The Dragon Waiting

by John M. Ford

  The ribbon holding Lucian's eyeglasses had broken, and the lenses lay against his cheek; his brown eyes crossed slightly, blinked. "Dimitrios, you're hurting me."

  Dimi almost drew the knife back; then he pushed it closer, till a line of fresh blood showed along the stained edge. "Did you... kill my father?"

  Lucian blinked again. "Extinguishing a family is not a simple problem," he said pedantically. "Massacres have survivors; or worse, create indelible rumors of survivors. Exile is the training-camp of usurpers. Bribery is erratic; your father would not be bribed with the throne itself."

  "Then why did you kill him?" Dimi did not care if a thousand soldiers came at the noise; he had only this one more throat to cut. "He... loved your Empire."

  "He obeyed the Empire. He never loved it, as you do not. But men love you. It is a Ducas trait, the dangerous one. The reason the order was formulated to destroy the line."

  "Whose order?" Now it seemed Dimi would have to escape, go on to kill someone more. He would do it, if it took forever.

  "The particular experiment began in the reign of John the Fourth Lascaris."

  That had been two centuries ago. "I don't understand! What are you talking about? Who—killed—my—father?"

  "In a fashion, Dimitrios, you did...."

  Dimi's jaw clenched till it hurt.

  Lucian said "... or I. Or a professional poisoner from Italy. Julius Caesar. The sun of Gaul. A weak blood vessel. Philip Ducas. The political science faculty of the University at Alexandria, to prove a theory of group behavior. Any of these. All."

  He inhaled shallowly. "And I am killed by underestimating the intentness of boys, and the Ducas I knew to be most dangerous, because he was the most loved. And faulty gunsmi-thing... Dimitrios, were you ever fond of me, even a little?"

  Dimi said nothing. The warm air from the hypocaust vent made a rushing sound.

  "I do not want to be tortured, Dimitrios. I have seen it done, and you do not want it either. When you are done with me, cut the veins in your forearms. With their length, not across. A good old Roman fashion."

  Dimitrios drew back, putting a knee on Lucian's chest. The Egyptian made no move to rise. Dimi looked at the edge of his knife, the point, the cudgel hilt.

  Lucian said placidly, "It will not make you happy. I faint too readily."

  Dimi made two deep, angled slashes across Lucian's forearms. Lucian nodded once; then his eyes rolled up and his head turned aside. His blood was thin, but as red as any man's.

  Dimi went across the room, to where Charles lay by the open panel.

  They wore the same clothing. Their hair was the same black. Charles's face was a bloody hole.

  Dimitrios pulled the rings from his fingers, let his knife drop. He felt the Raven medallion, a cold weight against his chest; he lifted it on its cord.

  It was the first thing his mother would look for, if she was still alive; and if she were not, Tertullian would know it.

  Yes, Tertullian, Dimi thought. The Persian will know the Raven. Even if he thinks I was a traitor, he will not deny a brother his funeral.

  Patiently, deliberately, listening for the guards' approach, Dimi knelt to give Charles all he had to give: his own place in heaven.

  When he was done, Dimi went to the bay window. Below him were the lights of Alesia, and the confluent rivers streaked with moon: obviously the valley had not risen in arms.

  The basilisks are sleeping, then, he thought, and will not see a King go by. He opened the narrow window, muffling its creak with a drapery, vaulted through, and closed it again. He began to pick his way down the slope, toward the town.

  He knew where there would be a horse that would not be missed until morning. He knew of a man in Troyes who hired soldiers for foreign wars, whether they had names or not.

  Beyond that he knew nothing at all, except that he was cold.

  Chapter Three

  FIORENZA

  RICCI was not very drunk, but probably drunker than a doctor should be in her patient's presence. Especially when the patient is the most powerful magnate in Italy, whom the doctor and her doctor father have warned to stay away from red wine.

  But then, Lorenzo de' Medici, il Magnifico, head of the Medici Bank and ruler-without-portfolio of the Florentine Republic, was probably past noticing. So was everyone else at the Medici summer villa at Careggi. For this was the last night of summer, and tomorrow Ser Lorenzo and the satellites in his orbit would move back to the Palazzo Medici in Florence city. And there would be a little more business in between the singing and the dancing and the poetry, philosophy, and wine. A little.

  The hall was tiled black and white, chessboard fashion—Lorenzo loved chess—with fluted false columns around the walls and a frieze of Muses and bemused satyrs just below the ceiling vault. Midnight was made day by countless candles, on the table, in wall sconces, in chandeliers of faceted crystal. Arched doorways were open on Lorenzo's botanic gardens; fall flowers were blooming, summer's dying, and the mingled smell was astonishing.

  The night air was unusually cool, and the houseguests had risen to the occasion by putting on the heaviest velvets and brocades they had thought to bring—completely upsetting the packing for tomorrow's journey, of course, to the chill and silent dismay of the servants involved.

  Messer Lorenzo knew the specific for that disorder, however. Another sheep went on the spit, more kegs were knocked in, and very shortly no one cared if the clothes were in their chests or on the floor (or on their backs or anyplace soft, said Luigi Pulci in a little extempore verse).

  Messer Pulci was golden tonight: honey-colored velvet for his doublet, yellow hose, golden wash on the lace of his shirt and a gold necklace set with topazes. Next to him sat Lucrezia de' Medici, Lorenzo's widowed mother, in dark red and brown with fire opals in her blond hair, pretending to be scandalized by the poem Pulci recited while she followed its text from the book in her lap. The first copies of Pulci's new work to leave the printing-presses in Florence had been rushed to Careggi by special messenger; a wildly expensive journey for a little paper book that sold all over Florence for a few solidi. Lorenzo had presented the books to their author with great ceremony, pointing out that Pulci's condotta of publication guaranteed him fifteen copies, and no Medici ever overlooked the fine points of a contract.

  Lorenzo's brother Giuliano sat with Guidobaldo da Montefeltro, discussing tournaments, mistresses, and firearms, in no particular order. Giuliano wore a doublet quartered red and blue, with a lyon of England in gold on red above his heart: a gift from King Edward IV of England, who was king by right of arms and grace of Medici financial support.

  Guidobaldo's father, Federigo the duke of Urbino, was one of the finest mercenary leaders in Italy, one with Francesco Sforza and the extraordinary Englishman John Hawkwood. (Of course, it was not politic to make the comparison before the younger Montefeltro, just as Giuliano never wore his jacket with its French blue quartering when Louis, the perpetually exiled King of France, came to visit.) Guidobaldo's doublet was of silk dyed alessandro, a metallic blue with silver highlights, pleated horizontally and studded with silver in a striking imitation of lamellar armor.

  Cynthia felt a touch on her shoulder. Marsilio Ficino stood next to her, holding a pitcher of wine. Ficino wore a long white gown; he had translated Plato into Latin for Lorenzo's grandfather and into Tuscan for Lorenzo, and he liked to dress (he said) "a little like Ser Plato, a little like a priest"—which he had been, briefly— "and enough like a Florentine to walk the streets in peace." He was barely five feet tall in house shoes, very thin, with a huge beaked nose and eyes that were always happy and sparkling but distant— sometimes very distant, because Ficino had visions, of Plato, and the Graces, and odder things, and was convinced his soul left his body at times.

  He poured wine for Cynthia, then himself. His fingers were long and very graceful. "Salut'," he said, and they touched cups and drank.

  Ficino's eyes went wide and he plucked at the end of his nose, which
had gotten into the wine and dripped red. Then he patted the top of his head, held the hand out as if gauging the distance to the floor, and said in a worried tone, "This cannot be my nose, Dottorina Ricci. This is the nose of a much larger man." He held her hand. "Tell me, Doctor...can a man be born with another man's nose?"

  Cynthia tried to form an appropriately grave reply, but all that would come was laughter; and not even proper grown-up laughter, but giggling. She put both hands on her winecup, watched candles dance in the liquid; she was filled with giggles like bubbles, which must rise or burst.

  Ficino took up a tragic pose. "Perhaps it is the telltale of bastardy," he said, and touched his nose again. It was really quite a big nose. "Not much of a telltale, though. Perhaps Mother was only unfaithful once or twice."

  Cynthia thought she must giggle or die. She turned to the head of the table, in search of her host's mercy.

  Lorenzo de' Medici wore a gown of intense, pure heraldic red, with the sleeves slit to show white silk. Flattened versions of the palle, the six red balls that were the Medici badge, were sewn on the breast. His chair was pushed back from the table, one of his feet braced against the table edge, and there was a silver-strung lyre in his lap.

  He was not handsome, with a broad flat face and a large broken nose (though not so beaky as Ficino's) and coarse, straight, black hair. But his look was strong, as something made from Tuscan stone, and when he spoke his voice was as the voices of mountains.

  Or when he sang, as he did now, working out the words for a new festival song. This one was about the planets in their courses around the sun... well, that was what it was supposed to be about; the lyrics concerned balls warmed by a central fire, and the tubes of telescopes thrust into darkness, and the white stream of the zodiacal light. Lorenzo's festival songs were all like that, hot bake- ovens and tree grafting and casting bronzes, funny and delightful pretense of innocence.

  And then he would take the same tune and give it new words, about his wife Clarice, or olive trees silver in the morning light, or his sons Piero and Giovanni, or Sandro Botticelli's latest painting— and the lust would become love, meanings not double but multiple, as the soul is multiple.

  Cynthia loved him.

  Lorenzo touched the lyre, striking candlelight from the strings. He looked up at Cynthia, tilted his head. Oh, bloody flux, she thought, wondering how she must look.

  Cynthia's green velvet gown was conservatively slashed at the sleeves, showing a little silk lining dyed yellow with crocus. Her green cap and golden hairnet were almost uncomfortably tight. Cynthia was twenty-two, and her hair was pure white: a touch of the strange, that she had found either attracted men or repelled them. The gown's bodice was not quite low enough to show her breasts. Around her neck was a gift from Lorenzo: a thin cord of gold and pearls, holding a pendant crocus blossom in pure gold.

  Not solid gold, but only Lorenzo and Cynthia knew that.

  Lorenzo looked at her, and the pendant. He said, "Before the night dissolves, Dottorina... I have an offer to make you."

  A number of things whirled through Cynthia's mind. None of the other conversations paused at all; only Marsilio Ficino might have heard—but Ficino was the arch-Platonist, always, in all things.

  Lorenzo opened his mouth. A chime sounded. Lorenzo shut his mouth, blinked, started to speak again; another chime came out.

  With a sudden grin, he put hand to lyre, tossed his head back, and sang the next chime. Then he clenched a fist and declaimed the stroke of four.

  By the sixth stroke of the clock, Cynthia's giggles had completely escaped control, and before midnight tolled everyone in the room was laughing, chorusing the chimes with Lorenzo.

  "To the garden, everyone!" Lorenzo said as the last stroke died away. He got to his feet. "Outside, quickly!"

  Laughing, awkward, the party disengaged themselves and their clothing from the table and went through the archways.

  A full moon washed down the gardens with silver; pine and palm and cypress trees stood pale against sky and summer-soft stars. The gardens were laid out with a ruthlessly Aristotelian precision, radial paths of tessellated stone, golden sections of bushes and blossoms. At the center was a colonnade of white marble, with marble benches, around a bronze fountain showing Venus rising from the Aegean. Ficino had created the image, Donatello cast it in metal, and Botticelli reinterpreted it in paint with his inevitable layers of symbol and allegory added.

  The poet Arturo Poliziano and Alessandra Scala, the designer and stage manager for the Florence Grand Theater, sat together on a bench in wildly animated conversation.

  "Orpheus descends to the Underworld," said Poliziano. "Descends. All the poets use that word, descends."

  Scala said "So we should cut a hole in the stage, and he can perform the act below the view of the audience?"

  "Walking across a stage is not descending!"

  "Or we could set up ladders... oh, just a minute. Have you spoken with Leonardo lately?"

  "The Archimedian? Not since winter."

  "He brought me sketches for a machine—a whole group of machines, really—to move sceneries and actors about. Make the gods fly, that sort of thing. Suppose, as Orpheus walks, the overworld begins to rise on Leonardo's wheels "

  Poliziano wore violet, Scala absolutely black velvet set with hundreds of tiny silver buttons. "The god of night and goddess of the sky," Cynthia heard Ficino false-whisper behind her; then she heard the scrape of his foot. She turned quickly and took his arm; he looked up at her with a slight smile and a nod, and allowed her to assist his lameness.

  The group began to take seats; Lorenzo insisted that all sit on one side of the circle of benches. Cynthia supposed that some presentation was coming, written by Lorenzo and staged by Alessandra; she well recalled the summer Lorenzo's Life of Julian had rehearsed here, going on to success in the city and, in translation, as far away as London and Byzantium. There, of course, the companies did not have Lorenzo himself as the Wise Emperor, and Cynthia could hardly imagine anyone else in the part.

  There was a crack of thunder, though there had been no lightning and the sky was clear. Then a yellow-white streak of fire stabbed upward, hissing and crackling; it exploded in a shower of sparks and moon-bright smoke.

  "From the Chinas," said Lorenzo. "Fire as an art form."

  There were more eruptions, streaks, fireclusters, filling the sky with flowers of light in amazing colors. "The moon will be jealous," Luigi Pulci said, and composed a typically bawdy verse on the fruits of lunar envy.

  "What are you thinking, bella Luna?" said a voice by Cynthia's ear. She turned and saw Lorenzo, seated on the bench next to her, facing outward with one knee drawn up and his fingers laced around his leg. His face was in shadow except when a firestar exploded, and even those left his deep-set eyes in darkness.

  He was in his twenty-eighth year, wealthy beyond his ability to count, and thanks to Cynthia and Vittorio Ricci the gout that had destroyed his father did not trouble him at all. He was ruler of Florence in all but name. What Lorenzo wanted was Lorenzo's. Cynthia's gown was too tight, too warm; she could not breathe.

  "I would like you to go to Pisa," Lorenzo said.

  Many things were in Cynthia's mind. That was not one of them.

  "Pier Leone wants to stop teaching for a while. He talks about going to Germany, and Alexandria; he wants to learn some new surgery while his hands are still clever, and I think write another book too. That, however, leaves the professorship open. Do you want it?"

  "I—think my father might be a better choice."

  "Vittorio's in the city, and you're here. But of course the decision's yours." He gave a small shrug, turned to look out over the half-dark gardens. "The crocuses will be blooming soon. Have you any difficulty in getting enough?"

  "No. We are.. .discreet, of course."

  "Of course." She saw the outline of his smile, wondered if a double meaning had passed her by. In the stuttering light from above, Lorenzo looked at his large, roug
h hands, flexed his fingers. There was a rattling chain of detonations overhead.

  His eyes went again to the golden chain around her neck. He was still smiling, but now she saw that it was not a happy smile at all. His hands moved apart, and she wondered if he would touch the pendant, but he stood up, saying, "Buona notte, Dottorina Luna," and went away as the sky burst red.

  She put her own fingertips to her throat. Autumn crocus. Colchicum. Twice a day Lorenzo de' Medici took a measured spoonful of colchicum extract in brandy, an infusion prepared by the Riccis, and his gout did not afflict him; as simple as that. There were only two problems.

  Neither of Lorenzo's parents was able to tolerate the medication; it gave them vomiting and galloping diarrhea. Fortunately Lucrezia's disease was very mild, and diet kept her well.

  Unfortunately, Piero de' Medici's was not mild. And so Vittorio Ricci banned red wine and organ meats from the table, and consulted obscure books and distant physicians, and wrung his hands.

  And his daughter collected the urine and blood that Vittorio would stare at like a mad soothsayer, and took notes on every possible variation of the prescription—and then took samples of vomitus and watery feces—and bathed and wrapped the patient's hot, purple-swollen joints, for days into years, until when she was fourteen Piero died, all twisted, and the last color faded from Cynthia's hair.

  Lorenzo came to power at twenty-one. The infusion caused him no distress; that problem was over, and the second could come into its own. Colchicum extract, as every sophisticated poisoner knew, was deadly in marvelously small doses. The line between cure and kill was thinner than a knife's edge.

  Thus the discretion. Thus the Riccis compounded their own medicine despite the apothecaries' guild, and killed two dogs and two piglets testing each batch. One gives poison to a prince with the utmost caution, even when it is with his consent.