The Warring States (The Wave Trilogy) (25 page)

‘Consuls, please! Take your seats. Clearly, the boy’s still traumatised, and who could blame him? We must give him our support, and ease some responsibility from his young shoulders until he’s ready to bear it. It would have been correct to debate the matter, but I commend to the house extending General Spinther’s command of the Ninth. The Collegio must show that it too is a friend of the army. So let us go further: the Transalpine Franks are restive, and the last thing Concord needs is an interruption in its coal and iron supplies. I propose therefore that we award command of the Tenth along with the Ninth to General Spinther, with orders to aggressively subdue the Frankish Isles.’

In the vestibule outside the Collegio, Prefect Castrucco and his men were keeping back the petitioners. Torbidda spotted a familiar face amongst the crush.

‘Prefect, earlier today you offered me your sword.’

The praetorian grinned greedily. ‘Yes, First Apprentice?’

‘Have your men surround the next man I approach,’ he said. ‘Do it quietly.’

The withered old man stared at Torbidda like one seeing a ghost, then when Torbidda abruptly turned and approached him, he looked about in alarm, as if assessing the possibility of flight.

‘Grand Selector, it’s been too long. You appear to have fallen on rough times.’ Since the state of emergency had been announced a year ago, Guild Hall classes had been suspended. Flaccus, unemployed and homeless, was a shell of his former robust self.

‘Ah, we are all reduced, Cadet Sixty.’

‘You’ll address the First Apprentice correctly,’ Castrucco snarled.

Flaccus stiffened and glanced around and saw he was
surrounded by praetorians. He smiled wanly. ‘But he’s not
First
Apprentice. He’s just the last.’

Torbidda stopped Castrucco from striking Flaccus. ‘It’s all right, Prefect. The Grand Selector and I are old friends.’

‘Corvis will soon get things in hand,’ Flaccus said defiantly. ‘There’ll be a proper election and Concord will return to normalcy. The Apprentices have failed Concord.’

‘You failed
us
. The Contessa of Rasenna defeated the First Apprentice in hand-to-hand combat.’

‘Nonsense. Rasenneisi workshops don’t teach Water Style any more.’

‘Nevertheless, she knew it, and at a higher level than you ever taught. Your arrogance left us unready.’

‘As I heard it, the Apprentices abandoned the Twelfth Legion to its fate. You want someone to blame. I know how good you are at deceiving others, but don’t deceive yourself.’

‘You’re right, Flaccus. I
am
looking for someone to blame. This morning I was attacked by rogue praetorians who
had
Water Style training. Do you know anything about it?’

Flaccus paled, but said, ‘Only that it’s a tragedy for Concord that they weren’t successful.’

‘Prefect, take this dog to the barracks and see if you can’t bring him to heel. Be creative.’

Torbidda let his mind wander as he made his way back, not to the tower but to the Guild Halls. He knew these winding paths well: the arches, vaulted roofs and pillars, the niches that afforded hiding places – occasionally from selectors, more often from fellow Cadets. To hear his footsteps alone was a strange novelty, however. The Guild Halls were cavernous without Cadets, but even untrained hands were needed when the ship of state was sinking.

Was it really sinking, though? During his lifetime the empire
had grown; that decade-long run of success had made Corvis and all the rest of them forget how much they gambled on each throw. He had no frame of reference to answer the question on which his life depended, but curiously, he was not worried about the consul’s machinations. A greater problem preoccupied him.

He handled it cautiously, fearing that that it might crumble like ash. Many of the library’s volumes were so old that his touch was the final insult. Tremellius could take all the precautions he liked; the fire consuming these pages was Time and nothing would stop its progress. The volume was a loosely bound collection of preparatory studies for the Molè; the hand was Bernoulli’s. As Torbidda studied it, he realised that many of the designs were for another great edifice, a Molè that never was, almost double the size of Concord’s Molè. Torbidda assumed it had been abandoned because of the cost.

In the corner of one drawing, he spotted a tiny scribbled note in a distinctive spidery hand. He took out his dagger and polished it in his sleeve and studied the equations in the blade’s reflection. He had seen other examples of Bernoulli’s transcription; he normally recorded his calculations in a precise, crystalline manner, the numbers falling like notes on a scale. But this was blotted, convoluted, halting, speculative, like a mediocre Cadet’s first attempts at Wave Theory, until finally it petered out into multiple question marks and crossed-out numbers. At the end this afterthought was scribbled in frustration: ‘The preceding being an attempt, alas unsuccessful, to describe an engine most fanciful, one that requireth a most singular fuel: the Blood of the Lamb. The formula is elusive, though I feel it is possible. Return to this, time allowing …’

Torbidda locked the door behind him. The Drawing Hall was empty, but it had always been that way; that was why he loved it. The praetorians’ ambition, the rhetoric of the Collegio, the
convulsions of Old Town, all fell silent in here. He had taken the largest desk for himself and the crisp light streaming in the window fell upon the vast sheet pinned to it. As he stood there, examining it critically, he found he was still carrying the balled-up page of equations. It didn’t really surprise him that he had clenched his fist all day; he had never been able to let go of a problem until he had solved it. He unrolled it, straightened out the creases and began systematically checking the measurements of his drawing against the bizarre results that were coming out in the formulae. The inconsistency was here somewhere. He just had to find it.

It was just like the bridge competition: there was no problem so hard that constant pressure would not crack it.
Labor Vincit Omnia
. He would just wear it down. He smiled to himself at the thought that where Bernoulli had failed he would succeed. As he did so he caught sight of his reflection in the giant mirrors. The red he wore curved and danced on its warped surface like a flame.

A glass dome protected the lantern’s flame from the full force of the winds. He had to shout to make himself heard over its howling. ‘I found Bernoulli’s final journal, First Apprentice.’

Argenti didn’t look away from the stars. ‘You have questions.’

‘It’s babble. Was he mad?’

Argenti fixed Torbidda with his cold stare. ‘To the Curia, his work was incomprehensible from the first. What does that demonstrate, his insanity or their inadequacy?’ Without waiting for an answer, he continued, ‘Do you know how many chief architects the Molè had? How many mosaicists, sculptors, painters worked on her? How many lives were spent in its construction. Thousands, Torbidda: a small war. And today we remember the name of only one Proto Magister.’

‘Please,’ Torbidda said, ‘help me understand.’

The First Apprentice regarded him sadly. ‘Ah, if it were that easy! If
one wants to reach the heavens, there is no map. Night after night you must study the stars and give them time to study you. When you are ready, if the stars judge you worthy, they will reveal their secrets. It is like the dawn of a thousand suns. I would not rob you of it, even if I could.’

He was so tired of evasion. ‘Another riddle!’

‘Yes, and one that only the worthy can solve. The Molè is well proportioned, logical and precise as Heaven, but there is another side to both, chaotic and mad.’

‘The beast.’

‘What I did not understand for the longest time was that they are reflections of one another. If you are worthy, illumination will come.’ He turned away, once more looking raptly up at the heavens. ‘Leave me now. I have my study too.’

Though Argenti had since drowned in the Irenicon, Torbidda believed he now understood his purpose. In making Torbidda puzzle out the Molè’s mechanics, by letting him discover the truth – that the pit beneath it was the real wonder – Argenti sought to inspire the same intellectual reverence that he felt when he looked at the stars, all so that when the time came, Torbidda would lie upon the sacrificial altar, humbled and gratified to be a part of this wonderful enterprise.

It might have worked, too. The pit’s secret
was
humbling in its grand implications. Man prefers the lie, Varro had told them. The secret was hidden within a great deception. The keystone of Wave Theory was that a space could be designed to amplify other qualities beside sound. A structure with the correct proportions could create, capture and distil the essence of pain. That was how the Wave worked. But the truth was, that world-shattering hammer was just a by-product; the greater part of the groans and weeping that the pit’s turning produced was sustenance for the sleeper lying dormant at its heart. The pit
was a chrysalis where the soul of its creator could hibernate through the winter of death. The al-Buni test, the selections, Candidacy, Conclave – they were all rituals designed to distract from the truth: that the Guild was a machine with a secret purpose, to ensure that the perfect vessel would be obediently waiting when the terrible spring came.

It had all worked perfectly – all but the last detail. Torbidda did not want to be a vessel.

‘Although changed, I shall arise the same,’ he said, looking over the drawing. He had laboured over it since he had returned from Rasenna with the knowledge that the Handmaid was amongst them. The regret he felt for the Molè’s passing was dwarfed by his ambition to show that old ghost who was the greater architect – and not just Bernoulli, but Hiram and Nimrod too, all of those ghosts. He would show the world a tower greater than the Molè, greater than Babel’s – and this time God would be powerless to knock it down, for the mortar that bound its bricks together would be God’s own blood.

From General Leto Spinther of the IX and X Legions of Concord,

To the most August and Prudent First Apprentice of Concord,

In the name of Girolamo Bernoulli and the martyrs of the Re-Formation,