In her excitement, their quarrel was quite forgotten. Sofia was not easily impressed, but this young engineer had apparently managed it, and the Doctor was curious to meet him.
“Call off your hounds, Signore!” a voice called out.
“Don’t tell me a condottiere doesn’t know the quickest way to break a siege?” he responded.
The Scarecrow sighed, “I thought as much,” and threw his purse to one of the beggars. “Boy! Yours—if you can keep it!”
The luckless child bolted with his fellows in fast pursuit. As the men tied up their horses, the Doctor whispered to Sofia, “I’d rather a certain Concordian did not see us fraternize with these gentlemen.”
“I’ll get him out of the workshop.”
“Then send for Guercho. I need to confer before the meeting.”
Sofia looked at the strangers. “Why are they dressed like that? We’re not at war, yet.” There was almost a family resemblance between her and the Doctor as she stood with arms crossed and studied the strangers with a cool distance.
“It’s to advertise their profession.”
“What do they want?” she said with distaste.
“Gainful employment, I fear. I’ll show them the view first.”
The Doctor waved her off and advanced with a smile and a bow. “Gentlemen, welcome. Doctor Bardini at your service.”
The Scarecrow gave a neat bow. “My name’s Colonel Levi; this is Colonel Scarpelli.”
Scarpelli removed his plumed helmet to reveal a neat but old-fashioned bowl cut like some militant monk of a century earlier. He did not bow, and if the Doctor was offended, he hid it well.
“Would you prefer to talk privately or have you time to take a tour of the workshop?”
“How about it, Levi? I know I’ve always wanted to see how tough Rasenneisi really are.”
The Doctor looked up at Scarpelli with a bland smile and recognized a killer. The condottiere towered over him by more than a braccia, and his arms were sculpted muscle. He was balanced—and ready, too.
Levi laughingly interrupted the face-off. “Perhaps later, Doctor. First let’s talk.”
As the Doctor led the way up the endless stairway, Levi systematically complimented Rasenna’s history, architecture, food, women, and fighters until Scarpelli interrupted, “It’s true, then? You train Concordians?”
The Doctor turned on the step. “I do.”
In the moment’s silence, Levi became aware how high they’d climbed and how far they could fall and laughed. “I’m sure you have your reasons.”
The Doctor ignored him. “Whatever your opinion of engineers, Colonel Scarpelli, you will agree they are sensible. Forgive my crudity, but the Guild uses their nobility like a stud farm. Blue blood means nothing to them, but it’s respected by the scum who make up the infantry. Officer selection is competitive, so Families who can afford it send their boys here.”
“I don’t doubt Concord’s policy is sensible. I merely ask how you stomach training the enemy.”
The Doctor nearly smiled. “Rasenna’s not important enough to have enemies anymore. If one must be a servant, is it not better to be a useful one?”
Scarpelli looked stony-faced at the Doctor.
“A sensible attitude,” said Levi.
The Doctor grunted, as indifferent to flattery as to antagonism, and continued up.
Levi hung back and whispered, “Madonna, Scarpelli! If you can’t be polite, behave.”
The other spit, “Why are we here? It’s pointless begging from beggars.”
Cat was waiting on the roof for the strangers. As Levi admired the view, it rubbed against his legs with a friendly whine, hoping for a bribe. For a rude soldier he was indecorously handsome, though hardly any part of him matched together; no painter ever painted a knight with such an unserious smile.
“Enough shadowboxing,” said the Doctor.
“John Acuto sends his regards,” said Levi.
“Please return mine. I’ve long followed the exploits of the Hawk’s Company. All Etruria has.”
“You know of his quarrel with Concord these last few years?”
“Men rarely admire their employer for long. I’m only surprised they haven’t reconciled.”
“It’s no tiff,” Levi replied seriously.
The Doctor shrugged. “I spend much time up here. When you can’t see details, you concentrate on important things. A condottiere who wants a raise picks a fight with the city employing him. If that doesn’t work, he starts working for its enemies.”
Levi chuckled. “War is salary negotiation by other means? Doctor, you make us sound cynical.”
Scarpelli interrupted, “It’s a mark of condottieri professionalism to remain neutral.”
“This is different?” said the Doctor.
“This is personal.”
“If you say so. But come, it hardly matters what I think. You didn’t come to hear secondhand gossip.”
Levi agreed, considering how to put it politely.
The Doctor didn’t flinch when Scarpelli drew his sword.
“T
his sword’s for hire, Bardini.”
“I have soldiers.”
“You need an army.”
“A freelance army,” said Levi hastily. “Respectfully, we offer our services.”
The Doctor smiled. “A Contract? Then this is a question for our government, not a citizen.”
Levi said, “We have been frank with you, Doctor. Do likewise, I beg you. It’s John Acuto’s business to know who to talk to.”
The Doctor looked at them seriously. “I’ll carry your offer to the Signoria if you prefer, but Rasenna has never dealt with condottieri and,” he said, jabbing a thumb to his chest, “as long as it listens to my advice, it never will.”
Scarpelli grunted disgustedly and resheathed his sword. Levi tilted his head at a certain angle the Doctor recognized.
“Perhaps,” he began, “if we make a donation to your workshop, you could represent our case in a summer light.”
“I appreciate the offer, but again I must refuse. Condottieri are not in Rasenna’s interests, and so not in mine. What need have we of an army? We lost our war twenty years ago. I wish you success in yours, but we cannot be part of it.”
Scarpelli didn’t bother concealing his irritation. “I thought Rasenneisi were supposed to be passionate, but you’re as sensible as an engineer. We’re wasting time, Levi.”
“Doctor, you said you train Concordians,” Levi said. “How many?”
“This year just one. There’s another in a workshop across the river.”
“Formerly there were more?”
“Many more,” the Doctor said cautiously. “Concord seems to have changed its policy.”