The Warring States (The Wave Trilogy) (23 page)

Torbidda managed to keep a solemn face throughout Castrucco’s performance. He knew perfectly well that he was being asked to sign his own death warrant. The victims of an indiscriminate bloodbath would most certainly include him.

‘Your loyalty is heartening, Prefect, and I thank you for it and your offer, but I must say no. Such violence would only provoke an outcry from the engineers at large. Corvis, for all his ambition, is a moderate. If we quarrel, the Guild as a whole looks weak and our true enemies will be encouraged. I can’t put my pride over the interests of Concord.’

‘I understand, First Apprentice,’ said Castrucco, grim-jawed and sighing deeply.

‘I’ll be along presently. Go ahead.’

‘I shall wait outside.’

‘I will go, but not with an escort. I will not be seen to fear my countrymen.’

‘Given the circumstances, I don’t think that’s wise—’

‘— and I don’t recall asking. Dismissed!’ Torbidda waited till Castrucco left before smiling, enjoying how badly the prefect had managed to conceal his disappointment. The new instability had seeded dreams of power in the most unlikely places. Praetorians were the only soldiers allowed to bear arms in the city; though that law was largely ignored these days, they remained the largest armed body in Concord. Nobles were ineligible
to join the thousand-strong division, the idea being the nameless would never be able to make a credible power grab, but ambition is like any plague: proximity make one vulnerable. No, Torbidda thought, staring despairingly at the pages of inconclusive calculations in front of him, whatever had to be done he must do alone – and it must neutralise all his enemies at a stroke.

He picked up the quill, then dropped it. This attempt was the same as the rest, a failure. He’d started well, then the contradictions, the myriad unknowns and weight of unsupported speculations, all combined to slow his progress to a stop. He scrunched the parchment into a ball, rose from the desk and walked to the window. A web of wires connected the Selectors’ Tower to the mist-wreathed Guild Halls below, but otherwise it was isolated. This view had been his first really close look at the Molè; now he watched the snow skitter off the distant mount. It was empty now, but for a few jagged remains of pillars that stood like the charred remnants of a forest fire. This was all that was left of the greatest tower ever built: the lantern, the engine room, the triple dome, all gone.

And the library.

When he recalled the dusty months he’d spent there it felt like the type of nightmare where he yearned to warn the actors to flee, but knowing they could not hear, silently watched them play on as the world crumbled. Argenti had told Torbidda to ‘solve the Molè’ –
that
charge he had taken seriously. The First Apprentice’s other warning, that the Molè’s destruction was imminent, he’d dismissed as Naturalist hyperbole.

Stupid, stupid,
stupid
.

Ever since the Handmaid had burned down the Molè, Torbidda had choked on a heavy stone of regret. Had he heard the clock winding down, he would have done things differently.

‘Hello? Count Tremellius?’

If the elegant exterior of the triple domes reflected the virtues of the Re-Formation – reason, balance, precision – the eccentric maze within the second dome reflected a mind mired in confusion and contradiction. Its curved walls were lined with thick volumes and the air was heavy with dust. The floor was filled with unwieldy stacks, barricades, cascades, valleys and tottering hills of books. A stench of mould rose from dark nooks while other parts were parched under the direct sunlight streaming in through the roundels.

A winding path led from the pod to a scholar’s desk. It too was empty, but Torbidda approached and examined the old-fashioned banner that hung behind it. Suddenly a mound of books nearby erupted and a fat little man emerged sneezing. He squinted like a mole, blinking his small round eyes, before they settled on Torbidda. ‘Heavens! Our new Third Apprentice! Welcome!’

His attempts to clamber out caused a small avalanche of books, but he rolled out of the wreckage unconcernedly. ‘Now,’ he said proprietorially, ‘let’s have a look at you …’ He waddled around Torbidda, stroking the neat circle of his beard with his pudgy fingers. ‘I must say the yellow suits you better than it did Pulcher.’

Torbidda noticed his gold rings, and that the gown Tremellius wore was more luxurious than your average Guild notary. Leto had always laughed at those nobles who ostensibly conformed to the Guild’s egalitarian ethos, all the while taking care to make their more elevated status plain. The rosy glow of his skin was surprising in someone who spent his days buried in a literary crypt. He had an undignified, boyish quality, despite his three-score years.

‘My dear boy, we shall make excellent colleagues and more, if you permit me. I will be Aristotle to your Alexander. Oh, I see you’re sceptical now, but you’ll come to rely on me, as your superiors do. I sometimes like to think of myself as the Fourth Apprentice.’

Torbidda ignored his nervous laughter. ‘Do any of these books concern Architecture?’

Tremellius leapt back as if accused of some impropriety. ‘Oh! Fully one-fifth deal with nothing else. There are hundreds of volumes, ascribed to Nimrod, Imhotep, Daedalus and Hiram – Madonna knows who actually wrote them. If you are looking for authentic work, there are several I can recommend, by Callicrates, Apollodorus, Anthemius and Vitruvius. There’s more recent stuff from the Continentals, chaps like Abbot Suger and Jean de Loup – though they are a bit dated, frankly. I’ve been meaning to catalogue them, but somehow I never find the time. To be perfectly honest – I feel I can trust you, Torbidda – it bores me terribly. I mean really, if you’ve read about one bloody cloister-vaulted Ionian column you’ve read about them all! Give me a good History, a Biography, Theology even, anything but Architecture!’

Tremellius rolled his eyes and reeled as if fighting off the awful subject, then stopped as a thought struck him. He looked again at Torbidda. ‘That’s what you’re here for, isn’t it? Why, just the other day I told the Third Apprentice – that is to say, the
former
Third Apprentice – that I need help cataloguing – you don’t mind, do you? – ’course you don’t, eager fellow that you are. You see! I told you they listen to me. All three do
, did –
poor old Argenti, I’ll miss him, of course, but life goes on and we make the best of it. I envy you, Torbidda. The Molè is a veritable school for a budding Architect. Do you know, besides History, I believe Architecture is my favourite subject.’ He paused and grinned shyly. ‘Have you worked out my library’s scheme yet?’

Torbidda looked about the chaotic landscape. ‘There’s a scheme?’

‘You mocking rogue, of course there is! It’s the world, Torbidda, the world! Here in the West is History, Theology and Etruscan literature, which is a hybrid of Theology and History. In the Eastern Hemisphere there is Prophecy – what’s History but Prophecy in reverse? – and works from the once-mighty Radinate. These are the Ebionite translations that preserved the wisdom of the Aegyptians and Hellenes. Bernoulli mined some of his chief jewels here. This brings us to the centre, which would make the pod correspond with Jerusalem. Why not? We can go above to Heaven, or below to Hell. And in this unloved corner, Torbidda, is
Architecture. The northeast, the chaos of the Steppe. Your task, dear boy, is to bring order to the unruly tribes of Gog. Whip them into shape with filing!’ So saying, Tremellius wandered off, exclaiming with joy as he found a misplaced History volume. He buried his nose in his treasure, ignoring the stacks he knocked over as he made his way back to the West.

The main canal had three separate lanes; Torbidda’s gondola travelled in the central one. Only the middle current led away from Monte Nero.

Perhaps
, he thought, looking down on the mist-shrouded Old Town passing beneath,
a praetorian escort would have been a good idea
. The Small People had been restive since the Molè’s destruction, but after the defeat at Rasenna they’d become positively mutinous. When the terrible news had flooded the Depths, its denizens awoke after brown decades of correct action and thought and celebrated the calamity like a great victory. Little wonder –Bernoulli’s Re-Formation might have created the world anew, but it was a world that excluded them. Some discovered they had exchanged masters only when the new aqueducts blocked the sunlight, months after the event. They shrugged and carried on – what matter if the dogma they were required to believe came from the Guild instead of the Curia? They were equally incomprehensible.

Now that the myth of engineer invincibility was dead, the bereaved exalted. Since Rasenna had finally learned to be rational, Concord must learn to be quarrelsome. The Mouth of Truth burst forth with new eloquence. In the Depths bears danced on street corners, prostitutes plied their trade and thieves preyed with impunity on engineers and were cheered on for it. Nobles once more strutted the streets; they expected deference and were ready to duel for it. Who could not applaud such extravagant wastefulness? Fashions became indiscreet
and sensuous; flesh heretofore hidden behind walls and barred windows and veils tumbled forth like spring flowers. Saints were invented so that parades could march, with gay songs sung in their honour. And everywhere the rival processions of mendicants went sweating and bleeding, leaving trails of ash in their wake. The noisy Fraticelli were the most popular of the competing orders. The old shrines and street-corner niches, empty for years, were once more occupied by Madonnas – some newly carved, most disinterred from the dusty attics and basements where they had lain hidden for decades. The Rasenneisi had succeeded because of their devotion, so the Concordians would best them in love as they once had in philosophy.

The Collegio dei Consoli moved the Fraticelli on when their sermons disrupted the city’s traffic, but otherwise let them alone. It had been a long time since Concord’s rulers had considered the Small People as anything other than a resource; so long as it did not affect production, the consuls were tolerant of the poor’s religious enthusiasm; it was bound to be shortlived as their other crazes. The Collegio’s peace of mind was disturbed far more by the newly puffed-up nobility than by the preachers, but Consul Corvis used his growing influence to convince his tremulous colleagues that the Collegio could use the latter against the former. By reinstating a Curial institution, the long-disbanded Office of the Night, they could harness the Fraticelli’s puritanism to productive ends. A few burnt sodomites – this abomination was the nobility’s special vice – were a small price for stability.

Though doubting the wisdom of this strategy in the long term, Torbidda had acceded. Maintaining Guild unity was vital. He looked ahead into the mist and wondered what new insults Corvis had in store for him at the Collegio.

Weeks had passed. The chaos still had the upper hand, but Torbidda felt he was making some progress. He’d separated historical accounts from the mythical and speculative and practical works on tools, technique and materials from the numerous mystical tracts on ritual and proportion. His investigation of the Molè itself went more slowly; there was no obvious route to clarity there. Varro said that great buildings never revealed themselves at once; there must be a seduction first. Torbidda proceeded methodically – haste would only inhibit his chances of finding the solution. He had a few certain facts and certain intuitions, which might lead him into any number of blind alleys – that’s what the landscape of literature around him represented: thousands of journeys to nowhere. He would
not
make that mistake. The next step would determine success or failure, so he would move not an inch until certain of his course
.