The Shadow Master (8 page)

And then Leonardo stepped forward. He didn't say anything but looked carefully at the metal arrow in the man's neck and touched it with his fingers. Then he looked down at the pot of soup under the table and pulled the man's hand away from his member and looked at the fingers. Then at the other hand. Then he put a finger into the soup bowl that the dead man had fallen into it, licked it with the tip of his tongue and spat it out quickly.

The cook pulled a face at the thought of tasting dead man soup, and said, “Let me at least save the pot under the table.”

“No,” said Leonardo. “Throw it out. Throw it all out. It has been poisoned.”

“But the man has clearly been killed by an arrow,” said the Captain of the Guard, “Not poison.”

“Very astute,” said Leonardo. “But this man is a poisoner.”

Everyone in the kitchen was taken aback. The Duke, the Captain of the Guard, the steward, the cook, the kitchen hand and the kitchen girl. The Duke asked the question first. “So, tell us what you believe happened.”

“This man has undoubtedly been in the employ of your enemies and had poisoned this soup bowl in front of him that was undoubtedly meant for you. See the fine bowl he has used.” They all saw this and nodded. Leonardo then held up the man's fingers on each hand. “See the traces of powder on these fingers,” he said. “That is residue of the poison. You can taste it in the soup slightly now that it is cold, but when heated up I'd wager it is not detectable.”

“What do you know of poisons?” the Captain of the Guard asked.

“Enough,” said Leonardo. Then, “The person who shot this man saved your life, your grace,” he said to the Duke.

“Then who was it?” asked the Captain of the Guard. “One of my men?”

“A stranger,” said Leonardo. “This arrow is like no craftsmanship I have ever seen. Can you dig it out and have it sent to my chambers for further examination, though?” The Captain of the Guard nodded dumbly.

“How long has this man been in our employ?” asked the Duke. The cook screwed up his face and tried to recall, but Leonardo said, “About two months, I'd estimate.”

“How can you tell that?” asked the cook.

“That's when the household soup first started tasting of piss and when I stopped eating it,” said Leonardo. The other five people in the kitchen, the Duke, the Captain of the Guard, the cook, the kitchen hand and the kitchen girl all looked at the dead man's member and the pot of soup under the table.

“You don't mean…?” said the kitchen hand.

“Impossible,” said the cook.

“Unthinkable,” said the Captain of the Guard.

“Outrageous!” said the Duke, knowing his wife would turn purple with rage when she heard of this. Then Leonardo rolled up the dead man's sleeve to reveal the Medici sign of six balls in a circle tattooed on his inner arm. Everyone in the room stared at in dumbfoundment for a moment. “The Medici will answer for this!” the Duke railed. “We will serve them up baked turds!” The cook wondered if that was a metaphor or if he'd actually be called upon to do such baking, and while the others expressed variations of increased outrage, it fell to the kitchen girl to ask the relevant question, “So, if this man was a Medici spy, who killed him?”

“That I cannot tell you as of yet,” Leonardo said. “But clearly whoever he is, he is exceedingly skilled in the art of death, and let us hope that he proves a friend and not our adversary.”

 

 

 

XII

Standing inside his new machine Lorenzo was a giant metal man, taller than any of the great statues in the main plaza. He was three times the height of any militia man and about ten times as strong. He stood in the metal man's heart, his limbs working the arms and legs, striding along the streets of the Walled City like one of the ancient gods. People ran from the sight of him, scurrying around his feet like rats in the gutters. Now and then a braver soul would throw a rock at him, but it bounced harmlessly off his metal chest.

He turned his head to look at whoever dared defy him and the eyes of the giant metal man shot out a concentrated ray of heated light, driven from a lens that captured the rays of the sun. As he strode closer to the Lorraines' household, men on horseback galloped out towards him, waving spears and swords. But the horses shied away at the sight of him and when rallied, he emitted a high-pitch scream from the mouth of the machine that panicked them so badly they turned and ran.

Lorenzo laughed and it boomed out the trumpet inside the metal man's mouth, echoing around the streets and alleys about him. The next line of defence was soldiers, who ran towards him. But their spears and swords bounced harmlessly off his legs as he kept striding onwards. He had to concentrate on not stumbling over the men who fell under his feet and were squashed beneath him. He laughed out loud again when arrows started clattering against the metal man's skin.

He looked up and saw the men on the roof of the building beside him and reached out a long metal arm. Where he punched the wall, the rocks collapsed, and the men hiding behind them fled. Now the house of his destination was before him. He walked to the corner of the building and looked up at the tower there. He turned his head to the magnfiers above his eyes and stared up at the window of Lucia's room. She was looking down at him in awe. He could not hear her voice, but he could see her lips moving. She was calling to him, he supposed. She knew it was him. It could only be him, coming to her.

The metal man reached up an arm that increased in length as cogs and wires stretched out extensions to the hand. It stretched all the way to her window and he saw her hesitate there just a moment, before stepping to the window sill and jumping down into the metal hand. Immediately he turned the giant about, bringing the hand down so that she was protected by the huge metal body. Lucia, his loved one, curled into a ball, pressed against him, and he wished he could feel her through the metal.

Then he felt the change happening as she leant into him. Felt her merging into his large metal body, felt her heart seeking out his. Felt the wings of the butterfly inside his chest. “Not here,” he said, feeling his armour turning into flesh. He turned to stride back up the street, so the transformation could be complete, knowing they would not be safe until it had. Then the change would spread out around them, changing the whole city, restoring peace.

“What is this?” asked Galileo, holding up the sketch he had been working on.

“A giant metal man, controlled by a person standing inside it here.”

Galileo looked over the diagrams carefully, then said, “Where are the counter-weights to allow the arms to lift up?”

“I will put them here and here,” Lorenzo said, taking the diagram and adding them to it.

“But the machine is too heavy on top now. It will over-balance too easily.”

“Not if the operator is skilled enough.”

“But if it falls just once, the weight of the machine would damage any of the joints here and here, and it could not rise again to walk.”

Lorenzo sucked in his cheeks. “Then he would not be allowed to fall,” he said.

“Perhaps it needs four legs,” Galileo offered. “Or wheels?”

“But then it would not be a metal man,” said Lorenzo. “It would be half man half horse. Or half man, half cart.”

“If you truly wanted it to be a man it should have a giant metal phallus,” said Galileo. Lorenzo blushed a little. “And a fully operational one at that. How do you propose constructing that? And what about an arsehole? What would it shit? Metal cast offs?”

“It's only meant to represent a man,” Lorenzo said.

“It could be a metal pig or goat, if that is the shape best suited to its purpose,” Galileo said. “Whatever that purpose might be.” That was his way of asking what Lorenzo meant it for, although he suspected that his master already had an inkling.

“It is to strike awe into the hearts of men so that they run away,” Lorenzo said.

“Hmmm,” said Galileo. “So would not a mythical beast be more appropriate? Something from a person's nightmares?”

“It is not meant to scare everybody,” Lorenzo said. “Just those who attack it.”

“So it's designed for a use that is likely to have people attacking it, is it? And this here, is that not a magnifier?”

“Yes,” said Lorenzo, “to see through. And here, see, this arm can extend via several metal tubes that slide inside each other and are attached to system of cogs.”

“Very clever,” said Galileo.

“I've been thinking we could design a magnifier that did that too, so it would be small to carry but could then be made larger when using it.”

“Very clever indeed,” said Galileo. “However I think your metal man might be a little more ambitious than the laws of nature will allow for. But what else have you been working on?”

Lorenzo was a little embarrassed to show him, but his master pushed his sketches of the giant metal man aside and lifted up another piece of paper and examined it. He frowned as he looked at it carefully and said, “And what would this device be intended to do?”

“It is a toy,” said Lorenzo. “This metal cylinder, when spun, creates a static charge that can be discharged from this metal arm here. Like the ones you have built, but larger.”

“But this one appears to be on a vast scale,” said Galileo. “And it is on wheels so it can be moved around. A device this large might be dangerous, surely it would produce a charge large enough to perhaps stun or kill a man?”

Lorenzo shrugged. “I don't know,” he said. “Perhaps.”

“You've made a good design,” said Galileo, “But what would possibly have the strength to turn the cylinder?”

“The metal giant could turn it,” said Lorenzo.

“Hmmm,” said Galileo, “Perhaps. But who would be strong enough to power the metal giant to turn the cylinder?”

Lorenzo bit his lip before he could say, “My love for Lucia is strong enough to power the metal giant to knock down half the city or turn the cylinder if I needed to.”

“Anyway,” said Galileo, “Your ideas are fanciful. There is a lot more involved in making a large model of a smaller one than just increasing its size. The weight of something has to be considered against the strength of the building materials being used. It is easy enough to build mud castles by the river, but they cannot be built to the height of our buildings without collapsing.”

“They could be powered by science,” said Lorenzo softly. Galileo laid his hand flat on the table, on top of the sketches and Lorenzo could see the fingers were as grey as stone. The old man said, “This hand was once young and supple like yours.”

Lorenzo said nothing. Then Galileo put the hand on his neck and asked gently, “Did you intend to give these designs to Cosimo Medici?”

“No,” said Lorenzo quickly. “They were just for me. Just ideas I had in my head.”

Galileo nodded gravely. “And I suggest you keep them in your head. You will have never seen them, but these are the types of machines the ancients toyed with.”

“Then in seeking the knowledge of the ancients, should we not seek to rediscover them?” Lorenzo asked his master.

Galileo looked at him squarely and said, “Only if we know that we will use them more wisely than the ancients did. And can you, or anyone, ever promise me that?”

 

 

 

XIII

The Duke of Lorraine used to love this view of the city. He stood by the window in his study, looking down on the world from his high tower, watching the citizens below going about their daily tasks. He always imagined that each was aware of him watching them. Some would be Lorraine men and would feel that he was their benevolent lord watching over them, and others were Medici men who would try and avoid the touch of his gaze, worry what he was planning. For he was always planning something. It was like a great game of chess, this battle between the two Houses. Even those who were non-aligned could not help but be caught up in it.

But increasingly, he was finding, the joy had gone out of it. There were too many other players trying to take over the game. The mysterious death of Lorenzo Medici. The plague people at the gates, growing in number daily. The City Council, always scheming to try and assert their own power. The battles with his wife. And to add to that, an assassination attempt inside his own household. The game had become a war and in a war there had to be a decisive winner. A game could go on indefinitely, but a war needed a quick victory or both sides suffered. Already the streets below were mostly empty of anyone but armed militias and guards. The city could withstand a small army at the gates, but could not withstand warring armies within. Or worse, numbers of deathseekers prowling in the dark, patiently waiting to assassinate members of each household. That would be like an insidious plague infecting the city, working its way around inside it, sapping it of its strength and vitality. His only option would be to crush the Medicis. But he could not bring himself to do it. It would be like crushing parts of the city below him. Better to try to find a way to restore the delicate balance of things. Return to the game.

Leonardo had shown him the means to make it happen, but the one thing science could not show him was the shape of the future. That is something he would ask him to work on next, he thought. That would be a power worth having.

And he pondered, if such a device had been available to him in his youth, how different his life might have turned out. Would he have married the Duchess and suffered the sorrow of losing three baby boys who died as infants? Would he instead have found a brighter path not travelled?