by Aidan Harte
He answered cautiously, ‘It depends on how badly Concord wants Veii. I’ve left some of my best people to help you prepare. You’ve a fighting chance, unless you are surrounded.’
Pedro suggested two well-stocked and well-armed batteries, one either side of the harbour mouth, to insure against naval incursions, but Grimani assured him that would be taking things too far. ‘We have our navy, after all.’
‘You have a few slave galleys – that’s nothing compared to Ariminum’s, and when you add in Concord’s firepower, the contest is even more unequal. As soon as the Moor has Ariminum stable – by which I mean sufficiently terrified – he’ll set off down the Adriatic. Between the Concordian legions and the Golden Fleet, Veii’ll be pretty stuck.’
‘They may have taken Rasenna without blood, but Veii will cost them dearer,’ the duke bluffed stoutly. Such protestations were expected from him, but Pedro prayed it wouldn’t come to the test.
*
He was not sorry to say goodbye to Veii at the end of the week. A posse of butteri mounted on stocky Tolfetano horses were waiting east of the city to escort Ferruccio home. Pedro wondered aloud how they had crossed the Albula without getting wet.
‘Oh, we have our ways. That other riddle’s still gnawing at you, ain’t it?’
Pedro smiled at the old man’s astuteness. ‘Engineers are circumspect by necessity. Even in the brief time we were there, Veii’s population was swelling – all those trains of exiles carrying a hundred different flags … Towns small and large are fleeing before the Grand Legion like a plague. They think Veii’s the place to make a stand. But they are—’
‘—desperate,’ Ferruccio finished soberly.
‘Yes. Something’s gnawing at you too, Doctor.’
He stared at the river, ‘I’m just worried that this is nothing more than a gambit to give Grimani a better negotiating position when Concord comes knocking. Veii have hitherto remained studiously neutral in Etrurian squabbles. They took no part in Tagliacozzo, remember.’
‘—unlike certain rash neighbours of theirs. The hour’s late. We must start trusting each other.’
‘I suppose we must.’ He clapped Pedro’s back so hard he nearly fell from his saddle. ‘I hope to see you down the trail, Maestro. Must you really go back? What’s the point of returning to a city held by the enemy? Whatever its shortcomings, the first battle will be fought in Veii.’
‘You’re wrong, Doctor. The battle is already under way, in Rasenna.’
CHAPTER 5
The Colossus, by some miracle, still stood, but all that remained of the Molè was rubble. A boy in rags little better than a mendicant’s stood by the great statue’s base.
Next to him, taking instruction, was the finely dressed chairman of the Opera del Duomo. His quill ceased scratching momentarily as he inclined his head. ‘—and the statue?’
The boy turned to study it. The Etruscan motto carved in its base was still legible, but the sword the Angel of Reason held aloft was shattered. Its face was distorted as if by a palsy. The fire had gouged the bronze deep, painting the newly mottled surface with a carbon patina. ‘Melt it down.’
‘Oh surely not, First Apprentice!’ the chairman exclaimed. ‘The damage is only superficial; we could easily restore it – we could relocate it in front of the Collegio.’
‘Concord is done with idols,’ the boy said in tones that brooked no contradiction. ‘We shall need every ounce of the metal before long.’
On the way down from the windy mount he passed one child after another; the fanciulli all wore the same fervent expressions on their face, the same red bands on their arms they had donned the day that he had renounced the Red. Now they hauled stone up to the mount, working until they collapsed, and their mothers and fathers, who had by now joined the daily procession, stepped over them, oblivious to the deaths of their sons and daughters. There was no time to stop.
The children were in the thrall of a king in their image – but they were deceived, for he was nothing like them. He was nothing like anyone.
*
The gondolier pushed along the canal while his unkempt young passenger sat quietly mediating. Torbidda begrudged the trip to the Collegio dei Consoli, though he knew it was necessary. For a few months more he must keep the consuls as tightly leashed as the fanciulli. Afterwards, they could all go to hell together. It seemed a lifetime ago since he’d last considered abstract political questions; his days now were full of masons, glassblowers, iconographers and goldsmiths, and treks to dusty quarries near the coast looking for fine-grained stone. The craftsmen found the First Apprentice precise, cold and demanding – but not one of them could hear him screaming for help. He, the boy called Torbidda, had some awareness still, though his limbs and tongue were controlled by another power, ageless, pitiless. But the coffin-lid was getting heavier each day.
The Darkness cast its pall over everything his eyes regarded. He was no longer a boy trying to survive but a carrier of corruption like a Lazar. He had no bell to warn people away. He remembered everything – his mother’s betrayal, Agrippina’s duplicity, Leto’s loyalty, the rote-learned lessons and formulae, and the hard-won magic words he’d used to open the Molè – but all colour had been leached from those memories. They were husks. To say I am Torbidda now would be sophistry. In the Guildhalls, Examiner Varro had taught them the principles of logic: lies that deny truth are harmless, he’d said; it’s the lies that distort truth that are poisonous.
His memories were intact, but stripped of their emotion they no longer made sense. He remembered the terrible day he had entered the Guild. He remembered his dread of the Examiners, of the other children, of never seeing his mother again – and how those fears had vanished when he had received his name: Sixty. It was the first beautiful thing he had ever owned. Sixty had so many facets: it was not a prime, though the two adjacent numbers were, as were three of its twelve factors. It was the smallest number divisible by one through six. Squared, it was three thousand and sixty, the number of seconds in an hour. More: it was the fifteenth trump card of that deck his mother used when she thought he was sleeping. The wailing mendicants who roamed the Depths rattled rosaries with sixty beads. The dread faded to nothing as he lost himself in its myriad aspects.
Before he knew it, the shearing was over and he had jumped the Guild’s hurdles and become a candidate. To win the yellow he had to step over Agrippina’s corpse. That final hurdle was steep.
Then there had been the months wasted in the Molè’s library looking for the means to outshine Girolamo Bernoulli, the sun. He learned … nothing. The Babylonians, those marvellous astrologers, had believed sixty a firmer base than the decimal. Their king Nebuchadnezzar had built a statue sixty cubits tall, which he commanded the Jews to worship – and the Jews’ god promptly struck him mad for it. What else? Isaac was sixty when his son Esau was born, with Jacob grasping at his heel. Sixty men of Israel, valiant and expert in war, guarded the bed of Solomon, that king whose temple was sixty cubits wide and tall.
It was all nonsense and trivia: the piled detritus of history, the absurd fancies of theology.
He remembered the other terrible day, when he had finally tested himself against the Stupor Mundi – the wonder of the world, Bernoulli himself. There was another shearing and his beautiful name broke into fractions after he lost not just the contest but himself.
He remembered his fear growing as the pod descended, and at the same time he remembered his hunger to consume the boy, the expectation of the Darkness he descended into. He was both hunter and hunted, the petrified hare leaping over the contato and the hawk diving to break its back. He was within and without of his body. He was the boy shrinking from the pit and the slavering, obscene beast within. His last physical memory was the agony of being consumed; after that he was nothing but a voyeur, experiencing only second-hand sensations. The Darkness’ carnal satisfaction was intense as it fed on fresh meat at last, as – at last – it regained a foothold in the world of men.
>
Most likely none of it was real. Most likely he had broken under the strain of being the last Apprentice, had gone insane. A philosopher should not multiply explanations. And yet … the Darkness’s purpose was clear. The occupation of his body was simply the first step. He was a bridge by which Bernoulli could reach his ultimate object: the Handmaid’s child. The worst was knowing that he had made himself that bridge. And even had his usurper allowed him a voice, how could he – the boy who had sacrificed all he loved to ambition – object?
*
Attendance was high at the general assembly of the Collegio dei Consoli – as was anxiety. Rumours and theories circled the concentric rows of the chamber. This was a very different gathering of Guild leaders to the one that had met just a few months ago. Then, the First Apprentice had been politically isolated and had been maintaining control only by the authority of his rank – and when that failed, by the assassination of his critics. Now he had a power-base that was legion, comprising the young and the poor. He had won over the mob by eulogising Fra Norcino and pillorying Girolamo Bernoulli, and the consuls, looking to their own self-preservation, needed to know why. Was this just a ploy, or the beginning of a new stage of Concord’s revolution?
Torbidda did not keep them waiting.
‘Consuls, only those who have been candidates for Apprenticeship are allowed to sit in this august body. So one way to see this – the way we tend to – is that the Collegio is composed of the best of the best. A more realistic view is that the Collegio is composed of failures. That is my view, and therefore, I am reopening the Guild’s rolls to the nobility.’
Protests erupted from all circles, but Torbidda’s head swivelled to his right and lit on a round, red-faced round man with a half-eaten sack of yellow apples in his lap. He was leaning towards his neighbour and whispering.
‘Please, Consul Fuscus, be so good as to share your opinion with all of your colleagues.’
Numitor Fuscus, one of Consul Corvis’ allies, had been lucky to escape the purge when Corvis fell. He was an Empiricist of the old school and suspicious of all innovation. Though he was an outspoken opponent of Leto Spinther, he was well aware that questioning the First Apprentice in public had generally proved to be fatal. Now his usually hooded eyes became round as pennies and his flushed cheeks paled.
When he began to stutter, Torbidda interrupted, ‘Come, Consul – if any hour called for boldness, this is it. Speak your mind. In this chamber, we do not censure candour.’
That was demonstrably untrue, but the challenge had the desired effect and Fuscus threw down his half-eaten apple and stood. ‘Very well, First Apprentice. I believe that your proposal is contrary to everything Bernoulli believed in. Even if we could trust the nobility to share power – and we cannot – they lack competence for the job.’
Hear-hears told the consul that the majority agreed with him, and he ended with stentorian resolve, ‘Bernoulli built a state devoted to Reason and the rigour of Natural Philosophy, not the spurious claims of pedigree. Let us stay true to that vision.’
‘You will, I trust, allow that the First Apprentice knows the mind of Bernoulli better than you?’ Torbidda started, his voice suspiously calm. ‘He believed in expedience. He excluded the nobility from government in Forty-Seven because it was expedient – but circumstances change. I am privileged and burdened with knowledge you are not, a little of it esoteric and wonderful, but most wearingly dull. And amongst the latter is the true state of our finances. Brothers, they are grim. I see your doubtful faces and I hear you asking: how could we, who have Nature on a leash, have empty vaults? How did we arrive at this pass? Who is to blame? Some of you have heard me defame Bernoulli’s name to the fanciulli and doubtless thought it a clever ruse. I tell you: I meant every word. I tell you the Guild has made of Bernoulli a false idol. We call him the Supreme Architect, but he built his empire on weak foundations. With our native talent and skill, we could have let the world come to Concord and attained a lasting hegemony, built peacefully and gradually. But Bernoulli was a man in a hurry, and plunder and violent confrontation were his methods. For a time, they worked, and the appropriated fortune of the Curia funded our legions. As long as the empire was expanding, the fact that the tumult of Re-formation destroyed Concord’s tax-base did not matter, for we acquired vassals aplenty and whenever we needed to pay for new projects, more legions, bigger war machines, we simply squeezed them.’
The consuls listened silently to this blasphemy with a mixture of indignation and confusion, appalled to hear the First Apprentice, of all people, insulting Bernoulli so casually.
He appeared not to notice. ‘Since Rasenna destroyed the Twelfth Legion, all of Etruria had been in a state of rebellion. This has wounded our pride, and broken our finances. We need capital – so where shall we find it? There’s no one to tax – no one with money, anyway. Most of the nobility are impoverished. The smarter families renounced their names and joined the Guild – families such as yours, Consul Fuscus. What are we to do, then? Fleece ourselves? And when we are all sheared, what then?’
Numitor Fuscus touched his neck nervously.
‘Therefore I move again that we open the rolls. If you’re worried that every wretch will be allowed in, don’t be; only those with something to offer will be welcomed. Not every noble took the route yours did, Consul. A few went into trade and not only maintained their fortunes but acquired greater ones – Malapert Omodeo is one such—’
Torbidda’s spell wavered as the rows began to mutter. Malapert Omodeo: a notorious name, a name regarded with special hostility by nobles and engineers alike. The Guild might exclude nobles from all important positions, but it respected expertise and ability. Omodeo had run one of the most productive mines in the Rhine Lands and had used his direct access to the mint and his foreknowledge of Concordian plans to invade the Dalmatian Pass to speculate on grain prices – the fortune he made off the back of the ensuing disaster was enough to buy sanctuary in Byzant.
Consul Fuscus gave voice to the common feeling when he spat, ‘That traitor!’
Torbidda moved to silence the mutters of agreement. ‘Consul Fuscus, you know very well that Omodeo fled only because he feared the Guild would appropriate his fortune – surely that is prudence, not treachery – surely we would each have done the same. We have need of prudent men. I wish to invite him back into the fold. Does anyone object?’
The consuls took the prudent course – silence – and once they passed the motion, Torbidda left the assembly. The chamber quickly emptied, until Numitor and half a dozen of his supporters were alone.
‘The First Apprentice may be insane, but he is cunning as ever,’ he told them. ‘You know what this is, don’t you? He hasn’t forgiven us for giving Corvis power. It’s bad enough he ignores the Collegio; now he wants to dilute what little influence we have left by planting enemies in our midst. With the Collegio warring with itself, he can pursue his mad schemes unopposed.’
‘We can do nothing,’ said one consul disconsolately, ‘but bide our time.’
‘Oh, I think we can do more than that,’ said Numitor serenely. ‘Concord’s never lacked ambitious soldiers. We simply have to recruit a few.’
*
Deep in the chambers beneath the Guild Halls, the blind man stared at his reflection. What he saw in it, only God – or some power equally omniscient – knew. His ears pricked up as feet splashed through a puddle and he felt the torch’s warmth on his face. ‘Where have you been, my King?’
‘Busy.’
‘Why do you waste time with these parliaments? Are you a king or no?’
‘These days kings must pretend not to be. I need the Collegio’s support to buy the materials to build my temple.’
The First Apprentice stopped as he saw the warped mirror Fra Norcino crouched over. ‘You got that in the Drawing Room.’
‘What of it?’
‘You cannot go about in the Guild Halls! The fanciulli are devoted to me only because they believe me your h
eir.’
Norcino chuckled at that. ‘The times are hysterical. There’s nothing so remarkable about a dead man walking – you above all should appreciate that.’
‘Just take more care. I need the fanciulli as much as I need the Collegio.’
The blind man leaned closer to the mirror, his foul breath misting the parabolic lake of its surface. ‘I care nothing for your temple.’
‘If you could see the foundations, you’d care.’
‘I’m blind. Did you forget?’ said Norcino. He was used to Herods and their mania for building; they might be useful tools, but they were also tiresome.
The boy turned away. ‘We have each our part to play, Astrologer. Mine is to build towers.’
‘You’d be better off concentrating on finding the Handmaid.’
‘I think you overestimate this girl. My body’s previous incumbent wasn’t a total fool. He did not notice anything remarkable about her when he guarded her prison.’
‘Until she burned that prison!’ Norcino spat. ‘Do you imagine this Handmaid will lie docile on your altar? The Madonna has been waiting longer than you for the Wave’s return. She did not choose someone meek and mild to be her successor.’ He walked to the edge of the puddle and pointed to the other side. ‘The Contessa is a warrior.’
The boy took his position. ‘I can fight.’
‘Show me.’
This time Norcino did not restrain himself; he did not like the sneering, cynical creature that had returned from the pit and wished to remind it of the mortal pain to which it was now subject. Of course, it was he who had persuaded Torbidda into the pit in the first place. The boy, whoever he was, had fought well, coolly receiving blows and returning them, not surrendering ground. The water droplets hung about them in a mist.
‘I wrung the secret of Water Style out of the buio in my last incarnation,’ he said with lofty hauteur.
‘Indeed? How subtle of you. Alas, the Jinn are not so easily frightened,’ said Norcino, and he began flipping end-over-end in a circle. All the boy could do was turn with him and keep his guard up – but suddenly Norcino was gone. Then a column of dust snaked through the pillars and a punch rattled his jaw. He turned groggily. Another gust passed by and this time he found himself face-down in the pool with dust settling on his back.