The Floating City

by Craig Cormick

  He looked out onto the streets and courtyards and buildings and canals of the city that he loved so much that he felt stronger for it than he had ever felt for his children. He loved its grandeur and he loved its areas of decay. He loved the plazas and the waterways and the stagnant backwaters. He loved each island and the buildings upon it, whether they be palazzo or shack. He loved it all and not just his own island, or the immediate vicinity of where he lived, unlike some. The city was his mistress and he thought her beautiful in all her moods and weathers. He had dedicated his life to serving the city, and knew that he had failed her. Under other circumstances it would be time to step down and spend his days writing up his history so that he had a chance to influence how he would be remembered. But that was no longer a realistic option. He knew he would have to hang onto power until it was forcibly taken from him and then throw his legacy to chance. For no legacy was as rich as honesty.

  Yet his father would have been disappointed, he felt. The man who had also dedicated his life to public office and right at the end of his rule had offset all of his wise decisions with one poor decision. And that he was remembered for and that the Duca had spent much of his adult life trying to avoid replicating. And yet, here he was, standing at the window’s edge, contemplating a similar decision to his father.

  He turned from the window and walked across to a bird cage that held four brightly-coloured songbirds in it. There had originally been five, but one had become slowly aggressive and had started attacking the other birds. He had let it do so for far too long before finally deciding to remove it. But the damage was done. The other songbirds huddled apart from each other, as if expecting the other bird to return at any moment. Too scarred or scared to sing for him anymore.

  He opened a small door in the cage and reached in his hand slowly. The birds flittered away from him. He moved his hand around gently until he was able to coax one of the birds onto his fingers. Then he drew it out of the cage slowly, talking to it in a soft cooing voice. He brought the bird close to his face and looked at it closely. It turned its head this way and that, ducking and bobbing in nervousness. Once it would have let him kiss it on the head.

  He took the bird across to the window and paused just a moment before casting it out. The surprised bird fell like a stone and he leaned out the window to watch it plummet towards the city streets below before recovering and taking to the air, rising and circling and then flying out of sight. He would like to lean further out the window and watch it, but feared he might emulate its fall – without the recovery.

  What should he do with the plague people? he wondered. He had hoped that resettling them on the Isle of Sorrows would provide them the safety of the city while they were treated. But they were little better than prisoners there. No wonder so many stole across to the city and into hiding. He had been brought news that plague had appeared in many quarters. In the poorer streets and in the city jails. Should he round them all up and send them off to the Isle of Sorrows as well? Or should he have them moved further away, as Signor de Abbacio advocated? Turn the boats back or sink them out at sea. Go from house to house and find anybody with plague and have them put on old boats and towed outside the mouth of the lagoon. With luck the Othmen might even capture them as slaves, Signor de Abbacio had said, and they’d then get a taste of their own medicine – or pestilence.

  The Duca went back to the bird cage and put his hand in once more. Again the birds moved away from him, reluctant to let him touch them. “I am offering you your freedom,” he said, but the birds still flitted and squawked at him. He enticed a second bird onto his hand and brought it slowly out of the cage. This one was mostly green, with flashes of red and yellow on its wings.

  “Will you sing for me?” the Duca asked, but the bird just ducked its head at his words. He took it over to the window and cast it out too. This one took to the air at once and was gone in an instant. He felt a soft pang of envy. Then he went back to the cage again.

  “Come to me,” he said, moving his hand about slowly, but neither of the two remaining birds would. He had to grab one, as if it was a soft fruit he was plucking from a tree. He felt the bird struggling a little in his hands and bore it to the window quickly. He opened his hand and let it recover, before holding it out, waiting for it to make its own decision to fly away. But it just stood there, bending its head and grooming its feathers.

  If he even gave an indication that he was considering taking flight like these birds, Signor de Abbacio would seize control of the council at once. He would have his Djinn-slayer installed as general of the city. He may even have Othmen advisors sitting in the empty council seats before anybody could offer the slightest protest.

  And he would have access to the secrets of the city that were reserved only for the Duca. Secrets that were not even shared with the Seers. What would he do with that knowledge?

  “Fly away,” he said, giving his hand a shake and the bird took flight. So easily.

  He went back to the cage and tried to coax the last bird to climb onto his hand. But it would not. He had to grab it too. He brought it out of the now empty cage and held it close to his face. The bird seemed scared of him. He could feel its heart beating rapidly within his closed fist. Is that what it felt like to hold a beating heart? he wondered. And would it be so easy to cast it into the air to freedom.

  He wished for a moment that it was his own heavy heart that he held in his hand right now. He would like to throw it into the air and watch it take flight, lighter than the breezes and the clouds. On his death bed his father told him not only how he had torched the Isle of Sorrows, where the victims of the black lung disease had been quarantined, killing everyone there, but of the day he had decided to do it. It was something that haunted his dreams every night since, he had said.

  And he told him of a woman who had come to him to beg permission to become a citizen of the city. Well, to become a citizen once more. She had renounced her citizenship to marry a Son of David and move away. She had come to him as a widow whose husband had contracted the black lung disease and now had the early signs of it herself. She also came to him as a mother, as she had a young babe with her. The son of the Son of David. And she came to him as an outcast, as her in-laws had sent her away as not a true believer.

  Her name was Ruth. But he knew that, for he remembered her from when he was younger. In fact he had been quite in love with her growing up. But she had rejected him for the Son of David. And now here she was, begging him to let her return to the city of her birth, with a young child in her arms.

  And he, who had strived to be a fair man most of his life, found a sudden coldness in his heart. He looked at the woman as if she was a stranger. As if her tears meant nothing to him. All he could think of was her lying with the Son of David and bearing his child.

  The Duca stood there by the window, his palm open and the bird gone. He had taken her to his chamber and induced her to lie with him, and afterwards he had sent her to the Isle of Sorrows. And the next day he gave the order to purge it clean with flame. That act became his legacy and the source of his nightmares. And for his sins he contracted the black lung disease from her.

  The Duca held up his hand and looked at the sores that were developing on his wrists. He would not be able to hide them soon. They would advance down his hands. They were already blossoming at his armpits, and from there would spread to his upper torso and neck. Ugly black welts that would burst yellow pus when pressed too hard.

  His father’s last words to him were that he should know the agony of bearing the deaths of others on his conscience, and should never be tempted to do what he had done. It was a promise he had made him swear over and over again. And after he was gone, and he was but an unfillable empty hole in his young life, he had clung onto that vow, in memory of the man who had also loved the city more than he had loved him.

  The Duca closed his hands and let his cuffs fall down over the sores on his hands. Signor de Abbacio would be delighted to know the agony
he had contracted, and would certainly have him sent straight to the Isle of Sorrows. In the interests of the city’s wellbeing, of course. But, as he stood at the window, looking not down on his city now, but up in the air, searching for any trace of his songbirds, he was more concerned with knowing what his father might have chosen to do if he had stood beside him.

  LXXVIII

  THE STORY OF ISABELLA

  Signora Montecchi could not even enter the crypt as the weight of seeing two of her beloved daughters in death, lying there as if still alive, was more than she felt she could bear. Disdemona’s body had been borne to the family crypt on the Island of Mourning along the recently-trodden path and laid in an open coffin in a recess not far from her sister.

  Signora Montecchi stood outside the crypt with her last daughter, Isabella, supporting her, crying silent tears that fell about her feet like rain, her face screwed up tightly in grief. “It is too heavy a burden to have to bury one’s children,” she protested, her voice coming out thinly as if she were being strangled. “Her goodness is being interred with her bones.”

  Isabella held onto her tightly, giving her strength, and she in turn clung to her daughter, as if it might somehow protect her from any harm. “Come and sit,” Isabella told her mother eventually and the two women moved across to a small stone bench under an olive tree.

  “This should be a happy day for you and your new man,” Signora Montecchi said to Isabella and nodded her head towards Giannetto who was in the crypt with her husband. “We should be preparing to celebrate a wedding, not a funeral.”

  “There is time enough for that,” said Isabella.

  Her mother then lifted her hands to take her daughter by the shoulders and said, “These deaths were not natural.”

  “What do you mean?” Isabella asked her.

  “There is foul work at play here,” she said. “Assassins.”

  Isabella shook her head. “Why would anybody choose to assassinate young Giulietta?” she asked. She did not ask the same of Disdemona, who she knew had marked herself for attack from the moment she declared her love for the Moor. He was a foreigner. Of a different faith. He had many enemies. But she had not died from an assassin’s knife. She had died from the city not honouring the general with a house of sufficient quality that it would not collapse on them.

  She had many times offered to house her sister and the Moor in one of her former husband’s houses in the city, but Disdemona had always refused. Otello would consider it an insult to his honour, she told her. He would rather the city make amends by offering him a better house. Pride indeed comes before a fall, she thought.

  Her mother now took a large breath and seemed to compose herself a little and said, “There are so many things I never told you girls. Things I always thought you could better survive the trials of life not knowing. But perhaps I was wrong in this. Perhaps I have done you all a great disservice.”

  “What are you talking about?” Isabella asked her.

  “Your origins,” she said.

  Isabella’s eyes widened. As girls they had often asked their parents to tell them more about where they had come from, and always had to accept the meagre story that they were orphans whose parents were never known, or had died of a rare disease, or had been slain by the Othmen. But, they had assured them, they were all children of the Floating City. They were just like every other boy and girl in the city – though they had often felt that was not the full truth of it.

  “Tell me,” Isabella said.

  “This is not really the time,” her mother said. “We are here to mourn your dear sister. Your dear sisters. We can talk of it another time.”

  “No, tell me now,” Isabella urged.

  But her mother shook her head. “I should not have spoken,” she said.

  “You said this was not natural,” Isabella said. “That they were assassinated. Are you saying that I am at risk of being killed too?”

  Her mother looked horrified, as if that idea had never fully occurred to her – or perhaps she had never been willing to accept it. She put a hand to her mouth and then looked about her, as if somebody might be listening to them.

  “Who killed them?” Isabella said.

  “I do not know,” her mother said. “Perhaps those who seek to bring our city down.”

  “The Othmen?” Isabella asked.

  “I do not know. But I do know that there are forces trying to bring our city down from within.”

  “What do you mean?” Isabella asked her. “Who?”

  “Your father knows more than I do.”

  “Then I shall ask him,” Isabella said.

  “You must not,” her mother said, grasping her arm tightly. “It was long ago, and we made promises never to talk about these things.”

  “What things?” Isabella asked, a chill suddenly walking up her spine like an ice spider. “I must know.”

  But her mother looked around and suddenly startled. Isabella looked up and saw a strange man in a hooded cloak standing across the cemetery looking at them both.

  “I can say no more,” her mother said and stood up. Isabella looked back at the figure and saw him nod at them and then step back into the shadows and trees.

  “Who was that?” she asked her mother.

  “Who?” she asked. “I did not see anyone.”

  Isabella saw that for a thin lie. Whoever it was, he had clearly scared her mother.

  “We must get back to the others,” her mother said and began walking across to the other mourners.

  “Wait,” Isabella urged. “Are we in danger?”

  Her mother stopped and turned to her, her face again a mask of grief and pain. “You have always been in danger,” she said. “But things must play out as they play out. That was our agreement.”

  LXXIX

  THE STORY OF GIULIETTA

  Romeo knew enough about how contraband goods were smuggled into the Floating City to find an inn where he could find a boatman with experience of navigating the lagoon at night. Though to be truthful, finding a boatman was a lot easier than convincing one to actually take him across to the city. That required him offering up the large jewelled ring off his finger.

  But he was driven enough to hand it over with only a small amount of regret. The boatman he had found fingered the jewel with grubby calloused fingers several times before deciding it was more likely genuine than not, and with a grunt led Romeo out into the darkness. The two men made their way down a dim pathway to the water’s edge. There were several low sloops tied up there, each painted black and near impossible to see in the darkness. How he could tell which sloop was his, Romeo was uncertain, but the man untied one and indicated to Romeo that he should climb in. Then he pushed off silently and they glided out onto the still waters of the lagoon, the lights of the Floating City burning there ahead of him, shrouded in a mist that made them seem much further away.

  Romeo gathered his dark cloak about him in the prow of the vessel. He watched the city for some time and then turned back to the boatman. “Have you heard of the death of Giulietta Montecchi?” he asked him in a soft voice.

  The boatman said nothing.

  “She was a noblewoman,” Romeo said. “You must know her father. He is an important man in the city.”

  Still the boatman said nothing. Romeo looked to the man’s dark outline and suddenly wondered if he could trust him. Might he get to the middle of the lagoon and tip him into the water and then turn back? It would be a safer way to earn his fee. “What is your name?” Romeo asked him.

  The boatman spat into the water behind him in reply, making more noise in doing so than the soft strokes of his padded oar in the water. Romeo fidgeted nervously with the dagger’s hilt at his belt. He would be able to draw it out quickly if the man made any move against him.

  “It is said she died mysteriously,” said Romeo, but he knew in fact she had died of a broken heart from being separated from him. “I am a friar, coming to perform a service for the family.” But having
said it aloud, the long thought-out lie suddenly seemed absurd. Why would a friar be sneaking into the city at night rather than travelling across during the day when traffic was allowed?

  He had concocted the story only because a dangerous man like a smuggler would surely think a friar more trustworthy than a random stranger, and would be more likely to help him. Or less likely to harm him. It didn’t matter. They were nearly half way across the lagoon now. If the man did not attack him by the halfway point, he would be unlikely to attack him beyond that.

  Perhaps.

  “They say she was uncommonly beautiful,” Romeo said.

  “Quiet,” hissed the boatman and Romeo more sensed than saw the boatman turn his whole body towards him. This was it, he thought and gripped the hilt of his dagger. But the boatman did not move further. And Romeo suddenly understood he had not turned towards him, but had turned to look beyond him.

  “What is it?” asked Romeo at almost the same instant he heard the soft splash in the water behind them.

  “Hush now,” said the boatman, and he bent his back to the boat’s oar with more vigour, but with no more noise. “But your prayers might be welcome now, friar,” he said softly.

  Romeo didn’t know quite what to say for a moment and then knew it was best to say nothing. If the man believed he was truly a friar, and believed that the prayers of a friar could actually influence events, then he was welcome to believe it. He himself had lost faith in the influence of friars and their promises. He had been waiting for a letter from Friar Lorenzo da San Francesco for many days, telling him what scheme he had devised to bring him and Giulietta together, and had heard nothing. The drug-addled fool was undoubtedly still in a stupor of Othmen potions, trying to come up with some half-witted and impractical idea. And his beloved Giulietta had died while waiting for him to fulfil his promise to help them.