The Floating City

by Craig Cormick

  The Duca, however, he wasn’t quite sure what to do with.

  “Our general is entitled to defend himself from your accusations,” said the Duca, in a soft voice.

  Yes, he’d leave the old man be, Otello thought.

  Signor de Abbacio sat back down again and said, “Of course. Of course. I was just wanting to make sure he was aware of the severity of our concerns.”

  Otello turned to face the Duca and bowed his head a little in acknowledgment of his authority.

  “How do you defend yourself?” the Duca asked him.

  Otello kept facing the Duca and said, “I would lay down my life for the council and the city. You know that.”

  The Duca inclined his head a little. “We do not doubt your loyalty,” he said.

  “We doubt your effectiveness,” said Signor de Abbacio.

  Still Otello did not turn his head to look at him. “I need time. I will destroy these assassins. And I will rid our waters of these demons. But I need time.”

  “How much time?” asked Signor de Abbacio. “Enough time for the council to be destroyed and for the last Seers to be slain so that our whole city sinks into the sea. Will you then stand before us and say that you still need just a little more time? Water is already lapping at our ankles and you ask for more time. The blood of our brothers flows in that water and you ask for more time.”

  “I can defeat all our enemies given a little more time,” Otello said.

  “I can feel the eyes of these accursed assassins on me at all times,” Signor de Abbacio said. “I can feel the talons of these beasts pressing at my entrails.” He smacked his palm on the table. “We have no more time.”

  Otello did not answer him. Signor de Abbacio folded his arms and said, “We should summon a Djinn-slayer.”

  Now Otello turned to fully regard the man. “They are treacherous dogs, trained by the Othmen. Better to trust a scorpion than to trust a Djinn-slayer,” he said.

  “But we have lost trust in you, general,” said Signor de Abbacio.

  “We should summon the Djinn-slayer,” said Signor de Abbacio’s lackey, Signor Hermino.

  “We must vote on this,” said the Duca. “It is truly a dangerous proposition.”

  “Dangerous times demand dangerous actions,” said Signor de Abbacio.

  The Duca looked uncomfortable, but said, “All in favour raise your hands.”

  Signor de Abbacio and Signor Hermino led the vote, thrusting their hands up high and turning to look at those members of the council they knew would vote with them. Slowly two more hands went up. Signor de Abbacio smiled widely.

  “I believe that four votes is now a majority of the council,” he said smugly.

  XLV

  ELSEWHERE IN THE FLOATING CITY

  The port guards saw the ship sailing listlessly towards them and alerted the commander that although it appeared to be one of the Floating City’s own vessels, she flew no flags of identification. The commander called out the sea guards and three small ships were dispatched to cut the vessel off at the mouth of the lagoon.

  They approached it warily. There had been stories circulating that the Othmen would try and attack the city and they were renowned for their cunning and stealth. Every suspicious ship would be stopped and checked. The sea guard themselves had no real desire to find a ship bristling with Othmen warriors, and were happy to challenge vessels from a distance to prove who they were and then board them and gruffly search them when it was apparent they were just merchantmen.

  But this vessel was different. There were very few crew on board that they could see, and those they observed seemed to be moving about as if drugged.

  The commander, whose job it was to oversee this work, called on his three small vessels to stay well back. He was in his fifth decade of life and had a preference to reach his sixth, which he knew would only be possible through caution in all things.

  “Identify yourselves,” he called to the ship, through a metal hailer that amplified his voice, making it sound gruffer than normal.

  Nobody on the ship responded to his hail, and it kept coming towards them. “Ready yourselves,” he said to his men, and a few of them shuffled their feet, as if that was what readying themselves entailed.

  “Identify yourselves!” the commander called again to the vessel. “Or else we will be forced to take action.”

  A few of the sea guards looked at each other, wondering just what action the commander might order them to take. They were poorly armed and their vessel was much smaller than that bearing down on them.

  The commander chewed his lip, half expecting a phalanx of Othmen archers to suddenly rise from behind the ship’s rails and send a storm of barbed arrows at them. But instead a single elderly woman came to the railing and called out them, “Let us pass. Please.”

  The commander looked at her and frowned. “You are not showing the required flags,” he called. “Where are you coming from?”

  “From Kaffa,” she called back.

  He knew it well. It was one of the Floating City’s colonies to the north east, along the waterways of the Russ. But he had heard it was being besieged by Othmen troops.

  “What news from Kaffa?” he called to her.

  “The city has fallen to the Othmen. We are refugees.”

  All his men looked at each other in alarm. The city was extremely well defended with high walls, and over the decades many armies had tried unsuccessfully to take it.

  “How?” he called. “Kaffa is impregnable.”

  “We had thought so,” she said. “But the Othmen hurled plague-ridden corpses over the city walls on their catapults. The whole city became infected. Men, women and children. The suffering was terrible.”

  “Othmen swine,” he muttered. He was on the verge of ordering his men to allow the ship to pass, when a thought closed his throat.

  “Have you plague on board?” he called.

  “We are refugees. Please let us pass.”

  “Have you plague on board?”

  “Many of us are citizens of the Floating City,” she called, “and request our right for admittance into the city.”

  The commander chewed his lip again, coming close to drawing blood. Any citizen of the Floating City did have a right to be admitted to the city, but if the ship was carrying plague…

  He called a third time. “Are you carrying plague? Answer me or we will take action.” His men seemed to take a small step back from him, as if more reluctant to take this action, whatever it was, against a plague ship than against Othmen archers.

  “We have sick children in need of medical care,” the woman at the ship’s rail called and she turned and beckoned with her hands and then two more women came up to the railing, both holding babes who the men could now hear crying with choked and gasping wheezes.

  The commander stood there for some moments, as the ship bore right down on top of them, until one of his men asked, “What should we do? Should we stop them?”

  “How will we stop them?” asked another.

  “They have a right to enter the city,” said a third.

  “But we have a duty to stop them,” said another.

  The commander felt that whatever he said next would determine if he would reach his sixth decade still in his position or not, but words failed him. He would be criticized for whatever decision he made today, he knew.

  “Burn the ship,” said one man.

  “Let them pass,” said another.

  “Make them drop anchor.”

  “Send them back where they came from.”

  If he let the ship past or turned it back he was certain the council would decide it was the wrong decision and he would receive some punishment for it.

  “Quarantine,” said another. “Put them in quarantine and let the council decide.”

  The commander turned to the last speaker to see who it was. A young man he’d had his eye on for promotion for some time. “Yes,” he said aloud. “Escort the vessel to the Isle of Sorrows and
keep it there under quarantine.”

  He looked up to see the faces of the three women at the railing of the ship, so close now he could make out the dark blemishes on their skin, like he could clearly see the look of desperation in their eyes. He had heard that the plague was transferred by touch. But others said it was enough to breathe the same air that a victim exhaled.

  “And any man who comes in too close contact is going to be left on the isle with them, understand?”

  The vessel’s crew started moving now, hauling on lines to turn them about to escort the ship through into the lagoon. The commander gave a satisfied nod. Putting them into quarantine was as much as no decision at all, but he had learned from his many years as an official that no decision was often the best decision of all.

  XLVI

  THE STORY OF ISABELLA

  Isabella found herself a little distracted today. She was trying to concoct a plan to send four ships to the ancient kingdoms to the south in secret. They would not even know they were sailing on her ships, so as to avoid the crews deserting her in fear of the Othmen vendetta against her. They desperately needed to bring more grain into the city, but there were so many things to consider. The likely weather patterns at this time of year, the possibility of lesser pirates and where they might be, how good a crop the kingdoms had had and what prices they would be seeking. Also which captains should she send who would be both able seamen and competent traders? And the ships, she had to balance speed against storage capacity.

  And of course the risk of an Othmen attack. There were times she wondered if they really did have some enchantment that allowed them to find a ship anywhere on the ocean, whether at day or night, or it was just a bluff by the Othmen envoy. And then there was also the envoy. She still had to find a way to outwit him. She had already taken a gamble in sending a letter to a Graecian nobleman of her husband’s acquaintance, gossiping about the envoy’s excess and corruption, accusing him of keeping a harem of young women and living like a sultan on Othmen funds. There was a very good chance that the letter would be intercepted, or even that her husband’s acquaintance would sell the information contained in it to the Othmen. The first accusations might only get them a little riled, but when she also suggested that he had turned his coat yet again, and was now working for the Floating City against the Othmen – they would want his blood.

  He would undoubtedly be warned by friends and informers and decide to take his many purloined treasures and flee further to the west, taking his poisonous lies with him.

  So many things to concentrate on, but today she found her thoughts kept drifting back to moments of conversation with the young captain Giannetto, from the evening before. It had really been most pleasant.

  She frowned. If it had been her handmaiden who had been continually distracted in her work by thoughts of a handsome young man she would have admonished her. And if it had been one of her captains, moping distractedly over a young woman, she would have been more than a little annoyed with him. But there was nobody to chide her but herself – and she found that she could not rely on herself to do so. Every time she told herself to concentrate on the task before her, she would find her mind turned slowly to the way the young captain had smiled or something witty he had said. Or even something particularly clever she had told him.

  She stood up from the desk, walked to the window and looked out over the ocean that all her wealth and her livelihood came from. For the first time in as long as she could remember since her husband had been killed, she found she did not have an overwhelming urge to take a ship and sail off over the horizon.

  Then she crossed over to a looking glass and considered the woman there. The familiar face but with the soft edges of a smile to it. “Who are you?” she asked. “I’m not sure I know you.” The face looked back at her, unanswering. “I’m not sure you should be trusted to doing business,” she said to herself cautiously. “Not today.” She was trying to decide if she liked the face she was looking at, and asked, “What do you think?”

  “Um, about what?” asked her handmaiden.

  Isabella spun around and saw the woman in the doorway, looking a little confused. Isabella waved her hand in the air, dismissing the question without answering it. “What is it?” she asked.

  Her handmaiden, she saw, also had a smile to the edges of her mouth and she tried hard to pull her own down into a frown. “It’s a message for you,” she said. “From a suitor.”

  Isabella’s face now did drop into a frown and she said, in a harsh voice, “I told you I would take no more messages from these old suitors. I have no desire to meet these unknown men.”

  “This one is not unknown, my lady,” said the handmaiden, holding out a letter.

  Isabella stood there for quite some time before walking across and taking it from her. Surely one of her own captains would not have the audacity! She took the letter, expecting the other woman to withdraw from the room, but she did not. Isabella looked at her and then looked at the letter, letting her gaze drop to the signature first. It was well written, with a distinct flourish, and read Giannetto Scali!

  She glanced across at the handmaiden who had suddenly found something very interesting on the floor at her feet to be examining. She looked back to the letter. Giannetto had written that he was full of apologies for his behaviour the night before and could not understand what had happened to him, and would be filled with shame until his dying day if she did not agree to let him have supper with her again tonight, and he would have a second vessel and cargo readied by then. The rest didn’t need to be written.

  “I suppose he’s waiting for an answer?” Isabella asked.

  “Yes, my lady,” said the handmaiden.

  Isabella tapped the letter and threw it to the table amongst all her papers and then walked back to the looking glass. Her instincts were to say no, but she could see the woman in the glass was going to say yes, and could see the faint smile lines clearly returning to it again.

  XLVII

  ELSEWHERE IN THE FLOATING CITY

  The Djinn circled Vincenzo slowly. He turned and tried to keep it within view, but it sank deeper into the waters and he felt the swirling currents where it swam past him. He spun and tried to find it, but could not see it. Then he felt it brush against him as if taunting him, and he turned again, and then felt the coarse touch of scales against the back of his legs.

  He kicked out, vainly hoping to scare it away. He wanted to keep turning to keep it in front of him, but his limbs were as sluggish as if he was underwater. He tried to lift himself free, but felt himself sinking deeper. It was water but it wasn’t. He could breathe, though it felt thick and stuffy in his mouth. The waters gripped him, but were dry.

  He reached out his arms to find something to grab hold of to pull himself free, but there was nothing. He looked up and saw the buildings and bridges of the city. And he saw stars about him. As if the city was floating in the night’s sky. As if the canals were not filled with water, but something darker and heavier.

  And the Djinn circled in closer, the large head leaning in closer to his, as if just wanting him to know it was there. He saw the red fire in the eyes and the jaws open in a wide mocking smile.

  Vincenzo tossed and turned in his thin bed, legs entangled in the blankets, trying in vain to avoid the beast that circled around inside his head.

  XLVIII

  ELSEWHERE IN THE FLOATING CITY

  The commander of the marine guard had just enough time to feel pleased with himself for solving the problem of the plague ship when a breathless young private came running with the alarming news. An Othmen vessel had been sighted approaching the city. The commander looked at the private as if he was talking a foreign language and had him repeat it slowly. Then he began trembling and found he could hardly stand, as he called all men to stations and sent word to the city to send reinforcements.

  By the time an extra fifty men had arrived and taken up positions around the outer walls of the floating fort that stood
by the lagoon entrance, they could see the enemy ship. It had that Othmen cut of sharp points and menace that all knew, though few of the soldiers had actually seen.

  A few old hands who had fought the Othmen already told the other men to be vigilant, for the Othmen would hurl balls of fire at them from a long distance. Or poisoned darts that they would not see until they struck them. Or they’d send naked men covered in oil, swimming unseen through the water to climb up the walls at their rear and attack them. Then the ship would bear down on them like a wraith, they said.

  But the vessel was actually approaching very slowly, and was flying diplomatic flags of truce. That had to be a trick, of course. The Othmen deceits were legend. The commander, leaning on a battlement edge to hold himself up, as if his backbone had been ripped from his body, ordered a warning shot fired over the bow of the ship as soon as it was within range. But to his consternation, the ship dropped anchor, just out of cannon range and a small boat detached itself and rowed straight towards them.

  Even the launch had the cut of sharp points and danger to it. The commander looked for the young guard whose advice he had taken earlier, and asked him, almost casually, “What would you do if you were in my shoes?”