The Warring States (The Wave Trilogy) (7 page)

‘Don’t you mean
if?’

‘I mean when.’

He offered his hand. ‘My name’s Torbidda.’

First-bloods were students to watch. He’d set a record in so quickly learning the Guild’s key lesson – that notoriety was safer than anonymity – but it would take more than one killing to impress the selectors; they had seen the passage of numerous prodigies. A few, including the current Third Apprentice, fulfilled their promise. Most, like Giovanni Bernoulli, grandson of the
Stupor Mundi
, did not.

A fearsome season followed as Torbidda’s peers raced to catch up, but still there was more to learn than fear; there was delight, discovery and inspiration as Cadets began to discover their particular affinities for individual subjects.

‘… Architecture begins and ends with Man. Literally. The Etruscans compared man’s footprint with his height and replicated the ratio in their temples. See, the capita of this column, one sixth. There are no accidents. What made this idea important, anyone? You, Spinther.’

Leto yawned. Aside from the practicalities of bridges and siege-engines, architecture bored him. ‘It was new?’

‘Even bad ideas are young once,’ Varro said impatiently. ‘Anyone?’

‘A pleasing ratio,’ Torbidda said, ‘applied consistently makes a pleasing building.’

The Drawing Hall was a huge space embellished with a brighter touch than Bernoulli’s. It had once been a scriptorium, and the dappled light that filled it hummed of noble dreams and honeyed memories. A line drawn here had clarity as nowhere else. Before the Guild overthrew the Curia, before her engineers became soldiers, their study was innocent; you could
see it in the spiralling plant motifs tumbling joyfully from the columns that interlaced like bending trees. The scribes had willingly shared their desks with the Guild’s draftsmen, and both celebrated the Word of God: the scribes paid homage by embellishing it, the engineers by uncovering the gears of his great work, Nature.

The light was dispersed further by several three-braccia-wide parabolic mirrors. The artefacts, dating from the Guild’s early days, leaned against the walls like the discarded shields of some Homeric band. Inspired by fanciful legends of Archimedes, the Curia had attempted to create a weapon using giant mirrors to focus and target light. These optical experiments were discontinued after Bernoulli demonstrated water’s vastly greater potential.

But the Maestro was gone, and the few draftsmen required now worked under the harsh mechanical lights of the factories. An age of synthesis required different men, Flaccus said; he called it Progress. Like the old scribes, these new draftsmen were copyists who looked upon original creation as vanity. If a war-machine was needed, no one sat down to draw it. Instead, one filed a request to the Collegio dei Consoli, who forwarded it to a clerk, who consulted the index and rooted out the appropriate design. But it was obvious that the age of discovery had never ended for Varro. He especially enjoyed the paradoxical aspects of architecture, the illusions employed to flood the hearts of men with joy or awe or dread. ‘See how a pillar will appear straight only if it bulges at the centre. If it
was
straight it would not
appear
straight.’

‘Entasis,’
said Torbidda, struggling with the Greek.

‘Don’t be embarrassed,’ Varro laughed. ‘It’s good to know words you can’t pronounce; a true student must outstrip his teacher’s pace!
Entasis
. What perversion that lovely word implies – that perfection displeases Man. And experience bears this out,
does it not? A perfectly tuned instrument sounds
wrong;
there must be twelve uneven semitones in an octave to please our imperfect ears. Yes children, we prefer the lie.’

While Varro carelessly imparted his eccentric doctrines, Flaccus trod a more cautious path. Any interpretation of Bernoulli’s legacy necessarily favoured one of the factions at war for the Guild. The Empiricists championed the
antediluvian
Bernoulli, the youthful iconoclast, the first among a generation of enginers of equal wisdom, with all his energy, his anti-clericalism, his military triumphs. The Naturalists’ idol was the
postdiluvian
philosopher passing from mere knowledge into wisdom, soberly weighing his famous deeds and finding them petty, electing instead to remake the world after he had washed it clean. He was David
and
Goliath, joyful giant-killer and tyrant executioner. All of the Collegio and two of the Apprentices were Empiricists, so naturally Flaccus concentrated on the younger Bernoulli, skating over those later years with no stronger admonition than ‘Regrettable’.

Expedience was the real lesson, and the Guild took only fast learners

Torbidda wasn’t surprised to see how quickly his example was emulated; the lesson required no further explanation. As the boy who killed first (anatomical subjects didn’t count), he enjoyed brief notoriety, but others soon joined the club and the more time passed, the more gruesome proofs of the principle, the more attentive every student became in Anatomy and Military History class. Cliques formed and sundered as the lambs scrambled to find security, but the truth was plain: there was no safety in numbers, nor any place to stand aloof from the race. If the Guild was a family, it was a family of wolves, all against all. To the average citizen, this brood of killers, merciless, inventive and quick, were devils, but even Hell has its
reasons, and even in its depths there were all the games and laughter that make up childhood. After a fashion.

And there were friendships.

The storm was vicious enough for Ballistics to be cancelled. Cadets used free time to work on their own projects – it was good practise; in their second year they would be expected to be autonomous. While Torbidda lost himself in Wave Theory, Leto’s interests were more practical: he was designing a trebuchet that used the recoil of the throw to load its next. Torbidda had been sitting in a nook parsing a particularly thorny theorem when he had spotted the Fuscus twins surreptitiously edging towards the Drawing Room, where Leto was working alone.

Five minutes had passed. Instead of rushing to his friend’s aid, Torbidda was walking the Halls, struggling to justify his inaction. Leto had breezed through first year so far, aside from occasional confrontations with the Fuscus siblings. His winning manner, his connections and his father’s reputation had seen to that. The only thing that fazed him was Anatomy. He could dissect cadavers perfectly well, but whether from tender feeling or sheer queasiness, he hated to work wet. Torbidda had long worried that Leto could not leap this most important hurdle. He knew he was being logical – helping someone who wouldn’t help themselves was pointless – but that didn’t make him feel any better.

The Drawing Hall was empty. Dust motes hung expectantly in light shafts, waiting to baptise new creations with their soft veil. ‘Leto?’

He’s not here. Just go.

Cursing his sentimental weakness, Torbidda walked through the empty rows of desks. Automatically he glanced at his own
desk. Strange: his pair of compasses was gone. Something else too was
off
– what? He scanned the light-filled space, marvelling, in passing, at the thick iron windowpanes, wrought into the semblance of ivy. That was it— The light. The uppermost window was open.

He prayed that the ivy was strong enough to bear him; though it groaned when he began climbing, it held fast.

Don’t get involved.

The roof was a rounded vault of beaten metal held fast with studs and tar that gleamed in the rain as if new. It was cold, but that wasn’t what worried him. One false step on the slippery roof would send him plummeting.

On the top of the roof Leto sat hugging his legs, thoroughly soaked, staring sullenly at the Molè. It was a temple designed to humble. Its interlocking forms and its awful height entangled the eye until one forgot all truths and whichever weak god one was pledged to. Its stone demanded terrified worship.

Beside Leto lay the body of the Fuscus girl. The rain had washed the wound clean, and now it looked as if Leto had inserted the points into her neck without pain or protest. His stained robes gave the lie to that. Torbidda looked down and saw the smashed body of the other twin on the rocks below.

‘And Varro says you don’t know one end of a pair of compasses from the other.’

When Leto kept his eyes on the Molè, Torbidda said, ‘I’m sorry I didn’t come to help earlier.’

At last Leto turned. ‘Madonna! You don’t have to explain! I know the rules – I’ve always know them. It’s folly to protect a weakling in a world where weakness kills. You figured that out for yourself, but I’ve heard stories about this place since I was young. I told myself that I could do things differently.’

‘You did good.’

‘I did what I had to. It’s not the same thing. It was easy, too. I did it the way you did Four: gave them a target, chose the day, chose the terrain. Easy.’

‘You’re being melodramatic. How many did you kill before you became a Cadet?’

‘… none.’

‘What do you think they’ve been training us for? If you get a chance to cull the competition you take it. Being guilty for being rational is foolish. You’re here; you have to fight, same as the rest of us. Of course you planned it. That’s what we do.’