The Warring States (The Wave Trilogy) (2 page)

When Torbidda kept silent, his eyes fixed on the ground, the boy shrugged and turned back.

Torbidda looked up slowly and studied the back of the boy’s head. Then he examined the tall girl holding a clipboard at the head of the queue. A weeping blond boy entered the pen and she directed him to wait behind Torbidda. She was older than the other children, perhaps ten or eleven, and had the composure of an adult. She wore a Cadet’s white gown, with its distinctive wide neck and shapeless cut. Her hair was dark
like his mother’s, but very short, almost patchy. She dealt with the inductees with a brusque confidence he found impressive.

After some time Flaccus reappeared and pushed another boy, heavyset and scruffy, into the pen, then walked swiftly back towards the examination desks. This new boy stared furiously after the Grand Selector, as if debating whether to hurl an insult or a stone, before finally looking around at the girl, who pointed to the end of the queue. He walked with the lumbering shuffle of a pit-dog, and Torbidda realised he was a real city boy, the type who made the New City stairwells so dangerous; he probably ran along the partition walls and dropped down on unsuspecting ferrymen. He was probably an orphan who’d volunteered himself.

The city boy looked disdainfully at the sniffling blond child and barked, ‘Move!’ When the blond boy stood aside, he pushed ahead of Torbidda, growling, ‘You too.’

The Cadet calmly set down her clipboard and walked over to them. The city boy tensed, but she sounded quite relaxed as she spoke. ‘This will take all day unless everyone waits their turn.’

‘I don’t take orders—’ he started defiantly, but she stepped forward, planted one leg behind his and pushed his shoulders, hard. The boy went onto his back.

Before he could rise, her foot was on his neck. ‘You’ve all year to prove how hard you are – all you have to do today is wait in line. Do yourself a kindness.’

Without waiting for assent she released him and returned to her station. The city boy silently took his place at the end of the queue.

‘Best give second-years a wide berth,’ said the tall boy in front, as if Torbidda had asked his advice. His expression was sympathetic. ‘Sad about leaving your family?’

Torbidda saw he wasn’t going to give up. ‘Not really.’

The tall boy looked surprised, then said, ‘Yes, quite right,
we’ll see them in a year. What’s to be scared about? Plenty of children have been through it all before.’

Torbidda eyed his inquisitor with suspicion. ‘So what happens next?’

‘We’ll get our numbers soon. We’re supposed to forget names – mine’s Leto, by the way.’ He lowered his voice. ‘Leto Spinther,’ he said in an undertone, as if he didn’t want to sound boastful.

Torbidda had heard of the Spinthers, of course. He didn’t offer his own name, but Leto dispelled any awkwardness by ignoring it and carrying on with his cheerful patter. ‘They’ll tell you engineers don’t have names – don’t you believe it. A third of the students here are from good families, even though most probably didn’t get to the second page of the test. The First Apprentice is an Argenti.
That
hardly slowed his climb up the mountain.’

‘I’m not from a good family.’

Leto had the tact not to laugh. ‘Don’t worry, there’s still perfect equality in the Guild. “No number greater than another”, as they say.’

Torbidda was bemused by such an innumerate statement from a prospective engineer; he didn’t get Leto’s courtly sarcasm. But he listened carefully, picking up the rhythms in Leto’s speech, cataloguing his words, sifting meaningless gossip from information that might prove
useful
, just as every other child in the pen was doing: working out the
rules
. Caution dictated that becoming friendly with
any
Cadet this early on would be premature – better to wait and size things up properly before committing; a bad alliance was worse than none – but this boy’s friendly, relaxed manner was obviously unfeigned, and with his family background …

‘I’m Torbidda,’ he said with a shy smile.

Leto beamed and shook his hand. ‘I got to the fourth page –
mind you, this wasn’t my first attempt. My parents paid for tuition.’

The older girl made no small-talk as she processed the Cadets. ‘Take nothing that will slow you down,’ she instructed, and they obeyed, leaving behind bags and purses, even emptying their pockets. As Torbidda drew closer, he could see that a set of keys hung round her long neck instead of a Herod’s Sword. She had shadowed Grecian hair and olive skin that was more common further south of Concord; her robust features suggested she might even have some Rasenneisi blood.

After taking their details she pointed to the narrow stairway clinging to the side of the mountain and the children proceeded under a rusted arch that read
Labor Vincit Omnia
.

A few steps up and out of her sight, the city boy pushed in front of Torbidda, pausing only to give him a murderous look. Clearly he needed someone to blame for his humiliation and the girl was obviously not an option. Torbidda made a fist, but Leto said, ‘Not here. You’re liable to get yourself killed too.’

Torbidda ignored him and yanked on the city boy’s hood. The boy turned with it and pushed him, making Torbidda fall back, jolting down several slippery steps until he caught himself. Leto stood aside as the city boy climbed back down to where Torbidda was looking about in vain for a weapon, a loose rock, anything.

The city boy was about to pounce when he abruptly froze. ‘Catch you later,’ he said, then pushed by Leto.

Torbidda looked around for the reason for the boy’s retreat. The second-year girl was coming up the steps towards them. He held his arm out, but she walked over him. A few steps up she looked back and called, ‘Get up, Cadet! You’re on your own – haven’t you figured that out yet?’

Leto waited until she’d gone before helping Torbidda up. ‘I
did
warn you.’

‘You don’t believe in fighting?’

‘Not at the wrong moment. It’s an especially bad idea on terrain this bad, when the other fellow has the high ground and more experience in combat – well, street brawls anyhow.’

‘What should you do?’

‘Manoeuvre – make him surrender those advantages. Then attack.’

They climbed through rain that fell like whips, clinging to the slippery stone. Far below, Torbidda could see the factories of Old Town, wreathed in a perennial yellowed fog. The sheer number of factories wasn’t appreciable from below, but they worked night and day, engines churning out war engines just as the Guild Halls manufactured engineers.

The Guild might be brutally logical, but the buildings it inhabited were a monument of improvisation, hastily supplemented whenever needed. Though Monte Nero’s gradient afforded little level ground to build upon, there were extensions, and extra towers and outhouses perched wherever space could be found upon the great rock. The towers that originally housed the Molè’s builders were connected by iron bridges and narrow passages cut through the mountain itself. They were never meant to be permanent – they formed a strangely chaotic venue for training ordered minds – but proximity to the Molè trumped all other considerations. Now, the higher the building, the greater its importance.

A third of the way up, a particularly stout tower sat isolated on a little summit: the Selectors’ Tower, a hub to the surrounding minarets. As well as bridges and stairways, Torbidda could see a tangle of wires connecting each tower, like a web. He couldn’t begin to guess their purpose.

At the end of their climb the children dragged themselves, panting and perspiring despite the cold, under a second arch that read
Homo Homini Lupus
, where a long rectangular building
dominated the space: the Cadets’ quarters. The baths were in a bunker below the building.

Following orders, the children hurriedly stripped and ran the gauntlet of pressured water jets that struck their skin like hail. Torbidda emerged from the dousing to discover his clothes gone. In their place was a ticket. Leto quickly whispered what was coming, and Torbidda tried to compose himself.

Baaa baaa—

Baaa baaa—

He listened to the gleeful jeering as he waited in line; it made him shiver more than the bitter wind on his wet, naked skin. As he entered the refectory he felt his face redden and his eyes water. Leto had a distant, small smile on his face, but he kept his head bowed. The city boy, still angry after his humiliation at the hands of a girl, was like a trapped animal, constantly looking about for a means of escape. Torbidda thought he was just making it worse for himself – this need only be endured. To distract himself, he studied the lectern at the top of the hall, a great silver eagle. Leto said edifying Bernoullian maxims were read out from here as Cadets took their meals, but today the new second-years were to be edified with a different spectacle.

Baaa baaa—

Baaa baaa—

The refectory echoed with the mocking calls. Torbidda caught the eye of the dark-haired girl for a moment. Although she wasn’t joining in with the taunting, she was watching proceedings with interest as she ate.

Three at a time, the new inmates were summoned to the top of the hall, where an ancient trio of bored-looking legionary barbers waited, grizzled antiques who probably fought at Montaperti.

‘Ticket. Sit.’ A mechanical exchange and a rough shearing. The message was clear:
A bad job is good enough for you
. Torbidda
had always been able to distinguish between what adults
said
and what they
meant;
the two were generally at odds. This here – this methodically orchestrated spectacle with all the nakedness, the jeering, the renaming – it was an induction into a new family. If they were lambs, they were lambs without a shepherd, for this was an abattoir where children were efficiently ground up and recomposed as engineers.

When his hair was scattered on the ground, the wheezing old sot pressed a waxy piece of paper against his skull and braced his head with that hand as he took the hot knife in the other. Torbidda didn’t flinch, but he couldn’t stop the tears rolling down his cheek. Unfair, he thought, to pry out this evidence of weakness.

Pulling off the stencil, his shearer told him flatly, ‘Your name is’ –
rippp!
– ‘Sixty.’ He poured a foul-smelling orange oil onto to Torbidda’s head which burned as he rubbed it in. Cold drips streaked Torbidda’s neck and back. ‘Let the scabs heal by themselves. Stand and dress yourself, Cadet.’

He was finished just before the other two. The side of Leto’s head read LVIII and the stupefied city boy’s read LIX. Torbidda was walking away when he turned and glanced back as three new naked children took their place. Already he felt different. They were
civilians
. He was a Cadet, Cadet Number LX. His name was Sixty.

His mother screamed curses at the Grand Selector as they dragged him away. ‘My baby! Don’t take him from me, please!’

It was too unbelievable not to be a dream. Torbidda opened his eyes and listened instead to the storm outside the dormitory, and children weeping in the dark, weak islands adrift in a predatory archipelago. Other voices catcalled and teased, but no one ventured out of their cubicles. That first night was a period of watchful waiting, of study. Like an al-Buni grid, they had to learn the rules before advancing.

RATATATATATA TATTARATA TA TARA RAT AT AT AT T T T

The bell was the lambs’ first lesson: that belligerent mechanical rapping would henceforth marshal Cadets’ hours, dictating when to study, eat and bath; when to sleep and when to rise—

‘Let’s go, maggots! An engineer’s got to outpace the sun!’

The second-year who’d processed them yesterday was monitor today, and her first duty was to familiarise the lambs with early rising. ‘Anyone still sleeping when the bell rings tomorrow gets a visit to Flaccus’ tower. Next week, it’s automatic expulsion. That’s right: back to the mills. Back to mines. Back to the streets. You don’t want that, and I don’t care. Let’s go! Let’s go!’ Torbidda was learning already to distinguish between the babble of new accents; her broad singsong came from the Concordian contato.

The dormitory was a long, wide hall with a curved roof. Light beams from high circular windows crisscrossed the dusty space, making Torbidda think of the belly of an overturned ship. There were four rows of cubicles, with a corridor running
alongside either wall and in the middle; the two doors were in opposite corners. Each cubicle had a single bed and a wardrobe, and a modicum of privacy was provided by thin blue curtains hanging from a steel bar. The back-to-back wardrobes formed a narrow walkway for adventurous midnight prowlings.

‘Keep Flaccus waiting down at the shooting course and he’s liable to use you for a target!’ the monitor shouted as the last of the lambs ran out. Somehow, Torbidda didn’t think she was making that one up.

Bernoulli, the Guild’s founder, had wanted his Cadets as deadly as possible, as quickly as possible. They would first be taught to use projectiles, including hand-cannons and bows, and then knives. Only those who survived the initial cull to become Candidates would learn the more sophisticated martial arts, which were more deadly than any weapon.