The Warring States (The Wave Trilogy) (19 page)

The Morellos’ fire-gutted palazzo was just large enough to quarter the Hawk’s Company. Where they’d repaired the damage, its walls took on a more military aspect, with merlons
and arrow-loops, everything but a moat. It had acquired a new name too: the Fortezza del Falco. The Hawk’s Company, unwilling to be fully domesticated, sought to keep the town it defended at a distance. And what exactly was their status? Their general was also podesta, but were they Rasenna’s army or its police – and what then were the bandieratori? Until time settled these questions, they lived in dangerous ambiguity.

The stable adjoining the fortezza was theirs too. Levi stored the Company’s black powder reserves in its cellar, but after half a year of stationary life, the Hawks did not need extra stables: idle soldiers gamble, and when they lost everything else, they sold their horses. It was lucky timing, because at just this hour Rasenna had need of a dungeon. It was an unpleasant place to spend the night; sleeping over a cellar of incendiary powder inspired nightmares. But all agreed that if it exploded it was better to burn those who owed a debt to society rather than innocent horses.

Sofia was annoyed that Fabbro’s daughter had accompanied him to see the prisoners. As for Fabbro, he was still riled by the argument with his wife. When he saw the bloody state of the beaten condottiere he said furiously, ‘Signorina Scaligeri, your men
cannot
deal summary justice. We have a podesta for that. If you can’t support Levi the way Doc Bardini supported Giovanni, then your workshop is a public menace.’ Though he knew full well Sofia had not been behind the incident, and that she was on better terms with Levi than he, an opportunity to shame the haughty Scaligeri heir was not to be missed. Like many of the magnates, he looked sceptically upon the Contessa’s renunciation of her title. Scaligeri trickery was legendary.

The cells still looked like stalls, but the bars and chains were real enough. Most of the current guests were condottieri or bandieratori sleeping off last night’s hangovers. Tommaso and
Uggeri shared a cell. Neither spoke as their fate was debated.

‘They acted without my knowledge. Your wife can attest that I was delivering the baby in question at the time.’

‘Don’t bring my mother into it, Signorina Scaligeri,’ said Maddalena. ‘If you can’t balance your responsibilities as midwife and workshop maestra, choose one. Neither is fit for a lady in my opinion – but then, I keep forgetting, you’re exceptional.’

Sofia ignored her. ‘Gonfaloniere, this problem’s not going away. Unless we use them, the Hawk’s Company has nothing to do but drink, gamble and whore.’

‘This is what I was afraid of,’ added Levi.

Maddalena laughed. ‘And don’t blame my father for your men’s incontinence!’ She turned to Sofia. ‘Or your men’s indiscipline. Papa’s given Rasenna prosperity it never knew before and you have the gall to carp because he attends to trade instead of playing soldiers! The truth of this is too murky for me to fathom but the solution is simple: justice needs to be seen done, and swiftly. Either
this
animal is punished’ – she pointed to Uggeri in his cage – ‘or we give Rosa Sorrento’s bastard a father. Doesn’t matter which.’

‘It matters to me,’ Sofia said. ‘Uggeri’s my man to discipline.’

‘Very well. Since Signorina Scaligeri is exceptional, the Podesta’s man must pay.’

‘That won’t solve the wider problem,’ Levi said stiffly. ‘Gonfaloniere, John Acuto always said a soldier with no enemy is everyone’s enemy.’

‘That’s your problem!’ Fabbro snapped. ‘My daughter’s right. We only need to calm this flap. See that your man does the honourable thing. That’ll send a message that Rasenneisi women are not whores to be used and forgotten. Maddalena?’

‘I’ll follow, Papa.’

Inside his cell, Uggeri tipped his cambellotto back from his
eyes and yawned, as if he’d been napping this whole time. ‘Can I go, then?’

‘You can stay the night,’ Sofia shot back. ‘Next time you want to act for the bandieratori, you come to me first.’

‘Yes, maestro,’ he said, and nonchalantly leaned against the wall to watch her leave.

Levi followed to break the news to Becket. The decision would be unpopular, but it was logical. If the company meant to stay, the condottiere couldn’t behave like routiers.

Maddalena was left looking down at the two prisoners. With a smile playing on her lips she said, ‘You’re lucky.’

‘What were you hoping for?’ Uggeri asked. ‘To see me flogged like an animal?’

‘The Contessa would never countenance that. She has Levi wrapped up like a parade flag.’

‘She cares for her men.’

‘She cares for her prestige, you dumb beast. If it suited her royal prerogative she’d let you hang,’

‘You’re jealous,’ Uggeri said, calmly and without malice.

Tommaso Sorrento spoke up. ‘Thank you, Signorina Bombelli. You did my family a great service today. I won’t forget.’

Maddalena took two coins from her purse and let them clink in her hands. ‘See that you don’t.’ She threw the coins into the far corner of the cell. ‘Fetch.’

Confused for a moment, Tommaso glanced at Uggeri, then he turned and crawled on all fours to the corner and sat there facing the wall.

Maddalena beckoned with her hand and said softly to Uggeri, ‘Come here, boy.’

Uggeri shuffled to the bars. Maddalena’s eyes glittered in the gloom as she watched his awkwardness. He seemed to stumble, but then he suddenly reached out and grabbed her waist through the bars. She gasped as he brutally pulled her towards him.

‘I’d like to have seen you flogged,’ she said, her teeth showing through her smile. ‘That’s the only way beasts learn.’

‘Shut up,’ said Uggeri, and pulled her body still closer.

‘Any thoughts?’

‘I think it’s a good thing I’m not claustrophobic.’

Pedro said, ‘I invited you down here for a soldier’s opinion on how we might use it in another siege.’

Levi considered it. ‘Well, the last time the siege ended before it really began. We won’t be so lucky twice. If the walls were breached, this might be a last line of defence. But if things got that bad … your thinking’s taking a dark turn.’.

‘Never hurts to consider the worst that might happen.’

‘Don’t you have to get to the Lion’s Fountain?’

‘There’s time,’ said Pedro calmly. Down here there was no shortage of time. Down here Rasenna wasn’t red and yellow but blue and murky-brown. Down here the air wasn’t dry and spiced; it was moisture-laden and iron-stained. The only light came from a flickering lantern, the only sound was the Irenicon’s rumble through the miles of stone that surrounded them, buried them, hid them. They were alone. Pedro wound the angel’s springs and waited for a heartbeat. He held the device to his ear and listened to the courageous ice-pick chipping at eternity.

tik tok          tik tok          tik tok

He remembered his godfather’s stories – strange now to think of Gonfaloniere Bombelli like that – stories that Fabbro had heard from Ebionite dye-traders from Oltremare, of miracle-working Jinni imprisoned in lamps under the sea, in deep caves; surely it was no less miraculous to confine tomorrow’s endless
minutes in a brass prison, to corral the fleeting moth-winged moments until they piled into millenniums, ages in which all things would come to pass and Natural Philosophers would work miracles routinely.

The annunciator hovered and moved forwards, carrying the swaying lantern down the dark tunnel, a scout to ensure no gaping holes lay ahead, until it was stopped by the broken engine jamming the tunnel. Pedro wriggled through the confined space until he reached it. The metal was cold and weeping, and the angel cast its light irregularly. He rested his head against the engine and left it there, like a rider letting a horse become accustomed to the presence of its master, then he grabbed hold of the end of the digger and pushed.

After the siege, Pedro had salvaged dozens of these abandoned diggers, the mechanised screws that made Concordian siege-craft legendary. Most were beyond repair, but he had rescued enough for Rasenna’s engineers to become familiar with their principle and to duplicate them, at least as far as they had the materials.

‘Put your back into it!’ shouted Levi, his voice weirdly distorted by competing echoes.

‘No,’ Pedro said to himself, then louder, ‘It’s good and stuck, Levi. The bit’s fixed deep in the stone. I’ll get the lads down to dig arouuaahh—’

Without warning the ground shifted, and great clumps fell away into the darkness. Pedro reacted instinctively, scrambling back. The digger’s back end hung precariously out over the new chasm, but it didn’t fall.

Levi grabbed Pedro in case the rest of the floor followed, but after a moment the strange creaks and rumblings subsided.

‘All right?’

‘I’ll let you know when my heart stops hammering.’

A wet wave of chilled air rushed up from below.

‘How deep do you think it goes?’ Levi threw a pebble and waited for the splash. And waited.

‘There’s a better way to find out.’ Pedro said, inserting silk plugs in his ear. He pointed the Whistler into the darkness and Levi covered his ears.

BeeeeEE beeeeEE.

Pedro had adapted the Whistler to work in other media than liquid; the strength of the beep’s echo revealed distance, but also what type of surface it had struck: rock, soil, ice, water and so on.

‘Well?’ said Levi with forced casualness. Though he considered himself far more cosmopolitan than most Etrurians, he still thought of Natural Philosophy as a Concordian tool.

Pedro was less superstitious. He might not have a Guild Hall education, but he had the equivalent. Like the Cadets, he’d been raised around machines – in his case, his father’s looms – and he had learned the craft from a Concordian engineer with an impressive lineage: Giovanni’s grandfather was the
Stupor Mundi
himself, Girolamo Bernoulli (though that was a secret that Pedro knew he must hide deeper than these tunnels).

‘These numbers makes no sense. This cavern’s about fifty braccia deep, but if I didn’t know better I’d say that’s water at the bottom –
flowing
water.’ He stared pointlessly into the darkness.

‘You mean that rumble isn’t the Irenicon? So what is it?’

He looked up to see Pedro smile in flickering light. ‘Let’s find out.’

The stars were coming out when they finally emerged from the tunnels and they might have been even longer if Levi hadn’t remembered Pedro’s appointment. By the time they got to Piazzetta Fontana, it was thronged with revellers. The blood
from this morning’s fracas was washed away with vinegar, then forgotten with wine.

He looked about for other engineers in the Lion’s Fountain, and when he found none he was both gladdened and disappointed. On the one hand, his men had work to do; on the other, he wanted his engineers to be seen as part of Rasenna. Weird theories about Giovanni’s death showed the Rasenneisi suspicion of engineers hadn’t yet been exorcised; the very idea of a Rasenneisi Engineers’ Guild still made many nervous. That was why Pedro had agreed when they asked him to adjudicate the duel of
li doi Ziganti
.

The crowd made way and watched suspiciously as he tested the table’s balance with a spirit level and great ceremony. He measured its dimensions, and made his compass do an elaborate dance across the breadth. Then he put away his instruments, took a piece of chalk from behind his ear and drew a line between the contestants, and an X on either side. The two giants sat opposite each other, backed by their partisans.

Pedro pulled up a stool and stood on it to announce, ‘As Chief Engineer, I declare this table to be of sound mind and body. Gonfaloniere Bombelli, will you do the honours?’

Fabbro bowed. ‘All yours, my boy.’

Pedro did not demure, but leapt suddenly onto the table and called for a flag. One came flying and he caught it with a graceful flourish – which surprised those condottieri who didn’t know Pedro was a flagmaker’s son.

‘I declare this contest of strength between Jacques the Hammer and Yuri the—’

‘Rolling-pin!’ Sofia shouted.

‘—and Yuri the Rolling-pin ready to commence. Signori, on your marks.’ The giants slammed their elbows onto their respective Xs.

The condottieri had great confidence in Yuri; the
company’s cook had bested champions the length and breadth of Etruria. Both men towered over the assembly – Yuri, perhaps, by a few inches more, but his opponent made up for it in breadth. Both men were stripped to the waist, though the bandieratori champion kept on his long-eared leather cap. Jacques the Hammer was an immigrant not long settled in the Smiths’ Quarter. He was built like a menhir, concave at both sides. He wore loose, coarse-threaded britches, a soot-grey vest and a thin leather apron that looked more suitable for a smaller man. His neck thrust forward from between the unbroken curve of his shoulders.

Pedro waved his flag – left, right, then a nice overhead slice – and shouted ‘Avanti!’ as he leapt from the table. Immediately supporters crowded round, baying like hounds.

Yuri’s technique was straightforward: push. He strained and turned red, and Jacques’ arm tilted slowly to seventy degrees. The blacksmith’s strategy of letting Yuri make an all-out effort was risky, the touts agreed. A little bit further and Jacques would find himself at the point of no return. The condottieri pounded the tables rhythmically, shouting, ‘Hawks! Hawks! Hawks!’