by Aidan Harte
‘Without the Temple then, God is homeless?’
‘A vagabond God for a race of wanderers,’ he shouted back, and the wind howled in sympathy and dowsed them in blinding sand. ‘But even Solomon’s temple was never anything more than a simulacrum of the true Temple. God is the Temple. Vainly Our soul searches for Him, in books and caves and grottos and mountaintops – everywhere but within. He is closer to us than our own jugular vein. The Jinn knew that. They chased out the ghosts, so they could wait for the Messiah too.’ He took a step to the edge and looked back at her.
She knew what he was asking, ‘I can’t.’
‘Look!’ Ezra pointed to the birds. ‘They don’t experience air as we do, Sofia. It’s thick as water for them. You are sceptical, but tell me, do you control the ocean with Water Style?’
‘… no … It’s more like I control myself. I allow its flow to become mine.’
‘Exactly: magicians don’t decide what spells erupt from their wands, any more than kings decide when to go to war. Wind and Water, the same power that moves them. They are one: realise that and you can enlist their aid. You think you are not falling now? All of us are falling at the same rate through time. Trust in God.’
‘So He can betray me like He did the Madonna?’ she screamed.
‘He didn’t betray Her.’ Slowly he began to tip forward into the wind and empty space.
‘He never told Her what was in store.’
He was tilting forward until now he was almost horizontal, yet supported by nothing.
‘All He has are prayers, same as the rest of us. Abraham didn’t know the future when he brought his boy up to the Mount.’
She stepped to the edge, feeling the wind buffet her. Her eyes watered and she wiped them angrily. ‘I don’t give a damn about Abraham’s son,’ she cried, and leaped—
*
They found a niche a little down from the summit protected from the gusts. Ezra made a fire and brewed up some tea which he sweetened with a lump of greasy honey. Sofia drank it gratefully and watched him. He sat leafing through his book as though nothing extraordinary had happened that day. She had thrown herself off the summit, and the Wind had caught her.
‘How did I do it?’
‘Water Style and Air Style are different names for the same discipline,’ he said placidly. ‘The little you needed to know about The Wind I taught you when we sailed from Ariminum.’
‘You only taught me to sail, Ezra. Mik la Nan nearly killed me with his Air Style when we fought.’
‘That is because you didn’t know you knew. You see how the mind hobbles us?’
She supped her tea thoughtfully. ‘Why does God need a Handmaid to fight His battles anyway? If He can be born and born again, He can do anything.’
‘I fear you will never make a philosopher,’ he said mildly. ‘That does not follow at all. Like all mortals, you overestimate God’s strength. There was no “Let there be Light”. The world had to be made like every other thing, and like any masterpiece, it required several iterations. No one would look at this chaotic universe and guess that it had sprung from mathematical perfection. His first essay was a family of perfect forms. Within fractions of the first moment, the crystalline vessels shattered. They were too perfect. The universe had to love its Creator. It tore itself apart to do so and became this fertile universe of division and flux. Its heartbeat was the Wave. He saw that it was better. To be fit for such an inconstant world, men must be free to love, free to err, free to change. After that titanic act of foundation, He slept for an age and when He awoke, the Darkness had crept into Creation.’
‘From where?’
‘God had to remove Himself from the world to make room for life. In that vacuum, we were made, but so was an emptiness. Nature has a horror of the vacuum, because the vacuum is horror. We were born together: Man and this shadow.’
‘Why not just start over then, return to the perfect forms?’
‘I told you: God is weak. Through a dark glass, He looks on our world. Once every millennium, He waxes strong enough to create – not a universe, but a single life imbued with His essence. A wave is composed of drops of water, after all, and one of those drops is the first mover.’
Sofia thought of the love Iscanno made her feel, and that he inspired in others. ‘That’s all there is to it?’ It seemed inadequate.
‘All it takes to change the world is one voice speaking the truth. Once in an aeon, someone comes who says what God is, loud enough that everybody can hear. The Wave forces change. The Messiah is a genius of love. It’s hard to love, but for Him, the first steps come easy. He struggles on higher planes. His reward is to wrestle with the most difficult problems, problems the rest of us fail to notice.’
‘Is there hope? What does the book say?’
‘It’s irrelevant. This is only history’s first draft.’ He showed her a page on which the text rippled, like the crest on a flag in the wind, words and letters constantly rearranging. ‘Our lives are blank pages, our blood is the ink. The author strives to keep up. We surprise Him as much as ourselves. History’s not a prison, it’s a dance.’
‘The pages are running out,’ she observed.
‘Yes. Iscanno is the new Covenant, and the Darkness knows it. It has never been stronger. Mary’s son was to free us by his sacrifice, but before conquering death, He was to harrow Hell. Devils must be culled, evil pruned, or wicked weeds break through. The First Apprentice is but a puppet of Bernoulli’s ghost, but the ghost is just another puppet. Urgently, like a ravening wolf, the Darkness seeks Iscanno – it is dethroned if the Messiah attains the age of Reason.’
‘Then why don’t I just hide him? Go deep into the Sands and lose myself – I can survive here now.’
‘There’s nowhere it would not find you. The Darkness doesn’t want a fair fight. I fear that at this year’s Day of the Dead the guests will outstay their welcome and take Akka as they once took Jerusalem. O, if I was Joshua I would halt the sun’s passage and let Iscanno grow to be a man, but I’m not that strong. Night is coming, and we must not fear the Dark. Now hurry and finish your tea. The Wind appears to have got its second wind and you need more practise.’
CHAPTER 24
The Spira Mirabilis is perfection, a thing terrifying to imperfect creatures. We see clearly in the nautilus shell that the spiral is not a living thing. Its trail is the dead things life leaves in its wake. Its beauty is that of the charnel pit.
The Maxims of Bernoulli, collected
by Count Titus Tremellius Pomptinus
The Etruscan town of Concordia was founded in a deep valley. Old Town was a relic of that older Concord, as were the soaring aqueducts that collided with the foothills of Monte Nero. Once, the aqueducts were the tallest man-made structures in Concord, but after the Re-formation, a second Concord of steel and marble completed that canopy. That city of broad avenues and canals was the realm of philosophers who learned never to look down, never to consider the squalid denizens of Old Town who toiled in a choking mist of coal and on whose back was built an empire. The philosophers’ eyes were ever on Monte Nero, the linked towers of the Guild that girded it, and the leaning triple towers that capped it.
It was the first thing that struck Leto when he laid his eyes on his home. He paused a while in the Wastes to take it in before riding on. He still remembered the first time he’d ever seen Concord: on the occasion of his father’s Triumph. Then, the mountain had been crowned by the Molè. He’d been raised in the military camps of the north and had never before seen anything so glorious as the Molè – or the city, or the crowds who chanted, ‘Hail Imperator!’ and cheered for the hero Manius Spinther. His father had ridden through the streets in a quadriga, showered with rose petals and crowned with oak, his solemn face daubed red like the god of war. Try as he might, Leto remembered little else about the man as vividly as that day. The only other memory that came close was the day he was killed.
The assassins had scattered in panic and left his corpse squi
rming in the mud. Leto fearfully pulled his cloak aside and looked upon his father’s blood-caked visage, and there he saw something he’d never before seen on his father’s face: terror.
As Concord was segregated within, so it was without. The wall surrounding the city was a perfect circle – it might have been rendered on a colossal lathe. The massive stones were water-blade-smooth, and laid together so seamlessly that not even a daub of moss had ever found purchase there. Surrounding the wall was a dry moat formed by the slopes of the valley. This recession was bridged by the Ponte Bernoulliana.
As Leto crossed it, he reflected that there had been other, smaller, bridges once – before Concord became a city that treated all the world as antagonists. Under the engineers the other bridges were allowed to fall into disrepair, their gates welded shut and bricked up.
Every officer with any ambition made a point of visiting the Piazzetta Bocca della Verità whenever he was in Concord, and Leto was no exception. The Mouth of Truth was an efficient way to gauge the public mood. There wasn’t much fresh material – a sense of humour is a dangerous thing during a pious upheaval, so the city’s wits lay low. Instead of poems, there was the same graffito that was repeated everywhere these days: a Herod’s Sword on a rising sun, with the motto: Her Kingdom Come. Eventually, he did find one new rhyme. Its theme was uncomfortably close to home:
It will take time, there’s no doubt,
To civilise the barbaric south.
And we’ve been patient, but how much longer
Will it take? They’re weak. We’re stronger.
Rome did not burn in a day,
But why so long to vanquish Veii?
Our faith is strong in General Spinther.
… he’d better get it done by winter.
It wasn’t a denunciation, exactly, but the threat was clear enough – not that he required such pathetic doggerel to tell him his neck was on the line and he brooded on it as he walked through the Guild Halls. Teaching had still not resumed since the Emergency. It was eerie, walking these empty halls – and then to find Torbidda in the Drawing Room, bent over his desk … The sense of déjà vu left him speechless.
‘You look as though you’ve seen a ghost, Leto. I pray it’s not as bad as all that.’
Leto was feeling insecure, so he began with a subject that had always proved agreeable in the past. But anecdotes about the blunders of mutual acquaintances didn’t interest Torbidda today, so instead he started to describe his brush with death in Rasenna – but that too failed to penetrate the First Apprentice’s indifference.
‘Torbidda? Are you hearing me? He used me as bait.’
Torbidda looked at him blankly. ‘It worked. What else matters?’
Leto was taken aback momentarily. ‘I command your legions.’
‘But lately not very well. If Veii was not taking so absurdly long, perhaps I’d agree that Geta took an unacceptable risk. As it is, I begin to wonder if new blood might accomplish what you cannot.’
Leto stiffly drew his blade and knelt. ‘If you want my sword, you need only ask.’
‘Must you resort to melodrama every time I state the facts? Veii is an important test. All Etruria is watching. If we succeed there, the memory of Rasenna’s defiance will be washed away, and with it all hope. While hope remains, we’re vulnerable. No matter how grand the Grand Legion, a united Etruria could field a larger army.’
‘A united Etruria is a contradiction in terms,’ said Leto irritably.
‘And ours,’ said Torbidda mildly, ‘is an age of prodigies.’
Leto flinched. There it was again: that mocking sarcasm, so unlike the boy who had been his steadfast comrade in the Guild Halls. When Cadet Sixty meant something, he said it outright, bluntly, with no dissimulation. Lately Leto had the impression that Torbidda was secretly laughing at the world. He kept the frustration from his voice,
‘So I’m told, First Apprentice. Speaking of which, I’m having no more luck than you in getting that bouncing bridge to work. It’s the harmonics, I think—’
Torbidda cut him off, saying impatiently, ‘It served its purpose. I have no time to waste on such trivialities.’
Leto took a breath and tried again. ‘What about Numitor Fuscus? Is he still causing a fuss?’
‘For the moment, his faction is reserving their righteous indignation for Malapert Omodeo, the mint master.’
All of the new moneyed breed with whom Torbidda had flooded the Collegio dei Consoli were objects of suspicion to the engineers and those nobles – the majority – who lacked the funds to buy a consulship, and Omodeo was by far the most prominent of them.
‘I’m not surprised,’ Leto said, trying to hide his disapproval, but still Torbidda picked up on it.
‘I told the Collegio that it were better if neither side had recourse to the dark art of banking, but since our enemies have the Bombelli brothers, we must have Omodeo. You, above all, understand that we need the money.’
‘I do.’
‘Oh Madonna! Spit it out, Leto.’
‘War brings out the worst in man, and the worst men. Malapert Omodeo is a faithless profiteer, the lowest of a low breed. He got rich on a war that killed Concordians.’
‘Hypocrite!’ he chortled. ‘Our empire exists because of wars that killed Concordians. Omodeo is a means to an end, just like the rest of the Collegio. If any consul gets too vocal in his loyal opposition I can always inspire the fanciulli to have a bonfire of politicians. Make them see that.’
‘You’re not coming?’
‘I have better things to do than listen to those fools chatter.’
‘Torbidda, be careful. Fanatics are a dangerous weapon. What if they discover Norcino’s alive? We ought to have killed him when we pretended to. I say this as your friend: he’s influencing you for the worse. You can’t see how much you’re changed. You’re not yourself lately.’
‘That’s called growing up, my friend,’ he said, picking up his quill and dipping it into the ink jar.
Leto understood that he was dismissed. As soon as he turned his back, the insidious smile vanished from the First Apprentice’s face, to be replaced by a look of desperation. His hand began to shake, blotting his drawing with ink. He grabbed it savagely with his other hand and pounded it savagely against the desk until the pen fell from his grip. A strangled ‘Leto!’ escaped the contested tongue.
Leto had just reached the door. He turned back urgently. ‘I’m here, Torbidda!’
The First Apprentice was leaning over the desk like one who’d been mauled. He had survived the mutiny and was back in command ‘Yes, why is that? The consuls are waiting.’
Leto clicked his heels and slammed the door behind him.
*
The vestibule of the Collegio was thronged with consuls filing into the chamber. In the middle of this river was an island formed by a neat young man surrounded by consuls eager as hatchlings. As they gabbed into each ear, his lively blue eyes roved about and stopped only when they fell on Leto.
Leto sized him up as he approached. Malapert Omodeo was about ten years older than him, and while Geta’s generation had lost themselves in an endless circle of debauchery and conspiracy, the next generation of nobles had accepted their lot and found ways to survive and even prosper. Leto had expected Omodeo to have taken up Byzantine fashions during his exile, but he was a clean-shaven man with close-cropped hair who dressed like a high-ranking servant: dark, simple, neat as a parcel. His winning smile never failed, even when insulted – which, since his return from Byzant, was often. They called him Speculator, Usurer, Traitor, and he smiled with the knowledge that the future belonged to those alchemists who could invariably make from one piece of silver two hundred of gold.
‘An honour to finally meet you, General.’
‘Forgive me, Signor, but I cannot say the same.’
‘You too, Spinther?’ Omodeo pouted, mockingly. ‘I expected principled scorn from the rest of these unworldly worthies, but not from you. I did what I ha
d to do to survive, just like your forefathers.’
‘My forefathers joined the Guild because they believed in Bernoulli.’
‘That, and to protect their estates, to have influence, to count. I sought the same thing, but I took another route.’
‘And it led you here, right back to where you started.’
‘Which means we are on the same side now. A general who shows up to battle alone looks rather foolish, so I beg you to remember, when next you see your Grand Legion assembled, who’s paying for it.’
‘I will – and you should remember that you’re a temporary expedient. When the war is done, we’ll once again have steady revenues from our vassals.’
‘Perhaps … but the ambitions of States have a way of expanding. I’m confident that I can make myself useful whatever the circumstances.’
Before Leto could respond, the bell summoned them inside.
*
Leto was used to addressing mechanically cheering soldiers and he found himself struggling to complete his report over the sardonic jeering of the chamber. He did note that Omodeo and his supporters were not part of the noisy opposition, which was centred on the consul known as the Circle, Numitor Fuscus.
Consul Fuscus was nosily listening eating his way through a bag of apples, making an exhibition of his inattention to the general’s address. The apples were not just props but ammunition, for whenever a speaker made a point that he disagreed with, he would shift on his fleshy buttocks and release a great rumbling fart that echoed round the chamber like a cannon’s report.