by Aidan Harte
“That’s true,” he said thoughtfully, waiting for more.
“I don’t want to go there especially. I want to leave here.”
“Then perhaps you’re not a pilgrim but a fugitive.”
“I’m neither.”
“Perhaps you are and don’t know it. You are running from something. What is it?” He pulled up the rope fully.
She couldn’t go back. “Liars,” she said.
“A common complaint, but I cannot help you. There are liars in Oltremare, some of the best. Plenty on board too. Alas, Signorina, you picked the wrong boat.”
Nevertheless, he dropped the rope. “But perhaps you’re running from a particular liar?”
“What does it matter?” Sofia reached for the rope, only to have it pulled away again.
“Well, I need to know what kind of shipmate is on the end of my line.”
“If I don’t like liars, I’m honest.”
“Ack! Whatever else you might be, you are a weak logician. Even liars hate to be lied to. But my question is whether you are escaping a dishonest world, in which case you are a philosopher like myself and are welcome.”
The rope lowered, then was quickly yanked up again.
“Or you’re running away from someone who fooled you, or helped you fool yourself, in which case you’re a coward.”
“I’m not a coward!” Sofia’s voice sounded small next to the sea’s grand and indifferent silence.
The rope finally dropped to the boardwalk, and the sailor said, “As it happens, I’m both. The sea’s got enough salt already. You’re welcome aboard, but hurry—tide’s changing.”
Levi found her sitting by a dying fire, keeping warm, wrapped in the Scaligeri banner. If there was no country far enough to escape the past, at least the Hawk’s Company was a place she could lose herself. This time there was no one else to blame for deception. Of course war entailed murder, rapine, and massacre. What else could it be?
“The Company’s part in Gubbio,” she started. “Did you know?”
He sat down by the fire. “That wasn’t the Hawk’s Company I joined. After I heard, I thought about leaving, but—” He sat down with a sigh. “What will you do?”
“He should retire,” Sofia muttered, “go home to his wife.”
“He couldn’t disband the Company if he wanted to. All these men are far from home—what would they do? Take up farming? Even if they wanted to, they’d be killed before they picked up a pitchfork.”
“By who?”
“By Etruria! Do you think we are welcome guests? Feuds turn to wars when towns can hire help. We’re fuel on a burning fire. We’re pests, and individually we’d be exterminated like pests.”
Levi mimed squashing bugs—splat, splurge, splug—then grinned. “Together, that’s something different. Forgive me; I know Rasenneisi don’t go in much for unity.”
Sofia punched Levi in the arm. “Illuminate me.”
“Ow! Together, we get paid to make and not to make war. Together, kings pay us money and respect—that’s the real reason we fight our unwinnable war.”
“You told the Doc it was Etruria’s war. You said Concord had to be stopped for everyone’s sake.”
“I did?” He laughed. “Madonna, I’ll say anything when I’m selling.”
“You’re a bunch of chicken hearts.”
“Don’t judge us so harshly. Most of us weren’t lucky enough to be born with names like yours, and the few who were are bastards or second sons left out of their fathers’ estates.”
“Which were you, a second son or a bastard?” Sofia snapped. Condottieri were only one link in the chain shackling Etruria. War paid for itself, peace brought mass unemployment, so war’s purpose became self-perpetration. “Sorry,” she mumbled.
“Well, it is more glamorous than plowing. Not many homeless thieves get to play at being knights.”
She poked the fire. Was this nobility? An overflowing pot pouring disenfranchised rejects into other lands, spreading disorder and war. In Rasenna, there was a river of blood. In Concord, a different type of aristocracy, a brood of monsters. Everywhere, the noble gave birth to the bestial. The title she’d been so jealous of, the system she’d been a part of—it forged the chains.
“Stay,” Levi said.
“What choice have I? I’ve got nowhere to go.”
CHAPTER 63
“Thought I’d find you here. Sure it’s safe down there?”
Pedro didn’t look up. “I borrowed your tools to repair the malfunction. Hope that’s all right.”
He was crouching on the narrow shelf where Piazza Luna abruptly terminated. “I don’t understand it. I’ve been taking depth samples. There’s no deviation from what’s normal at this time of year.”
“That’s because it hasn’t happened yet. The individual partials of a Wave don’t need to move to transfer energy. For buio, the past, present, and future don’t come in any sequence. They’re just different states of existence, permeable states.”
“Oh,” Pedro said, frowning, “that explains this then.”
He scooped up some water in a beaker and held it still until tiny globules began breaking free. They hovered above the surface until the wind took them or they ran out of energy and fell.
“That’s right,” said Giovanni. “Whatever’s causing this is weak because it’s in the future. It’s growing stronger as we get closer.”
They both looked at the river gloomily until Giovanni said, “I’m the same person I was.”
“No, Captain, you’re not. If the truth got out, it would tear Rasenna apart again. They’d fight for the privilege of hanging you. Does the Doc know?”
“No one knows. Sofia didn’t either.”
Pedro laughed suddenly. “I know that. The Contessa would have cut your heart out. If by some miracle Rasenna survives this, you have to go.”
“I know.”
“So, can we survive it?”
“I don’t know. I’ve been working on it but—” Giovanni struggled to maintain a philosophical distance. “Only another Wave, out of sync by half a pulse, can cancel a Wave. But it must be as strong or stronger.”
Pedro looked back at the river. “What’s stronger than that?”
“No power in the world—none that I know.”
Pedro threw down the beaker. “Where’s your salt, Captain? Before I knew anything about Natural Philosophy, I used to figure out things by hearing what they did. Show me how the Wave works . . .”
Sketches and scribbled-out calculations were strewn all over the studiola’s floor.
Working alone, Giovanni hadn’t made much progress. He tried to explain the impasse. “Thinking the Wave is something than can be unleashed overnight keeps Etruria terrified, but it can’t: it takes huge amounts of energy.”
“From where?”
“The Curia’s Architects were obsessed by acoustics. That’s how my grandfather won the competition to build the Molè: his design was a great spiral based on Euclid’s extreme and mean ratio, a number that the Curia believed revealed the name of God. My grandfather wasn’t that superstitious, but he did believe it was a power he could harness.”
Giovanni took out the main lens of Pedro’s magnifier. He extended the segments and said, “The engineers secretly built another building under the Molè with that same spiral reversed.” He flicked his wrist, and the magnifier inverted. “An anti-Molè, if you will. Together they amplify whatever power is generated within. The Curia wanted a cathedral filled with songs of praise. My grandfather had other plans. After the Revolution, the Beast became a prison for men and water, the perfect place to collect, distill, and perfect fear. Over time, the Water comes to associate Man with this torture, so when it’s finally set loose on a town—”
“—the Wave is triggered by the town’s own population. Elegant,” Pedro said with uneasy admiration. “What was he like, Giovanni?”
“I barely remember. Always busy. I saw even less of him than my father. What I did see was that everyone respec
ted him. I was different then; I would have done anything to impress him.”
“Sorry; I shouldn’t have asked.”
Giovanni shook his head angrily, then looked up. “So. Any ideas?”
Pedro was doodling. “Maybe. You?”
“Maybe. Remember the day I came here? Sofia told me signaling was your primitive way of communicating. I found it ingenious, though I didn’t contradict her.”
Pedro smiled. “Fast learner.”
“It’s an efficient means of communication if you have limited power. We can’t hope to match the Molè’s power—unless we steal some.”
He showed Pedro a sketch of something like a church spire connected to an engine. “A machine that transmits a signal with a pulse frequency of 1.6 will resonate with the Molè.”
“Allowing their magnifier to magnify our own signal.”
“That’s the idea—like the signals the eggs emit, but over a longer distance. If the buio hear it as they approach Rasenna, the Wave won’t form. But it’ll take time to build, and this isn’t something we can afford to mess up. What’s your idea?”
Pedro held up Giovanni’s Whistler. “This thing works by listening for the echo, right? Can you teach it a new tune?” He handed Giovanni a sheet on which he had matched a sequence of numbers and musical notes. “Something with a progression that occurs at the intervals equal to the ratio—”
Giovanni read, “1-2-3-5-8—”
“And so on. We can play it at the bridge, so if anything gets past your transmitter or we miscalculate, it’s a fail-safe.”
“It’s an elegant solution. An engineer’s solution. Vettori would be proud.”
Pedro reddened as he adjusted the rod’s dial. “Wonder what a golden spiral sounds like.”
“Don’t underestimate them again,” the Doctor cautioned. “It won’t be long before they figure out the Wave signal is blocked. That’s if your plan works.”
“It’ll work.”
The Doctor shrugged. “If it doesn’t, we won’t be around to worry about it. Assuming it does, Podesta, I think we need to start making friends with other giants. You’re looking down at your bridge, as usual. Try looking beyond.”
“South?”
“A year ago all those towns exhausted by war or bankrupted by condottieri were resigned to vassalage. Now we’ve reminded them that Rasenna once led a Southern League against Concord.”
Giovanni looked at the land south of Rasenna, cooling as night drew on, and he imagined the wild possibility of Tarquinia, Salerno, Ariminum, Caere, Vulci, and Veii not as rivals but as allies. Some would be suspicious of any gesture of friendship, some would wait and let rivals risk the wrath of Concord, but might some raise a flag?
“You think we can bring the south together?”
The Doctor showed the letter he’d drafted. “Podesta, we have to. I don’t know why Concord is willing to waste another Wave on us, but that willingness tells me they won’t back down easily.”
“We’ll bring it to the Signoria tomorrow.” Giovanni stopped on his way down the ladder. “That lament Sofia sang on the night the bridge opened—”
“‘The River’s Song.’”
“Where did she learn it?”
“From me. It was something my sister taught me—a strange lullaby, but then, my sister was a strange woman. Why do you ask?”
“No reason. Golden dreams, Doctor.”
The Doctor grabbed an orange, looked south, and whistled. A grand alliance was optimistic, but the inescapable fact was that only with a miracle or combination of miracles could Rasenna survive.
“What do you think, ugly? We got a prayer?”
Cat moaned skeptically.
He threw an orange peel. “Bah. All cats are pessimists.”
CHAPTER 64
The three wise men fought on two fronts, redrafting the Contract night after night, battling Ariminumese intransigence on one side and John Acuto’s temper on the other.
Sofia missed Levi and was glad to see him approach the mess tent.
“Yuri, I’m taking your little helper. Watch out, Sofia; I think Acuto sees a protégée in you. He wants you to see the business side of Contracting, not just the glamour.”
Sofia threw a wet dishcloth. “I’d prefer to kill Concordians if that’s still on the menu.”
“By the legion! But not until we get this damned Contract signed. Come on, you’ll enjoy the cut and thrust of negotiation.”
“Do I get to talk?” Sofia said, leaping into the saddle.
“Certainly not.” He laughed.
“Why is this Contract taking so long? Doesn’t Acuto want to get home to his wife?”
“Acuto’s been saying that for the last decade.”
“Maybe he’s afraid of going home.”
Levi glanced over his shoulder. “You can relate?”
“Go to hell.”
“Well, anyway, he has no choice. Contracts take time, and I can tell you, I’ve seen tough negotiators, but these take the prize. For example, we’d usually be sold supplies at cost price—”
“To prevent you from raiding the contato.”
“It’s the done thing. But word’s out that Acuto will fight Concord regardless of price.”
“Last I looked you were condottieri. Why don’t you throw your weight around?”
“Time was, we would. But Acuto’s taking this shining knight business more seriously the older he gets. Scarpelli thinks you’re a bad influence. I’m inclined to agree.”
“I know you’re a mercenary, Levi, but since when are you such a mercenary?”
He laughed. “I just don’t think we need to advertise our good deeds. We should be taking advantage of townsfolk, not the other way around.”
As the notary brought the session to order, Levi whispered, “Remember, you’re here to watch, listen, and learn from the professionals. The trick is never to lose your temper.”
He stood. “My Lords, we think we’ve finally found a payment schedule that will suit—”
The doge interrupted, “Colonel, new information has emerged that will change the terms of agreement.”
Levi’s smile faltered. “My Lord, at this late hour—”
“In fact, the situation has so changed that it remains to be seen if we need you at all.” The doge held up a letter. “Do you recognize this seal?”
Levi and Scarpelli looked at each other blankly, but Sofia spoke up. “It’s Rasenna’s seal.”
Scarpelli threw her a look that said be quiet or be gone.
“Correct, young lady. Your friends are only concerned with our country’s military landscape, but Rasenna returns to the map of Etruria at last—and she returns rich. Soon they will have bankers giving loans.”
This suggestion prompted nervous smiles from the Signoria—most were scions of banking families.
Levi took the chance to interrupt. “I fail to see what relevance—”
“Precisely,” the doge snapped. “You fail to see, but Rasenna’s new podesta does not. He sees Ariminum’s preeminence and invites us to lead a reformed Southern League. It remains to be seen what scraps are left in this alliance for the dogs of war.”
Struggling to maintain his composure, Levi stood. “With respect, Doge, it is naive to—”
“Be seated! This house will not be lectured to!”
“But you will lecture us and waste our time.”
“Levi,” Scarpelli cautioned.
But Levi was beyond caring. “My Lords, it may amuse you to imagine yourselves empire builders, but such fantasies can be fatal. War’s not something to play at. You risk the wrath of John Acuto and Concord both. While you daydream, one will knock down your walls and the other will burn your towers.”
“You threaten us, Colonel?”
“Consider it augury. Rich enough to buy an army is rich enough to tempt Concord. Hiring the Hawk’s Company is a logical deterrent; joining this league would be a senseless provocation. Concord’s aims are in Europa—all it wants from
southern Etruria is peace. Ariminum is rich enough to rent an army—but you must be realistic. You are bankers and merchants, not fighters.”
“Perhaps not, but the men of Rasenna are.”
Scarpelli stood, pulling Levi up with him. “We should adjourn. We’ve all got some rethinking to do.”
“My Lord?”
The doge had been so busy glowering at Levi that he’d forgotten Sofia’s presence.
“Yes, my child?” he said pleasantly.
“What is the new podesta’s name?”
He lifted the scroll close to his face. “A Bardini or a Morello, I suppose. Who’s in charge these days? Hmm, unusual: no family game given, just an initial. It must be a Bardini. It’s signed Giovanni B.”
As they left the city with yapping dogs at their heels, the Dwarf admonished Sofia for interrupting.
She was in a dark, cold place where a storm was kindling. Even his death was a lie! To think, if she’d never discovered his true identity, what joy she’d be feeling. The dagger was barbed every way; she couldn’t let it be, and she couldn’t pull it out.
“You were told to keep your mouth shut!” the Dwarf fumed.
Sofia ignored him. “Levi, this league is a trap. Rasenna’s new podesta is a Concordian spy.”
Levi shook his head slowly. “That wouldn’t make sense. Concord has always ruled by division.”
“Just like condottieri,” she muttered.
“Not quite,” Scarpelli said. “Concord has long-term goals.”
“And we do it for money.” The Dwarf laughed.
“Maybe the League’s designed to fail. If Rasenna brings all the towns together only to betray them, it’ll finish the cause of unity for good.”
“Too subtle,” Levi said dismissively, “but it is surprising that Ariminum is even considering this alliance. They’ve always exploited the other southern cities; they have that much in common with Concord. If Rasenna’s growing rich by trade, it’s as big a threat to Ariminum as Concord.”
“But don’t forget,” said Scarpelli, “Ariminum’s got the fear!”
“You see that doge standing up to Concord?”
“He stood up to Acuto,” said the Dwarf.