Irenicon

by Aidan Harte

  Secondo quickly wilted under his stare and retreated without protest. Sofia kept walking. The Doctor grabbed her good arm and pulled her out of earshot.

  “It wouldn’t have happened if I’d been with them, Doc.”

  “Keep your voice down. I didn’t train you to be a common street fighter.”

  “What’s wrong with that? You’re one.”

  “Grow up. Someday soon you have to rule.”

  “If Quintus Morello had his way, I’d be dead already. You think the south will suddenly pay homage when I turn seventeen? Right now, the Bardini name is in the mud, and Scaligeri is neck deep with it.”

  “You’ve inherited your grandfather’s rhetorical skills at least,” he said patiently. “So what does my bloodthirsty Contessa propose?”

  “Nothing complicated. Cross the river. Crack some heads.”

  The Doctor pushed her hard against the wall, slammed a fist down beside her face, and glared.

  “What’s wrong with a good fight?” she said coolly, all music gone from her voice.

  “The only good fight’s one you can win.”

  “What, then? Do nothing?”

  “Not nothing. We wait.”

  She pushed the Doctor away and went to the door. “You think I don’t know you sent Mule and Secondo over?”

  He looked back at his students until they went back to training, then said quietly, “Don’t question me, Sofia.”

  “When I’m Contessa, I’ll be in charge. How will I run Rasenna when you don’t let me run my own life?”

  “Your life’s not yours to waste. I made a promise.”

  “To a dead man!” Sofia slammed the door behind her.

  The Doctor followed her out and shouted, “Be back by evening. There’s an emergency meeting of the Signoria.”

  She didn’t break her stride. “There’s always an emergency.”

  The Doctor’s anger was dulled by his bemused recognition of a family resemblance: for a Scaligeri not to carry high her head would have been grossly false, politic though feigned humility might have been. There are few things in life as truly ugly as conceit or as common. Sofia’s pride was the rarer kind, and it made her beautiful.

  Back inside, the students were busy with their sets and pretending not to have heard. The Doctor pried his fingers separate to crack them. In repose they curled naturally into fists.

  The young always hurry. Count Scaligeri once told him that everything had an appointed hour. Have patience, study, and come the hour you may succeed—if you’ve acquired sufficient skill. Thinking of Sofia’s grandfather always cheered him, not in spite of the end but because of it. To execute any act gracefully in this life was hard. To die well, hardest of all.

  CHAPTER 5

  The pristine morning light blended the Irenicon with its surroundings so perfectly that a stranger might be forgiven for assuming that it had always been so, that the town had grown up around the river. No Rasenneisi would make that mistake, though, and as the years flowed by, the town turned its back ever more determinedly on the river. To acknowledge the trespasser would be a betrayal of the dead, a form of collaboration.

  In the days after the Wave, the water subsided a few braccia to reveal a few shattered structures that now stood like sentinels keeping futile watch on a no-man’s-land. Those towers still occupied stood back from the river.

  The young man wore good boots dirty from his travels. Under his dark hood and cloak his clothes were neat, even the patches where they had been torn. His equipment bag was heavy, and he had carried it a long time. He let it down beside the base of the statue with care. The dun stone carving was long broken; all that remained were its paws—the perfect monument for the town left behind by History.

  The Doctor walked up and down the toiling rows with eyes closed. The rhythm of banners slicing air when bandieratori fought was distinctive. One could tell how advanced apprentices were by the sounds of sticks clashing.

  “Again.”

  The hallowed Art Bandiera drill: the same set every day, every day the same. Do it a thousand times in the workshop until you fight like an old alley cat—no plan, just the most efficient attack, decided and executed in the same moment. No second chance on the street.

  “Again.”

  They started young. When Rasenneisi were born, the question wasn’t “Boy or girl?” but “Good grip?”

  “Again.”

  After an hour’s review, he retired to the tower. A mournful sound as he climbed the ladder told him the creature he ventured to call Cat was waiting. Its mother had abandoned it without teaching it the most rudimentary skill of its species, so instead of purring, it had an ear-piercing whine for every occasion.

  “Breakfast,” he grunted, throwing the severed head.

  Like any old couple they lived together successfully by ignoring each other. Cat’s best instinct was in judging whether the Doctor would tolerate its presence or was sufficiently angry to kick it. This morning it crept away hastily, gnawing the meat and shuddering with satisfaction.

  The Doctor tore an orange in half and studied his flags. Keeping Valerius alive was going to be tricky if he insisted on putting himself in harm’s way. Second, their ambassador had not returned. Gonfaloniere Morello had been foolish to send his son to Concord, given its reputation. Would grief make a predictable rival unpredictable? Lastly, Concord had given notice of the imminent arrival of an engineer—a captain no less. His mission was unspecified.

  Cat was not around to kick, so he rubbed the stubble of his head and chin with vehemence while looking at the surrounding town with suspicion. Rasenna had changed many times in many centuries, but in one thing it was constant: even when Etruria was known as Etrusca, Rasenna was quarrelsome. A century ago, Rasenna’s population has expanded in step with its dominion. Most of the towers were built in that age of victory. The law forbidding new buildings higher than one hundred and one braccia was enacted to curb the rivalry even then plaguing Rasenna, and the Bardini had obeyed the letter of the law, all the while building on the “healthy” northern hills (those too poor to live in the valley could scarcely afford debilitating indulgence). As a result, their tower of regulation height looked down on all the others.

  The Bardini were proud to have risen high. Their workshop was the most famous school in a town famous for its martial artistry throughout Etruria. Talent was the reason the Scaligeri had winked at Bardini infractions. That age felt like a dream more than memory; it had ended the moment the Wave swept through Rasenna, when the low were made high and the high were swept away. Only a reputation was left, and that, twenty years later, was almost forgotten too.

  The Doctor’s rueful gaze was drawn inevitably across the river to the handsome palazzo at the end of Piazza Luna’s arc. Like the Bardini, the Morello had been far enough from Tower Scaligeri to escape the Wave. Their weakness had made them powerful in the new Rasenna, not a city but the remains of one. The weak had inherited the earth, as the Virgin had predicted; he didn’t think this was what She had actually had in mind.

  While the Doctor studied his enemy, he was himself under scrutiny.

  Every tower in Rasenna flew a banner, but only the Vanzetti flew a multitude, advertising the family craft. Pedro was small for his age, small enough to be sitting comfortably in the window frame of Tower Vanzetti. His mother had perished upon his early arrival into the world, and he might have joined her had it not been for his father’s tireless care. Even now, Vettori Vanzetti could not be persuaded that Death was not waiting to steal his son away, and his fretting meant Pedro grew without ever losing his eggshell fragility. No amount of food would ever make this boy fat, but if Death had cast a cold eye, he would have seen small hands gripping tightly to life.

  Pedro did not believe that lacking physical stamina made him an invalid or that expending his energies on books and mechanical instruments, things most Rasenneisi had no use for, was evidence of deficiency; he ignored such whispers, just as he ignored the heated conversation in
the room behind him. His eager face was creased with the intense concentration it took to hold the device steady while focusing. Freshly washed wool smelled of home to Pedro, but weaving bored him—the final product was just a basic weapon. Yet the looms with their elaborately dancing parts had fascinated him since he could remember, and his father had come to rely on him to keep the hardworking machines going, though they ought to have been replaced a decade ago. Pedro not only kept them working, he made improvements, and on those rare occasions when nothing needed repair, he returned to his experiments.

  Vettori’s conversation with his old business partner was more fractious than usual—Fabbro Bombelli was diplomatic by nature as well as by trade. The men danced around it, but now their discussion gradually spiraled toward the familiar argument.

  “We’re the Small People,” Vettori said with his practiced resignation. “That’s our fate.” He marked a length of new fabric with a chalk piece that then disappeared into his dusty leather waist jacket. He had scissors, rulers, clips, and sundry other tools cleverly secreted about his clothes, which were tight and trim as befitted a tailor.

  “Who says we have to stay small?”

  Vettori had returned to the loom. “The men who decide.” His face was stretched and unlined, and his lips were careful and tight, as if emotion were another luxury they could not afford. His long, quick hands remained expressive of the generous man he had once been.

  “They do.”

  Fabbro Bombelli picked up the glass he’d perched on his generous belly and swirled it under his curlicue nose, looking sideways at Vettori. For every inch Fabbro had gained around the middle, his old partner had contracted. Some great unseen weight seemed to hang from the tape around Vettori’s shoulders, though it was not years but the manner in which he had spent them, curved over the rack, that had left him stooped in obeisance to the world, his head bowed so low that wearing a young man’s neat beard looked like an old man’s vanity. His loom jerked his limbs in tandem with its creaking parts, like a tired old puppet made to dance.

  In the last decade demand had fallen until Vettori could no longer afford to employ carders and dyers—though still he wove, believing it the last thing he could do competently. He had once won his Woolsmen’s respect by arguing on their behalf with the Signoria, and he still saw himself as the Small People’s advocate, but talk that had once reflected healthy self-respect had become shrill, self-pitying. Years of defeat were stretching him thinner than the old thread he wove.

  “You’re really going to ask him?” Vettori asked.

  “Won’t be the first time I’ve asked.”

  “Or the first time he’s said no.”

  “And I keep asking. What’s the worst he can do?” said Fabbro, running fingers through a beard as bright as white smoke. It separated out into two pluming cones, mirrored by the cloudy scuff encircling his bald and sunburned skull. A portrait of respectability was an asset to maintain as judiciously as one weighed metal.

  Vettori looked up pointedly from his work.

  “All right, there’s plenty,” Fabbro said quickly, “but the Doc can’t keep me—us—down forever. I’ve got money.”

  “He’ll say it’s not about that,” Vettori said mildly.

  Fabbro was not going to tolerate quibbles. “I’ve got a right to sit in the Signoria, as much as Guercho Vaccarelli or any of those Family heads who come knocking at midnight for loans I mustn’t speak of. Maybe the Bombelli banner isn’t as old as Bardini’s or as pretty as Morello’s, but we do well. People go to the Doc for his flag. They come to me to pay for it.”

  “And you go to him when you need help. If you have a voice in the Signoria, you won’t need him anymore.”

  “Well, he’s pushing against the current.”

  “Sure it’s pushing that way? Why don’t you wait till next year? The Scaligeri girl will be Contessa then; maybe she’ll—”

  “Bah! The Doc raised her. When she holds the mace, it’ll be another way to hide his hand. No. The time’s now. I have a claim to a seat and a right. He can’t fight progress.”

  “He can do what he likes. The Small People can’t fight the Families.”

  “How would you know? Tried lately?”

  Vettori slumped as if the frayed string had finally snapped. The loom ceased with indiscreet silence.

  “Sorry,” Fabbro said quickly. “I’m just—Not being able to use your people—it’s frustrating. I’ve outgrown my shoes, but nobody will sell me a new pair.”

  Vettori gave a thin laugh. “Don’t worry about it, Fabbro. You’re right. You’re the one who kept your business going, not me. What do I know?”

  “You’re just down on your luck.”

  “Sure.” Vettori smiled, his lips tight.

  Fabbro looked around for a distraction. He understood that old friends, like old ambitions, became embarrassing when you were poor. “Madonna! What’s that, Pedro?”

  “It’s what I needed the glass for, Signore Bombelli.” Pedro’s maybe-machines were inhibited not only by a dearth of information; most remained sketches because the only material he had readily to hand was uncarded wool. On his last visit, Fabbro had brought his godson some Ariminumese glass as well as the usual descriptions of inventions Pedro so loved hearing about. By collating these stories and sifting through the layer of suspicion attached to all things Bernoullian, Pedro learned what a particular machine did, and then he could tackle the larger question of how.

  Now the merchant held the magnifier to the light. His restless hands were always picking up things, appraising, weighing, costing—cost was more than a figure; it was merit enumerated, judgment every bit as just and severe as Heaven’s, although God was not known to be open to negotiation.

  He peered through.

  “Dio! I can see across the river! You devised this?”

  “I just copied it. The Morello’s Contract this year is shortsighted. He has a pair of glass disks that let him see better. I just copied the design and doubled them up like this so I could see far.”

  “Bah! A typical Vanzetti, too modest. That’s not copying—that’s inventing. To see a complete thing and understand its working, that’s a gift.” Pedro blushed as Fabbro ruffled his hair. “You remind me of your old man young.”

  Vettori’s head was bowed, and he was back at his loom. Fabbro downed the drink, smacked his lips loudly, then said what he’d come to say, quietly: “If you need a small loan, Vettori, just ask. Of course, no interest for old friends.”

  Vettori looked at Fabbro, contrasted the bright banners of the past with the gray and threadbare present, and set his jaw. “Thank you for your concern, Signore Bombelli, but I didn’t knock on your door.”

  Fabbro saw that Vettori would go hungry before taking charity. He knew too that unless he regularly made the perilous crossing, their friendship would expire. Eager to avoid that day and conscious of the sudden change in mood, he made his excuses.

  With his back resolutely turned to the humiliating scene, Pedro continued scanning the northside until he came to a figure standing by the river. The young man was dressed in the black hood and short cloak of an engineer, but Pedro would have known he was foreign anyway—he was standing closer to the water than a Rasenneisi ever would.

  Pedro was delighted when his father instructed him to escort Signore Bombelli to the Midnight Road. “Wear a scarf and wait until you can see he has crossed safely.”

  He leaped down from his perch and flung on a long cassock. Like his father’s, it had a strange array of tools in hidden pockets. Pedro was always glad for an excuse to escape from the stifling smell of wool and caution, but right now all he wanted to know was why this stranger was not afraid of the water.

  CHAPTER 6

  The moment the sun appeared, Captain Giovanni threw off his dark hooded cloak, revealing a mane of untidy black hair covering a brow furrowed in thought as he studied the river. His eyes were dark, and his broad leonine face was dominated by a large, honest nose. An emaci
ated dog had limped after him since he’d arrived, and now it sniffed at the bag cautiously, clearly expecting to be chased away. He let it be.

  It was too early in the year for the northern mountains’ snowmelt, but the current was still powerfully fast and loud. He could see where the landslides had happened, of course, but there’d been little erosion of the banks after the initial Wave, which was typical of a forced river diversion: when they came, they came suddenly. These were the signs trained eyes detected, but it did not take an engineer to see this river was abnormal. Normal rivers do not flow uphill.

  No wonder the Rasenneisi kept their distance. He knew the theory, and he had seen one other like it, but still it made him uneasy, like a thing from a story of omens and prodigies. From what he had heard, Rasenna was a town out of place too, still living in a time when it was somewhere that mattered.

  “Probably don’t get many strangers, eh?”

  The dog turned its head curiously. The flat Concordian accent sounded strange, almost toneless compared with the singing dialect it was used to. The engineer took a biscuit from the bag and threw it, and the dog snatched it out of the air, teeth clamping loudly.

  “I guess they don’t feed strays here either.” A soft smile spread over his face like the sun moving over rocks, softening the deep shadows in between. While the dog barked and wagged its appreciation, Giovanni turned back to the river with the same stern look. He opened the bag fully. Everything inside fit neatly, with no wasted space. The dog studied the young man as he patiently searched; it was accustomed to intemperate passions—a Rasenneisi would either have chased it away or adopted it by now.

  The engineer found the tool he needed and, after adjusting the dials on the small glass rod, sank to the ground and crawled to the side of the bank. He’d dipped the rod into the water and was about to sink his whole hand in when the dog growled. Giovanni watched his flickering reflection carefully, then quickly stood as a shimmering hand gushed from the water and swiped at where his face had been a moment ago. The water lost its shape and dropped back formlessly into the river, and as the dog barked again, Giovanni realized it was barking not at the creature but at him—it had been warning him.