Irenicon (35 page)

They reached the original Lion and stopped there. On the far side of the bridge, Giovanni lay prone while the First Apprentice stood looking down at the gap, waiting.

“Stay back, Sofia,” said Mule, rushing forward.

“Mule, no!”

He went in swinging. The man in red waited calmly and when Mule came near ducked under his banner swing, lunged forward, grabbed his head, and turned it backward.

Sophia heard, “
CracKKkkk!
” and Mule dropped without a cry.

“Mule!” she sobbed.

The First Apprentice turned to face her. “You’ll join him soon enough, Contessa.” He frowned. “That’s not the banner you stole from us.”

“Rasenna has a new banner.”

“Then we’ll take that too. Why did you come back? To be reunited with your lover? Haven’t you figured out yet that he lied?”

“I know.”

“You know nothing, child.” He laughed his off-key laugh. “He fooled everyone, even himself. There are currents intersecting here that you can’t possibly fathom.”

“You’re afraid of it, aren’t you?”

The man in red dropped all pretense of a smile. “You think the
Art Banderia
can defeat our Water Style? It didn’t help your friend.” He kicked Mule’s corpse and glanced back toward Tower Bardini.

“The thunder you hear means it didn’t help your Master either.”

She dropped her flag. “I had more than one Master. Did you come to talk or to fight?”

Giovanni, woken by the rumble, hobbled over to the machine in a daze. He heard a crunch and looked down at the glass fragments beneath his feet.

Then he saw on the far side of the bridge—

“Sofia?”

It was true, then, everything Lucia had told him. Sofia was alive, and he could tell her all the things he’d been too afraid to: the truth, his name.

Iscanno

Giovanni looked down at the river and saw a buio standing there.

Wind is coming.

With a scream of hate, the First Apprentice attacked. Sofia did nothing. She saw the Darkness and the First Apprentice for what they were: one. She was tired of running, tired of fighting, tired of being afraid. The Reverend Mother had said only faith was necessary, and she had been willing to die for it. Was she that strong?

Sofia let go of a lifetime’s training that told her to strike first and watched him and watched herself.

This is fear, this is hate. Regard it steadily.

Sofia could feel the adrenaline surging though her body, into her heart, her limbs, bone and muscle.

The surge slowed, her heartbeat slowed. Time melted away. She did not dodge or strike; she breathed. The Apprentice’s scream and his body slowed in space together, and then—

Stopped
.

In the pit, the Dark Ancient screamed as it was burned by a fire brighter than a thousand suns. Sofia saw the Source and was covered by—

Light
.

She had never been this deep before. Measurements such as seconds and centuries were meaningless in this place; here she was outside Time. The future became the past: both a gray memory to be observed with not too much interest; neither could ever be as
important again. She felt as if she had been keeping one eye closed her whole life and now she had suddenly opened it.

And there was something else: the thing that the First Apprentice had spoken of with dread, that
something
was about to happen here and it was something good. Nature was pregnant with a wonderful idea—it was so obvious. How had she ignored it her whole life?

Exhale.
The last of the mist swirled lazily in the air, thicker in patches, catching the crisp golden light and turning into curious shapes, spirals, letters. Was this magic all around me all the time? Why did I never see it?
Inhale
.

The mist quickened and raindrops fell freely and the scream grew shrill once more and all again was movement—

Sofia was not where she had been a moment ago.

“How—?” the First Apprentice gasped.

“I told you I was through answering your questions.”

The answer was beyond words: the First Apprentice was a Student of Water Style and she, though only a moment had passed, was now a Master. The blows hurtling toward her were a distraction, easily parried. When he threw another punch, Sofia caught his hand and twisted it effortlessly, and his wrist was broken.

He didn’t pause, so Sofia batted his other hand away and then kicked him under the chin, knocking him back toward the gap. He would have fallen through had she not caught his collar and held it.

“Sofia!” Giovanni shouted, limping toward them.

The Apprentice gagged and whispered, a manic gleam of hope in his eyes. “Contessa, you know his name—why don’t you kill him? He lied to you.”

“Not about love.”

“How can you be certain?”

“Faith,” she said.

“Ah,” he said, now understanding the battle was lost. “I too have faith. I shall tell my Master your name.” He ripped his collar from her grip.

The river recognized the voice of the one it hated most of all and was waiting at the surface to drag him under.

Giovanni looked back and saw the buio seeping onto the bridge, following him.

“Stay away from her.”

Cannot stay in Dryworld. Must leave, Iscanno.

“Stop calling me that! My name’s Bernoulli!”

“It can’t be!” Sofia gasped.

Giovanni turned to face her. “It is, Sofia. I’m so very sorry—I wanted to tell you so many times—”

“No. Giovanni, you don’t understand: you’re not a Bernoulli—you’re one of them! A buio!”

“What? No, I’m as human as you.”

Sofia walked toward him. “Give me your hand.”

Suddenly they were in another time, another place, immersed in the same vision.

“Where are we, Giovanni?”

“. . . Gubbio . . .”

A boy came out of a Concordian tent and looked about. His eyes were as sharp as knives. Snow drifted in the cold gray air as if reluctant to touch the earth of this awful place. The tent was pitched beside a steep bank leading to a rapidly flowing river, the water leaping and surging as it flowed up and over an incline.

In the middle of the rapids were towers, freshly smashed. There were other remnants, lying in piles and pits, and carrion birds and wild dogs squabbled lazily, though they had no need to fight. There was enough for all.

The boy’s tent was more elaborate than the others and stood apart.

His work was private.

He was and was not Giovanni—he was younger, of course, but the difference was more profound than that.

His apron was covered in blood, his hands and face too, yet he looked as pleased as a well-fed cat. He even walked differently, with a self-confident strut. Shooing away a crow with a blood-caked beak, he crouched by a basin and washed himself. He cupped the
water in his hands and frowned at the reflection he saw. Someone—something—was behind him, and he turned to face it.

He had no time to scream. Enveloped in the buio, he struggled noiselessly, the blood washing off his skin as he drowned. Now moving more slowly, the buio faced the river again and the body was expelled with a gush of bloody water and rolled down the bank to the river.

“You killed him.”

“I don’t know how to say it, I—we—were angry. I had forgotten it till now. I was reborn that day . . .”

The buio tried to get back to the river but found each step heavier. Blood was in it now, filling it, finding the places where veins would be, where a heart would beat.

“I was changed, but I arose the same.”

“You were punished for it? Why? He was the same as his grandfather, a murderer.”

“They—we—do not kill in anger. Bernoulli made us kill. I remember it now. Our Law is Water will be Water but shall not kill. My punishment—our punishment—was to live a murderer’s life.”

Sofia let go, and the vision ended. The buio surrounded them, waiting. The rumble was amplified to a tooth-rattling roar now. It was midday but dark as late evening, and the rain was pelting down.

“Whoever—
what
ever—you are, I love you.”

The other buio were sinking into puddles and flowing back into the river.

Wind coming. Must join it, Iscanno.

“No!” Giovanni said.

Cannot fight it—
part
of it
.

When they were gone, he felt it too: the pull of the Wave. It was like a thousand hooks pulling at the smallest part of his essence, and it was almost upon them.

“Why don’t you run, Sofia?”

Sofia said, “There’s nowhere to go, and I’m not afraid anymore.”

She kissed him.

“Why are you smiling?” he said.

“Because you can’t die,” Sofia said.

“I won’t live without you. I was put here to stop this. Time is different for us; we knew the Wave was coming even before Concord thought of sending it. Sofia, something wonderful is going to be born here; they’ve been waiting for it—all History has been waiting—”

“What?”

“It wasn’t an accident that I became—this, who I am. I’m here for a reason.”

They looked to the west simultaneously. The Wave had not yet peaked; when it reached the walls, it would scatter them like straw. It was several times broader than the river, wide enough to flood the town and contato together. As it came closer to the bridge, the Hate grew, a crescendoing scream.

On the walls and on the battlefield beyond them, they saw it too and knew it would sweep them all away—Concordians, condottieri, and Rasenneisi—all together.

Every atom of Giovanni’s being screamed to join it, but he did not. Now that he finally understood the cost, he knew what was necessary.

“Go, Giovanni. It’s too late! It’ll pull you apart.”

“I won’t let Bernoulli win.”

“I can feel what you feel—and
Madonna
, it hurts! You can’t fight it! You’re part of it.”

The signal peaked, and the Wave climbed to breaking point, swollen with loathing for Men and their weakness, their cruelty, their lies. The wind died, and every flag dropped. The shadow covered the trembling towers of Rasenna. On the battlefield, Concordian and Rasenneisi alike cried out to the Virgin for succor.

Giovanni pulled away from Sofia and faced it. He raised his hand and pushed,
pushed
, against the river. Raindrops hung in the air, waiting to fall. The river did not flow. The Wave did not break. Love was stronger.

On the walls, outside them, everyone looked about in wonder, all asking the same question: How were they still alive?

Like a tower collapsing, the Wave fell back into the river, and the rain that hung waiting to fall dropped—all of it. The towers shook with the impact.

The Baptistery bells chimed, and every Rasenneisi cheered, all but one. Giovanni had pushed the river. Sofia watched as that power pushed back on him alone.

“I’ll always be with you,” he said, reaching out.

Before her hand touched his, he was scattered into a cloud of mist.

“Giovanni!”

The mist hung in the air, holding a man’s shape for a moment, and then passed away on the wind.

“No cause for tears, Contessa.” Isabella reached for her hand. “He’s with you forever now.”

But Sofia picked up the Herod’s Sword he had left behind and looked on the river and cried anyway. The rain, liberated now, danced on the surface of the Irenicon. Water was water.

EPILOGUE

To walk the streets on summer days listening to the towers babble was sweet. Returning from a Signoria meeting, Sofia reflected on the year that had passed since the Wave. The bridges between the towers were permanent now, and neighbors spent hours on them, gossiping and arguing and watching the world go by for the pleasure of criticizing it. The pale flecks of cotton, blown in on a temperate breeze from the Rasenna contato, floated indolently through the streets, and the sun poured down until the cobblestones rippled like water. She often imagined that she walked in the heart of old Rasenna with her grandfather and father proudly watching over her.

Nobody guessed it at the time, but the siege inaugurated the third contest between Rasenna and Concord: the final and most terrible war. There was more than a year’s respite before Concord regrouped, time enough for Rasenna to rebuild broken walls and grow still stronger.

Rasenna had withstood the most powerful weapon Concord had. It was predictable that the cities of Etruria would believe that it had engineers equal to Concord’s; they neither understood Natural
Philosophy nor believed that anything could be stronger. Still, it was true that a miracle had come to pass, and the cities of Etruria lost no time forming a new Southern League for collective security, the chance of revenge, and, most of all, a stake in the Empire’s assets when it collapsed.

This was premature.

Though the First and Second Apprentices had perished, leaving a mere boy in charge of an Empire that would never again be seen as invincible, much remained unchanged. The Guild still ruled Concord, and Concord still ruled northern Etruria. The Twelfth Legion was lost, but eleven other legions continued to fight and win the war in Europa. At best, Rasenna had been given an opportunity; whether it used that opportunity wisely or squandered it as before depended on the men and women who led it.

Under Pedro Vanzetti, Rasenna’s Engineers’ Guild expanded as rapidly as Concord’s had more than three decades ago—but there was no question of Rasenneisi engineers abandoning their names.

Family banners hung proudly from family towers, no longer cause for contention or rivalry; the only banner that would be carried into future battles was the city’s, as both a weapon for her bandieratori and a Standard for her knights.

The men of the Hawk’s Company, tired of scratching a living in a country that could no longer afford condottieri, petitioned to stay in Rasenna, and Colonel Levi was nominated podesta. Vowing never to become too respectable, he accepted the honor.

Sofia crossed the bridge and stopped at the gap to watch the river. Though she had thrown off her rank, she was still conspicuous among the crowds. Stall owners whispered to civilians that this was the Contessa Scaligeri—the noblewoman who had returned to Rasenna with an army; she might have seized power, but in giving up her birthright, she had instead slain the serpent of faction forever.

There were certain bandieratori and certain towers that urged her to reconsider, but the Contessa—
Sofia
—insisted there would be
no return to aristocracy in Rasenna; the chain was broken. Her only ambition was to sit in the Signoria as one respected voice among many and to support Gonfaloniere Bombelli.

She turned away from the river and walked back to the workshop. In the months after the second Wave she’d struggled to come to terms with a grief that existed without death, though she knew that Isabella was right: Giovanni was not really gone. He was with her forever, as the Irenicon was one with Rasenna.

The Scaligeri banner had found a new home on what once had been called Tower Bardini. The Doc had been faithful to her, so she in turn kept his workshop alive, and it was as thronged with students as ever. Now she briefly conferred with Uggeri before climbing up to the tower roof.

Up here, she felt as if she could call upon the Doctor’s ghost for counsel. She peeled an orange as she looked down on the bridge and pondered the questions still unanswered since that terrible, wonderful day: the Reverend Mother and her own visions had spoken of a choice
she
would have to make, yet it was Giovanni who had sacrificed everything.

Why had the Apprentices been so intent on destroying Rasenna instead of simply reconquering it?

What were they so afraid of?

She still felt that a terrible ghost was loose in the world and a wonderful promise. Her recurring nightmare always started the same way:

At night, with wind and rain howling through the ruin of the Molè’s great hall. Indifferent to Nature’s agony, the charred angel looked down at the circle of torch-bearing engineers standing around the repaired glass column. In the center, the Third Apprentice, now First, now wearing the red, looked balefully up at the statue.

“This is a great honor,” the boy said nervously. “We are but vessels.”

“We are vessels,” came the engineers’ response.

“Although changed I shall arise the same,” he intoned as he approached the waiting coffin with faltering steps.

When the door hissed closed and there was no one to hear, he whispered, “
Madonna
, preserve me. I am afraid.”

The star dropped into darkness. A storm that had been incubating for centuries attacked the dark white city, with bolt after bolt striking the lantern at the Molè’s summit. The charges shot through the triple dome and lit up the great hall as they hit the angel’s upraised sword. The engineers fell back in fear as their torches were snuffed out.

In the underworld, a moment later, the charge shot from the second angel’s sword through the void of the pit and into the lake.

The water’s surface boiled with buio in agony.

When the coffin rose from the filthy black water, the boy inside was no longer crying.

The thunder that followed was the sound of Heaven cracking open.

Sofia awoke. It was just before dawn, and she realized she was not alone. The air was humid, as if an imperceptible mist hung in the air, and on her skin were droplets like morning dew.

The buio stood at the window, waiting for the morning light.

“Is it you?” she asked.

The sun came up over Rasenna and swept into the room. The light swam over Sofia, and she understood the responsibility offered.

“Behold the handmaid of the Lord,” she said, and felt at once the quickening.