The Floating City

by Craig Cormick

  “It is like a puzzle half solved, isn’t it?” said a voice behind him. Vincenzo jumped and spun around. The Shadow Master was standing there behind him.

  “How did you get in?” Vincenzo asked. He had bolted his door particularly to avoid being caught like this.

  “Better than ‘who are you?’” said the Shadow Master and stepped closer to look at Vincenzo’s notes.

  Vincenzo swept them all together. “I am trying to make sense of it all.”

  “But consider that the sense might only be apparent at the very end, when everything has played out.”

  Vincenzo shook his head. “I need to see some sense now.”

  “Everything will converge,” the Shadow Master said. “There will be only one story instead of a dozen or so.”

  “A dozen or so?” asked Vincenzo, holding up his fingers and counting. “There are the three Montecchi sisters, Disdemona, Isabella and Giulietta. There are the Seers. There is the council. There are assassins. Are you telling me there is going to be more?”

  “Oh yes, much, much more.”

  Vincenzo let his shoulders slump. “And you seem to be the only one who knows what is going on and what is happening, or going to happen, and yet you refuse to share this with me!”

  “And yet,” said the Shadow Master, “you are the one that has been granted the power to write the future of your city and what is going to happen within it. So you tell me, what will you write?”

  Now Vincenzo’s fingers twitched just a little, as if the challenge was tempting him to pick up his quill and start writing the city’s future at once. “I would write of turmoil and hardships but ultimate peace and prosperity,” said Vincenzo.

  “What? No chase and love interests?”

  “Chasing what?” asked Vincenzo, but the Shadow Master ignored the question. “I would write our city saved,” the scribe said.

  “And how would you save it precisely?”

  Vincenzo leaned back in his seat. “I would have the Othmen defeated. I would have our trade routes opened. I would have the assassins caught. I would have the Seers rid our waters of the Djinn.”

  The Shadow Master nodded his head. “All right. But what if for every intervention you created that favoured the city you had to accept some loss in return for it?”

  “What type of loss?”

  “Perhaps a death. Perhaps an attack. Perhaps illness.”

  Vincenzo nodded his head again. “This has become a game, I see, and I must therefore plan very carefully and not make too many decisions at once, until I know the impact of the losses I must sustain.”

  “Good logic,” said the Shadow Master. “And what if for each positive outcome you engineered you found the loss you had to incur was greater?”

  Vincenzo frowned now. “That’s not fair,” he said.

  “I don’t recall saying it had to be fair,” the Shadow Master said.

  “Then what incentive should I have for changing the future if the losses were worse?”

  “What indeed?” asked the Shadow Master.

  “Then perhaps I would choose not to intervene,” Vincenzo said.

  But the Shadow Master shook his head. “No. Your task is to write the future. That is your burden.”

  “You change the rules too often,” said Vincenzo sulkily.

  The Shadow Master said nothing for some time and then said, “Tell me about your first memory.”

  Vincenzo thought hard for a moment. “I was on the road, in a wagon. I was laying in the back wrapped in blankets and I had a book in my hands. I could not read the words on the page, but had a strong longing to. I was running my fingers over the marks and making up to myself what they meant, reading out some nonsense.”

  “Nonsense?” asked the Shadow Master.

  “I suppose so,” said Vincenzo. “I don’t remember the story I was making up.”

  “Are you sure? Wasn’t it something about being a mighty warrior and dispatching all the villains that attacked your family?”

  Vincenzo said nothing for a long while. “Yes. I can remember it now that you say it.” He stood up and then sat down. “How can you know that?”

  “What if I am the warrior that you created?” the Shadow Master asked. “A little late, I admit, but here nevertheless.” And he bowed.

  Vincenzo closed his eyes a moment. “No. Wait. You’re confusing me.”

  “Or is it the dreams you sometimes have that you are a character in somebody else’s story?”

  “Stop it!” said Vincenzo. “Stop it!”

  “Am I messing with your head?”

  “No. Yes. I don’t even know what that means.”

  “Have you ever wielded a sword?” the Shadow Master asked suddenly, changing the topic.

  “Not really,” said Vincenzo. “Not in a fight or anything.”

  “Here,” said the Shadow Master, and with a fluid move he was holding out one of his curved deadly blades to Vincenzo. The scribe took it by the hilt and felt the weight of it. It was incredibly light. He moved it around in his hand and saw the Shadow Master watching his face intently.

  “Does that bring back any memories?” he asked him.

  “No,” said Vincenzo. “Should it?”

  “You hold it well,” the Shadow Master said.

  Vincenzo passed it back to him. “I prefer to wield a quill pen,” he said.

  “And which do you think is more effective in creating your future?” the Shadow Master asked. “The pen or the sword?”

  Vincenzo regarded him for a moment and then said, “Both together. And I have the answer to your riddle about how to write of the future and overcome larger losses.”

  “Yes?”

  “I would write a saviour like you,” he said.

  XL

  THE STORY OF ISABELLA

  “I’m not going to know peace until I give in to your scheming, am I?” Isabella Montecchi asked her handmaiden. The other woman gave her a knowing victorious grin. An increasing line of old sea captains had besieged her entranceways each day, and her handmaiden kept reminding her that the only way to be rid of them would be to agree to let one of them court her. And she just happened to have chosen the perfect one – as she reminded her mistress many times.

  Isabella had already changed her mind, having agreed to dine with the young man and then sending him away after making him wait for most of the day out in the hot sun. But he had shown up early the next day and dutifully taken his place in line behind all the other hopeful old sea dogs.

  “Tell him to dress for dinner and be here early,” she told her handmaiden. “And make sure all the other men hear it.”

  Her handmaiden bowed and hurried out of the chamber as eager as if she herself would be having a meal with the handsome young man. Isabella watched her go and wrung her hands. She had watched the young man from her window, and yes, he was handsome and yes, he seemed rather nice and well bred, but she was just not interested in a man in her life at the moment.

  The accursed Othmen envoy was going to ruin her! Several of her more reliable – and married – captains had come to see her and told her that word was going all around the ports that her ships were marked for attack by the Othmen. It was said they had put spells on them that meant they could find them in any weather and they would slaughter the crews and take all cargo, or just sink it into the ocean. There were stories that Othmen sages could conjure up storms to dispel a fleet of ships ranged against them, and could as easily have a fat merchant vessel becalmed so they could easily overtake it and plunder it. And it was said she had personally insulted the Othmen Empire and they could not let the insult go unchallenged.

  As a result crewmen were deserting her employ and that meant no ships going out. And that meant no income coming in to offset her ongoing costs. She sighed. It would not just be the ruin of her, but the ruin of the city as well. Her ships were stuck at dock unmanned and a goodly amount of the city’s other ships were lined up outside her window there, with their captains seeking t
o win her hand.

  The city would soon run short of food and medicines and textiles, and would run short of civil order soon afterwards. Their city was effectively besieged without the Othmen having to send a single soldier or ship against it. And she’d heard and read enough accounts of what went on within siege cities as food shortages began to tell. The rich would still be fed, but at increasingly high prices, and black marketeers would crawl out of the gutters, enforcing their territory and prices with cut-throat villains. The poorer people would fight over food and then start eating animals and rodents. There would be a steady stream of refugees leaving the city as it grew weaker and weaker. If she could not find a way to effectively combat the accursed Othmen envoy’s tactics, any enemy would find the city an easy target for conquest.

  “Those damned Othmen and their arcane enchantment and their bloodlust,” she cursed. “And their lackeys!” Dinner would be a good opportunity to take her mind off this battle.

  She was pleasantly surprised by the young man, Giannetto Scali, when he was finally ushered into the dining room. She had again left him waiting outside while she had snacked. She wanted him hungry. And thirsty.

  He had entered and bowed low and told her it was a pleasure to meet her, showing no displeasure at all at being kept waiting. She said little and bade him sit. He did so and would not touch his food until she had picked up a small pastry. And even then he ate only sparingly.

  “Tell me about yourself,” she said.

  “There is not much to tell,” he said modestly.

  “Surely you have a life that you have lived, and as such you will have a story relating to it?”

  “I would rather hear your own stories,” he said. “There is so much to learn about you.”

  “Indeed,” she said. “Might I ask what you know already?”

  “So little,” he said.

  “Tell me. I’m curious.”

  “I had heard you were the most beautiful woman in the Floating City and certainly the most beautiful woman in any city.”

  The handmaiden, standing at the wall beside the door, covered her mouth with her hand and giggled a little. Isabella shot her a glance. She had heard such flattery many times and was immune to it.

  “And what else have you heard?”

  “It is not so important what I have heard, as what I have observed,” he said. “For I first saw you in the markets some weeks ago now and was immediately smitten by the sight of you. You were far more beautiful than the stories had given you credit for. And I was filled with sorrow that you were a widow who had lost her loving husband and had to carry the burden of his business. But you seemed to bear it easily on those lovely shoulders.”

  And it was he who glanced down, having spoken the flatteries. Then he said, “The truth is, I have become somewhat enchanted by you and when I heard of the wager I knew I had to take part, at least to sit with you like this and be near to you.”

  “And of course, a chance to win my hand and my fortune?”

  He waved his hand in the air as if shooing a pesky bug away. “What could be more valuable than being here with you?”

  “Spending the night with me perhaps?”

  Now Giannetto blushed and looked down at his meal. “I admit I have become somewhat enchanted by the idea of that too,” he said softly. “And I would be a fool or a liar if I did not say so.”

  Isabella smiled. Just a little. Despite herself she was finding that she was slowly warming to this young man. It was hard to estimate his age without asking him, but certainly it was no more than twenty-one. Or perhaps twenty-two.

  “Now tell me about yourself,” she said.

  He looked up and smiled, happy to be on sounder ground. “My father was a merchant in the Walled City to the west. He had three sons, of which I was the youngest. One year ago, almost to this very day, he called us to him. He had been unwell for some time and felt his last moments were approaching. He read out his will to us. My two elder brothers were to get a half each of his fortune and I was to get a letter of introduction to my father’s best friend, the merchant Ansaldo, here in the Floating City.”

  “I know him,” said Isabella. “He is a good man. But were you not disappointed to have been left out of your father’s will?”

  “Why should I be?” Giannetto asked. “My brothers are tied to their estates and I have been able to travel across our country and see the most wonderful sights it has to offer. Tonight being the culmination of them.”

  “Continue with the story,” she said, reaching one hand up and playing idly with her hair.

  “Well, after many adventures I finally reached the Floating City and on my first day I saw the most wondrous sight. A woman who was so perfect that if I had dreamed her I could not have created something more lovely.”

  She arched an eyebrow.

  “I found my father’s dear friend and told him of my father’s death and we both wept over it. Then he said I should be his godson and he has allowed me to learn the ways of his business until I was competent enough to be trusted with my own ship of trade goods to try and make my fortune with.”

  “And where did you sail to?” she asked.

  “Your dock,” he said.

  She met his eyes. “Won’t your godfather be disappointed if you lose it all?”

  “Why should I lose it? Is it more dangerous to be here with you than to brave an ocean storm, or a reef, or pirates, or the Othmen?”

  Isabella did not answer. “I think,” she said slowly, “I have had enough food and stories. It is time to go to bed.”

  “Lady, I am at your service,” replied Giannetto.

  Isabella then held up a hand and beckoned her handmaiden over. “Bring us some wine,” she said. And then added, “The finest wine!”

  The handmaiden’s face pouted just a little in disappointment, but she bowed and walked across the room to fetch it.

  XLI

  ELSEWHERE IN THE FLOATING CITY

  It was becoming very rare for any of the council members to be walking the streets either in the dark, or with less than half a dozen guards – and yet here was Signor Faliero loitering furtively along one of the quieter walkways of the Floating City, under the Bridge of Smiles, wondering if what he was doing was wise, or incredibly stupid. The city seemed larger from down here, or perhaps it was that he felt smaller, tucked away in a dark cranny out of the light. He spun his head slowly at every sound and felt his stomach lurch whenever another person walked into the alleyway, but so far they had all walked slowly past him.

  He tasted sweat on his upper lip when he licked his lips quickly and decided the likelihood of folly was rising over the likelihood of wisdom with each passing moment, and he exhaled heavily and turned to make his way back home.

  “Don’t take another step,” a voice suddenly hissed at him from the shadows at his side.

  He froze and felt his buttocks tighten in reflex. “Don’t… don’t hurt me.”

  “Just step back to where you were,” the voice hissed.

  “What… what… do you want?” Signor Faliero asked.

  “For you to stay where you are.”

  “Don’t hurt me,” he said in a voice full of fear.

  “I’m not here to hurt you. I’m here to save you.”

  “What… what? I don’t understand.”

  “You don’t need to understand. You need to be quiet.”

  “Who are you?”

  “A man who is clearly better at following instructions than you are. Be quiet!”

  Signor Faliero nodded. Then he said in a much lower voice. “What are we waiting for?”

  “Assassins,” said the voice.

  Signor Faliero gulped heavily. “I was invited here by Signor Tradonico,” he said. “I trust him fully. He said he was going to reveal a conspiracy against the city to me. I still have his letter.”

  “Show me,” hissed the voice.

  Signor Faliero reached into his robes and pulled out a small envelope. He held it out and
a hand stretched out from the shadow and took it. Then he saw a man step out of the darkness and hold it out to the night light. He knew this man. He had seen him somewhere before, he thought.

  “I know you,” he said.

  The other man didn’t respond. He held the letter closer to his face and then said, “This is a forgery.”

  “Yes, I know you,” Signor Faliero said again. The man looked at him and met his eyes. “Vincenzo the scribe.”

  “The historian!” he replied.

  “How are you involved in all this?” Signor Faliero asked him.

  “That’s a good question,” he replied. “To which I myself have more questions than answers.”

  “So what are we to do now?”

  “We wait,” Vincenzo said.

  “For what?”

  “For me,” said a sudden deeper voice and Signor Faliero was startled to see a dark figure in a hood and cloak descend rapidly from the rooftops above and land lightly on his feet beside them. Signor Faliero drew back in alarm and held his hands up before him. But the man didn’t even pay him any attention. He said to the scribe, “There is no one out there.” Then he turned to regard Signor Faliero and said, “At least nobody intending you harm.” He bowed just a little, and said, “Show me the letter.”

  Vincenzo handed it over and the stranger held his hand up and a soft light seemed to glow from his fingers. “I would have sworn it was Signor Tradonico’s hand,” Signor Faliero said.