Pasquale's Angel

by Paul J McAuley

  ‘You are the Judas goat,’ the magician said, and raised his hand. He was suddenly holding a staff made of black ivory.

  ‘I’ll kill them now!’ Salai sprang to Niccolò’s side, drew his sword and held it to Niccolò’s throat. Niccolò stood quite still, looking calmly and levelly at the magician as if challenging him, for all that he was chained and a moment from death.

  The magician said, ‘Leave off, until we know the size of the force ranged against us. We may well need them alive, to bargain.’

  Salai shook his head so violently that his ringlets fluttered around his choleric face like a bush in a storm. ‘No!’

  The magician flung out his hand and his staff promptly transformed into a black snake. Continuing the same motion, he threw the snake at Salai. Wild with fear, Salai slashed at the serpent with his sword, missed, and screamed and ran from the room.

  The magician stooped and picked up the writhing serpent, and ran his thumb down its back. It went rigid. The magician shot his sleeves and then he was holding a black ivory staff again. There was a noise growing outside, a wild drumming and a mad ear-splitting skirl of pipes, as if made by men with arms of iron and throats of brass. Pasquale remembered the drumming machine, its bellows and weights and clockwork arms.

  The envoy said, in the dazed manner of one suddenly awakened from a dream, ‘Are we surrounded?’

  The magician said, ‘My men will fight free, with my help. You will take charge of this prisoner, signor, and follow me.’ He bent over Niccolò and brought his hands together. Niccolò’s chains fell away from his wrists, leaving his hands bound by a device which locked his thumbs together.

  Niccolò said calmly, ‘He who moves first in a battle is generally the victor.’

  The magician struck him with the back of his hand, so hard that the sound echoed in the smoke- and dust-filled room. ‘If you will live, you will follow me,’ he said, in a conversational voice.

  Niccolò brought his head back and met Giustiniani’s stare, a half-smile playing on his thin lips. ‘It’s never wise to admit to losing the game,’ he said.

  The magician turned on his heel and grabbed Pasquale by the arm. ‘Come,’ he said, and marched Pasquale out of the room without looking to see if the envoy and Niccolò followed.

  The villa was filled with dust and smoke. The magician marched Pasquale through a series of empty rooms, past mercenaries running to and fro with bound chests or weapons or stacks of books. Clearly, they were preparing to retreat. One half of the entrance hall was afire, a fire that clung to the walls and the frames of the broken windows. The ceiling was down, filling the floor with lath and plaster, and most of the statues had fallen from their plinths. The fire filled the space with a strong dry heat and a great roaring noise and a piercing sweet smell: it was the smell of Greek fire, with which the hollow heads of the missiles had been filled, spilling and catching alight upon impact.

  Heat scorched Pasquale’s skin as he followed the magician outside. The shouts of the magician’s men were mixed with the cacophony of the drumming machine. Vast, vague lights flickered beyond the boundary of the garden, and shadows moved within the lights. Some of the mercenaries were taking pot-shots, their muskets sounding as frail and harmless as twigs snapping in a fire. And indeed they could do no harm, for the shadows at which they fired were no more than that: shadows made to resemble the silhouettes of an army advancing against a background of brilliant lights.

  Two men were hard put to hold the stamping horse which was harnessed to the black carriage. They were in silhouette against the fierce light that beat across the lawn, the light of the reflector lamps, each with spinning blades, which Taddei’s men had mounted in the olive-grove.

  As the magician started to hustle Pasquale down the wide marble steps towards the carriage there were three muffled thumps beyond the wall and the arched gate. Pasquale flinched, but the magician kept him upright, by main force, so that he saw the three vapour trails as the steam-powered missiles flung their arcs through the black air. One struck the crown of the gate with a dissonant clang and enveloped it in a ball of orange fire. The other two rose higher, and Pasquale glimpsed their fat shapes turning like fish in the black air as they came down. One burst harmlessly amongst trees, but the other smashed through the roof of the villa. A moment later a ball of fire shot into the air. The horse, maddened by this, reared and plunged. It broke its traces and galloped away round the corner of the villa, dragging its handler behind it.

  Down the line of the road to the gate, the griffin stirred on its plinth. Perhaps someone had activated it, or perhaps the shock of the explosion had jarred its mechanism. It rose on stiff legs, eyes glaring red, then started shivering in a kind of mechanical palsy. Steam burst from its joints, from the ruff around its neck. Its beak spasmed, chattering like the teeth of an idiot. Jets of vapour spurted from hidden vents, raising a great cloud that was driven upward by the heat of the burning villa and the burning gate. This mist refracted the lights beyond the wall, so that things took on the aspect of a small grainy dawn suspended in the deep night.

  The magician’s men were firing in the direction from which the steam-driven missiles had come, running to and fro in the glare of the lights, their shadows thrown in overlapping confusion over the lawn. Some used muskets or crossbows; others whirled slingshots around their heads, hurling glass globes into the glaring lights. But Pasquale had warned of this tactic, and Taddei had equipped his mercenaries with charcoal masks. A stilt-man tottered across the lawn, gaining speed, and plunged into the shrubbery. A moment later there was an eruption of fire and a fountain of bits of burning bush.

  Giustiniani drew Pasquale close. He suddenly had a knife in his hand. It had a twisted blade with red characters printed on it. The magician spoke directly in Pasquale’s ear, his clove-scented breath feathering Pasquale’s cheek. ‘How many men, and what disposition? Tell me now.’

  ‘No more than seven, magister.’

  The point of the knife pricked the soft skin just beneath Pasquale’s left eye. Pasquale could not help but flinch.

  The magician wound his hand in Pasquale’s hair, and pulled his head back so that he was looking up at the black sky. ‘You will tell the truth, painter, or first you will lose this eye, and then the other.’

  ‘A hundred at least! They surround the place, magister!’

  ‘Is this the city militia?’

  The knife-point withdrew slightly. ‘No, magister. They are the private army of the merchant Taddei.’

  ‘I know the name. A friend of Raphael.’

  ‘He wants the body, magister.’

  The magician said grimly, ‘He can have yours instead.’

  ‘He calls on demons, as you have seen.’

  ‘My magic will defeat his,’ Giustiniani said.

  One of the cedar-trees at the edge of the firelit lawn began to shake its lowest tier of branches. The magician turned just as a shadow flung itself from the tree and shot across the lawn. Mercenaries scattered in panic, unable to shoot at the apparition for fear of wounding each other.

  The magician flung Pasquale away and raised his arms above his head. Gas suddenly whirled up from a scattering of brief detonations in front of him. It was yellow, acrid and choking. Pasquale reeled back as the ape—it was Ferdinand—shot through this cloud. It danced from side to side and beat the ground with its fists. Its eyes redly reflected the fire behind the magician.

  The magician stepped back and, with a flourish, produced his black ivory staff. Pasquale shouted a warning just as the magician threw his arm forward. The snake struck the ape in its throat, and it rolled over and over, gripping the thrashing snake by its head and tail. Pasquale ran to the ape just as it flung the broken-backed snake away. It kicked out and quivered, all its muscles in tetany. It could not breathe, and all Pasquale could do was hold its horny-palmed hand as it suffocated.

  ‘Thus I destroy all demons,’ the magician screamed, and then he was running. He grabbed a passing mercenary, sho
uted something at him and pushed him on, ran to grab the next. He was trying to marshal his resources, running to and fro amongst his scattered troops, his white legs flashing through the slits in his black robe.

  Pasquale closed Ferdinand’s eyes, as if the ape had been a man, and turned away. His eyes filled with tears. Some great grief was threatening to wrench itself free inside him, if he would let it. Then hope returned, for the second time in as many minutes. A figure emerged from the burning villa, one arm flung up to shield his face. The man tottered down the steps and fell to his knees, and Pasquale ran towards him. It was Niccolò, soot-stained and scorched but otherwise unharmed.

  Pasquale got him to his feet and they staggered a little way across the lawn. Its grass was withering in the heat. The mechanism that animated the griffin had jammed. It stood in a half-crouch with one paw raised, its mouth clacking emptily on wisps of vapour. Pasquale and Niccolò took shelter by its plinth, and Niccolò explained with a smile that the envoy had wisely decided to look after his own self.

  ‘He has what he wants, after all. The device, and the papers you brought. That was a brave bit of trickery, Pasquale.’

  ‘You saw through it!’ Pasquale had to shout to make himself heard over the drumming and the rifle-fire.

  ‘Salai was forced to tell the truth, yet no one believed him. A pleasing irony.’

  ‘And the envoy really let you go free?’

  ‘Let us say I slipped away in the confusion.’

  ‘And your shackles dissolved.’

  ‘Oh no. I took the key from Signor Giustiniani when he hit me. While it seemed that he released the chains by sleight of hand, he of course used a key. By my own sleight of hand, I took it from him, and then used it to open the device which locked my thumbs together.’ Niccolò looked about him. ‘I believe it is time to leave. What is the plan?’

  Pasquale said, ‘Taddei would have us die, I think. This attack came far sooner than we agreed. Perhaps we should stay where we are.’

  ‘How many men out there?’

  ‘Seven.’

  ‘No more than that?’

  ‘The Great Engineer supplied certain devices.’

  ‘In that case we have little to fear from those attacking.’

  Pasquale saw movement in the flames that engulfed the broken arch of the gate. He said, ‘Don’t be too sure.’

  The device emerged from the burning gate with patches of fire clinging to its burnished hide. It was the utilitarian cousin of Taddei’s jewelled tortoise: a thing the size of a hunting-dog, with a dome of steel plates no more than a couple of braccia high. It marched forward on a dozen stumpy legs. Rifle-shot rang on its hide as the mercenaries turned their attention to it. Then it stopped. Pairs of spring-driven shafts shot out on either side and began to lift it above the gravel road.

  Pasquale pulled at Niccolò’s arm and told him to run for it. They had made the corner of the villa when the device exploded and sent discs of sharp-edged metal scything across the lawn. Wounded and dead mercenaries toppled even as another device marched through the burning gate and bumped into the remnants of its fellow and went off prematurely, discharging most of its explosion into the ground, vanishing in a burst of earth and broken metal.

  Niccolò said, ‘I’ve always held that man will never rise to grace until his capacity for creation equals that for destruction!’ He was dangerously exhilarated, his black eyes gleaming with more than firelight. ‘With just a handful of those devices a single man could destroy an army!’

  ‘If we are not careful they may destroy us.’

  ‘There’ll be a way out of here, you can depend upon it.’

  ‘How can you be so sure?’

  Niccolò grinned. ‘Quite simply because Giustiniani would not live in a house with only one entrance and exit from its grounds. Look there! Come on, Pasquale! We have but one chance now!’

  The red-headed servant was running in the opposite direction to the surviving mercenaries, who were fanning out across the lawn under the direction of the magician, advancing upon the shadow-play of forces beyond the wall. The magician was making war on demons, finally caught up in his own system of sleight of hand and illusion—for after all, had he not just defeated a demon which had attacked him? He brandished his ebony staff and it ran with blue flames. Pasquale knew then that the snake had been a snake all along, produced by a trick, although this brought no consolation. The real snake had been as deadly as if it had been magical—perhaps more so.

  Niccolò gave chase to the red-headed servant and Pasquale picked himself up and followed. They ran past the mechanical griffin. Its head had been blown away by the explosion of the walking cannon, and the ragged stump of its neck erupted a jet of steam. Pasquale told Niccolò to circle to the right, and he himself ran off to the left. They closed on their quarry, who had stopped to kick at the plinth of a statue of a nude woman with the shaggy, horned head of a goat.

  The statue abruptly rolled backward. The servant glanced behind him and saw that Pasquale and Niccolò were almost upon him. He drew a pistol but hesitated as to which man to shoot. That was enough for Pasquale to run straight at him and knock him to the ground. Niccolò snatched up the pistol and aimed it at the servant with shaking hands. ‘Bravely done, Pasquale,’ he said. ‘You see, we have our exit.’

  The plinth was hollow. The statue had moved back to reveal stone steps that descended down into the ground.

  The servant grinned up at Niccolò. Blood ran from one corner of his mouth, but he paid it no mind. ‘If you’re going to threaten me with that pistol, you’ll need to cock it first,’ he said.

  Niccolò eased the brass lever with his thumb. The pistol was the same pan-loading multiple-action type he had carried on the first expedition to the villa. He told the servant to stand up and move aside.

  The man clasped his hands on his bush of red hair but stayed where he was. ‘If you were going to shoot me, why, you would have done so. Let me show you the way out. It is as tricky as the way in.’

  Niccolò said, a touch wildly, ‘I have shot at men before, and have no desire to shoot at you, but I will if pressed.’

  Pasquale said to the servant, ‘He means that you should lead on, although why we should trust a man who is bent on betraying his master is beyond me.’

  ‘There’s no more profit to be had here, that’s for sure.’ A stray musket-ball cracked past overhead. Niccolò and Pasquale ducked reflexively, but the servant stood straight, hands still on his head. He added, ‘In fact, profit is about to become a loss. May I take my hands down? The passage is not particularly easy.’

  When the three men reached the bottom of the steps, the statue ground back over the opening. Little beads of blue flame sprang up in scattered niches. The passage was scarcely half Pasquale’s height, dry, and lined with bricks. The servant led the way, and Pasquale brought up the rear, with Niccolò breathing hard between.

  Halfway along, the passage made a U-shaped loop—to trap any besiegers who discovered it and tried to make use of it, the servant explained cheerfully. They had to wait there while something made giant footfalls overhead, shaking loose thin streams of dirt from the unmortared joints of the bricks.

  The servant remarked, ‘A fine tomb this place would make.’

  ‘You may yet put that to the test,’ Niccolò said.

  In the light of the blue pinpoint flames, scarcely brighter than starlight, Pasquale could just see the servant’s white face over Niccolò’s shoulder. The man was smiling, as cosy as a rat in its burrow. He said, ‘What was the answer to that riddle about the devil and the angel? I’ve been turning it over and can’t see an answer to it. Make an end to my torture.’

  ‘Signor,’ Niccolò said, suddenly very much on his dignity, ‘it is but a pinprick to the humiliations and trials which your master has put me through this past day. Let it rattle your brains. I’ll get little enough joy from the thought, but it’s more than I expected.’

  The servant laughed. ‘You have me at pistol-
point. I’m sure that’s more satisfying. As for your hurts, I was following orders, as you well know.’

  It suddenly came to Pasquale in the sideways fashion that answers to puzzles often did. He said, ‘You ask what door the other spirit would recommend. It is the only question to which both will answer in the same way.’

  The servant laughed again. ‘Ah, then the devil will lie, and recommend the door of destruction, knowing the angel would lead you to safety. But the angel, the angel…’

  ‘I’m not surprised that you cannot understand the minds of angels,’ Niccolò said. ‘Despite that your master would call one up, if he could.’

  Pasquale said, ‘The angel also points to the door to death, knowing that the devil would recommend it, and so both spirits will answer the question in the same way, and you may escape by taking the other door. I’m sorry, Niccolò, I only just now understood.’

  Niccolò said, ‘Listen.’

  ‘I don’t hear anything,’ Pasquale said, after a moment.

  ‘Precisely. The war has moved on. So should we.’

  After the tight bend, the roof of the passage was a little higher. It ended at another stair, rising up to a small square ceiling.

  The servant put his fingers to his lips and winked. ‘My master that was would tell you that it’s all done by incantations, and the binding of demons. In fact it’s simple hydraulics, as I’ll demonstrate.’

  He shifted half a dozen bricks from the wall. Reaching inside with both hands, he turned something with a deal of effort. There was a rushing noise underfoot, the noise of water evacuating a reservoir. The ceiling that stopped the stairs ground aside, and the servant took the steps three at a time. Pasquale gave chase after him, afraid that the man would escape, or turn at the top and seal them in. But when he clambered out, he discovered the servant sitting on the shelf of rock which had stopped the hole in the heathy ground, the ankle of one leg crossed on the knee of the other. He seemed quite at ease, as if being captured and forced to reveal the bolt-hole were part of his plans all along.