by Aidan Harte
“That’s cynical, Doctor. I thought that after we exiled Morello—”
“I’m telling how I saw it a year ago.”
“How can they still stand apart? Even if we delay, Concord will be at the gate before the year is out.”
“Children don’t think about tomorrow.”
“Can’t you reason with them?”
The Doctor laughed. “The only thing a pack understands is strength. It’s not just this side of the river; every day, a different bandieratoro whispers in my ear about what an opportunity this is.”
“What do you tell them?”
“I tell them to shut up, and I keep Bardini banners north.”
A boy pushed his way through the group in the doorway. The Doctor recognized Uggeri and noticed that even the older boys showed deference. Calmly, Uggeri watched them walk by.
“Isn’t that Hog Galati’s son?”
“He’s the last of Morello’s crew of killers,” the Doctor said. “Got some salt too.”
Uggeri spit and turned his back on the Doctor to enter the ruined Palazzo. Most of the other boys followed.
“A Rasenneisi needs something to love so he can fight for it,” the Doctor said. “They don’t remember the Wave. They hate each other more than Concord.”
A balmy evening swaggered on, and the bridge stalls closed up as merchants went to waste money in Rasenna’s hostels, taverns, houses of gambling and other activities.
“Unity can’t wait until Concord’s at the wall. By then—”
“Like I said, children don’t think about tomorrow. The Bardini banner can’t unite them either. Now that Morello’s gone, hating me is the only thing southsiders have in common.”
“So what do we do? Exile the ringleaders? That boy—”
“Stick a crow’s head on a stick?” The Doctor laughed. “A show of force would unify them, but against us. The Scaligeri flag was the last thing that unified all Rasenna. For a long time that was the only choice—to be slave or master. They don’t have a leader anymore, but it’s only a matter of time before one of them raises colors. Still, we’ll figure out something. Coming up?”
“Not tonight. Work. Golden dreams, Doctor.”
Giovanni had opened his floor in Tower Vanzetti to Rasenna’s young engineers. They called it the studiola, and even this late he knew they would be working. Delaying Concord was only logical if every hour was used to prepare for the inevitable confrontation.
Doctor Bardini climbed the steps, brooding on the violence promised in Uggeri’s stare, not afraid but unsettled by the boy’s resemblance to the young man he himself had been.
The Doctor hadn’t dreamed in years, but that night he was immersed in a twenty-year-old memory:
In Tower Scaligeri, a serious young man takes dictation. Count Scaligeri stands by a long narrow window watching the black and gold banner blowing in the wind. The Count’s study is on the tower’s top floor, so the winds are always fierce. It has been especially gusty that day, which makes it all the more disconcerting when the flag abruptly goes limp.
The boy’s penmanship is good, but the word he is writing, Concord, comes out illegible. The table, the tower, Rasenna itself is shaking. The ink and water swirling in the jar beside him begins to separate, small drops rising to the surface and floating in space.
“My Lord, look at the water!”
“So they have done it, Madonna help us.”
The boy looks up and sees the Count leaning out of the window to tear down the banner.
“Bardini, the hour has come. Where is my son?”
“With my sister, in my father’s workshop.”
“Something is coming,” the Count says, “and I must wait for it. Take my banner, protect my son—whatever happens, the Scaligeri must survive.”
“I should stay with you!” the boy says stubbornly.
The Count slaps him. The boy is speechless: he has never seen his master angry.
“Never start a fight you cannot win.” The Count touches his cheek. “If you learn nothing else from me, learn that. Obey me one last time. Get to high ground. Do not look back.”
The boy takes the banner and goes to the door. He looks back one last time. The Count sits at the desk to complete the letter. Only the ink remains in the jar beside him; the water floats in the air. Frozen rain.
He looks up suddenly and roars, “Fly!”
Down and down and down the steps the boy runs. He passes noblemen and women panicking in the piazza. He passes the Lions, silently roaring defiance at the spreading darkness, up the north steps to the old town and the “healthy” hills, to Tower Bardini. He does not look back. The thunder grows louder until the shadow covers everything and the rumble drowns out the screaming. Morning birds fall silent. Night falls on Rasenna.
The air in the Doctor’s chamber was stifling, reeking of guilt and disappointment. Why did his youth come back to him now? After Count Scaligeri, he’d never sought another leader. And what had he achieved? Nothing. He’d failed to keep any promise he’d ever made—his career, a record of things lost: banners, battles, and a daughter in all but name. And now, after all this time, he’d put his trust in another leader—what chance that he’d chosen wisely this time? What chance he’d picked a fight he could win?
He slowly lay back down on his sweat-damp mattress and cursed himself—sleeping without a banner to hand was apprentice stuff. As his hand silently searched the floor beside his bed, he spoke to the darkness:
“What are you waiting for, an invitation?”
The boy stepped into a shaft of moonlight. His skin was ghostly blue, the knife he held a purer white. It burned with the same intensity as his eyes.
“Not surprised, old man?”
“It’s what I would do.”
The Doctor waited, but the boy just held his knife ready.
“Uggeri, isn’t it? Why did you really come?”
“You’re fake, aren’t you?”
He sighed in the darkness. “Not anymore.”
“You used the Contessa. Now you’re using the engineer. This fake Signoria thinks it’s in charge, but you’re whispering in the ears that matter, aren’t you?”
“You won’t believe me, but no.” Even as his hand touched his banner, he kept talking. “I wouldn’t if I was in your position, but then, in your position, I’d be dead by now!”
He rolled out of the bed. Uggeri threw the dagger, but it struck his banner. He kicked the bed, slamming it into Uggeri’s shins. The Doctor pried the blade out of his stick and advanced. Uggeri watched calmly as the Doctor aimed. The knife landed in the floor beside him.
“Take it and go.”
“What’s the matter?” Uggeri said casually. “No wind in your flag?”
“I said get the hell out.”
The boy left through the window he’d entered. The Doctor watched the shadow scramble over the rooftops, knowing what would come next as well as he knew himself. Uggeri would raise his flag. He couldn’t let that happen. He’d failed Count Scaligeri; if blood needed spilling to keep his promise to Giovanni, well then, blood would spill.
CHAPTER 59
“Important order,” Pedro explained, shutting the door in Giovanni’s face.
Later, as Giovanni drafted the response to Concord with Fabbro, he mentioned the incident, only to learn there was no new order.
He returned in the evening to Tower Vanzetti to investigate—but Pedro wasn’t home. He went down to the studiola, a bad feeling in his gut.
“What the hell?”
It was still bright enough to see the bridge from the window. Giovanni watched as Pedro handed Doctor Bardini a bundle. The Doctor put the banners on his shoulder and marched into the piazza.
Obviously he had changed his mind about that show of force: he was carrying a Bardini banner south. If Giovanni had seen it, other towers had seen it too. Southsiders might be dispirited and leaderless, but they wouldn’t surrender without a fight. He reached the piazza too late. The Doctor had
entered the dragon’s cave.
A bonfire burned in the center of what had once been the workshop. Its flames reflected in the warped mirror, throwing up strange shadows in the charred ruins. In the dancing light, the boys surrounding the Doctor looked as large as men and more dangerous. They carried Galati’s blue banner, but that wasn’t the real change. There was a difference between a pack of bandieratori and a borgata. A borgata needed someone to obey.
Uggeri sat on a pile of rubble that had once been a staircase; now it was a throne. When he spoke, the others listened. “You think your bandieratori hiding in the shadows have us surrounded? They’re surrounded, by Rasenna.”
“I came alone.”
“So that’s what this is.” Uggeri leaped down. “It won’t do you any good. When you kill me, someone takes my place. That’s how Rasenna works, old man.”
The Doctor looked back to the doorway. The leaders of other southside borgati were blocking the way should either think to flee. They’d come to see which dog would win the fight.
The Doctor thrust his banner into the bonfire. He let the cloth catch and then held it up and let them see it burn. “How Rasenna works is what I came to talk about.” He threw the charred stick into the fire. “I’m at your mercy.”
There was a long silence in which they studied each other. “So talk,” the boy said.
Uggeri’s soldiers looked to him. The fire popped and cracked, goading them to act.
“Hear that, bambini? Concord’s coming. Kill me tonight, we’re all dead tomorrow. Concord won’t need to knock down our walls and towers—they’ll fall on their own.”
As the Doctor spoke, he looked around the hostile faces of Uggeri’s army. It was early evening, and dark clouds enshrouded a pale distant sun. The wind stirred up the bonfire and the Doctor’s voice with it.
“I wish I could blame Concord for it, but I remember life before the Wave—faction had already slithered into paradise, though it was under Count Scaligeri’s boot. If that’s the type of unity we want, we can have it. You only have to follow one tower’s banner.”
“Yours, Bardini?” Uggeri sneered.
“I don’t deserve loyalty: the Families that replaced the Scaligeri set the serpent loose. I take no pride that my flag’s still flying. I know my methods. I made a weak man my enemy to make my tower strong, and Morello used me. Well, look at our reward.” He gestured to the blackened stones. “Our separate towers don’t protect us, they enfeeble us. Where there was a river between us we bridged it, and as a result we have grown in wealth and unity, choking the serpent till it’s almost dead. We must go further. We must make bridges between our towers—make them one. Whether you hear or not, bambini, Concord is coming. We die tomorrow unless we cast out the serpent today. Our new Signoria needs an army, not more borgati. United, Rasenna may survive, but that means you, not the merchants or engineers, must exile the real enemy: faction!”
He untied the bundle, and a dozen new flags fell to the ground. He took one and untied it. As it fell open, a wind caught it. It was blood-red, with a Lion’s silhouette embroidered in gold.
“Here is a banner belonging to no tower. It belongs to Rasenna. If I carry it and my enemy carries it, we are enemies no longer. We are brothers!” He picked up another. “Who will take it up?” he roared. “Who dares?”
His voice echoed in the palazzo and throughout the piazza outside. Southsiders nervously eyed one another, unsure how to take this challenge. The boy threw his banner on the fire, took a new banner from the Doctor, and unfurled it. They stood watching each other.
“You better be real, old man,” Uggeri said.
After a minute’s doubtful silence, others came forward and added their flags to the flames. The sparks flew up, and the glow could be seen from every tower of Rasenna.
PART III:
ADVENT
Therefore the Lord Himself shall give you a sign; Behold, a virgin shall conceive.
Jeremiah 7:14
CHAPTER 60
Every venture has its own risk. Betrayal attends love, death attends war, ruin attends commerce, but the penalty for avoiding risk is always the same: nothing happens. For Rasenna’s merchants that had been the worst penalty: years of self-imposed stagnation.
Now they were bold, and boldness made them rich.
Rasenna’s new affluence showed in a wealth of different ways, from elaborate weather vanes on her tower tops to expensive clothes on her citizens below. Color used to be reserved for essentials such as banners, but now black, gray, and tan retreated before vivid yellow, brilliant scarlet, lush Cambria green.
Both rivers seemed to flow faster—who could deny that the steady pulse of people to market was a river too—and as wealth breathed in new life, it brought new people; there was novelty everywhere. Strangers stopped to marvel at the engines used to construct the riverside towers or the mills and, passing through the new walls, admired the engineering skill their design revealed: octagonal—eminently defensible—towers projecting from each corner; the slope, to turn aside the impact of bombardments. If the stranger understood such things, he saw the builders’ chief concern was imminent siege, but he could not pause for long, as others pushed behind him, eager to see the miracle of Etruria. After all, it was not aesthetics that drew the pilgrims but commerce.
Stepping onto the bridge, our stranger might rub one of the Lions’ paws and pray for good bargains that day. Although one of the northside plinths remained empty, the other three Lions, intact and virile, were now back in their traditional perches—dragging the remaining two sentinels from the riverbed had been the first task for Rasenna’s growing Engineers’ Guild and its visionary podesta.
The bridge lured them all with the clamor of wares advertised and sold. Bombelli’s currency-changing stall was set up beside the broken balustrade—just as one Lion was left broken in memory of the Wave, so the gap remained as tribute to the fallen of the uprising. The clinking of coins was a constant heady accompaniment to the din of bargaining. Thieves attracted by the sound of easy money soon learned that the risk of working the markets far outweighed the putative rewards. And just as Rasenna changed, so the bridge changed daily, with different stalls selling different goods, each taking its turn.
Bandieratori no longer loitered at street corners; like everyone else they had business to attend to. While some were on duty, patrolling walls, manning towers, and policing the markets, the rest were drilled in new tactics and weapons.
“Salute,” Pedro said without looking up from his work. “Sorry about the dust.” It was late, and Giovanni had sent the other apprentices home. They were young and enthusiastic, but they’d been going without sleep to get Rasenna’s defenses ready, and he needed alert minds.
“What’s that you’re working on, Pedro?”
“Just a distraction. The Doc gave me the parts, asked me if I could put them back together.”
“It’s the annunciator I gave—” Giovanni was quiet for a moment, then said, “He still thinks she’s coming back.” Without its cover, the angel looked undressed, its gown’s elaborate whalebone showing. “You’ve changed it?”
“Not really; the old design’s sound but for a few redundancies.” Pedro held up a discarded part. “These gears were sparking off each other.”
Giovanni held it up appraisingly. “Lighter, easier to reproduce.”
Pedro was embarrassed. “Too bad we need weapons, not toys. I just needed a break.”
They’d both been coordinating other work with defensive engineering—Giovanni rehearsed battle plans with the Doctor while Pedro kept busy overseeing workshops across town.
“You think we’ve got a chance?” It wasn’t a question Pedro would have asked around the others. Giovanni understood by now that he’d taken on much more than authority when he had become Rasenna’s podesta.
“Last time Concord didn’t have to beat us; they just had to show up.”
“We’re still one town against an Empire.”
“That
’s the thinking that let Concord build that Empire. True, we’re only a town, but we won’t have to defeat an Empire.”
Pedro gave a careless Rasenneisi shrug. “Oh, just a legion. No problem, then.”
Giovanni smiled. “If we can bloody their nose, every town in Etruria under the Concordian boot will join us. And that’s a fight we have a chance of winning. Our mistake was trying to overpower them. Rasenna’s got the greatest fighters in Etruria, but against disciplined troops holding a line—well, you saw what the Twelfth did. Our particular skills, we need to get close, and to get close, we need to change the rules. Look here—”
There were four powder piles on his desk: “Charcoal, saltpeter, and sulfur.” He carefully held up the forth saucer. “Together, it’s called serpentine. Bernoulli found the recipe in an Ebionite alchemical text.”
“How do you—?” Pedro began, then asked, “What does it do?”
“Give me that gear you took out of the angel.”
He watched as Giovanni crouched and poured a small pile with a trail to it.
“Stand back and cover your ears.”
Giovanni struck the gear. There was a sudden hiss as the trail lit up, then, as it reached the pile, there was a loud Pop! that sent a cloud of dirty yellow smoke spiraling into the air.
Pedro laughed when Giovanni looked up coughing, his face blackened.
“It’s used for propulsion in cannons and such.”
“Pity we can’t lob a cauldron of it at them. That would even the odds quickly.”
Giovanni shook his head. “Thank the Virgin it’s too unstable for that. Our new walls can withstand arquebuses and cannonballs but not direct explosions. Any large amount is liable to explode prematurely, killing the wrong person.”
