Irenicon

by Aidan Harte

  Presently, the man in red nodded. He remained while the boy and the adolescent ascended. They didn’t slow their pace as they crossed the pendulum’s path, assured that they commanded Time even as they commanded Etruria.

  They circled her silently for a moment.

  The boy spoke first. “Sofia Scaligeri.”

  Before she could respond, a sarcastic voice behind her added, “The ‘Contessa’ of Rasenna. Do you know where you are?”

  The Beast. They wanted to hear her say it. She replied simply, “Yes.”

  The boy continued, “Cooperate, Contessa, and within a month you will be fighting. Rasenneisi rise quickly in the legion ranks. You’d prefer that to dying in a cell, surely?”

  “What do you want?” she asked.

  “The truth—your version. The engineer who built Rasenna’s bridge. Who was he?”

  Sofia turned to face the adolescent. “You sent him; you should know.”

  “We know what we know. We want to know what he told you.”

  “He told the truth,” Sofia said. Her voice was unexpectedly loud, and the last word echoed around the chamber.

  The adolescent chuckled. “What do Rasenneisi know of truth? Have you heard rumors?”

  “His name was Captain Giovanni.”

  “We know that. What was his surname?”

  “SenzaChiama, like the rest of you. He had none.”

  “Think, Contessa,” the boy said.

  “He’s dead, so what does it matter?”

  “What’s the point of protecting a dead man?”

  Sofia bowed her head, clenched her fists. What should I say, Giovanni?

  Why did he confide about his father’s execution? She knew how feuds worked. Any surviving relatives would be endangered if she revealed anything.

  “He said engineers have no name. The Guild was his family.”

  The adolescent laughed outright at this, a grotesque sound. “Was he angry about that?”

  It hurt to remember at all, and to remember like this, in this place, was torture. Was that their aim, another turn of the screw?

  The boy asked seriously, “Why did he kill the Concordian boys?”

  “He didn’t.”

  “He confessed to General Luparelli.”

  “That was a lie.”

  “You said he told the truth,” the adolescent interrupted. “Were they interfering with his work?”

  “He wasn’t like that.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like you. He was ashamed of Concord, if you must know.”

  “Of Concord or of himself?”

  “He had nothing to be ashamed of. He was good.”

  “Good? He killed no one?”

  “He—there was an accident.”

  Before Sofia could say more, the boy asked, “Why did he dredge up the Lion statue?”

  The heat and noise made it impossible to concentrate. She stopped trying to face her questioner, focusing instead on answering the question. “To stop the fighting.”

  “And did it?”

  “It became worse, didn’t it?” The adolescent sneered.

  “You’re trying to confuse me. Go to Hell!”

  “He lied, he murdered his countrymen. Why?”

  “Because he loved me!” Sofia screamed.

  Her outburst echoed around the engine room while the pendulum swung back and forth indifferently. The Apprentices paused a while.

  “You can’t treat me like this. I am the Contessa Scaligeri!”

  “We don’t make such distinctions here. So, murder is a romantic gesture in Rasenna?”

  “You can’t understand,” she said.

  “Why?”

  “Because Natural Philosophy can’t help you here! Giovanni was good. He died doing right—or trying to. You can try to scare me, confuse me, hurt me if you want; it won’t change the truth. He died a Rasenneisi!”

  She turned her back to them. “Lock me back up. I’m through with your questions.”

  “You think he loved you?” a voice like an ill-tuned instrument asked.

  Sofia turned and saw the man in red coming down the stairs.

  “What if he lied?”

  As he came closer, she began backing away.

  He leaned in and whispered, “You must have considered the possibility.”

  With a scream, she threw a fist. He did not block the punch; he was simply elsewhere when it came. She tried again, and again the First Apprentice avoided her; then he tapped her chest with a rigid palm and she flew backward and slammed into the coffin. Before the doors shut, she heard them conversing. It was like a person talking to himself.

  “She knows nothing,” said the boy.

  “He knew nothing! His death has no consequences, just as his life had none. As I told you, First Apprentice,” the adolescent said irritably.

  “Be not complacent,” the tuneless voice said. “Consequence is the final mystery.”

  The porthole opened beneath the coffin; a star fell into darkness.

  That night, the blue light returned. There was no mark on her door; it simply deigned to pass over. Tomorrow it might not; an inconsistent torturer was worse than one who followed rules, however harsh.

  She dragged herself to the door. The pit bottom lake was getting closer day by day. This was a more subtle torture; with every turn of this giant screw those chosen were robbed of strength, and those spared, of hope. It must have another purpose—just using it to petrify doomed men was too petty a reason for this remarkable engine, Sofia thought; logically, its effect on individual prisoners must be secondary. And yet sometimes logic was a poor tool. Her senses had become keener since her training, and this amount of fear and despair was powerful. The very air quivered with it.

  She looked back at the wall she’d been thrown against in her last attempt to control the drip. The nun not only was able to feel the current, she could control it. She’d said it took years of mediation. Sofia didn’t have that kind of time, but she wasn’t resigned to being a cog for what little of it she had left. She sat down cross-legged, as if she were back in the Baptistery, and let her breath mirror the drip’s slow rhythm. She gathered focus and asked the stillness, Where do I go now? She already knew the answer was down. Into the Pit, where something pale, ancient, and dark writhed in slow anticipation. A tentacle uncoiled. It was more powerful in this place. The Beast was where the Darkness incubated, the loci of all misery, where the buio were churned and remade.

  This is Fear.

  She wrenched open her eyes with a scream. There was no escape within or without. All doors were locked.

  CHAPTER 44

  Better to be caged, she thought when her door remained shut the next time the coffin appeared. This time, however, when the grimy capsule opened, a fat little man—maybe the bearded creature she had seen surrounded by book stacks in the second dome—leaped gingerly onto the platform and looked around with the curiosity of a newborn, a queer impression enhanced by the rosy gloss of his skin, which looked as soft as undercooked meat.

  In age he looked close to sixty, and although he was dressed too expensively to be a notary, he looked like one to Sofia. Beneath squinting eyes his neat beard circled a small mouth bent up into a nervous smile around which his fingers played; his hands were neither a fighter’s nor a worker’s—a scholar, then.

  He glanced at his solemn escort from time to time as if seeking approval. The youngest Apprentice was more accustomed to the pit, and his attention didn’t wander as he led the way to her cell. Sofia instinctively took a step back on seeing the boy in yellow approach. The boy’s large hands and sure strength reminded Sofia powerfully of the Doc: he took his time but was confident in his power. He had a pallor strange to see on one in such obvious rude health. This period of his education was evidentially conducted indoors, far from the kindly eye of the sun.

  Sofia couldn’t help but think of an oversized infant accompanied by a diminutive adult.

  “Has it revolved today?” the little
man asked.

  “Probably not,” said the boy wearily.

  “I wonder,” he began with a nervous titter, “would it be possible, do you suppose, to see it?”

  “The current’s activated by a random algorithm.”

  The fat man blinked innocently.

  “I can’t turn it off,” the boy said slowly. “If we’re here, we’ll be shocked too.”

  “Oh, I so wanted to see it!”

  “Well, there’s a manual switch for each cell.”

  He clapped his hands. “Really? May I? They—I mean, you—wouldn’t mind, would you?”

  The boy sighed. “Why not question her first?”

  “Oh! Yes, capital idea! Hello, hello in there?”

  Sofia looked at the little face peering in the window.

  “Do I have the great honor of greeting the Contessa Sofia Scaligeri?”

  “What do you want?”

  “Ha! Direct, isn’t she, Third Apprentice! In a word, Contessa, to be as forthright as you manage to be without apparently trying, what I want is a thing, a very small thing, useless to you but most precious to—”

  “Names,” said the boy.

  “I didn’t have any for you. I don’t have any for him.”

  The little man chuckled, a sound like a blasphemy in this hopeless place.

  “Not that kind of information, Contessa, oh, no! What did the Apprentices want to know, secret battle plans? Troop positions and such? Oh, no, I leave war to the experts. Wars start to interest me only when the contestants have been dead for a couple of decades. Which is to say, I am merely a humble historian. Though perhaps, ha ha, I should say with all modesty that ‘merely’ does not do my status full justice; I am, you see, rather well known in Concord—I daresay in all Etruria.”

  He drew himself up to his full height, though the difference was hardly noticeable. “I am Count Titus Tremellius Pomptinus,” he announced, “Knight of the Order of Saint Jorge, Laureate of the Empire, and Librarian of the Imperial Record.”

  He leaned closer, his voice dropping to a confidential whisper as he went on. “I should add that several Tremellius generations were Concordian gonfaloniere—of course, that was when the office still existed!”

  Sofia backed away to escape the historian’s breath. She suspected his performance was not only for her benefit.

  The historian’s eyes bulged dramatically and he turned to the boy. “I mention that only as historical record.”

  “Fine.”

  Tremellius’s pudgy fingers played with his beard. “It is relevant, you see: she’s a noble too, so this will make her at ease with me.”

  He didn’t seem to notice or care that she could hear every word. He turned back with an unctuous smile.

  “Forgive my manners; we’ve become very proletarian these days. This is Torbidda, our current Third Apprentice!”

  “We’ve met,” the boy said.

  “Ah, well, then, you know already what a tremendously bright young fellow he is. Someday he’ll be First Apprentice, captaining our great ship of state, and you’ll remember my kindness then, won’t you?” He reached out as if to grab a cheek, then thought better of it.

  “He helps me hold back the deluge. Ceaselessly! It pours ceaselessly in from the world’s every corner—Europa too. Some of them write, you know—so much information: tax forms, geographical and mineralogical surveys, political reports, census and books, so many books—in so many languages! The babble of the Hebrews I learned, the dusty tongues of Aegyptus, Grecia, and Etrusca, I exhumed, unwrapped, and conjured life into. Then came the hard bit, wrestling sense from them! My masters need information on so many subjects, and Contessa—”

  Sofia drew back as he leaned in confidentially and whispered, “They are so impatient!” Crossly, he added, “I do it all alone! Well, perhaps not all alone.” Again he reached out to scruff the Apprentice’s hair, and again he changed his mind.

  “As I mentioned, I am also a historian, and it is History that brings me here. And you to me, Contessa, in a manner of speaking, ha ha! We are all moved by its current; our tragedy is that we only become aware of it after its passage. Just like the Wave over Rasenna—you never saw it coming, did you? Ha ha! There’s still so much to understand about Concord’s rebirth, how it came to be, who drove it, and why. I of course have coursing blue blood in my veins, Contessa, like you, so you will assume I am, like you, biased against engineers . . .” He glanced at the boy.

  “Well, you would be wrong! Quite wrong! Knowledge enlightens me, gives me the perspective to cast off the shackles of class consciousness and rejoice at liberation. The true value of the Concordian Empire is not land or slaves or new towns to tax, no, no, no! It is the Empire of Knowledge we have built. What was dark, Girolamo Bernoulli illuminated; that which was mystery, Nature and the Elements, we now understand, and in understanding, we control. The World, from Rasenna to Gubbio, has been flooded with our knowledge.”

  “What do you want, fat man?”

  “The proverbial blunt Rasenneisi. Is this the switch, Third Apprentice?”

  The boy nodded. Tremellius turned the lever, and Sofia’s cell was suddenly flooded with blue light. She fell, immobile, to the ground.

  Tremellius giggled uncontrollably as he looked in. “Contessa, the Apprentices don’t need you. I do. You’ll die soon without me. I can give you food, and if you cooperate—think of this!—I can get you transferred to another prison!” His innocent face was free of malice, simply happy.

  “I ask only for names, dear child: sons, fathers, grandfathers. I am writing a history of Etruria, and you are the Scaligeri heir. I expect that you know all the branches of Rasenna’s family trees; I simply require a guide to help me navigate that tangled forest. It’s not going to hurt anyone. The people I’m interested in are long past harm. What say you, Contessa?”

  Sofia tried to answer but only succeeded in drooling. “Guhsplurl.”

  “She’ll be like this for an hour or so,” said the Third Apprentice.

  “Really? Oh, merda—you might have warned me! I wanted to begin today!” Tremellius leaned into the window. “I can see you’re tired. Sleep on it, dear child. Dream dreams of gold and freedom.”

  Next day, he came alone.

  “Eat slowly,” he said as he handed a plate of dry chicken and hard bread to her.

  Sofia placed the food on the floor. “Aren’t you going to hit the switch?”

  “Oh, an accident, my dear! This old place just needs maintenance. Bernoulli said the body is the perfect machine, and you need maintenance too, ha ha! You must recover your strength. Let’s start over. Look! I brought a gift.”

  He handed a rolled-up cloth though the barred window. “Now, I’m not silly enough to give a Rasenneisi a stick to go with a banner, but look, Contessa! The black and gold! Don’t you recognize Scaligeri colors? You see, I understand that blood matters. I knew it would give you some comfort to have it back, finally. Aren’t you going to unroll it?”

  “A pillow. Thanks.” She threw it, still rolled up, into the corner. “You want information? So do I. How is it that the Apprentices know Water Style?”

  The historian looked around cautiously as if expecting to find an Apprentice at his shoulder. “Well, they don’t call it that anymore, but I understand that Bernoulli taught it to his First Apprentice, the First Apprentice taught the Second, and so on.”

  “But how did Bernoulli learn it?”

  “You could say he taught himself. After the Re-Formation, the clergy weren’t exactly cooperative. You see, it’s said that men were originally taught by angels—”

  “I’ve heard that one,” she said, crunching on the bread.

  “Like so many old stories, once freed of religious trappings, it was explicable by Natural Philosophy. Bernoulli speculated these angels were pseudonaiades.”

  “But the Wave made the buio.”

  “Or perhaps it only brought them to our attention. In any case, in controlling rivers, Bernoulli also contro
lled the pseudonaiades.”

  “Tortured them, you mean.” Sofia felt a strange foreboding. “You’re saying all engineers know it?”

  The historian smiled. “Dear, silly child, of course not. Only the very gifted are even capable of learning it, and no one ever mastered it like Bernoulli. It’s taught in some elementary form to all cadets who become Apprenticeship candidates, which, I suppose, isn’t many.” He sighed wistfully. “Everything’s less romantic these days, isn’t it?”

  Sofia looked up from the food. “If the body’s the perfect machine, why build a machine to ruin it? That’s what this is, right?”

  “Only the Apprentices know the Molè’s purpose,” he said grudgingly, then smiled. “Besides, Bernoulli also said, ‘To know man, dissect man,’ which I’ve always taken to mean that you never truly appreciate something until you’ve taken it apart, ha ha, rather like History.”

  “Don’t you ever think for yourself? What makes Bernoulli so special?”

  Tremellius took the question as a great joke; his jowls started wobbling as he chuckled. “Ha ha! Where to begin? Bernoulli cast off the superstition that previously shackled us. I speak of Man, you understand, not merely Concordians. When the Molè falls and Time grinds the mountains to sand, Bernoulli’s proofs will remain inviolate.”

  Sofia let him drone on until she had emptied the plate. She was still ravenous, but the food had given her a clearer head. “All right, what do you want to know?” she asked.

  Days ground by. The drip still fell into its groove, but Sofia had given up trying to stop it. The Apprentices had given up on her too; they probably assumed she was dead, Tremellius joked. Most prisoners didn’t last to the water.

  That was for the best. If there was to be any chance of escape, the Apprentices’ attentions had to be elsewhere. Nobody was coming to rescue her, certainly not the Doc; without Quintus Morello or the Reverend Mother to restrain him, Rasenna was his, as he had planned all along. Giovanni would have come for her, but he was dead.

  Tremellius visited daily, feeding her in return for information. After Sofia ran out of Rasenneisi genealogies, she began to invent obscure dynasties until Tremellius finally became suspicious. In desperation, Sofia asked about his writing.