The Warring States (The Wave Trilogy) (12 page)

‘Flaccus thinks he’s the only one who knows about this place. Ha! I know
every
secret. I roam these vaults with the ghosts and listen to the echo of the great days.’ Torbidda watched with mild nausea as Varro stripped the shroud from the statue and ran his hand, hungry as a blind man’s, over the form of the shy maiden.

‘The Madonna. Oh, I’m sure that you were thinking of someone else – a sister, a mother, a sweetheart – but the sculpture represents your enemy. The snake at Her feet? That’s us. That’s why She hates us. We would dispel the darkness of ignorance. Curiosity is the only sure path to wisdom.’

‘I’m not a lamb any more,’ Torbidda said. ‘The Madonna’s a myth.’

‘Oh, she’s real.’

‘She lived – but two thousand years ago. She’s dust now, like the Curia and its fancies. Engineers build with stone and iron.’ Although Torbidda did not respect Flaccus, by now he had little for Varro either.

‘Engineers require imaginary numbers to solve certain equations, do they not?’ Varro said equably. ‘Without them, certain truths would remain inaccessible.’

‘That’s different,’ Torbidda said impatiently. ‘They’re … useful fictions.’

‘We know that
now
, but someone somewhere once took a chance. Different problems require different tools, and faith can be useful as logic.’

‘Logic’s a tool for preserving truth. Its first law is that nothing true can be derived from false principles.’

‘Yet every law has exceptions. I’ve extracted nobility from base metals. Torture can compel truth from liars. Kings have been born in mangers.’

‘Selector, these are false analogies.’

Torbidda’s polite response was wasted effort. Varro wasn’t listening; he was lovingly caressing the statue’s curves. Torbidda cleared his throat and the old man leered at him knowingly. ‘I was a mason, you know, before the Re-Formation. I might even have carved her. I don’t remember. Our work was uniform. These days every craftsman’s striving to be original and the result is cacophony. We strove then to forget ourselves, to let ourselves be God’s hands. All Bernoulli had to do was insert himself in God’s place to acquire an army of devoted slaves.’

Although quick to criticise Flaccus and his coterie, Varro usually limited himself to bland generalities when discussing Bernoulli. Curiosity compelled Torbidda to ask, ‘What was he like, really? Tell me, no one’s listening.’

Varro smiled conspiratorially. ‘He had an eye for talent. I
came to his notice on the building site of St Eco’s, as we called it then. I was always good at uncovering secrets, and bad at hiding them. When I realised he wasn’t building an ordinary cathedral he could have killed me. Instead, he told me his
real
secret and sent me out into the world to learn more. I wandered on his behalf and met other wanderers, older and more powerful, and when I returned, he showed me the Confession Box. He no longer had to search for secrets; they came to him and whispered the history of tomorrow. He told me one would come to destroy his work, and afterwards,
another
would come to complete it. I waited for so long that in my eagerness I mistook the signs! I thought his grandson, Giovanni, was that man.’ His fingers tightened around the statue’s throat. ‘How wrong I was.’

Torbidda said nothing.

‘You’re studying deep things down here in the dark. Flaccus lacks the wisdom to enlighten you.’

‘Can you?’

Varro walked across the puddle. Torbidda noticed that he did not disturb the surface. ‘Follow me.’

The Alchemistry Hall echoed with the sound of crashing waves. The pool was already drained. Below, a pseudonaiad stalked up and down, flowing over the curved walls, crashing against them and then reforming. When Torbidda approached the edge, the restless movement ceased.

‘See: it remembers you.’

Though it was eyeless and faceless, Torbidda felt it
looking
at him. ‘I can’t get in there. It’ll kill me.’

Varro pulled the ladder up. ‘If you don’t face your fears, I promise that you’ll die in Conclave. You know that Flaccus has been secretly training Agrippina. Do you think she’ll hesitate?’

‘Is
that
why you want to help me? To spite Flaccus? Perhaps
Agrippina is willing to lower herself to simony, but if I win the yellow I won’t be a pawn.’

‘Precisely why it must be you,’ Varro said high-mindedly. ‘Girolamo Bernoulli wanted the best to climb the mountain. In this faithless time I remain his last faithful servant.’

Torbidda didn’t give much credence to that, but he was out of options;
that
was undeniable. With a silent prayer, he leapt down. As soon as his feet touched the ground the water rushed for him. His reflexes were considerably better now, and he dodged it – but only just. He backed away, but there was no escape in the cylindrical prison. The elemental hurled itself at him again, and again he rolled out of the way at the last moment.

‘Varro!’ This was foolish. ‘In the name of sanity, lower the ladder!’

‘No,’ Varro said simply.

Torbidda’s Water Style was sophisticated enough now that he could sense the water’s will, and he could anticipate its attacks. But no entirely defensive strategy could win here: the water never lagged, it never got tired or gave him space; it just kept coming. Eventually he’d make a slip, and then—

Soon he was up against the wall again.

Varro yelled, ‘You need to attack!’

Torbidda knew he was right, and in desperation, he threw a punch. His fist sank into the column, where liquid entrails gripped his fingers, pulled his hand in and swallowed his wrist, his arm — Torbidda leapt, kicked both feet against the wall and pushed himself
into
the pseudonaiad. He landed on the other side, thoroughly soaked, but free.

He gulped for air. ‘Damn you, Varro! How can I hurt what I can’t hit?’

‘Think, boy! It’s water – only water. You’re that and more.’

Torbidda’s mind worked desperately:
water, air
– could he
harness air the way he harnessed water? Surely that was impossible. Water was in him, in his blood, saturating his matter. Air was outside. How could he control that? But with nothing to lose, he threw another punch, this time stopping scant inches before the column’s surface. The focused blast of air burst through the elemental and it reeled back, looking like a tattered flag, then reformed.

‘That’s it, attack!
Attack!
Don’t let it rest.’

Torbidda didn’t need to be told now. Another blow, and another: he had it now. The elemental fell back from the pneumatic onslaught shedding water from liquid wounds. He herded it back against the wall and, eyes shut, fists together, struck mercilessly, pushing air into it like a hammer, inflating it …

The explosion drenched him. He opened his eyes. to find himself standing in a cloud of mist. Around his feet small, trembling puddles were desperately combining. It wasn’t dead – it couldn’t die – but he had bested it.

Varro dropped the ladder and held out his hand. Torbidda climbed up and stood beside the selector, watching the pseudonaiad reforming. It moves sluggishly, punch-drunk.

‘Now you are ready.’

‘Varro,’ Torbidda gasped, ‘I’m grateful for what you did, but, please, tell me the truth. I know there’s more.’

Varro smiled proudly. ‘I can’t fool you. When the water recognised you, I knew you would be the perfect vessel. That’s all the Apprentices are – red, orange, yellow, they’re all just potential vessels. Like a thief in the night, the master will return – at what hour, no one can say, but it is
imminent
. One Apprentice must sacrifice himself so that Bernoulli can live again, and it must be the most worthy vessel. My dear boy, I think that honour is yours! You have all the requisite qualities.’

‘What if I don’t want this honour?’

Varro’s shoulders began to shake with mirth.

‘What if I refuse?’

‘Oh, poor boy, your
wishes
are irrelevant.’ Varro’s face creased in hysterical laughter. ‘You think your will could withstand Bernoulli’s? Your fate was sealed the day you entered the Guild Halls – AAHHhh!’

Crrackk

The selector landed badly. He had not expected the push. The distinctive egg-white colour of fresh bone glistened from his shin. The water sensed him.

‘Take your reward,’ said Torbidda, covering the pool with its shroud, ‘O good and faithful servant.’

from
The Bernoullian Reforms
by
Count Titus Tremellius Pomptinus

Torbidda crept from the Halls down to Old Town wrapped in a long cloak. It was an indirect route, but one that would not be noticed. He requisitioned a horse from the heralds’ livery and rode across the Ponte Bernoulliana. The guards at the gate stood under the empty gibbets and studied him. Torbidda gave them a brusque salute, which allowed them to see his yellow armband. ‘Guild business,’ he muttered. One advantage of being a Candidate was the fear it inspired. The dark green gates rippled open and, for the first time in his life, Torbidda left the city of Concord.

To what end he knew not.

For all his doubts, as soon as he was outside the walls he felt invisible chains drop away: he had escaped a malign will that had directed every step of his life. He rode a mile or two before a gruesome spectacle slowed him to a walk. The procession of mendicants he had observed the other day had become a trail of bodies, tended by buzzing flies and crows. He rode on warily
until he came to a neatly stacked mound. One Fraticelli was living still, and he was piling bodies by the light of a small fire.

He turned with the contented smile of a farmer completing his harvest and Torbidda flinched when he looked into the pits where the Fraticelli’s eyes should be. Agrippina had told him the Fraticelli rejoiced in poverty; they never washed, and wore their habits until the cloth fell, rotting, from their bodies. If this was true, then here surely was their king. His shapeless, filthy rags were the grey of a donkey’s pelt, and looked as if they had been made from matted tail hairs.

‘Where goes’t thou, Brother?’ The blind man’s voice was like a sharp quill scratching rough parchment.

‘No idea,’ Torbidda said, carefully keeping the revulsion from his voice. He had worked on emaciated specimens in the Anatomy Halls, but he had never before seen such desiccation in living flesh. The blind man was all knee and knuckle: his limbs were bones covered with an uneven layer of thin, bruised skin, burned the same angry pink as the bodies on his pile. The bone of his skull showed clear through his bald pate. His mouth was large, and crowded with yellow teeth, perhaps four or six too many, and his smiling lips were chapped and broken.

‘If you don’t know where you’re going, no one is waiting for you, so what hurry? Rest a while.’

Torbidda couldn’t fault his logic, but he looked back at Concord anxiously.

The Fraticelli laughed. ‘Ah, you’re running! These poor pilgrims, they thought to run too. They believed they’d be safe if they reached the world’s centre.’

‘They didn’t get far,’ Torbidda remarked.

‘They got as far as they were meant to. Each star is given a path and may not choose another. Men are no different. The day Men are free to choose their own path, that day History ends. But these fools understood nothing of Astronomy. They
fell into the thrall of yonder city. Some said it was punishment; some said they were not worthy to see Jerusalem. Others, mad with the sun, said Concord
was
the new Jerusalem!’

‘I don’t know what Concord is,’ Torbidda said, and dismounted, ‘but it’s not that. Had they no guide?’

The Fraticelli’s head tilted like a bird. ‘Perhaps they thought I was their guide.’ He scratched his chin-stubble and giggled. ‘Perhaps I was.’

‘Why did they perish?’

‘There’s little else to do in the desert. Three paltry revolutions and they started dropping. A blind man makes a poor guide,’ he confessed, ‘but I’ll try to be a better host.’ He took a fiery brand from his campfire and threw it onto the pile of bodies. The dry clothes caught quickly and soon the crackle of skin peeling, fat sizzling and bones snapping filled the air.

‘That’s better. So, how shall we pass the time? A story! Have you one to tell? I see you’re shy. I’ll start. There once was a town besieged by condottieri. The thing went on till every larder in town was empty. The magnates got together and decided that there were simply too many mouths to feed, so they evicted the Small People. Well, you can imagine that when the condottieri saw this army of beggars coming towards them, they didn’t like the look of all those hungry mouths either. So they persuaded the beggars not to advance further – arrows, pikes and swords made their case – and the beggars fled back to the town. But the gates remained closed. “We know ye not,” the magnates said, and cast down stones and darts on their heads.’

‘Was the siege successful?’