Spira Mirabilis (2 page)

Isaiah 45:15

Some doubted their eyes. The mutilated corpse, they argued, could have belonged to anyone. These doubters were swiftly silenced because believing that Fra Norcino – their shepherd, their teacher – had abandoned them was even more terrible than believing he was dead. The engineers had scourged Consul Corvis, the devil who ordered his execution; now, leaderless and denied even the solace of revenge, the fanciulli retreated to the Depths. Unity had been their great strength but they broke willingly into gloomy covens, to argue amongst themselves about what had broken them, and why. A deficiency of faith was the explanation that held sway for a few dismal days, before a sweeter notion suggested itself.

This was a test.

What was Consul Corvis? An engineer.

Who had shown them the body? The engineers.

And what was the First Apprentice but an engineer – the king of that benighted race.

*

Monte Nero might tower over the New City, but its foothills were in the Depths and those twice-orphaned wretches threw themselves, pushing and shouting, like a wave at the crags. When the folly of that became clear, they retreated to the
Umbilicus Urbi
, the cartographic navel of the Concordian Empire, whence the mapmaker’s needle began its tireless revolutions, to meditate on the injustices done to them. The ancient stone pillar was not merely the point from where all imperial measurements began,
it was the pulpit from which Norcino had preached. Here the truth had originated, and against it was measured the falsehood of all other positions.

They alternated chanting,
Abasso Torbidda!
– down with Torbidda! – with
Abasso Spinther!

The objects of their hatred were the two boys who controlled respectively Concord’s civic and military wings: First Apprentice Torbidda and General Leto Spinther. Though the mob did not know it, this singular pair were looking down upon them from one of the New City aqueducts. Both had devoted their lives to Reason, and both knew this sea of passion was capable of drowning them.

Beyond that, their reactions were very different.

‘Look at it, Leto,’ the First Apprentice marvelled. ‘The great beast that is man in aggregate. What an army they would make!’

The young general was unimpressed. ‘A man can be worth something, but men are generally worthless. I shall gather the praetorians. A charge will soon break up this rabble.’

‘No, they’d just come back. I must speak to them.’

‘You can’t reason with a mob.’

Torbidda smiled so rarely that his gleeful laugh took Leto entirely by surprise. ‘Who said anything about Reason?’

*

No one assaulted the boy in red as he pressed through the crowd – the praetorians saw to that – but once the masses would have parted like cattle before the First Apprentice. Concord’s year of anarchy had made them bold.

‘Down with the Guild!’ they shouted as he stood with bowed head before the pillar from where the blind preacher had hurled his sermons. Bloody handprints marked it still. He turned and looked contritely at the hostile faces surrounding him, and they saw a boy not much different than them: paler, perhaps, but with
his ox-like brow and large callused hands he looked like one who knew what it was to work.

It was hard to hear at first, so choked with grief was his voice. ‘We mourn together, Children. Hear me not for my rank but for that woe we share,’ he started solemnly. ‘My rank is but an ephemeral vanity. Our grief is eternal. The saint’s pillar is empty, and so it must stay. No one can take the place of Fra Norcino – not you, not I’ – he stepped away from the protection of the praetorians and gestured contemptuously – ‘and certainly not them.’

The crown lowed aggressively, but no longer at Torbidda.

‘Nor can the Collegio dei Consoli replace him,’ he continued, ‘for all their claimed wisdom. A surfeit of Reason has enfeebled their minds. That scoundrel Bernoulli said that only philosophers could uncover truth, but I say that only
you
have that power! Your roar is the voice of God – give thanks that Bernoulli and his dogma are dead. Give thanks that Fra Norcino and his promise will live for ever! We, his children – we shall be tyrants to the world: we shall be a new breed, the tyranny of ten thousand! Cast off your petty bonds, your family, your names, and in this union forget your mothers, your brothers, your neighbours, your lovers. Forget all bonds and become something greater. Our unchained strength and collective stature is unbounded. O joy! O terror! How our senses will be magnified: a hundred eyes and ears, a thousand mouths to bite our foes! A million fists to smash the world!’

He walked amongst them so that that they could see he was just a boy like them. ‘We are young, that is why the Fra believed in us. He showed us the path and gave us courage to follow it. He threw away his life to free us from the snares of Reason. The Molè was a temple to that discredited idol, and we shall have nothing to do with it. Tear up the stones of the streets with your fingers; carry all you can on your backs. Load them till your knees buckle – and there on the grave of idolatry we shall build a new church dedicated to youth! Come, climb the mountain with me! Lay out the site with me! Cut the foundation stone with me!’

‘Lead us!’ they cried.

‘If you will follow me, then I will follow you. I tell you there is no greater rapture than to forget yourself.
Become
the Temple! Make stone of your flesh – make mortar of your bones and blood. Give your lives for Concord – for those who build and those who kill for Concord are equally brave, equally blessed: we are soldiers of God together.’

Leto, looking on, could hardly believe his ears. Instead of pacifying them, Torbidda was driving them mad.

‘I have no need of this gaudy robe, for I am no Apprentice.’ And as he spoke, Torbidda began to remove his clothes.

‘Then you are the master!’ cried an ecstatic girl, and the cry was taken up.

The surrounded praetorians, out of self-preservation, bowed low, and Leto bowed too, lower than everyone, to cover his indignation.

Torbidda, standing naked before them, picked up his Apprentice’s robe and threw it into the throng. ‘Tear it!’ he shouted. ‘Everyone take a share!’

‘Master!’ they insisted, ‘Master!’

‘We are all masters! Dip your wool in the blood of the lamb and be reborn. Children, we are Crusaders.’

Leto had to struggle to get to the head of the procession as Torbidda led a trail of naked children up the mountain. Like his followers, Torbidda’s feet were bleeding. In all the years Leto had known him, he’d never seen such an ecstatic smile. He threw his cloak over his naked shoulders and whispered, ‘Have you gone mad?’

Torbidda turned, and Leto fancied that he saw in his friend’s face – for the briefest moment – a look of terrible entreaty. Then it was gone, glazed over by joyless glee. He threw off the cloak impatiently. ‘On the contrary: I know now the true price of things. Concord is certainly worth a mass.’

Serves you bloody well right for doing the right thing!
Captain Khoril raged at himself. The diminutive, hirsute Levantine was waiting to be summoned, and sweating like the last hog of winter. This was the first time he’d returned to Akka since helping Contessa Scaligeri escape Ariminum and the Moor. It didn’t help matters that the Moor’s ensign was standing calmly beside him. The tall, handsome youth with skin the colour of liquid walnut had a noble mien and a haughty diffidence; Khoril had ferried the perfectly composed youth from Ariminum to speak on his master’s behalf.

A black-robed cleric pushed open the door to the throne room and stared at them for an awkward moment, then, apparently satisfied, he ordered them to approach.

‘I summoned the Moor,’ said the queen. ‘He sends his cupbearer?’

The ensign’s eyes, deep sleepy pools, opened wide. This was mild reproach for Queen Catrina, but the beautiful youth responded defiantly, ‘Admiral Azizi sends his dearest friend. Loyalty keeps him in Ariminum. You would commend his prudence if you knew the Serenissima’s reputation for treachery.’

She said with resignation, ‘All the world knows that. He did as instructed and offered allegiance to Concord?’

‘Yes and as you predicted, they stood by and let us take over Ariminum.’

‘What then has your master so worried?’

‘I would not say
worried
. As canaries are to miners are rats to mariners. He smells one.’

‘I’m told it’s quite a distinctive musk. Is that so, Khoril?’ Before the captain could stammer an answer, the queen continued, ‘You mean this boy king – the one who styles himself the— What is it your Beatitude? The journeyman?’

‘I believe he calls himself the Apprentice,’ said the patriarch, striking the appropriate note of scepticism.

‘The
First
Apprentice,’ the ensign corrected him. ‘Mock all you like, but Admiral Azizi believes he will feed us to the beast as soon as he gets what he wants.’

‘Which is the Contessa?’

‘Just so, your Majesty, which is why my master recommends you
don’t
hand her over.’

‘And what am I to do with her instead?

The ensign, oblivious to the queen’s sarcasm, looked surprised. After a moment, he answered, ‘Kill her, of course.’

While Captain Khoril glared at his companion, torn between fear and hate, the queen glanced at the patriarch.

‘Tell the Moor,’ she said at last, ‘that I have already decided what to do with that one. Tell him too that next time his queen summons him, he had better come himself, not send some overbold Ganymede. Dismissed.’

Fury flickered across the ensign’s handsome face and he looked about to retort, but then he thought better. He gave a shallow bow and turned on his heels.

Khoril did likewise, happy to escape the royal reprimand he’d been dreading, but her silky voice stopped him dead.

‘I expect you are eager to see your family, Captain?’

Her voice paralysed him. ‘ … very much, your Majesty—’

‘Then I will not detain you for long.’

The ensign shot Khoril a look of suspicion and warning before the cleric showed him out.

Khoril’s mouth went dry and he resolved to head off whatever accusations she might make with his own. ‘I must remonstrate,
your Majesty – why did you not tell me the Moor was your servant?’

‘You of all people know that a captain must not share everything with his crew. You are too hot-blooded to lie convincingly. Your enmity with the Moor is famous; the Ariminumese had to believe I wanted him dead too.’

‘I played my part so well that I helped the contessa escape.’

‘Yes, an embarrassing episode – But irrelevant now that I have custody of her.’

‘A captain needn’t share all but neither should he leave his servants wholly blind. The better I know your will, the better I can serve. What are you going to do with her?’ Khoril hoped he was doing a good job of keeping his sympathies concealed.

‘The Moor’s prescription is extreme. I buy time by keeping her alive. Contrary to appearances, my power is circumscribed. I cannot summarily dispose of her – sending her away or otherwise – and preserve Akka’s reputation as a safe haven, so I have engineered a situation, one where my subjects will clamour for me to cast her out.’

Khoril concentrated on looking stupid. He was appalled by her callousness, but he knew better than to show it.

‘But tell me, what is really on the Moor’s mind?’

‘His pretty friend spoke true: he’s worrying about the First Apprentice. The Moor is one of these sailors ever watching for the next storm. You’ve put him on a throne in a rich city across the sea upon which Concord’s shadow falls. He preyed on your ships as a pirate – what is to stop him doing worse now that he is Doge of Ariminum?’

‘Gratitude?’ the queen ventured, then laughed at her own joke. ‘Please, Khoril: I don’t need your counsel to navigate these seas. I’m well aware of the risks involved in employing such a duplicitous dog. But necessity obliges me to use the tools at hand.’ She rose from her throne and turned to the balcony, gesturing with
a flick of her head for Khoril to follow. ‘I asked you here because of
this
.’

Akka had a natural harbour, and though the queen’s predecessors had spent little bettering it, the trading fleets of magnates like Baron Masoir made it a busy one. The quickest way from Akka to Byzant had always been by sea, and thanks to the Sands’ incursions, it was now the safest way too. As the faintly rotten smell touched her skin, she said musingly, ‘Who controls the Middle Sea controls the world: so said the Etruscans, and it’s as true today as it was then.’ She turned back to Khoril and said, ‘Within a year, Concord will have subdued all Etruria, from the Irenicon down to the Black Hand’s filthy fingernails. It’s inevitable. And when the final city falls, Concord’s unsleeping eye will look to me. I have a reprieve, a few months at best. Whether the Moor gives Ariminum to Concord or they take it by force, the sword that will strike us will be the Ariminumese fleet. Our navy is old: a few worm-ridden cogs, barely adequate for patrolling our coasts. I want you to build us one that compares to Ariminum’s.’

She stared at him, awaiting his reaction as he struggled to find a way to respond politely, ‘Majesty, the Golden Fleet—’

‘—is large, and the work of generations. I know that. “Compares to”, I said. We don’t have to equal them – our fleet need never leave its moorings to accomplish its job. It’ll stay the ambitions of these Etrurian dogs simply by existing.’

‘With all due respect, your Majesty, I think you underestimate the scale of the task.’

‘I own the forests of Lebanon.’

‘Besides
dry
timber, we’d need pitch, hemp, tow, cordage – and sailcloth by the acre besides. Not to mention skilled shipwrights—’

She handed him a parchment bearing the Guiscard seal.

‘Bring this to the Moor. You sail for Ariminum tomorrow. You will deliver this, along with your other cargo.’