by Aidan Harte
‘What is it, a rebellion?’
‘More like a civil war,’ he said with a sniff. ‘The Tarentines have been hearing Queen Catrina’s side of it, of course, but it’s clear she’s hard-pressed. She’s even been building herself a fleet.’
Pedro looked surprised. ‘Why would she need one?’
‘That is the question.’ He gave a generous tip to the attendant standing guard at the door and closed it behind him. ‘Well, how do you like my chambers?’
Pedro was confused: the rooms were barely furnished. There were no carpets, no tapestries, no paintings – it was all oddly austere, especially for a successful banking house. Even in Rasenna, Fabbro and his children had surrounded themselves in luxury.
Then he understood. ‘Going somewhere?’
‘Soon as I can.’
‘Not staying for the race?’
‘I only like to gamble when there’s an excellent chance of winning. Veii’s doomed, and Papa always said a viper’s most dangerous in its death-throes.’
‘Would Grimani really betray the League?’
‘Come, Pedro, you’re not a boy any more. A king must at least pretend his actions are honourable – but no such chains bind a republic’s first citizen. He and his fellows need only convince themselves that a thing is expedient and that gives them leave to stoop to any crime, and not even furtively, but with pride. Right now, Grimani’s still in denial, but the siege has begun to bite. He’ll be trying to buy his way back into Concord’s favour soon enough, and I have no doubt he’ll use us as honey.’
Pedro did not need much convincing that their host might betray them. ‘Like father, like son, I guess. Do you think Spinther will go for it?’
‘No,’ Salvatore said, ‘the Concordians don’t want Veii; they just want its assets – the colonies, and the Albula’s waterways. But we’ll be dead before Grimani figures that out.’
‘When are you leaving?’
Salvatore looked around the empty suite of rooms. ‘This very night. I delayed only so I could warn you.’
CHAPTER 26
For years the Wastes had been slowly expanding, but lately the pace of infection had increased, and now the autumn crocuses of the Rasenneisi contato sickened wherever its dust settled. Isabella stopped at the threshold, paralysed by a terror greater than any she’d known. The night Tower Vaccarelli had burned was nothing compared to this. Behind her was home; ahead was a silence no bird could out-sing. She’d needed no map to get here: like the pole draws the needle’s eye, so the awful hum at Concord’s heart summoned her. Wherever Sofia was, she must feel it too, Isabella realised. Distance was nothing to power this potent.
Pedro might be right, that she wasn’t strong or skilful enough, but what she needed now was neither strength nor skill, but Grace.
With a whispered prayer she crossed into the shadows. She could see Concord’s high walls in the distance and as dusk came on, the glow-globes painted the grand structures of the new city with blue light, and from that pulsing mist arose the great black mountain. Some rot had exposed Monte Nero’s skeleton and now a great tripod arose from a web of scaffolding. Each leg was a colossal buttress that caught the last of the day’s light before the sun sank behind the northern mountains. Whatever sorcery had supported them while they were being built, they now supported each other.
There was the source of the maddening song.
‘Where goest thou, little bird?’
Isabella turned to see a man squatting in the shredded shadow of a dead tree that she had just walked by. He blended perfectly with the rotten wood. His skin was chapped with scars and burns and liver spots, and the rags he wore were recognisably those of a mendicant. He looked at her through empty eye sockets and smiled as he raised a bloody hand in greeting. ‘Delightful to see you again.’
‘We haven’t—’ she began, but the words died in her mouth as she saw he was missing a thumb. She drew back in alarm, holding her forearm. ‘You!’ The scar his fingers had burned had never truly healed.
‘Silly bird, you’re in no danger – not from me, anyway.’ Before him lay a buzzard with its ribcage prised open; he went back to pulling it apart, explaining, ‘I’m looking for my brother. He’s been hiding from me for – oh, for centuries now. But I’m catching up. What would you say if I advised you that there is nothing for you in Concord but pain?’
‘I’d say, get behind me, Satan.’
‘You’ve mistaken me for someone else,’ he said. ‘Him, perhaps?’
Still in the distance but walking towards them was a boy, a little older than Isabella. He was dressed in rags, some yellow, some orange, some red.
‘Alas,’ the blind man whispered, ‘too late to fly now.’ His unseeing gaze followed her as she walked towards the boy.
The wind raised a wave of choking dust and the boy’s body shifted like a mirage. Could it be—? Was this the same boy who had played such havoc during the siege in Rasenna, the one who’d calmly riddled Doc Bardini with arrows and escaped before the Wave came? He’d worn yellow then, but that was a superficial difference.
But no, this was not the same boy; this was not a boy at all. He was a shell, and Isabella could see the abomination that was his true form.
‘Brave to face me, Sister. Brave but foolish.’
‘That one,’ Isabella gestured to the mendicant behind her, ‘is too blind to see your intentions, but I see you.’
‘You ought to thank me. I will stay that wheel of suffering to which the absentee landlord you call God has bound you.’
‘And in so doing, kill hope.’
‘There’s no greater torture than hope. I am your liberator. I will teach Man to call me God. It will be an easy task, for we are alike in so many ways. When Men anger me, I send a flood to punish them. You, fortunate child, are the first to hear my good news. I shall make you my Evangelist.’
He was the Deceiver and there was no point listening to his lies. ‘I’d rather be your executioner!’ She leaped, crossing the distance between them in a moment, and he raised his hand like a bishop giving benediction, blocking her kick. He skidded backwards. His body was unnaturally rigid as his feet dragged the dirt. He had barely settled before she was spinning towards him, and again he blocked her. She rebounded with a second kick, followed by a cascade of battering fists. Her onslaught was furious, fluid and unremitting. The dust raised made the air cloudy and he calmly retreated into the murk.
‘Is the Handmaid as inept as you?’ he asked conversationally. ‘This will be easier than I expected. You’re getting tired. Why don’t you go to sleep?’
His voice was honey-seductive, but she resisted. ‘Because I see you. You may have deceived all of Concord, that blind priest, even that boy whose skin you wear, but I see you.’
Her words penetrated and for a moment his serene expression faltered and a twist of doubt made his face spasm. His right arm began trembling. His other hand restrained it. ‘Down!’ he commanded, speaking not to Isabella, but to someone else, partially present.
Isabella chose that moment to strike. A jab to the neck made his chin dip involuntarily and with her other hand she dragged her nails across his brow, then leaped out of reach.
His fist burst suddenly out from the dust, but rather than block it, she avoided his touch as something vile.
‘You’re beginning to vex— Aaahh!’ he screamed as the blood from his brow hit his eyes.
Isabella had been waiting. She slammed her knee into his bent-over face and he swung wildly, stumbling back. She caught his wrist as it passed and punched him in the kidney – a blow that would have made any normal opponent collapse.
He just laughed.
She grabbed the arm with her other hand too, and turned a standing somersault, never releasing her grip. The tendons of his shoulder joint ripped audibly and he bellowed with royal outrage.
A whiplash kick to her chest sent her flying.
Darkness for a second – no – don’t black out – don’t—
Her tongue was blood-coated. The kick had broken ribs, and every breath was jagged agony, and tasted of over-salted meat.
He stood before her in the swirling dust, his arm limp and backwards, blood streaming down his waxy face. He writhed unnaturally, and she saw the sickeningly pale skin between its black iron scales.
‘Worm, I see you,’ she cried.
With demonic strength, he raised his dislocated arm and it coiled like a trapped serpent until it wriggled back into position. His blood-bathed eyes remained closed.
‘Child, I see you too,’ he crowed.
*
Isabella awoke with a throbbing pain in her head and a constricting feeling around her chest. She was bound to the base of a massive metal cylinder that narrowed to a spike, exactly beneath the tripod legs on the summit of Monte Nero. The boy stood over her, tightening the manacles that held her wrists. Around the needle’s base was a shallow circular pool filled with briny-looking water intermittently blackened by inky slicks.
‘I must leave, my King,’ said a voice behind the needle.
The boy left off his work and waded towards the speaker. Isabella, listening to their voices as she looked at the water, began to suspect that the unreflective dark liquid was very slowly drifting towards her.
‘You are abandoning me, Astrologer.’
‘I have an appointment to keep in Jerusalem.’
‘There’s no need – I’m dispatching Leto to bring her back.’
‘The Contessa and her child are invulnerable while my brother is at their side. I will stop his meddling at last.’
‘You’ll go with the fleet then?’
‘There are quicker ways to travel.’
‘Very well,’ the boy said. ‘I owe you thanks.’
‘Don’t embarrass yourself. I knew what you were when I persuaded Torbidda into your jaws.’
The boy dropped his hand uncertainly. ‘Then why did you help me?’
‘I believe in Balance. The Messiah needs a devil to tempt him, and if that fails, to crucify him.’
The Astrologer turned and looked at Isabella. ‘I’ll give the Handmaid your regards, little bird.’
The boy appeared in front of her once more. ‘So it appears you weren’t the only one who saw through me.’
‘Torbidda,’ she said, looking him in the eye. ‘That was your name, wasn’t it?’
‘His name matters little. I do not expect to be staying long in this vessel. Tell me, do you like my temple? It will soon be complete, but its heart is beating already. Those busy ants beautifying the giant’s skin cannot hear it, but they are not my audience. The world those ants think so vast is merely a membrane between heaven and hell, an intermediate stage scarcely noticed by the contesting parties. You and I know the truth, little bird: to them it is everything, to us it is merely a bridge. When I erect the rest of the needle, it will be visible to the great unblinking eye for which I built it. I shall emulate cunning Ulysses and put it out! Then blessed blindness shall descend upon the earth like a mist. That foolish astrologer craved sleep, but I’ve drunk my surfeit of that nightly death. While I was entombed I dreamed of rivers. I mapped them in my last life – a life which seems another dream now. As the Molè was but a shadow of the Beast, so the rivers of Etruria my pedantic tools described are like the superficial veins compared to deep arteries.’
He crouched and scooped up a handful of the strange liquid. ‘The real rivers of Etruria run deep underground, pulsing life throughout the earth – I could hear them flowing beneath my grave. And O! how I yearned to drink them dry!’
He held his cupped palms up to her face. ‘This is melan, water unpolluted by God. I have extracted that essence that made the buio such a nuisance. See its purity – smell it.’
Isabella gagged, and the boy laughed.
‘You think it’s unnatural? On the contrary, I wish to return to Nature. I remember when Man was just another filth-encrusted beast, chewing roots in the plains – and then that terrible eye fell on him and suddenly Man’s little head, hitherto concerned with nothing more than rutting and eating, was filled with notions. Inventions. Art. Argument. The overweening creature stood upright, and every beast shrank from his nakedness. They recognised his unnaturalness – would that they had torn him to pieces. The world would have been spared so much grief.’
‘God raised us up,’ Isabella said.
‘He gave you a thirst that could never be quenched, like a whore teasing beggars. And for it, you slaves praise Him! He gave you wit enough to know your flesh is rotting, and for that you thank Him. O base, base servility. It was a crime against Nature and in kind it shall be punished. An eye for an eye!’
Isabella strained against her restraints to look him in the eye. ‘Take your life back, Torbidda!’
‘You cannot move me.’
‘Silence, Worm! I’m talking to the boy inside you – can you hear me? Philosophy blinded you! They said you were a number, but you’re more than that. The hole in you is not God’s fault. Only God can fill it.’
‘Shut up!’ he snarled.
‘Break free!’ she shouted, and suddenly his expression changed. Fear and regret flooded his face, and Isabella realised that the prisoner had heard her and was fighting to escape.
Then his face changed back, twisting in bottomless hate as the two souls warred for one body. The struggle ended suddenly.
The worm had won. His black pupils had over-spilled until his eyes were totally black. He brought the liquid closer to her, raising his palms above her head. ‘You must be born again, as I was. God is an infection of the mind. A most radical purge is necessary.’
Isabella closed her eyes and prayed: Reverend Mother, Lucia, Sofia, be with me now. Madonna, give me Grace.
‘You shall be my prophet, going before me in the world, spreading my good news.’
‘I shall die before I do your bidding!’
‘Torbidda said that too, before I ate him. I’ll tell you what I told him: a little dying is necessary.’
The unexpected coldness was shocking. It snaked through her hair down to her face, and before it invaded her, she knew that Grace had fled the world.
Her tormentor watched his medicine work, musing, ‘Now that I recall, it didn’t comfort him either.’
CHAPTER 27
The interlocking layers of the Ponte Bernoulli’s lapidary gate slid open and spilled the soldiers of the Reserve Legion into the Wastes, heading for Ariminum.
Before the legion came to the mountainous backbone that bisected Etruria, the last caravan of the baggage train turned south towards the Rasenneisi contato. The corporal driving the small covered caravan had precise orders; he was to catch up the rest of the men as soon as he had seen them carried out.
The two foot soldiers in the back of the caravan were eager to rejoin their comrades. Ariminum was not a city to miss. The younger of the pair tried to make conversation with his colleague. ‘You were one of Geta’s bravos, weren’t you?’
The old soldier’s hair was grey, and his sun-withered skin was slashed with horizontal wrinkles and vertical scars. ‘What’s it to you?’
‘Only asking. What’s he like?’
‘The best fighter I’ve known, and the worst man. After the Apprentice did for that Corvis, Geta abandoned us without a thought. If it hadn’t been for the amnesty I’d’ve hanged for sure. Plenty of me mates did. I’m an old man, but I’ve one ambition left, and that’s to see Geta dangle.’
The younger soldier had been hoping to pass the time listening to a good yarn, not a rant. He tried to change the subject before the veteran got fully into his stride. ‘What’s she singing for, you reckon?’ He looked at the prisoner kneeling opposite them. A pole behind her back connected the steel hoop around her neck to manacles around her ankles.
‘Crazies always sing.’ The veteran’s scowl inverted itself into a leer. ‘Pretty, though. Got a look before they put the hood on. Nice young thing. Reckon the corporal will let us—?’
‘Being as
how he forbade us to even touch her, I’d say not. What’re you at?’
‘Relax.’ The veteran pushed his younger counterpart aside, leaned over and poked a finger under the hood. ‘No harm in saying hello— OW!’ He pulled back, swearing. ‘She bleedin’ bit me!’
The other laughed. ‘Serves you right, dirty donkey.’
The veteran petulantly punched her and the prisoner gasped until her breath returned, then resumed her sing-song.
He sucked his finger. ‘Ought to knock her bloody teeth out. Mad as a mendicant, she is.’
‘You ask me, it was that Fra Norcino what drove everyone mad – First Apprentice and all.’
‘Naw, sonny, you mark my words. The Apprentice’s just using them fanciulli to build his new – whatever it is. Soon as it’s done, he’ll let us at ’em. Seen it a hundred times.’
The caravan stopped at the southern border where only the hardiest scrub was growing. A little further south were the grassy hills of the Rasenneisi contato.
The corporal came round to the back. ‘We’re here.’
‘Here don’t look like much,’ the veteran commented.
‘Ignoramus! This is Montefeltro.’
The young soldier looked around superstitiously. This was the field where, thirty years ago, his grandfather and thousands besides had perished, where Rasenna and her allies had smashed the Concordian host. The ground was an uneven blanket under which a mass of cannon and engines were rudely buried. They would need to tread carefully, lest broken bones beneath the weeds draw fresh blood.
‘So?’ the veteran didn’t like being reprimanded in front of the youngster. ‘Bit late for reinforcements, ain’t it?’
‘So General Spinther said to bring her this far.’
‘Don’t see the need—’
‘Don’t you? Well, maybe that’s why you’re the oldest foot soldier in the legions. Now get her out – and be careful. Don’t let her touch you – and before you ask, it’s ’cause it’s orders is why.’
