The Floating City

by Craig Cormick

  “Anyway,” the ensign said, “perhaps it is just that I think she likes me not.”

  “Why do you say so?” asked Otello. “Has she ever given you reason not to like you as much as I do?”

  “Perhaps it is just that I notice that she does not enjoy my company as much as she enjoys that of Captain Casio.” He noted how the Moor slowed his steps just a little as he said it. He knew she had asked her husband already that Casio be appointed her guard in preference to him and had given no credible reason for the request. “She is forever cheerful in his company, but never so with me,” he said.

  “I am sure you imagine it,” said Otello.

  “I had thought so too, but she is never as familiar with me as with him.”

  “How do you mean familiar?” Otello asked, slowing his pace just a little more.

  “It is nothing, it is nothing,” the ensign said quickly.

  “No, tell me,” said Otello.

  “Well, I am reluctant to say anything about a superior officer that might be taken amiss.”

  “Then I am ordering you to tell me.”

  The ensign squirmed as if in acute discomfort, and then said, again, “I would rather not say anything against him. He is a most excellent officer and I would fear to say anything that might jeopardize his position.”

  “You jeopardize your own if you do not,” Otello said, a tone of impatience in his voice.

  “Then only because you order it,” said the ensign. “I must confess then that it causes me some disquiet to overhear the bawdy nature of their jests and conversations.”

  “Bawdy?” asked Othello in a grim voice. “What do you mean by bawdy?”

  “Well,” said the ensign, putting on an aggrieved face. “We all know our Captain Casio is quick to make a bawdy jest in the company of his fellow guardsmen, but it is not the type of jest that I would have thought appropriate to make with a lady. It has a taste of a certain familiarity about it that I would hesitate to even imply.”

  “And yet you do imply it.”

  “No, no,” said the ensign, holding up his hands once more. “I only do as I am commanded by you. I would rather seal my lips than say any more.”

  “And I would rather I do not have to cut your lips open for you to tell me what you know,” Otello said darkly.

  “The word know is too strong in this instance,” said the ensign. “I think the word feel might be more appropriate.”

  “Then tell me what you feel? And tell me plainly.”

  The ensign looked around him as if the night moths might be enchanted flapping ears, flitting about in the shadows to overhear him. “I feel that there is a certain familiarity between the pair that favours bawdy humour between them.”

  “I think you should tell me more plainly still.”

  The ensign looked at his feet. “Is it not true that Captain Casio and Disdemona were quite close in their youth? And is it not true that she is somewhat headstrong in giving rein to her desires? And is it not true that a man never fully leaves his past.”

  Otello stood completely still for some long moments and the ensign could hear his breathing. “I think you should now put name to your feelings even plainer still.”

  “That is all I am willing to say,” the ensign said. “I would not wish to be the cause of slander when there is no rightful case for it to exist.” He made to turn away, but Otello commanded him, “Stay. You will not walk another step until I have heard everything that you have to say.”

  “I would rather you cut me down with your sword than I be forced to say anything ill of your wife,” he protested.

  Otello tapped his sword hilt and said, “Then say nothing ill of her when you tell me what it is you have to say.”

  “Let me then ask but one question,” Ipato said. “Would not a child who has grown up in the light and found the thrill of the dark an adventure, then long for the familiarity of the light again?”

  He watched the Moor’s hand tighten around his sword hilt, and wondered for a moment if he had gone too far. Otello followed his gaze and saw his hand was sitting on the hilt of his sword, ready to draw it.

  “What do you say, my lord?” the ensign asked in a clearly frightened voice. “Have I been disloyal to obey your commands of me?”

  Otello took his hand from his sword and lifted it up before his face. He looked at the dark skin and said, almost in a growl, “I thank you for your words. Only a true friend would have the courage to tell me this.”

  The ensign nodded his head and smiled. For he looked at the Moor closely and could see the seeds he had planted were taking root behind his very eyeballs, filling them with tendrils of doubt and anger.

  XXII

  ELSEWHERE IN THE FLOATING CITY

  The Shadow Master led Vincenzo the scribe along the quieter streets of the Floating City, weaving their way over bridges and down streets, along the stone paths less worn by the everyday tread of feet, where mosses and lichens grew undisturbed. Eventually Vincenzo asked what had been preying on his mind for some time, “We have known each other before, have we not?”

  The Shadow Master paused and turned around. “Is that something you wrote so that it would happen?”

  “No,” said Vincenzo. “It is something I feel.”

  “If you wrote this scene now, between us, standing here, would you write that I would answer you or walk on?”

  “I would write that you would tell me,” said Vincenzo.

  The Shadow Master nodded and walked on. Vincenzo glowered and chased after him, calling, “Do you even know where we are going?”

  “We are going to see Disdemona,” he said.

  “Then are you sure you know the way?”

  The Shadow Master said nothing. Vincenzo suspected that he was lost in the maze of stone pathways and pillared corridors and turnings and small bridges and brickwork buildings. The city was a puzzle to those who did not know it. Some of them even claimed it moved and re-arranged itself so that one path could never be found again. But they simply did not know its ways and byways.

  “Would you like me to lead the way?” Vincenzo offered.

  “In a moment,” he replied. “We have somewhere we need to be on the way.”

  “Why didn’t you say so?” Vincenzo asked.

  “You would ask me for details,” he said.

  “And what’s the problem with that?”

  “I don’t think you’d like the details.”

  “I would also write that you stop talking in riddles,” said Vincenzo.

  “Think of them as philosophical challenges.”

  They walked into a small square and the Shadow Master held up a hand for the scribe to stop.

  “What is it?” he asked.

  “The details!” He scanned the buildings around them carefully and then called out, “Come out, come out wherever you are!”

  Vincenzo watched him turn around on the spot, looking carefully at the doors and windows of each of the buildings. “Hmmm,” he said. “I could have sworn this was the right place. Too many of the dark nooks in this city look the same.” He turned to Vincenzo and said, “Let’s keep looking.”

  “For what exactly?”

  But the Shadow Master didn’t answer. He heard the sharp metal-on-metal hiss of a sword being drawn from its scabbard and smiled widely. “Oh, splendid!” he said. He turned and saw a man stepping out from a darkened doorway, with a short sword in his hand and a grinning white mask with arched eyebrows over his face.

  Vincenzo took a few steps back, but the Shadow Master didn’t move. In fact he clapped his hands and then beckoned the man to come closer to him. “Come on, we haven’t got all day,” he said. The assailant didn’t take the goading well and suddenly rushed at the Shadow Master, with his sword flashing through the air.

  Vincenzo waited expectantly for the blow to strike the Shadow Master, but he moved so quickly he barely saw it, stepping out of the way of the sword and lashing out with his bare hand. The attacker fell to the ground as if s
truck by a cannonball.

  The Shadow Master looked down at him briefly and then looked up at the buildings around them again. “And the rest of you. You might as well come out too.” Nothing happened for a moment. But then three more men with the same grinning white mask stepped slowly out of the doorways with swords drawn, and slowly began circling the Shadow Master. Vincenzo observed they were keeping a little out of his reach but incessantly closing their circle about him. Vincenzo knew he would never survive this attack and drew in a deep breath. But then the Shadow Master struck. Vincenzo didn’t even see him draw his swords but they were flashing left and right like a striking snake and before he could even finish the breath he was taking it was over. The three men were dead on the ground.

  “How… how did you do that?” he asked.

  “That’s the right question at last,” he said. But before Vincenzo could say anything in reply, the Shadow Master put a finger to his lips and turned his head a little to the side, listening. Then he spun on the spot and his sword flashed and something fell to the ground at Vincenzo’s feet with a clunk. It took him a moment to understand it. Someone had fired a crossbow bolt at them and the stranger had cut it out of the air with his sword. Unbelievable.

  Then the stranger was rushing at the doorway beneath the window from where the bolt had been fired. He kicked at the door heavily and there was a deep hollow thud. Vincenzo saw him step back cursing and limping a little on one foot. “Oh mother of mercy,” he said, followed by an even stranger curse that Vincenzo had never heard before. The Shadow Master gave him a quick look and said, “That wasn’t meant to happen.” He stepped back to the door, walking carefully and then slid one of his swords into the gap of the door jamb, then prised up whatever beam had been secured in place there. He then took a step back and kicked it with his other foot and this time it burst open and he limped into the darkness.

  He was gone a short while before returning, shaking his head. “I lost him,” he told Vincenzo. “A pity, he was probably the leader.” He walked across to the men on the ground and kicked the first one he had felled. “No matter,” he said. “This one here is still alive.”

  But Vincenzo the scribe looked at the way the man’s head was twisted on his neck and stepped across and knelt down beside him. “I don’t think he is,” he said.

  The Shadow Master looked down and kicked him again. “That wasn’t meant to happen either,” he said again. He shrugged and said, “Oh well, it can’t be helped. We’ll tell it better in the written version, eh?”

  Then he bent down and took the mask off one of the men. “Do you recognize him?” he asked Vincenzo.

  “No,” he said. “And I don’t recognize the mask either. It’s not one I’ve seen before in the Floating City.”

  “They are probably mercenaries from one of the other city states,” the Shadow Master said.

  “What will we do with their bodies?” Vincenzo asked.

  “We’ll hide them,” he said. “But not so well that the city guard won’t find them. But long after we’ve gone, hmmm.” Then he dragged the four bodies into a doorway and closed it on them, just as a small party of men walked into the square. There were also four of them, but they were dressed richly and Vincenzo recognized them all at once. He bowed while the Shadow Master nodded, and said, “Good day.”

  Two of the men didn’t even pause in their conversations with each other, but the third regarded him and nodded back.

  Vincenzo watched them depart and said to the Shadow Master, “Do you know who that was?”

  “Tell me,” he said.

  “It was Signor Tradonico, one of the Council of Ten.”

  “Council of Nine, I believe,” the Shadow Master said. “But we just prevented it from becoming the Council of Eight. Well done.” And he clapped Vincenzo on the back.

  “I don’t think I did very much,” Vincenzo said.

  “Such a modest fellow,” the Shadow Master said. “Now I believe we were on our way to visit Disdemona? Yes? Perhaps you could lead the way now and I’ll just follow and enjoy the scenery.”

  “And I’d write that you tell me what is going to happen before it happens!”

  XXIII

  THE STORY OF ISABELLA

  The Othmen envoy woke up slowly. He had been dreaming something about being a school child again, and discovering he was standing in the classroom with no pants on and all the children were laughing at him. It was most unsettling. He had not had that dream for many years.

  He tossed and pushed his head deeper into the soft pillow, wishing to shake the dream from him fully before opening his eyes, as if it might somehow follow him into the waking world. When he did finally open his eyes it took him a moment to realize that he was not in his own bed. And then he remembered where he was. He sat up a little too quickly and felt his head protest. He put one hand to his forehead and winced. The sunlight was shining in with an intensity that hurt his brain as if it was boring through his eyes.

  He shielded his gaze a little before realizing it was the light of late morning sunshine. He had slept very long. He turned his head a little to the side and winced. Too much wine again.

  Then he looked at the space on the bed next to him. It was empty but bore the indent of where a woman had been sleeping, and still smelled of her scent. Then he looked down and saw that he was naked. And then he saw the old hag of a maid kneeling at the foot of the bed, trying most unsuccessfully to hide a smirk from her face.

  He gathered the silken sheets about himself and glared at her. “What are you doing here? What do you want?” he demanded of her. And then, “And where is your lady?”

  “My lady asked me tell you,” the old woman said, looking down at her hands, “that when you awake you are to be escorted discreetly out the back door of the house.”

  The envoy glared at her harder and struggled out of bed, unsuccessfully trying to keep a grip on the smooth sheets. “I came in my ship,” he croaked a little hoarsely.

  “I am also to remind you that it is now my lady’s ship, as is all the cargo on board.” She tried, unsuccessfully, to keep her eyes low as she talked. He looked down again. His member had never looked so small and shrivelled. He had gone to bed with a proud stallion there between his legs waiting to impress the widow Montecchi with its magnificence, and now he found this old maid smirking at this aged donkey he now possessed. He grabbed hold of the sheets to cover himself again.

  “Where is your mistress?” he demanded.

  “She told me also to tell you that she had a most unenjoyable night and hoped never to be reminded of it again.”

  He felt himself reddening. “Who does she think I am?” he spluttered.

  “Why the envoy of the Othmen,” she said. “Everybody knows who you are.”

  The insolence of the old hag! If he had not been so speechless he would have struck her. But she rose to her feet, bowed a little and quickly left the room, saying, “I will wait outside. While you dress.”

  He fell back onto the bed and his head felt the worse for it. He suddenly understood what the message from the widow meant. If he wished to raise this with her, or accuse her of trickery, she would tell everyone in the city that he had failed to bed her. That he had fallen asleep naked in her bed and would not even wake up when she came to bed – most likely naked herself.

  He felt tears of anger welling in his eyes. The woman was a witch, curse her. She didn’t dare mock him in public. Did she? And then he thought, if she did, the Othmen spies would hear of it for sure. The thought of that made his member shrink even more. If they were to learn how he lost the ship, with so many treasures on board! He had loaded it up to impress her of his wealth. Now all gone. It would take months to rebuild such a fortune. The Othmen were generous, but did not suffer fools gladly. He had seen the way they both rewarded and punished.

  He licked his dry lips and then picked up the pillow next to him and slapped it. As if it was the old hag. Or the widow. But that was all the violence he would be capable
of for the moment. No, he thought, climbing out of bed and searching around for his clothes, it would be altogether better if word of this matter was never shared with anyone.

  He went to the window and looked down in dismay, watching workers busily unloading his favourite ship. He ground his teeth and spat out the window. She had been too clever for him, but he would find a way to exact some vengeance in good time. Working for the Othmen had taught him a thousand ways to be cruel.

  XXIV

  THE STORY OF GIULIETTA

  Romeo Cappalletti was in high spirits. The highest his close friend Marcuccio had seen him in for a few weeks. And that meant only one thing – a new love in his life. And that meant he was fair game for his torments.

  The two men sat in one of the illegal dens where Othmen pipes were available for smoking that dark oily substance known as Othmen Dreams. The room had a low ceiling and the windows were darkened, the light being provided by a few stubs of candles on the tables. A low blanket of smoke hung throughout the room adding to the gloom.

  The two young men shared a tankard of cheap wine, served by women with low-cut tops and wide hips. Marcuccio watched them carefully as they walked close to him, but Romeo paid them no heed. Clear confirmation that there was a new love in his life.

  “So,” said Marcuccio, “I’ve arranged a special banquet this evening in a private chamber, just for you and the Lady Rosaline and me and a woman of my choice.”

  Romeo looked at him and frowned. “You shouldn’t have done so without consulting me.”

  “When does a friend need to consult to do a favour? It will give you and the Lady Rosaline a chance to spend some precious time alone. That’s what you’ve been complaining about a lack of for the past month, isn’t it?”