by Aidan Harte
He entered the circle and where he stepped, ripples did not spread out. ‘If you fight against it, your energy dissipates in thousand directions. Go with it—’
He slammed his foot down suddenly and the puddle exploded into a thousand floating drops. A Candidate with a toe in the puddle went flying back into a pillar; the rest were buffeted by a momentary gale-force wind. Just as suddenly, the drops rained down around Flaccus.
Do as I do.
A simple, effective method. The only drawback to the repetitious exercises that ate through the morning was that the Candidates never got to explore alternatives, or make mistakes. Flaccus corrected faults so intolerantly that it became difficult to do the most elementary things. But despite their teacher’s limitations, these children knew how to learn. By the first day’s end, the canal’s water was barely audible; within a week, it roared.
Each day they practised, each session extending as their stamina improved. The enervated Candidates at the high table in the refectory were a diverting spectacle for first- and second-years. The regular absence of two of the Candidates was remarked upon.
They worked until Agrippina gave in to exhaustion, then Torbidda continued alone. He had most to learn, so he practised longest, rising early, working till late. Agrippina confessed that she could hardly relate to old friends any more, and Torbidda sympathised. He saw Leto rarely, and when they met it was as if years had passed in the interval. Leto was excelling in Military Applications, but Torbidda could muster little enthusiasm for his tales of siege and stratagem.
The more he practised, the louder the current became. It drowned out the din of ordinary life. A shadow had slipped between his eyes and the world; it made everything that had once seemed important fade to grey. Torbidda knew that Candidacy entailed sacrifice, and he had resigned himself to seeing his other studies suffer, but instead he excelled as never before. Impossible problems were effortlessly solved, new connections made, the paradoxes of Bernoullian Wave Theory no longer benumbed him. He understood with new depth. How was unclear, and Flaccus had no answers: to him, Water Style was sets and drills; he certainly didn’t believe they were harnessing the power behind the Wave. He blithely exposed the Candidates to dangers he could not see, and it changed them in ways that they didn’t understand. The loud fell silent, the subtle became frankly violent.
One morning Agrippina and Torbidda discovered they had had the same dream, of sinking into cold water and darkness. They realised they could easily lose themselves, and swore to pull each other back if the other was going too deep.
For lack of such a partner, the other Candidates suffered. As weeks turned to months, casualities mounted: two were murdered, two died in a suicide pact and two more were expelled (one had become incapacitated, the other insane).
‘They broke because they were weak,’ was Flaccus’ pat, unvarying explanation. Although he didn’t know what, he knew that there was something in the depths. His solution was to avoid it. ‘You can’t draw on what’s down there. Once It feels your presence, it’ll draw you in and consume you. So learn to float and concentrate on controlling the water’s flow. Ignore the rest.’ Constant pressure was his answer: ‘If you wish to master any wild animal, you break it.’
‘You don’t think it’s possible that Water has more than animal instinct?’ Torbidda asked. ‘That it has some sort of higher intelligence?’
‘No. Intelligence is revealed by election, discrimination. Water is a slave to its nature.’
‘Men are no less bound by causality’ – Torbidda pursued his question – ‘and perhaps more so. We can’t choose to make effects precede cause, but the pseudonaiades exist in a state where Time is liquid—’
‘Bah! The anthropomorphic theory didn’t sound any less preposterous when it came drooling from Bernoulli on his deathbed. If the pseudonaiades could act on the past, they wouldn’t still be our prisoner. And if they could see the future, they wouldn’t have let us capture them.’
‘Not necessarily,’ said Torbidda. ‘They could be obliged to act a certain way, though aware it will be disastrous.’
‘Obliged by what?’
‘I don’t know,’ Torbidda admitted, ‘some force stronger than Time’s arrow—’
‘Stop embarrassing yourself. I told the Apprentices you had a child’s understanding of Wave Theory. Nothing’s stronger!’
The last Candidates were too exhausted to sneer at Torbidda, but only Agrippina took his side. ‘Then perhaps they know their bondage has a grander purpose.’
Flaccus rounded on her. ‘“Purpose?” I thought better of you. Soon you’ll be talking about God’s plan for us.’ Flaccus was extra-hard on Agrippina; he saw her solidarity with Torbidda as rank insubordination. He wanted the Candidates at each other’s necks, not cosying up together. ‘Water Style’s not the secret of the ages. It’s a way to fight. It won’t get you to Heaven but it might keep you alive through Conclave.’
CHAPTER 13
Footsteps among the columns. ‘Agrippina?’
Flaccus stepped out from behind a statue. ‘Candidates don’t help other Candidates.’
Torbidda didn’t bother to respond. He went back to his steps. The ripple only occurred when he willed it. Flaccus watched for a while, waiting for some slip. He said at last, ‘I didn’t teach you that combination.’
‘I worked it out with Agrippina. It’s obvious really,’ Torbidda said coldly.
Flaccus stepped into the puddle, upsetting its placid surface. ‘Yet it took the wonder child to discover it. I see brats like you every year. You learn a little and hear stories of Bernoulli and start to think that you’re like him. You’re nothing like him.’
Torbidda continued his set. ‘If you think you can goad me—’
Flaccus suddenly brought a knee into his stomach and stood aside so Torbidda tumbled face-first into the water. There was a moment of darkness before his eyes opened. Half his face was submerged. He felt Flaccus’ foot between his shoulders, keeping him down. ‘You’re scheming to let Cadet Seventy-Nine win, aren’t you? The moment I saw you I knew you for a liar.’
‘That’s what you taught us!’ Torbidda shouted, gagging as water entered his mouth.
‘Oh no, no one had to teach you. You’re a natural. I needn’t have worried – you’ll fight her because you want the yellow more than anyone.’ He leaned down and pressed Torbidda’s face until his nose and mouth went under.
Torbidda tried to lift himself up, but it was impossible under Flaccus’ much greater weight. He was drowning. He twisted his lower half and spread his legs wide and brought them together against Flaccus’ supporting leg. The Grand Selector fell, and Torbidda rolled over, gasping for air.
Flaccus picked himself up triumphantly. ‘See?’ He walked away laughing, ‘When the moment comes, you’ll fight. There’s a wolf in you and I can’t wait to see its teeth.’
The embarrassed streak of yellow was the nearest thing to colour in an otherwise grey sky. They sat on the roof and looked down the barren earth laid out hopeless as a corpse. Winter had withdrawn its stranglehold and the sun resumed its faithful passage, but it was a pointless trudge, with no warmth to wake the slumbering roots.
Talk was exhausted.
No one else understood the transformation they were undergoing but their rivals. They huddled together like lotus-eaters, yearning for the next dose and terrified of it. Their senses had attained a new pitch of sensitivity, resulting not in clarity but cacophony. Everything was too loud, too sharp, too bright, too cold. The canal below them pulsed with energy. The Molè behind them was a malevolent hunger, and they were always aware of it, just as magnetised needles always know the poles. It was a relief to watch the pathetic sun and know they were not the only ones struggling.
Before the cold broke their feeble bones, Agrippina suggested they walk the city walls. She was on edge. Earlier that evening, Torbidda had discovered her unconscious in the crypts. ‘I went deep,’ was all she said when she awoke. The sentinels saluted
as they passed. Strange feeling, to be recognised – in the Guild Halls everyone was a number, anonymous, divisible, easily substituted.
She took him to the southern wall and pointed to the Wastes. The flat horizon shifted as grey winds passed over. The emptiness was perfect, but for a few sun-blackened husks that had once been trees and a long straight road covered in parts by the creeping dust.
‘Beyond that,’ she said, ‘a few leagues before the Rasenneisi contato begins, near Montaperti, that’s where my father’s farm is. It gets green eventually – well, greener, I should say. Nothing prospers. The Molè leached all the good out of the land,’ she added without looking over her shoulder, ‘like a big greedy tree spreading death with its shadow. The higher the Molè rose, the worse the land got, my father used to say. I told him it was a consequence of diverting the rivers, and that when the trees died, erosion made the land barren.’ She turned to him with a vehemence he’d never seen before. ‘I was wrong, Torbidda! There’s something else, deep in the roots of the city, and it’s hungry. You’ve sensed it too, haven’t you?’
Torbidda demurred, and sought to change the subject. Half a mile out, a dust-trail rose from a procession, slowly circling the city, crossed the road to the city as if wasn’t there, making their own path across the dry thorns and sharp stones.
‘Who are they?’
‘Fraticelli,’ said Agrippina with distaste.
Torbidda had seen mendicants before; some wandered into the city every few years. Many were haruspices of sorts. Lacking schooling, they invented rituals and preached eccentric sermons to the Small People who were seeking entertainment more than enlightenment. The Guild ignored new preachers until they began to preach sedition – all of them did eventually – and then they hanged them.
‘My father called the Fraticelli chickens coming home to roost. Lots of lost souls end up in the Wastes, people ruined by our legions or condottieri, but the refugees from Gubbio are unique. They think they deserved punishment. They believe that the Wave that made them homeless was God’s opening salvo in a new war on Man. They wander Etruria like Noahs warning of deluge, recruiting as they go. I’ve seen whole farms emptied in a day, families throwing away everything to join the pilgrimage.’
‘Where are they going?’
‘Jerusalem – at least, that’s what the Fraticelli tell them. But they all end up here, circling. It’s the Molè that does it: it draws and repels them at once.’
‘One desert’s as good as another, I suppose.’
‘No. This is the worst.’ She turned back to the city. Tears rolled down her face as she whispered, ‘Torbidda, what will become of us?’
‘We stick to the plan.’ He spoke with an assurance he didn’t feel. ‘You’ll win the Conclave and become Third, ally with the new Second, kill the First and both move up a step. Then you can make the argument that I’m still eligible since I moved up a year. Who’s going to argue with the Second Apprentice?’
‘Won’t the orange grow pale in turn? And when I’m First and you’re Second, and some other young villain is Third, what then? Aren’t we just putting off the inevitable? The day one of us must—’
Torbidda grabbed her by the shoulder and spun her round to look at him. ‘That day will never come! We’re powerless now, but when we’re Apprentices, we can change the world.’
She smiled sadly. ‘You’re right. We can change it. Anything’s possible.’
‘Come on,’ he said. He wondered if she really believed it. ‘I want to show you something.’
They walked down through the keep to the city gates, then took an old stairway to the Old Town. Agrippina had never been before, and he wanted to show her the boarded-up corner house he’d grown up in.
They paused in Piazzetta Bocca della Verità to read the latest Truth. The small landing halfway between worlds was named after its antique fountain. Water had never flowed from the leering Mouth of Truth; instead, a stream of innuendo, gossip and satire poured from the satyr’s lolling tongue. Those too lazy for conspiracy could exercise their spleen with epigrams and rhyming couplets. It didn’t matter whether one’s complaint was trivial or weighty or if the target was Guild bureaucracy, imperial wars or a particularly inept general; what did matter was the elegance of the attack. Especially good Truths would be swiftly replicated around the city. Like the Curia before them, the Collegio took a tolerant attitude: let the Small People vent – it was harmless, and a useful gauge of the public mood.
As Torbidda read, he fancied the satyr was laughing at him:
Who killed the First? I have a notion:
It was someone seeking fast promotion.
An impatient and ambitious fellow,
You’ll find him wearing orange or yellow,
But when he seeks to wear the red,
Who wears the red must needs be dead.
Torbidda was surprised that the circumstances of Argenti’s murder were known outside the Guild Halls. Cadets always imagined themselves privy to great mysteries, but the poem made it clear their imagined secrets were common knowledge, even as it satirised their pious protestations of fidelity to each other.
Agrippina seemed to share his thoughts. ‘Let’s get drunk.’
Theology students were a thing of the past and Cadets were generally too conservative to drink, but old Concord’s taverns were still busy. The nobility had nothing else to do. Cadets were not supposed to leave the Guild Halls, but Torbidda and Agrippina felt no fear. Though the streets were unsafe for ordinary Old Towners this late, engineers roamed where they pleased, no matter what the hour – everyone understood the dire consequences of offending engineers. They found a suitably derelict tavern in the Depths and an hour later were toasting each other loudly. The Rule and Compass, formerly The Cardinal’s Hat, was one of the older drinking holes in the so-called officers’ quarter. Though its population possessed that blood formerly considered noble, this part of old Concord was as filthy as any other slum in the Depths. What would be the point of improvements when the residents were just passing through, or so they insisted as decade followed decade.
Torbidda tilted his mug at the corner. ‘Bloody cheek. That soldier’s been staring at us all night.’
Agrippina tossed her head back. ‘Let him stare.’ She toasted the man. ‘Salute, Signore!’
Clearly inebriated, and clearly surprised to be noticed, the man lurched to his feet and stumbled towards them. The barman, following every unsteady step, mumbled warningly, ‘Geta …’
But the soldier ignored him and stopped in front of the Cadets. ‘Why don’t you lovebirds keep it down?’ he growled.
As Torbidda stood, he took his hood down to show his number. ‘How dare you—?’ he started, but Agrippina pulled him back down.
‘Forget it,’ she said. ‘He’s just a drunken fool.’
The drunk spun around. ‘I beg your bloody pardon, Signorina, but I’m a hero of a dozen sieges! While you bloody engineers sat around and plotted, I’m the one who scaled the bloody walls. I opened the bloody gates. And who gets the bloody credit? Bloody engineers, that’s who. But you baldies look like Cadets to me.’ He turned to look at the rest of the tavern’s clientele. ‘Baby lice,’ he announced, ‘know how get ’em? Pinch the head, that’s how—’ and he reached for Agrippina.
She allowed him to get close, which gave her time to grab the bottle. A streak of green smashed over his head and wet emeralds rained down. She kicked forcefully into the soldier’s knee and he fell forwards and smashed his chin against the table.
She pushed his unconscious body off the table into the fragments of the broken bottle.
The barman insisted that their drinks were free, and offered to call a night guard. ‘I needs my licence,’ he said, his voice low.
Agrippina just wanted to leave. ‘No harm done.’
‘You do have some Rasenneisi in you,’ said Torbidda, smiling to hide his disquiet. It was not the drunk noble – nothing strange there – but the speed with which Agrippina had p
ut him down. Perhaps it was an accident that she had gone so deep this morning, but he was now certain that she had been holding back in practise – just as he was.
‘Cin cin,’ he said, and clinked her glass.
She smiled back.
In their hearts, each knew the competition was real.
CHAPTER 14
On the Origins of Concordian Gothic
Even before the first stone of St Eco’s was laid, the Cathedral’s singular aspect atop Monte Nero made it unique. Most of Etruria’s great cathedrals were built in urban settings, which placed restrictions on construction. Free of these considerations, the Opera del Duomo of St Eco’s decided to forgo scaffolding in lieu of the large ramps used by the Ancients. This is just one of the ways that the Curia’s plans reflect the rebirth of interest in the Etruscans. They were inspired by newly translated texts that revealed that the sun-bleached temples still standing in the remote pastures of our contato4 had once been full of colour. Consequently, it was decided that St Eco’s façade should blend coloured marble with playful ornament.
Given the contemporary pace of discovery and innovation, St Eco’s architects assumed that the ambitious dome they sketched would be possible by the time the walls to support it were built.5 The Curia intended St Eco to proclaim Concordian superiority to all Etruria. They were to be disappointed. As successive capomaestri grew to manhood and sank to senility, the cathedral’s walls grew ever more elaborate, but not a braccia taller. St Eco, the domeless cathedral, became instead a byword for Concordian hubris.
CHAPTER 15
Her body leaned back in elegant surprise; the smooth undulations that composed Her face invited reverence. He leaned forward with parted lips.
‘She’s the real enemy, you know.’
Torbidda dropped the veil quickly and looked around. No one. Just the frozen ethereal silhouettes of shrouded statues. He cursed his stupidity in isolating himself with no escape route and prepared for ambush.