Quietus

by Tristan Palmgren

  He pushed himself to the calefactory and threw the door open as loudly as he could, stomping to the embers of the fireplace. He sorted his remaining firewood into stacks to give his hands something to do. The noise was a mockery. It was no more a real sound than the shouting inside his head. Just needles in his ears.

  For a while, Niccoluccio waited by the embers, uncertain what to do next. At least, he pretended to be. His mind was already made up, but his heart wouldn’t tolerate it.

  The only thing left to do was leave Sacro Cuore.

  He had to strike out, like the others. He would die if he stayed. If the lingering pest didn’t claim him, his food wouldn’t last.

  Sacro Cuore depended on winter grain and milk shipments from its lay community. If anyone there yet lived, they would surely want to leave once they heard that no one in Sacro Cuore – other than himself – had survived. They might send their own search party. The monastery grounds were large enough that they probably wouldn’t discover him. They would strike out without him. If, indeed, they hadn’t already visited and done just that already.

  He opened the calefactory’s doors and stood in the chill, staring at what was left. The place wasn’t important, he told himself. The brotherhood was. Or had been. Believing that was the only way he was going to convince himself to step out of the gates. The only brotherhood left here was the communion of death.

  A good monk shouldn’t fear death. He should close himself off from the world, accept his place in Purgatory and dream of the coming Paradise.

  But the past few weeks had taught Niccoluccio that he wasn’t as good a monk as he’d thought he was. Any people at all would do for brotherhood now. He shut the door again and hurried about packing.

  8

  Three days after Christmas, a pillar of fire burned high above the Palais des Papes.

  Meloku watched it through silk curtains on the third floor of her cardinal’s residence. The shuttle stood a kilometer above Avignon’s soiled streets, unmanned, firing its rockets hard. The only reason it hadn’t shot off on an escape trajectory was that it was firing its forward thrusters just as hard. The shuttle roared like a cyclone, haloed in an inferno.

  The problem with all this was the fuel expenditure. She could hide the shuttle’s trip to Avignon easily enough. It had been taking an automated aerial survey of Marseilles, and Avignon was only a short distance from its return course. It had been more difficult, but doable, to bounce her communications signals between satellites to trick NAI into thinking her updates were still coming from Venice. But she couldn’t hide half a missing fuel tank. This stunt had burned through that much in just three minutes.

  But when she’d started planning this, Companion had revealed several software packages it had, until now, concealed from her. While Meloku watched slack-jawed, Companion had altered the shuttle’s refueling schedule, added false extra legs onto trips between study sites, and then extracted its infiltrators without leaving any trace.

  She had black software of her own, but she had been forbidden from using it in all but dire emergencies. If Companion had deployed these resources on her behalf earlier, she wouldn’t have needed to hitch her way to Avignon on the legate’s coattails. But Companion had been testing her. It wanted to see what she could do without a crutch.

  “We take this project very seriously,” Companion had told her.

  “‘We?’”

  “The amalgamates and I.”

  “Why are the amalgamates taking a personal interest in a backwater like this plane?”

  “You’ll be briefed soon.” Companion added, teasingly, “Though you’ve seen enough that you should be able to guess on your own.”

  More tests. Meloku reclined into her seat and waited. Two minutes after the pillar of flame dwindled to nothing, audio filtering detected the footsteps of five men hurrying up the stairs. Her door clapped open.

  She didn’t turn.

  “It happened exactly like I said,” she said.

  Cardinal de Colville said, “The whole of Avignon saw it, Edessa.” For the first time since she’d met him, he sounded like he didn’t know what to do.

  “They heard it, too,” said a man Meloku didn’t know. From his accent, he was from Languedoc. Probably a veteran of its vicious Inquisition.

  De Colville said, “It was even more magnificent than you said.”

  “Terrible,” Meloku stressed. “It’s a terrible thing. The first half of an epistle from the Son.”

  The cardinal asked, “Do you know what the message is?”

  “Are we doomed?” another man asked.

  Meloku let the question hang in the air for a full minute. Gauging how long the men waited, she could tell how thoroughly she’d succeeded. Yesterday, no man besides de Colville would speak with her for other than insincere pleasantries. Today, they would eat out of her palm if she asked them to.

  “I need to speak with His Holiness,” she said.

  She’d established herself in Avignon with a minimum of fuss, until now. The Papal legate from St Mark’s had bribed his way past Venice’s quarantine officers. After reaching Avignon, she’d promptly left him for the more powerful Cardinal de Colville. De Colville’s appetites were infamous even among the debauched church hierarchy. Unlike many of his colleagues, he remained sincerely devout. If he saw a contradiction there, he never seemed bothered by it.

  She’d waited until she’d gotten into the most public place she could. Today, while touring the Palais des Papes with him, she’d cried out and collapsed, clutching her hands. Her demiorganics had manifested a minor repulsive field that split the flesh of her wrists and spilled blood onto the marble floors.

  She hadn’t dared call it stigmata. Better to let de Colville’s friends draw their own conclusions. She’d cut her nails short for traveling. Everyone could see they weren’t long enough to cut so deeply. She’d looked straight at de Colville and announced that she had received a vision from the Virgin. A pillar of flame would alight over the papal residence later that night.

  Now, Meloku stood. She primly folded her sleeves over her scabbed-over wounds. She’d turned away all attempts to dress them. She turned to de Colville. The cardinal had planned to spend most of the night out playing at cards, gambling half his estate away. He was dressed in a padded red doublet under a white surcote. He was bashful about his bald scalp, and hid it under an elaborately folded hood. The costume was wholly secular.

  If the papacy had ever been a primarily spiritual authority, it had been long ago. Now its spirituality masked a nexus of raw temporal power.

  He took a step away. Meloku knew at once that she wouldn’t have to share his bed again. But she wasn’t done with him yet.

  “I will need a carriage to the papal residence,” she said, and hugged her arms to her chest. “I can’t be expected to tolerate these filthy streets in a state like this.”

  De Colville said, “I had left my horses and driver at Jourdonnais’s when the fire erupted.” Jourdonnais was his gambling friend. “I came as fast as we could.”

  “Then I should expect that you would get it.”

  For a moment, Meloku wondered if she might have pushed too far. Until just this morning, she’d been here at his pleasure. Now she was asking him to serve her. She held her expression steady. Finally, he gave a stiff bow and backed out of the door.

  Too long a wait later, her augmented hearing picked up de Colville’s wagon clopping down the street. By the time it clattered to a stop, she was already at the front door. De Colville’s driver startled at her approach. Preternatural “foresight” would only enhance her reputation. Word would get around.

  De Colville, happily, was nowhere to be seen. It was small wonder he hadn’t come. The seat was hardly large enough for one person. His wagon was a bumpy, poorly built wooden ramshackle. And this was the property of one of the wealthiest men in Europe. Even compared to other primitive planes Meloku had visited, this one had a long way to go.

  Meloku hugged her arms
to herself to keep herself warm. Her demiorganics could block the sting of the cold, but they still insisted that she huddle up to preserve her core heat. The smell was worse than the cold. Avignon was the filthiest city she’d seen yet. Though the papacy had called Avignon its home for nearly half a century, the city had yet to have a rudimentary rubbish disposal system. Open sewage runnels lined its streets.

  She could have traced her course by the smell of urine and stale beer. Cardinal de Colville lived near a number of taverns and whorehouses. There was no place in Avignon without them. The highest-ranking ecclesiastical officials in Avignon lived in splendor unparalleled on this side of the continent, but the city was simultaneously home to the world’s poorest preachers and laborers. The squalor invaded the rich men’s streets.

  When the plague reached Avignon, it would find rich feeding. Meloku projected that casualties here would be a significant fraction above other cities. The boarding houses that served the church’s legions of clerks and accountants were so tightly packed that they were already a haven for fatal diseases. The higher church officials would do well to flee. Thanks to Cardinal de Colville, Meloku already knew some of their plans.

  They were what she hoped to prevent.

  Ordinarily, the streets would be still and silent at this time of night. Tonight, men and women stood outside the taverns and brothels, some naked or in their underclothes. Meloku passed two preachers giving impromptu sermons on the fire. Rumors that a woman had predicted the fire would soon permeate every stratum of the city.

  No one was panicking – yet. These people lived in what they believed to be an age of miracles. The pillar of fire was just one more way their God manifested Himself in their lives. They were waiting to hear what it meant. Meloku was ready to tell them.

  She wasn’t accustomed to influencing things so directly. The amalgamates preferred a softer touch. But this assignment was an exception among exceptions.

  Most of the Unity’s peoples agreed that the amalgamates controlled the Unity, but were a little spottier on the how of it. The amalgamates ruled their Core Worlds directly, of course, through edicts enforced by their NAIs and agents. Otherwise, the amalgamates ostensibly retained control only of the gateways. Each member plane retained its own choice of political and economic systems. The amalgamates only adjudicated in trade disputes or anything else that might lead to conflict.

  It was no secret that the amalgamates’ agents roamed the halls of power everywhere. Most member planes accepted them because the economic, cultural, and security benefits of belonging to the Unity were so attractive. Others became satellites to the Unity, maintaining only a handful of modest trade links. The amalgamates, in their many and varied ways, still made sure that their wishes were represented on those planes. And then there were even more unaligned worlds, colonies, outposts, still wormed through with the amalgamates’ agents.

  The Unity was less a federation than an espiocracy, a government by spies. Even the power brokers among whom Meloku had spent her teenage years suspected little about how deep and far the amalgamates’ influence extended.

  The Palais des Papes presented a stone, white-walled, crenelated face to the street. Its windows glowed with torch and candlelight. It looked more like a lord’s castle than the home of a godly man. Especially here in Avignon, the papacy’s venality was no secret. Clement VI was one of the most profligate men who’d ever held his office. He showered money on his cardinals, many of whom were his nephews and cousins.

  Infrared detected not one person sleeping. Cécile, the Countess of Turenne, came to the door when Meloku’s driver informed the guards of their arrival. Cécile, it was rumored, was Clement’s lover. She was a slight, sharp-cheeked, pale-haired woman. She spent all of her time at the papal palace rather than her own residence, acted as hostess for Clement’s parties. Meloku was surprised when a pulse scan detected no scent of sex about her, even days-old. Maybe the rumors were wrong for once.

  The countess asked, “Madam Akropolites? You arrived earlier than I was told you might.”

  Meloku bowed and nodded without answering. She didn’t ask for the countess’s name. Even if the rumors weren’t true, the countess surely must have been aware of them. She stepped past as soon as the countess stepped aside. She exchanged pleasantries as the countess guided her through the halls, but kept her purposes to herself. After only a minute, it became clear that she was having the effect she intended. The countess was stuttering, off-balance.

  She led Meloku to an audience chamber hung with gold-lined tapestries and a jeweled chandelier. Pope Clement VI sat cloaked in layers of multihued silk. He was bald but for a fringe of puffy white hair. He spoke with a clear voice. But he wasn’t a quarter as impressive as Meloku had imagined. He had trouble meeting Meloku’s eyes. His red cap couldn’t hide his cold, sweaty forehead. Infrared revealed a racing pulse. The noise and light had terrified him, deeply.

  He would listen to anyone who told him what to do about it.

  Meloku gifted him with a smile. She could afford to be generous. She had entered this room already a victor.

  An hour later, she left Clement pale and shaking. Her wagon was waiting. De Colville had somehow caught up with it, shivering and hugging his arms for warmth. Meloku guessed that he’d probably tried to enter the papal palace and been turned away. The bitter curl of his lips confirmed her guess.

  She climbed aboard the wagon. For a moment, he looked as though he might remain there, dumbfounded. As she told the driver to take her back, though, de Colville finally climbed aboard. The wagon’s bench only provided comfortable space for one passenger, but he forced his way beside her.

  He asked, “Well? How does His Holiness fare?”

  “For Christ’s vicar on Earth, seeing an actual miracle left him white.”

  De Colville was one of Clement’s strongest supporters among the College of Cardinals, but he let the bait pass without biting. “What did you tell him?”

  “That the fire was the wrath of Christ. When I received my vision from the Virgin, she told me she had tried to restrain His holy anger. The pestilence ravaging the south is coming here, where it will strike worst of all.”

  De Colville swallowed. “Then needs we must leave the city for the countryside. The Curia will be able to–”

  “No.” She hadn’t dared take that tone of voice with him before. “I believe the Virgin Mother spoke to His Holiness through me, unworthy as I am. When I collapsed today, I knew what she wanted. The church must remain here, in Avignon.”

  “You said the pestilence will annihilate us.”

  “Christ originally intended to end all men, everywhere. The Virgin begged for clemency, and persuaded him to send the pestilence instead. The pestilence is a punishment, no less for the church than for all men. Trying to escape is like a child trying to run from the rod. It will only make it worse in the end.”

  “So we’re to expose ourselves to destruction on your word?”

  “Not my word. By Law.”

  “Or else what will happen?”

  Meloku turned to look through his eyes. “Do you think you could escape God’s punishment?”

  He couldn’t meet her stare for more than a moment. He grunted, and settled back into his bench.

  Meloku allowed herself another moment of satisfaction. Clement and his hierarchy would probably have fled to the countryside. They would have stood a higher chance of escaping the worst of the plague. She didn’t want them all alive. She wanted them weak and in turmoil. Easily controlled.

  The moment of elation faded. She’d won a coup tonight, but tonight would end. Clement had been terrified, but daylight would strengthen his resolve. Meanwhile, the church hierarchy was always disobedient and discordant, even to His Holiness. She had much more work to do. As if to prove it, de Colville asked, “How long have you been planning this?”

  “Beg pardon, Your Eminence?”

  “That was a very well-timed vision this morning. It happened just when several of
the men of His Holiness’s court were in earshot.”

  Meloku held up her hands, still brown with dried blood. “It was more than a vision. The Virgin’s guidance always arrives at the moment it’s needed.”

  “The divine revelations of the saints always came in private, not in public.”

  Meloku was sure he was bluffing, but couldn’t be bothered to ask Companion to dig up counterexamples among the natives’ myths. “Do you think I created the pillar of flame with my bare hands?”

  He hastily shook his head. “Something divine certainly happened this night.”

  “Then you have no recourse but to take my word as truth. I can leave your home if you doubt me.”

  “Most of the Curia and all of the College of Cardinals know that you became my mistress as soon as you arrived in Avignon. You’re already tarnished by that. If you were to abandon me, all of them would certainly know that you came here from no deep feeling, but to seek an avenue into their offices of power.”

  Meloku glanced back at him, taking a deeper measure of him. When he thought she was just a Greek outcast making herself available to satisfy his desires, he’d been open and welcoming, but he’d certainly never treated her like an equal. He’d dictated the course of her day to her, when she must stay inside, and whom she had permission to speak with. In the course of a night, she’d turned from a mistress into a political power.

  He’d adapted much faster than she’d thought. He was already treating her with the suspicion that he would other power players. “You think my revelations convenient.”

  “Far be it from me to ever suggest that they would be planned for a woman’s benefit.”

  “They need not be. I will no doubt have several powerful visitors over the next few months, if the Virgin continues to bless me. My host would be at the center of their society.” And he would no doubt continue to provide access to high church office.

  There wasn’t much firelight on the streets, but the little there glimmered in de Colville’s eyes. “If offense was taken, I humbly retract my words.”