Quietus

by Tristan Palmgren

  She said, “Don’t worry as much about the assignment. The new agents will help us fill in a lot of the gaps in our knowledge.”

  He said nothing to that, and she didn’t elaborate. She hadn’t said it with any malice, and yet dread tickled the back of his throat.

  He didn’t know which of them had cut the power that bound their voices, but he didn’t speak to her again for the rest of the night. Maybe she was always listening. It would have been comforting to think so.

  More likely, though, he was simply beneath her notice.

  He figured out where he was without trying hard. He could still see the silhouette of the cathedral and the Tower of the Castagna. Both landmarks so near meant that his brother’s home was scarcely a fifteen-minute walk away.

  The candles by the windows were still lit. They usually were. Dioneo spent most of his nights away. He claimed politicking at late dinners, but even his children knew that he had a mistress, a widow.

  Niccoluccio fumbled his key and tried to fit it to the lock, a more difficult operation than he imagined. His fingers kept disobeying. On his third try, the door opened of its own accord. Dioneo’s wife, Catella, stood behind it. Niccoluccio stood there a moment, key drooped in his hand. Catella always retired long before Dioneo returned home.

  Catella curtsied and stepped back. She moved quickly, anxiously. “Beg your pardon, Brother Niccoluccio. You have a guest. I thought you would be back at your usual time and let her stay, but after it got late I didn’t want to turn her out to the dark.”

  “Who?”

  “She said she was a friend of yours, from across town.”

  Niccoluccio couldn’t think of any woman friends aside from Habidah. He strode past Catella and into the parlor. His head was light at the thought of Habidah.

  The woman seated in the parlor stood as he entered. She was not Habidah. He nearly didn’t recognize her. Like everyone in Florence, she’d changed. Ivy-vine wrinkles crawled around her eyes. She’d shed weight and become unpleasantly slender. Her hair had turned stringier.

  He stammered her name at the same moment that it occurred to him. “Elisa?”

  Her voice choked. “I’d heard you’d come back to Florence, but I didn’t think you would… I mean, I didn’t believe…”

  Niccoluccio stepped closer. Over the years, he’d thought he’d hardened his heart to this woman. He’d pushed her memory away, carefully and deliberately. He’d regretted the things they’d done and prayed for forgiveness for her as well as for him. During his last few years at Sacro Cuore, he’d thought of her as he might someone dead, so far away and lost she’d seemed.

  All his effort fell away at the sight of her. Before he knew it, he was embracing her.

  Her hair smelled of the peppers people used to ward off the pestilence. She wrapped her arms around him. He could hardly hear her over the pounding in his ears.

  “…believe you’d survived! My parents died, my husband, his parents, our children, even Pietro…”

  Holding her was something between a memory and a dream. He wasn’t sure he would have sounded any more coherent if he’d tried to speak. He stayed with her until she got her voice under control.

  So much of what he’d believed at Sacro Cuore was without foundation. It had existed only in his head. He’d never dreamed of a world as large as the one Habidah had given him. He’d been so small that he’d tried to never allow himself to think of Elisa, who had been part of his life longer than anyone but Dioneo.

  How amazing it was that he’d ever thought of himself as better for that.

  When she was able, she let go. He led her to a cushioned chair, and sat across from her. She said, “People at churches have been saying your name. When I heard you’d come back, I had to see you. I didn’t think it was possible. Everyone else in my life is gone.”

  Some of her words were just catching up with him. “Husband?” he stammered.

  She nodded. “God has seen fit to extinguish all of the lights of my life. My children…” For a moment, Niccoluccio thought she was going to weep again, but she held her voice together. “They left me behind. I didn’t think that I would find any part of my life again.”

  “Pietro, too?”

  “Taken the first week the pestilence visited Florence, almost.”

  The news sent a spike through his heart, as deep a gouge as it had been when he’d discovered his father’s death. Pietro was another enormous part of him that had lapsed into silence while he’d been at Sacro Cuore.

  He saw it so clearly now. He thought he’d been looking into the face of God, but all he’d done was stare at brick walls.

  He said, “I had no idea. There are no words adequate to contain my condolences. Every time I think the world could not hold more misery, I find out its depths go even deeper.”

  “Even that seems pale next to what I’ve heard you went through. Your whole monastery–”

  “If my brothers were here, they would be the first to tell you that God has not taken your children to deprive you, but to receive them into Grace.”

  Elisa had always been perceptive. She asked, “Would you say that?”

  He had no answer suitable for her hearing. None that he wanted to say to himself. When she offered her hands, he accepted them into his. “You and I have a great deal to talk through before we get to that.”

  22

  Meloku had never needed to take acting lessons or have programs fake a talent for it. She’d been acting since she was a child, pretending to be happy to see her parents, to go to school. She hadn’t been herself for so long that she’d forgotten who that person was.

  She attended the papal court only on its last day. When Queen Joanna entered, Meloku stood along with the rest of the spectators. Every day of her trial so far, Joanna had worn a different and fabulously elaborate gown. Meloku had no idea where Joanna had found the money. Probably creditors hoping to recoup their costs when she was restored.

  This morning, Joanna’s dress was blinding, virginal white. Chastity and innocence. Though Joanna and Andreas had consummated their marriage, it would have been ridiculous for a queen to remain unmarried and unheired. Joanna aimed to put herself back on the royal marriage market.

  She’d gotten exactly what she wanted.

  This morning, Clement embraced her in front of hundreds of spectators and the bitterly muttering Hungarians. In a clear voice, the pope apologized profusely that such suspicion could ever have fallen upon such an obviously virtuous woman as her. Joanna said nothing, blinking and wiping away tears.

  Meloku cheered with the rest of the spectators. All life in the multiverse was performance. The demands upon the actresses were about to get much higher.

  Her new secretary, Galien, sat beside her. She caught his probing glance. He’d scheduled a meeting with Joanna later that day. Meloku had never shared her purpose. Galien was sharper than most of the men she’d met here, but he never asked the obvious question.

  That afternoon, Meloku waited in the sitting room of de Colville’s manor. It was a nice, quiet little room. Not perfectly soundproof, but, aside from Galien, whom she’d left to answer the door, the servants had been dismissed to their quarters for the afternoon.

  Joanna arrived promptly, wearing the same white gown. She brought two officers of her court: middle-aged men, portly, and self-serious. Notaries or lawyers. Not even her principal advisers. As Joanna ignored them, so did Meloku.

  Formalities first. Meloku said, “Congratulations on your restoration, your radiance.”

  “I have a long way yet before I’ll be restored to my throne.”

  “A distance that’s a great deal shorter with the church’s backing. The Hungarians don’t have the ability to hold Naples. Your acquittal robbed them of their only justification for the war.”

  Joanna wisely didn’t answer. She had no need to reveal the strength of her position. Everyone in Avignon knew that Meloku was in Clement’s inner circle. She had only come because she believed Meloku was g
oing to ask, on behalf on Pope Clement, for favors in exchange for her acquittal. “Am I to understand that you, a woman, are representing the church…?”

  “I represent a higher power. God wants to spread the power of the church farther than ever.”

  “I might interpret that to mean His Holiness is trying to gather support for another crusade.”

  “Eventually. First we must consolidate the church’s hold in our own lands. Italy, even.”

  “My people of Naples are the most God-fearing in the world.”

  “I’m sure they are. The fact remains that God is dissatisfied with the state of governance in Christendom. His Holy Church is not respected as it should be.”

  Joanna glanced to the courtier on her left. He rolled his eyes. Joanna was reputedly sincerely devout, but words like Meloku’s only weighed so much in the theater of her world’s politics. She seemed bemused, but it was clear that Meloku’s time was up. “I’m sorry, Lady Akropolites. If Clement wants to use me to fight his wars, he needs to pick a better time than a year of pestilence. And he certainly could have picked a better messenger.”

  It was a shame, in some senses, that Joanna had been the first monarch to visit during Meloku’s time here. Meloku had gotten to understand and appreciate her a little more during the days of her trial. She was exceptional here, a woman ruler on a continent that didn’t often allow those to last long.

  And now Meloku had to take all of that away from her.

  As Joanna turned, her courtiers collapsed.

  It happened with neither warning nor spectacle. Their eyes fluttered, their knees buckled, and they hit the floor like felled wood. The walls reverberated with the impact.

  Joanna only saw one of them fall. Her mouth opened in shock. It took her a moment to notice that the other had fallen, too.

  She spun toward Meloku. She looked as though she’d been about to ask for help. Then she saw Meloku’s eyes.

  For too long, Meloku had been working like a mouse – keeping behind the holes in the wall, hardly making her presence known. That was a way to learn about a world, but hardly suitable for shaping it.

  One thing that stifled her guilt was that it felt really good to stop pretending that she was one of these people.

  She raised her hand. The skin above her knuckle slit open. A diamond-tipped dart shot free. The dart whipped past Joanna and pierced the doorknob. It penetrated the wood behind and stopped halfway into the door frame. Hooks speared out from each end of the dart, digging deep, sealing the door to the wall.

  Joanna didn’t even see it. She might have felt a whisper of air, but she was too busy gaping at the weeping wound on Meloku’s wrist. Meloku said, “I told you. I’m not here on behalf of the pope or any temporal authority. I’ve come from a much higher power. The highest you’ll ever know.”

  Joanna backpedaled. She grappled for the door and jerked her hand back from the splintered wood. She turned, but didn’t have time to do more than see the shattered doorknob before Meloku reached her.

  Joanna started to scream, but Meloku cut her off with one hand over her mouth. Another swiftly compressed her throat. Joanna tried to strike, but Meloku’s muscles were like ironwood. No matter how hard she slapped, Meloku remained unmoved. After fifteen seconds without breath, Joanna gave up the fight.

  Meloku eased the pressure on her throat, and let her gasp air through her nostrils.

  “I have a very important mission,” Meloku said, soothingly, “and so do you. Those of your class who work with God will be privileged above all others. But I need to secure your cooperation before I can tell you anything more.”

  Meloku curled her ring finger to touch the side of Joanna’s neck. She doubted Joanna ever felt the needle pierce her skin. Soon, Joanna began to relax. Her legs went limp. Meloku held her upright. Her stare traveled through Meloku’s.

  This was one of the easier things about dealing with purely biological humans. Demiorganics only made things more complicated. She could see the rules under which people like Joanna operated. Manipulate their blood and brain chemistry, manipulate the person. Engender an addiction…

  Any person who might otherwise pose a problem could be turned into a tool.

  Gradually, Meloku released Joanna’s mouth.

  Meloku asked, “How do you feel now?”

  “In love,” Joanna said, from somewhere else.

  “You’ve never felt God’s presence until now.” Meloku once again touched her finger to Joanna’s neck. “Before I explain what I’ll need from you, let me show you what worship is like.”

  Infrared showed Galien sitting in the corner of the foyer. He stood when he heard her coming. “God’s blood, what took so long? I thought I heard someone falling. I nearly ran up–”

  She waved him silent. It wouldn’t have done her reputation any good to have someone hear how often her secretary invoked God’s name in his oaths. “Queen Joanna is entirely on our side.”

  Galien ran his hand through his hair as he tried to recover his equilibrium. Unlike so many other men on this plane, he was always clean-shaven. She’d found him buried deep in a clerical office, tallying accounts. He’d been only mildly cowed to see her hovering over his desk, which she appreciated. When she’d come to Avignon, she’d never thought that Cardinal de Colville would be more than a temporary ally. Better to start with someone below her and build them up, and leave them always indebted to her. Galien had only been too grateful to accept quintuple his salary. He could be blunt-spoken, but he never disobeyed her.

  He asked, “What kind of favors will Her Majesty expect of us in return?”

  “None. You misunderstand. She’s on our side. We’re not on hers.”

  He stood dumbfounded. He hurried to catch her going back out to the street. Finally, he said, “You’re either lying to me, lying to yourself, or you’re the most persuasive woman I’ve ever met.”

  She allowed him a smile. “Wait until after our next meeting to make up your mind.”

  They were only a few minutes late to her next appointment. Three men in ostentatious red hats waited to meet her in one of the Palais des Papes’ smaller dining rooms. Meloku idly wondered how the cardinals had gotten their hats under the door frame. This time, Galien stepped in beside her.

  Cardinal de Colville stood. Meloku watched him. He may have been friendly in private, but the company of his fellow cardinals required him to act differently. “Well?” he asked. “You’ve had the courage to call us here, for what purpose I couldn’t say. Do you have the courage to speak?”

  She said, “To be honest, I’m surprised you came. You’re not accustomed to coming at a woman’s beck and call.”

  Young, wide-bellied Cardinal Regnault said, “As a favor to you and to your friends, we would be glad to listen to anything you have to say, Madam Akropolites.” By “friends,” he meant the pope, of course.

  Meloku said, “I’ve been watching and listening to the church these past few months, and it’s become clear that the church is failing in the obligations left to it by St Peter. I came to Avignon a convert from the schismatic Eastern church. When I followed the course God charted for me and turned here, I had hoped to find a church more deserving of God.

  “It’s plain to everyone inside and outside the church that your reputation is not what it ought to be. Kings and emperors ignore your judgments. Heresy is rife. The people make jokes in the streets about the venality of cardinals.”

  De Colville was used to dealing with scolds. He had a stock response. “Man’s irreverence is one of his eternal sins. Fools will always make light of the church.”

  “No,” Meloku said. “They do it because they’re right.”

  The chilly silence that followed gave her the chance to take their measure. She said, “Kings flaunt your powers because they know you have none. Heretics sense people’s dissatisfaction. They can’t lead those who aren’t willing to follow. And everyone makes light of the church’s venality and corruption because the church is venal and
corrupt.”

  The three men stared at her in silence. Meloku stared right back.

  “I don’t know what’s possessing her to act like this,” de Colville told his companions.

  “You’ve heard this from more voices than mine,” Meloku said. “Correspondence from all over Christendom has said the same. The church’s control slips everywhere. More importantly, it’s losing respect. Between your nepotism, appointment packing, and taxation, half of Europe is ready to desert you at the slightest provocation. The pestilence may provide them with it. Already there are new mendicant orders and penitent movements everywhere defying papal authority.”

  Meloku had chosen Avignon to be her base of control because she’d thought it the best place for any single person to influence Europe. That didn’t mean she’d thought it was a good one. There were no good places on this blighted little plane. Without her, the papacy’s simony, hypocritically lavish lifestyles, and selling of indulgences would reach a head. Absent change, the church would fracture.

  The last cardinal asked, “And what made you decide this was so? A message from God?”

  “Yes,” Meloku said. “It’s the reason God sent me to Avignon, and the reason he sent the pestilence to ravage the world.”

  The cardinals looked at each other. While none of them showed any sign of getting up, Meloku figured that was just inertia. She couldn’t drug everyone in the world like she had Joanna. She was only one person. She was going to have to use more conventional means to control men like these.

  Like terror.

  Meloku glanced between them. Cardinal Regnault had an elevated pulse. He was the youngest at the table, a nephew of the Duc de Berry. Naive. Impressionable.

  “By this time three days from now, two of you will be dead,” Meloku said, looking directly at Regnault. “Struck down by pestilence. The third will follow unless he heeds my words. This I have learned from God. If this man wishes to survive and serve God, he will seek me.”

  De Colville smiled patiently. “I don’t mean to impugn your relationship with the divine, Madame Akropolites, but you may wish to make sure that your bad dreams are more than the product of spoiled beef before you call upon us again.”