Irenicon (22 page)

CHAPTER 42

“Come down!”

He recognized the expectant note in Cat’s whine: the stupid creature was waiting for him up there. He stumbled over a pile of dirty plates to get to the ladder. His steps became slower the higher he mounted, and at the last rung he stopped altogether. He looked up warily as snow floated through the square of cold, cloudless sky. What else was up there?

Rasenna. If he could see it, it could see him. He was naked and exposed, his hand no longer hidden. They’d taken Sofia, and with her his excuse for his crimes, and without that his past loomed, a monstrous reflection.

“Starve for all I care,” he mumbled, then retreated down the ladder and crawled back under his bedsheets.

The Doctor had abandoned his perch for so long that many assumed he was dead. No one took to mourning: the quarrel with
Sofia and the truth of Little Frog’s murder had sent fissures though the workshop; younger students stayed away, and older bandieratori deserted. He avoided mirrors. His shabby appearance had once been an affectation; it was no longer.

“Go away,” he growled to the knock at his chamber door.

“I
need
a doctor.” The girl’s tone told him that she wouldn’t leave this time.

He swore, crawled out of bed, and opened the door. “Good morning, Sister.”

“Morning was a couple of hours ago,” said Lucia.

“What can I do for you?”

“You
are
a doctor, aren’t you? As well as a murderer, I mean.”

“Sister, look—”

“You look!” Lucia jabbed a finger to his chest. “The Reverend Mother died to save your worthless neck. She must have had a reason—maybe it was so you could save a life
worth
saving.”

“Whose?”

The novice lost some of her assurance as she answered, “Someone who isn’t ready to die yet.”

Gaetano was woken by the angry hiss of snow falling on smoldering wood. He crawled out from the debris and saw the blackened shell that was all that remained of Palazzo Morello: the Dragon that consumed itself. He had been abandoned by all, but he would stay—let the snow fall as it might; he would keep a fire burning.

While clearing the fallen timbers from the workshop floor he came upon a mirror, cracked and buckled. He wiped off the ash and set it against a wall where he could see its warped reflection when practicing. When he was resting, he spent silent hours studying his new face. The scars were the climax of a career of low deeds, a liberating confirmation: finally the outside matched the inside. He would share his epiphany with Rasenna. She would see her true reflection and know her true name was Hell.

He recovered old strength with a new clarity. The weight of doubt and guilt died with his family, burned away with his home.
The succession was clear. The last Scaligeri was gone, so the last Morello would rule Rasenna. He had obeyed for too long. It was time to be obeyed.

Mulling on fortune’s caprices, the Doctor walked out of the shade of the Baptistery into the bright snow-covered garden. Owning this part of Rasenna would have given him immense satisfaction once, before he’d been shown his miniature empire for the illusion it was. He’d thought himself strong, yet he had proved incapable of keeping the one promise worth keeping.

Lucia came from the chapel. “Doctor.” She had become somewhat less hostile when she saw the effect of his ministrations. The Doctor didn’t blame her for being hard on him; the Reverend Mother was the only mother Lucia had known, and in the passage of a day her whole world had changed. His sister’s death had dropped all responsibility for the Order on this slight girl’s shoulders. That might explain her obsession with saving this patient; if they could wrestle just one innocent from Death’s grasp, then the world was not completely unjust.

“How is he today?”

“Little better, still feverish, babbling all the time. He wants to make his confession.”

The Doctor rubbed his freshly shaved chin. “It’ll do him good. When the mind’s at ease, the body follows.”

“You don’t understand: he wants to confess to you.”

The Doctor frowned. “Delirious?”

“Clearly!” Lucia snapped, then continued more calmly. “But whatever miracle saved him from the buio, if this fever doesn’t break soon . . .”

“It’ll break. I’ll talk to him.”

The Doctor gave dietary instructions and reminded her to rest too. More than once he had glimpsed her shedding tears over her sleeping patient when she thought she was alone. Perhaps it was more than ordinary compassion.

In the chapel, a young novice was patting the patient’s brow with a damp cloth. The Doctor recognized the daughter of his old ally.

“He keeps asking for Sofia. I didn’t tell him she was—”

“We don’t know she is, child. Hostages are most useful when they’re alive, you know.”

“I hadn’t thought of that,” said Isabella, brightening for a moment before remembering her duties. “He’s still burning. I try to cool him down, but he soaks the water up like a sponge.”

“You’re doing a good job. Leave him with me for a while.”

He watched her go. It was good to see youth bearing tragedies that broke their elders. If they were Rasenna’s future, perhaps there
was
hope—for this patient at least.

“Giovanni, wake up!” he commanded.

After the Concordians left, the bridge was not empty for long. Fabbro ventured south to visit his deceased partner’s son. They left Rasenna together on what Pedro at least considered a fool’s errand.

“Maybe it is,” Fabbro said equably, “but what have we got to lose?”

Pedro couldn’t argue with that, and when they found Giovanni washed up on a bank downstream, Fabbro took it as Divine Providence.

And perhaps he was right, for that first crossing was the beginning of a flood. Under the Signoria’s watch, Rasenneisi might—
would
—have been more circumspect, but both Families were underground, so the Small People found reasons to cross each day, and almost immediately partnerships sprang up, both conjugal and financial, and though the results were sometimes chaotic, they were, often as not, profitable too.

It was the giddy optimism of a world starting over, and it felt wrong to hide away from it, but if nothing else, Pedro owed his father a period of mourning. He tried to find meaning in Vettori’s last words as he sat in the window of Tower Vanzetti—more cramped than he remembered—and focused his old magnifier on Fabbro. The merchant was overseeing the unloading of another
shipment of wool as if nothing had changed, as if he still had a partner to weave it. Of course, Fabbro would soon find a replacement.

Some might think it strange that his father’s old partner—his old friend—just kept working, but Pedro knew it was the merchant’s way of dealing with grief. He looked around at his father’s silent looms and suddenly snapped the scope shut. Why
should
Fabbro find a replacement?

That morning, Pedro visited the towers of every Vanzetti worker and asked them why they had not returned to work. They told him the same thing: they had assumed there was no work to go to.

Giovanni’s eyes took a long time to focus, and his voice came from a distant place. “Doctor,” he croaked, “I need to confess.”

The Doctor laughed softly. “For what grave sin, Captain?”

“Sofia thought I was good, but I’ve got blood on my hands, Doctor. That’s why the buio didn’t take me; they recognized what I am. And now she’s—” He tried to rouse himself but fell back.

“Sofia’s alive! You’re the one who’ll die if you don’t start eating. You’re delirious; that’s what’s making you say these things.” The Doctor firmly held him down. “Listen, boy, I’ve known killers. You’re not one.”

Giovanni’s eyes fluttered, sinking under again.

The Doctor grabbed him and shook him until he became lucid. “You build bridges for soldiers to march over; that makes you an accomplice, at most. Sofia knew you better than you know yourself. You failed trying to do the right thing. I failed doing all the wrong things; be grateful you don’t live with shame like that. And remember, Luparelli saw you drown—to Concord, you
are
dead. I’d give anything for a fresh start like that. I’ve heard your confession. Here’s your penance: Live and help Rasenna. Are you man enough to accept?”

When Giovanni next awoke, Lucia was lighting candles around the room.

He coughed. “He thinks she’s alive.”

“He’s right.”

“It’s not possible. How can you have faith after all that’s happened?”

There was a candle in front of the window, and its flame trembled in the breeze.

“Did you know the Virgin wasn’t special, not at least in the way the Curia imagined?” Lucia said. “Her conception was soiled with Humanity, just like ours. The Lord chose her because she was strong enough to bear the responsibility—that
grace
made her special.”

Lucia went to the window and moved the candle. “Sofia’s strong too, Giovanni.”

When she looked at him again, he had sunk back into unconsciousness. “
Madonna
, give us grace,” she whispered. “We need it so badly.”

CHAPTER 43

The half-light never changed, so there was no way to tell how long she’d slept or if it was morning or evening, but she woke to a sound that was becoming familiar: the screaming told her the light had returned. Too weak to move, she lay on the damp floor and watched the drip hard at work, envying its purpose. Was this how the Scaligeri line ended, its last scion’s body and mind worn away until nothing was left?

It was just below her row now. She could hear the sudden wails of the chosen. Her eyes shut tight and—

—nothing. The hum moved on. Yesterday and today, the Angel of Death had passed over. The Doc said death should find a warrior ready, but when it came for her, she would be either insensible or too insane to notice.

She looked at the bar in the window. How long had the drip taken to wear that groove in the floor? How long would it take to
penetrate metal? She turned her back on the pit and focused on the drip, feeling each drop as it fell, its weight, its speed, its surface tension.

Tap, tap.

Whooooomp KRAK!

Tap.

“Uhhhh—”

Sofia wasn’t sitting where she had been a moment ago. An invisible hand had batted her against the wall. So to move even a single drop, she had to open herself to all its latent force—
impossible
—yet she had seen the Reverend Mother control an entire glass full without suffering the same fate. It wasn’t possible.

ShuuuuDUNK.

The door slowly opened. That seemed impossible too.

She tentatively poked her head out into the void. There was nowhere to go—was it an unsubtle invitation to end it all? Looking down at the lake, she wondered which would kill her first, the cold or the buio.

Her attention was drawn upward by a screeching sound, and she saw a falling star gleaming inside the glass column. A moment later it was by followed by a scream of torn air. She followed its descent, expecting a splash, but instead, the lake water became agitated, with tremors racing to the center. The jet shot up to meet the capsule and lifted it with another surge of power to Sofia’s row. The metallic capsule, like a coffin but larger, hovered tantalizingly close, though a gap remained.

There was another tremor from the lake, and a long metallic panel emerged, pivoting around the glass column. The walkway stopped at the same point, forming a path to the coffin.

With a silent prayer, she stepped out and waited.

Nothing happened. She took a few more steps, and the coffin door cracked open like a seed pod. She decided it might be wiser to observe for a while from her cell, but before she could do anything, the walkway began dropping. There was no time, no option. She had to leap.

When she reached the coffin, its door clamped shut behind her. From inside she saw it was not metal but thick glass, like the column, almost opaque with scum.

The coffin sank abruptly, pushing gut to gullet, and after a moment the water rose again to shoot her into darkness. She peered up and saw, falling toward her, a pale body, but as it came closer, she realized the scale had deceived her; it wasn’t a person but a colossal statue emerging from the blackness as she drew closer. There was no time to study it before the coffin passed by. After a few moments there was light enough to discern a blur of masonry in front of the glass, as if the coffin were ascending some impossibly deep well. The light grew until she was forced to squint; she realized she had grown used to darkness.

The first thing that drew her attention in this new vast space she was emerging into was, again, the angel—it was the same statue, but this time rising with sword aloft in triumph. There was something comforting about its confident smile. But there was no time for study.

This time, when she looked up, she saw the approaching interior of a dome that was as broad as the sky. The roof was decorated by a mural of the Last Judgment, an unusual rendition in that there was an apeish beast consuming sinners at its center rather than a Madonna rewarding saints. Sofia looked down through the glass at her feet, comprehension dawning. Just as the statues appeared to reflect each other, the pit was
under
the Molè Bernoulliana, inside the black mountain where the aqueducts flowed. The conclusion was impossible yet inescapable—the Molè had been built twice, first proudly spiraling skyward, visible to the whole world, and then as a dark reflection, hidden from all but its architect.

The coffin passed through the mural, swallowed by the devil, and emerged into another, smaller dome. Her speed was diminishing, so now there was time to see its curved walls were lined with books beyond counting, so many that even the dome had insufficient shelf space. More books were scattered across the floor and stacked in tall heaps. In the middle of this forest of words stood a plump little man. He waved eagerly as the coffin flew by. Sofia didn’t wave back—her attention was fixed on an old-fashioned banner hanging from a tall narrow bookshelf behind him.

Then she was gone, into the third and final dome. Here the journey ended.

A port closed beneath, and when the coffin had settled, its door hissed open. In front of her there was a space between two great stone tables to the left and right, and beyond that a great pendulum made long bisecting sweeps of the room, flushing dead air toward her. She stepped out and stumbled—she was dizzy, but it was more than that: the surface was rhythmically moving, shifting both up and down and from side to side. She was inside a boundless clock; the walls were not really walls but moving parts of an engine. Man-dwarfing cogs made slow revolutions, bleeding black grease and cracking into each other with explosive violence.

Behind the pendulum, at the summit of a short set of steps and standing in front of a vast slate board, were three figures, all dressed in the flowing robes and miters of the Curia they had overthrown, identical but for color. The boy wore yellow; the youth, orange; and the young man on the left wore a red so vivid that he seemed to be ablaze. He was writing numbers rapidly on the slate while the others watched respectfully.

These were Bernoulli’s three wise men: the Third, Second, and First Apprentices.

She took a step away from the coffin and rested her hand against one of the tables. When she was sure she wasn’t going to be sick, she announced herself. “My Lords.”

Her voice sounded a small thing against the cacophony, yet with a screech of murdered chalk, the scribbling stopped. The man in red
stood back with his colleagues to examine the work. In the ensuing silence, Sofia glanced down and saw on the table a large map of Etruria and the surrounding Tyrrhenian Sea. Reverse the colors and the peninsula would look like a single long river flowing into the ocean of Europa. She was unused to maps, accurate ones at least, but Concord’s location was obvious: all roads led to it, all rivers from it. The smoky green of Concord dominated the north; the south was of varied colors. Painted markers like chess pieces dotted the map. On the other table, there was a more detailed map of the south.

Presently, the man in red nodded. He remained while the boy and the adolescent ascended. They didn’t slow their pace as they crossed the pendulum’s path, assured that they commanded Time even as they commanded Etruria.

They circled her silently for a moment.

The boy spoke first. “Sofia Scaligeri.”

Before she could respond, a sarcastic voice behind her added, “The ‘Contessa’ of Rasenna. Do you know where you are?”

The Beast. They wanted to hear her say it. She replied simply, “Yes.”

The boy continued, “Cooperate, Contessa, and within a month you will be fighting. Rasenneisi rise quickly in the legion ranks. You’d prefer that to dying in a cell, surely?”

“What do you want?” she asked.

“The truth—your version. The engineer who built Rasenna’s bridge. Who was he?”

Sofia turned to face the adolescent. “You sent him; you should know.”

“We know what we know. We want to know what he told you.”

“He told the truth,” Sofia said. Her voice was unexpectedly loud, and the last word echoed around the chamber.

The adolescent chuckled. “What do Rasenneisi know of truth? Have you heard rumors?”

“His name was Captain Giovanni.”

“We know that. What was his surname?”

“
SenzaChiama,
like the rest of you. He had none.”

“Think, Contessa,” the boy said.

“He’s dead, so what does it matter?”

“What’s the point of protecting a dead man?”

Sofia bowed her head, clenched her fists.
What should I say, Giovanni?

Why did he confide about his father’s execution? She knew how feuds worked. Any surviving relatives would be endangered if she revealed anything.

“He said engineers have no name. The Guild was his family.”

The adolescent laughed outright at this, a grotesque sound. “Was he angry about that?”

It hurt to remember at all, and to remember like this, in this place, was torture. Was that their aim, another turn of the screw?

The boy asked seriously, “Why did he kill the Concordian boys?”

“He didn’t.”

“He confessed to General Luparelli.”

“That was a lie.”

“You said he told the truth,” the adolescent interrupted. “Were they interfering with his work?”

“He wasn’t like that.”

“Like what?”

“Like you. He was ashamed of Concord, if you must know.”

“Of Concord or of himself?”

“He had nothing to be ashamed of. He was
good
.”

“Good? He killed no one?”

“He—there was an accident.”

Before Sofia could say more, the boy asked, “Why did he dredge up the Lion statue?”

The heat and noise made it impossible to concentrate. She stopped trying to face her questioner, focusing instead on answering the question. “To stop the fighting.”

“And did it?”

“It became worse, didn’t it?” The adolescent sneered.

“You’re trying to confuse me. Go to Hell!”

“He lied, he murdered his countrymen. Why?”

“Because he loved me!” Sofia screamed.

Her outburst echoed around the engine room while the pendulum swung back and forth indifferently. The Apprentices paused a while.

“You can’t treat me like this. I am the Contessa Scaligeri!”

“We don’t make such distinctions here. So, murder is a romantic gesture in Rasenna?”

“You can’t understand,” she said.

“Why?”

“Because Natural Philosophy can’t help you here! Giovanni was
good
. He died doing right—or trying to. You can try to scare me, confuse me, hurt me if you want; it won’t change the truth. He died a Rasenneisi!”

She turned her back to them. “Lock me back up. I’m through with your questions.”

“You think he loved you?” a voice like an ill-tuned instrument asked.

Sofia turned and saw the man in red coming down the stairs.

“What if he lied?”

As he came closer, she began backing away.

He leaned in and whispered, “You must have considered the possibility.”

With a scream, she threw a fist. He did not block the punch; he was simply elsewhere when it came. She tried again, and again the First Apprentice avoided her; then he tapped her chest with a rigid palm and she flew backward and slammed into the coffin. Before the doors shut, she heard them conversing. It was like a person talking to himself.

“She knows nothing,” said the boy.

“
He
knew nothing! His death has no consequences, just as his life had none. As I told you, First Apprentice,” the adolescent said irritably.

“Be not complacent,” the tuneless voice said. “Consequence is the final mystery.”

The porthole opened beneath the coffin; a star fell into darkness.

That night, the blue light returned. There was no mark on her door; it simply deigned to pass over. Tomorrow it might not; an inconsistent torturer was worse than one who followed rules, however harsh.

She dragged herself to the door. The pit bottom lake was getting closer day by day. This was a more subtle torture; with every turn of this giant screw those chosen were robbed of strength, and those spared, of hope. It must have another purpose—just using it to petrify doomed men was too petty a reason for this remarkable engine, Sofia thought; logically, its effect on individual prisoners must be secondary. And yet sometimes logic was a poor tool. Her senses had become keener since her training, and this amount of fear and despair
was
powerful. The very air quivered with it.

She looked back at the wall she’d been thrown against in her last attempt to control the drip. The nun not only was able to feel the current, she could control it. She’d said it took years of mediation. Sofia didn’t have that kind of time, but she wasn’t resigned to being a cog for what little of it she had left. She sat down cross-legged, as if she were back in the Baptistery, and let her breath mirror the drip’s slow rhythm. She gathered focus and asked the stillness,
Where do I go now?
She already knew the answer was
down
. Into the Pit, where something pale, ancient, and dark writhed in slow anticipation. A tentacle uncoiled. It was more powerful in this place. The Beast was where the Darkness incubated, the loci of all misery, where the buio were churned and remade.

This is Fear.

She wrenched open her eyes with a scream. There was no escape within or without. All doors were locked.