by Aidan Harte
“Then what’s it good for?”
“Changing the rules. Concord will try to make our walls our prison—they’ll want to starve us, bomb us, and burn us, then roll up their siege towers and spit out an invasion. With serpentine, we can decapitate their towers when they approach. They’ll have to approach on foot, between rows of burning toppling stacks.”
“We need to cast cannons then?”
“Small ones, with tempered iron. I already have smiths working on prototypes.”
Pedro tried to conceal his misgivings on finding the engineer so adept at the art of war. “This isn’t just for Rasenna, is it?”
Giovanni wasn’t listening. He rubbed tired eyes, feeling the chemical sting. “When I came here, I’d lost faith in myself; she believed in me.”
Pedro saw his discomfort and changed the subject. “What do you suppose Bernoulli was looking for in alchemists’ recipe books?”
“I don’t have to guess,” Giovanni said, suddenly angry. “Power. In whatever form he could harness it. That’s all he was ever looking for and—” He stopped himself, then went on more calmly, “In any case, it gives Concord’s legions tactical advantage in battle, just as hydroengineering gives them strategic advantage. The Ebionites didn’t know how to use it safely.”
“They kept blowing themselves up?”
“It’s prone to accidental combustion when dusty. Bernoulli found a solution: just add water. It makes a better weapon, too. The flame spreads evenly before exploding. You can change the ratio depending on whether you want noise, light, or power. I haven’t perfected the mixture, but I’ll make sure it’s loud and smoky. Legions are used to winning, so anything we can do to puncture their complacency is to our advantage.”
Pedro looked serious. “We can’t win a war by avoiding battle. Sooner or later, we’ll have to make contact.”
“Superior discipline beat us, not technology. Up until now, our bandieratori have been expending too much energy on noise and color. The Doctor is training them to coordinate like a Concordian phalanx.”
Pedro interrupted abruptly, “Can you increase the speed serpentine burns?”
“Yes, but increased pressure explodes cannon.”
“We need many small explosions, not one big one.”
“Then we’d have to get close, give up the advantage of our walls. We can’t plant them like caltrops either. It’s impossible to keep the fuse and powder dry.”
“I know how we can get close and keep our distance.”
Giovanni smiled. “Tell me more, Maestro.”
CHAPTER 61
As the Doctor studied the letter, Giovanni told him Pedro’s scheme in broad strokes.
He chuckled. “Won’t even the odds, but it’ll give them a scare. I hope the legion they send is the Twelfth. Luparino never did have much salt.”
The letter that had brought Giovanni to the Tower Bardini that evening was the latest of the exchange that had been carried out over the summer. In contrast to previous missives, its language was polite, almost timid.
Giovanni was optimistic. “Perhaps we’ll have more time than expected before they grasp our intentions.”
The Doctor rolled up the letter and handed it back. “Podesta, I’ve got a nose for this type of thing. They know. We’d better be ready, stocked up and locked up, within a month.”
Giovanni descended the northern slope less complacently than he’d climbed it. Concord was coming. He had overlooked some crucial factor. The place where he had first met Sofia was now a building site, transubstantiated into valuable real estate by other currents. The bridge was deserted. He stopped by a Lion, looking down at the water, thinking of the old saw about rivers always changing. Perhaps men seemed equally inconsistent to buio.
“Giovanni!”
He looked over to the embankment. “Pedro! You gave me a fright!”
Pedro came up. “One of the eggs malfunctioned. How was the Doc?”
“More illuminating than usual. We’ve got to step up preparations.”
“I suppose we can fix this later. There hasn’t been much buio activity.”
Halfway across the bridge, they stopped. Something was standing at the far end, waiting.
“Turn around slowly, Pedro.”
They turned to find several buio blocking the way north also. Turning again, more buio had joined the first. They began slowly advancing.
“What do we do, Giovanni?”
Jump? No. Surviving the river again was as unlikely as lighting striking twice. Giovanni looked up at Tower Bardini, hoping to see the Doctor’s silhouette against the moon. For once he wasn’t there.
The watery columns seeped closer until they were surrounded.
Giovanni knew that judgment had finally come.
“Pedro, you’ll have to run when they attack me.”
Water must be water.
“Who said that?” Giovanni cried.
We. Our souls hear your soul.
“Who said what?” Pedro asked.
“You can’t hear them?”
“Hear what?”
Many voices spoke at once in his mind. The columns were immobile and indistinguishable. Small ripples passed over and leaped the space between them.
Something has changed, he thought. The Reverend Mother said all water was one—if she was right, then Lucia had accidentally doomed him by having him “contemplate Water.” Now they knew he was a Bernoulli and knew too about Gubbio. Every day he paid a little more, but it didn’t matter. Some debts are too large to pay. However they knew, they’d come for revenge.
Thou shall not kill.
Giovanni looked around at the faceless pillars.
“You drown men!”
Not murder. Water must be water.
“If you didn’t come to kill me—”
You must feel Wind.
The night was still and peaceful.
“. . . no.”
“Giovanni, what are they saying?”
Forgotten much. Wind blows in wet world, not dry world.
“The river?”
We will be part of it. Stop us.
“I don’t understand!”
Water must be water. Stop us.
The buio were sinking away into puddles.
“From doing what?”
Forgotten much.
The puddles flowed over the edge.
“Answer me!” he shouted.
They were alone on the bridge, unchanged, as if the visitation had not happened.
“You didn’t hear anything, Pedro?”
“No, I saw but—what did they say?”
Giovanni looked down into the dark rushing water. What sounded like riddles was obviously much more than that.
“They kept saying ‘Thou shall not kill’ and ‘Water must be water.’”
Pedro could see the Concordian was too upset to reason. “If buio have language, perhaps they have morality of a sort.”
“You don’t consider drowning murder?” Giovanni snapped.
“I’m just trying to be logical! It’s not air that kills fish but fishermen, right? So drowning isn’t murder because it’s natural. What else?”
“They kept talking about a wind in a wet world.”
Both were silent, then, at the same moment. “A current?”
“Madonna!” said Pedro.
“Something’s going to make them kill, and they want us to stop it,” said Giovanni. “They didn’t come for revenge. They came for help.”
Later still, Pedro was somberly studying the calculations scribbled on the studiola wall. “Can we stop it? I mean, power to create a forced Wave; once it’s formed, the energy has to be used. That’s Bernoulli’s Second Law, right?”
“That’s why we can’t let the Wave form. If it forms, we’re sunk—literally. The technology’s moved on since Gubbio, and there’s been time to store enough energy for a Wave five times as large.”
“That would wipe Rasenna off the map! Why not just send an army?”
<
br /> “I have no idea.”
“Don’t you?” Pedro said with sudden hostility. “Why did you think the buio came to punish you?”
Giovanni shook his head blankly.
Pedro stood up. “Captain, what’s your father’s name?”
“. . . Jacopo.”
“His surname.”
“An engineer’s father is Concord,” he began in a confident voice that faded to nothing. “I knew if anyone figured it out, it would be you.”
Pedro pushed Giovanni over in his chair. “We made you podesta!”
“I told you not to!” Giovanni cried.
Pedro picked the only weapon to hand, a chisel. “My father trusted you. I should kill you.”
Giovanni stood up and faced him. “It’s your right.”
“It’s the right of every Rasenneisi, Concordian!”
Giovanni doubled over with the punch.
“You’re lucky that we need your native cunning.”
Giovanni saw the chisel drop and heard the door slam.
CHAPTER 62
The weeks had blurred into drawn-out months, and hope of the Ariminumese ever signing the Contract was ebbing daily.
Tents clustering in cliques redrew the camp’s lines crooked. Fights broke out every day—over equipment, over gambling, over Ariminumese women, over many things, and ultimately all over nothing. Faction thrives on hopelessness. With no prospect of fighting Concord, the enemy became Ariminumese merchants, who took advantage; John Acuto, who did not pay advances; and each other, who were available. The Company sank into chaotic equilibrium all too familiar to Sofia. It was like being sober among drunks.
Even waning, John Acuto’s star still shone: it was easy to fight and get dirty, harder to keep one’s armor polished. Levi said Acuto liked her because she stood up to him, but the past had molded them to fit—she was a tomboy raised by a fighter, and Acuto was a father without a son. But the more they talked, the more of a contradiction he was: a man who excelled at war but hated it. He fought for profit like a man doing penance. What sin is absolved by blood? she wondered.
“I never understand race who build Molè but cannot queue.” Yuri had sprained his wrist breaking up one of the daily mealtime fights. Sofia made a splint and brought him to the priest, who doubled as camp surgeon.
He examined her work. “Nicely done, Signorina.”
“I knew a doctor once.”
“He taught you well. I couldn’t do better. Yuri, just avoid punching anyone for the next few days.”
“I no promise, Father. These Etrurians, they crazies,” said Yuri darkly, leaving the tent.
“Keep him out of trouble,” the priest said.
“I wouldn’t have to if you told John Acuto to leave Ariminum. He listens to you, Father. Tell him—tell him the guts recommend it.”
The priest smiled as he lit the fire. “You think augury is sham too?”
Sofia didn’t blush. “All that matters is that the old man believes it. You have a responsibility. He asks your advice. Maybe you don’t see it, but every passing day undercuts his authority.”
“So you think someone’s planning mutiny too?”
“Mutiny doesn’t need planning any more than weeds need planting.”
The priest moved a pile of books and dropped a cushion on the tent floor. “Sit down, Sofia,” he said, seating himself among the litter of feathers and small bones.
“Are you going to tell my future?”
“Don’t patronize an old man. Even now you could see more than I ever have, if you’d let yourself.”
“Yuri said you’ve correctly predicted the outcomes of battles.”
“Two parts experience to one part luck. But once—ah, once, my Sight was keen. The Virgin’s turned her back on me since Gubbio.”
Sofia drew back. “Gubbio? But—that was Concord!”
The priest picked up a bone. He breathed out heavily and said clearly, “Concord sent the Wave. We sacked the town.”
Sofia just looked at him.
“The Company had just come down from Europa. Etruria was a great feast waiting to be eaten. The Concordians saw us for what we were, savages with just enough discipline to be useful.” While the priest spoke, his fingers moved the bones around as if trying to reassemble some long-dead beast.
“They sent us there in the aftermath. What happened, happened. We don’t talk about it. I’m not saying we became saints after Gubbio but . . . It didn’t matter, no matter what we did; it hung about us like a smell. I suppose Concord realized Acuto had lost his appetite and that’s why it terminated his Contract. Those who joined later, Levi and the rest, still think this life is a great adventure. They’re too young to know the cost, too young even to consider it. I think Harry’s become another casualty of Gubbio in Acuto’s mind, another body thrown on the heap. I told you, Sofia, everyone in a Company is a soldier: smiths, grooms, cooks—”
“And priests.”
“You too if you stay. Go home before this becomes home.”
“I have no home!” she shouted, kicking the bones away, then, more calmly, “So since then you’ve been rattling bones and gutting birds for show?”
“The price of blood is always too high.”
Sofia looked into the smoldering fire. “You give yourself too much credit. You’re guilty because you were weak, but you’re not responsible. The general wears the laurels.”
She ran past drunken soldiers carousing by campfires. They weren’t men—they were wolves in human pelts, like the old story. Outside the camp, there was a large weathered rock overlooking the valley. The old bull stood on it, studying Ariminum in the night.
“That sentry’s not too sharp, Rasenna. Good thing Concord doesn’t think we’re worth spying on.”
“Is it true?”
“No. Luigi’s a decent watch. I doubt you make much noise, and I’ve been sneaking around for years—”
“I said, is it true!”
“Why are you crying, girl?”
“The sack of Gubbio. Who’s responsible?”
The general slumped. “Who told you?”
“Answer me!”
A long time passed. Sofia prayed he would scoff and deny, but a decade of excuses no longer held up.
“I am.”
“Bastard.”
“I didn’t plan it, but I let it happen. If I’d known my destiny was to go down to Gubbio—”
“I’ve heard that excuse before. No one made you take that choice.”
“I’m guilty, no argument there, but I would have ended there no matter which road I chose. I was caught up in History. The war’s been going on in Europa since my father’s time. The Concordians think they’ll end it, but I doubt it. The Anglish and Franks quarrel like brothers, growing strong in the struggle. My family was the people Etrurians call Small—poor. My ambition was to be a knight until I saw how knights show fealty. I wanted to be rich, not dead, so I sought a new fortune. I decided the wisest course in a violent world was to fight for profit. Ha! The idiocy young men call wisdom. In Etruria, every town was a kingdom and any man could be king, if he was strong. A place where the midday sun is hot, the women are beautiful, and towns are willing to pay others to fight for them—sounds a better place to be a knight, doesn’t it?” He smiled, tasting the dream afresh.
“The Etrurians called us condottieri instead of knights. We didn’t care what they called us so long as they paid. We hitched our carroccio to the Empire’s expansion, all the while still thinking we were forging our own destiny even as we fled from what we knew was right. That naïveté made us ideal. The Concordians put us in the right place, knowing our nature. After what was left of the town was—”
He stopped and searched for the word. “—subdued, the Concordian engineers came and did worse things.”
“Don’t you dare shift the blame!”
“You misunderstand—we stood by. That was worst thing Concord did. They left us no one else to blame.”
“You expect pi
ty?”
“No. I know this debt will never be paid. There were plenty ready to hire us after we chased the Moor’s Company out of Etruria, and we became rich. It didn’t help drown out the screaming. Look, Sofia, I’m a soldier of Fortune abandoned by Fortune!”
She turned away. “I can’t.”
Ariminum’s port never slept. Fleets of loutish fat-bellied ships waited to be unloaded and loaded, to come and go between the numberless trading partners of the Republic. In a town so busy making money, a girl, beautiful or not, tearful or not, running by the street sellers’ stalls was sure to be ignored.
The gauntlet of islands protecting the harbor from the sea’s temper also stopped wind from dispelling the accumulated stench. The sea’s conquest of the decaying land was a slow march by stealth, a mist that suited those who wanted to be lost.
Sofia stopped only when she reached the end of the dock. It was quieter here, where the ships were bound for more obscure ports. At the end of a long narrow pier an elderly yet resolutely undignified boat was moored. At first sight it looked long-abandoned, but on closer examination its sails were neatly rigged.
The old sailor who’d been charily studying the horizon noticed the girl emerge from the mist. Like his boat, he’d seen better days. His skin was cracked leather like an old turtle’s and burned bright red by a life on the water. Even on a day when the sun was a diffused blush in the mist, he squinted as if looking directly at it. “Ahoy, Signorina! Come to me, kiss me, and say you’ll miss me?”
Sofia wiped her eyes and examined him with hostility. Another wolf, probably.
“If you’re here to accuse me of besmirching your honor, I must warn you that I smirch only when invited.”
“Where do you sail?”
“Farther than you want to go, I’ll wager. Oltremare, once known as the Holy Land, if you believe that.”
“I can cook.”
The sailor disappeared. A moment later, the end of a thick corded rope hit the dock with a thump. As she reached for it, it suddenly pulled back up.
“What’s the purpose of your pilgrimage? Business or pleasure? There’s a war there, you know.”
“War’s everywhere.”