The Shadow Master (14 page)

But not Frederigo! He knew how to survive. He knew when to fight and he knew when to offer gold or food for his freedom. And he knew to carry a pouch of poisoned seeds as well. That had gotten him out of trouble near Pisa. His captors were going to torment and torture him all night long until the poison took its effect on them and they were rolling on the ground shitting themselves, or falling into the fire. He had the last laugh on them. Walked around the camp and slit every last one of their throats. Even the little boy, who couldn't have been more than ten or eleven years old. He was a cruel little stoat, too, that one. The boy had jabbed him with a pointed stick over and over.

The stories of the plague cure within the Walled City were widespread over the land, but they were vague and the story changed wherever you went, but they were all in agreement on a city to the north that had a large wall and that was free from the plague. Some said it was an island. Some said it was a city floating in the sky. And he had followed the stories back and forward across the land, avoiding the bandits, listening to the stories firm up into something more credible the closer he got. But he had seen the armies of the plagued too. A vast horde of them on the march, also searching for the Walled City. And he knew he had to get safely inside the walls before they arrived.

When he'd found the city he'd resolved to get inside quickly. No matter what it took. They would cure his ravaged face and he would have women again, not just those uglier than himself. Then he would warn them of the coming army and they would promote him to the city guard. It was only a matter of planning and waiting. And now here he was, staring out the corner of his eye at the door set in the wall, waiting for something to happen. Cursing the apothecaries for making them wait. But clearly that was the prerogative of people who were not being eaten away daily by the plague.

He flexed his fingers on his right hand. They were swollen and weak. Barely able to hold a sword these days, though well able enough to hold a dagger to slit a person's throat. It would not be too much longer, though, before even that was difficult. He had fought plague people who had wrapped a blade into their deformed fingers with cloth bandages to hold it there. But he knew that if he ever reached that state it would be pointless. Might as well let somebody kill you then.

One of the men to his left was coughing, a wet spluttering cough that was probably sending up splatters of blood all around him. Everyone moved a little further away, just out of habit. The apothecaries would look at him and put him out of his misery, surely. There was no point in trying to save one so far gone. The plague ate out one's lungs and stomach to the point you couldn't eat or breathe properly. That his own face was half eaten away was a curse enough, but if he turned his head to one side they would not see it and would presume him healthy enough.

Frederigo looked back to the door and frowned. Why were they taking so long? Every passing moment meant the disease progressed a little deeper into his body. He wondered about moving again, closer to the door, when there was a creaking sound. It wasn't the door set into the wall, though, it was the door at the top of the steps that they had been brought in through. They all looked up to see a new man come down. He was tall and wore a red cloak and hat. He looked at them briefly, then crossed the room to the wall and rapped on the hidden door there. After a moment's pause it opened and he said to a figure out of sight, “Let's get a move on then.”

Two men, with their faces masked, came out of the hidden chamber and asked them all to rise to their feet and to follow them. It was a bit disconcerting for the others, and Frederigo pushed the four in front of him along and then followed. There was a large chamber there directly in front of them, lit by numerous candles and with light coming in from some window up high in one wall. They could see cages along one wall with people lying in them. Frederigo's first thought was that this was a trick. They were not going to be cured. They were prisoners.

But one of the other plague people asked, “We are going to be cured, aren't we?”

“Yes,” said one of the two masked men who had led them in, in a not unkind voice. “You are going to be cured of your plague. It will take a few days, though, and you will need to stay here with us while that happens to minimise contagion. Is that alright?” He asked it in such a sincere way that they could all only reply that it was alright.

“But these are cages?” said Frederigo.

“Yes. That is unfortunate,” the man said again. “This hospital used to house the insane who needed to be kept in cages so that they could neither harm themselves nor others, and the City Council has decreed that all plague people should start their journey to recovery in the same cages so that we can determine that we are not admitting any dangerous lunatics into the city.” Then again he asked, “Is that alright?”

And again, they could only reply that it was.

He thanked them and then asked them to follow him and he led them to a set of empty cages at the far end of the room. “You will received fresh food and some wine,” he told them. “Plenty of each. It is inside each cage waiting for you.”

Frederigo was a little more cautious now, but he looked across at the other wretches in the cages already there and saw none of them trying to warn him not to enter. And they looked well fed enough. He crouched down and entered the cage, seizing the bread and gourd of wine left there and quickly scoffing it down. It was good, he thought. The best meal he'd had in a long time. This would be alright, he was telling himself. It was just like this good chap was telling them. They just needed to ensure that none of them was a dangerous lunatic. It was a fair enough thing to ask, as there were more than enough madmen roaming about out there.

When they were all in their cages and eating happily, the kindly man walked down the row and locked their cages. Then he went back to one of the benches with the man in the red cloak. “Is there any improvement?” he asked them.

The two men were silent a moment and then said in a soft voice, “None.”

The figure in the red cloak ground a fist into his palm. “Is it the quality of the last batch of spice, as you suspected?”

“We tried making the spice wine out of previous spice deliveries,” the other masked man said, softly, “but it has still failed to halt the progress.”

The figure in the red cloak paced back and forward a while. “Did you try injecting the spice wine directly into the blood stream again?”

“Yes.”

“And did you try mixing it with mercury?”

“Yes.”

“Still fatal?”

The men didn't answer and the kindly one turned his head a little and looked across at Frederigo, who was beginning to feel his head growing light. It was just the wine, he told himself. It had been so long since he'd had good wine that it was going to his head. It took him a while to suspect it was something more though. Something that was making his eyes slip into a impassive stare like the others already in the cages here. He tried to shake it off and listen to what the men at the table were saying. Tried to calculate which of them he should attack first. Who would turn and face him and who would run.

“Damn, that one is ugly,” the kindly one said. Then he turned back to his comrades, “If the spice is no less potent, then it is the plague that has gained in potency. We are no longer able to cure it. Only slow its advance.”

The figure in the red cape immediately swung his cape up to cover his mouth and nose. “Slow it by how much?” he asked.

The other masked figure shrugged. “It is too early to say for sure. But it seems the more advanced the plague the less chance there is of slowing it at all.”

“What chances of plague breaking out in the city?” the man in the red cloak hissed fearfully.

“As long as none of our experiments here ever walks the city streets we should be safe enough,” the kindly one replied.

Frederigo heard the words, but it took a long time for his brain to comprehend them, as the meaning kept slipping just out of his grasp. It didn't matter, he told himself finally, as he felt the drug carrying him away, it couldn't have been so important. He was going to be cured soon. Then he'd warn them about the advancing army. They'd know who they had in their ranks then. They'd know the name Frederigo.

 

 

XXIV

Galileo sat at Lorenzo's bench, looking over his designs for his large mechanical man and wondering where he had gotten to. It was unlike him to be absent for such a long period and he had need of him. His aged and calcified fingers could not do the fine work that was needed of them. He had already sent some of the serving boys out to look for him but nobody knew where he had gone. He would have a firm talk to him about his responsibilities when he returned.

Galileo wondered if he wasn't treating him too much like a young boy, when he had clearly grown into a young man in the past few years. Lorenzo was so eager to try out the products of science they were building together, but he had no notion what they would do to a young body. He could not allow it.

He looked at the mechanical man design, trying to find faults in it, but Lorenzo had reworked it from his early sketches and there was little that Galileo could say needed improving now. And Lorenzo was quite right; if they used science they could make it walk and fight as if it were a metal giant. Cosimo Medici would value such an invention greatly. Galileo lifted the sketches and ripped them in two. Then again. Then again until they were little pieces of paper that could never be easily reassembled.

This was far too dangerous a thing to be allowed. A man like Cosimo Medici would not want just one. He would want an army of giant metal soldiers. Though what would he do with them once he had control of the Walled City? March out across the countryside to dominate the wasted remains of civilisation? No, thought Galileo. Unlike Cosimo, it was his mission to contribute to the rebuilding of civilisation, not the further destruction of it. A balance between the powers of the two Houses needed to be maintained. If one gained absolute supremacy over the other it would lead to state of tyranny. He would match Leonardo's inventions, but would not allow the development of anything that would crush them.

The plague could not last forever. An effective cure would be found or it would run its course. Then they would have need of science to rebuild. They would need new ways of tilling the land and growing crops. They would need new ways of building. They would need ways to help the many crippled plague survivors work like able-bodied men. They would need strong hands and arms, and science could help them with that.

Galileo stood and walked over to the wall where the metal gloves he had built with Lorenzo were housed. He looked at the empty space where they should have hung and frowned. Then he started searching all around the chamber, opening cupboards and drawers. “Oh you impetuous boy,” he muttered, finding that a magnifier and chronometer were also missing. “Where have you gone and what have you done?”

 

 

 

XXV

The lone figure clad in purple robes stood high above his congregation and saw fear in their eyes. That pleased him. He was their high priest and they his followers. Half his face was covered by a dark leather mask to hide his features from his nose up, leaving his thick, near-swollen lips free to speak. He raised his arms up to the heavens once more, and said that the gods and the angels who surrounded them were bringing their wrath down upon the Walled City. It was a certainty that nobody could doubt. And it would be pointless to beg for mercy, he said. They should instead ask for lightning and thunder to fully cleanse the city.

“Our city needs to be purged,” he called to the ceiling above him, as if he was being listened to from there as well. As if he were a native of the Walled City himself, rather than having come to it as a troubled young orphan, years before, witness to the atrocities of a northern civil war. He had learned to talk like a native of the Walled City, though, just as he had learned to project his voice to make it seem it was coming from several angles at once. As he had learned to find passages in the scriptures of the ancients that made some sense of the horrors he had witnessed. Reinforced his belief that people were being punished for being sinners. Learned how he could make others believe it too.

“The foolish citizens think their walls will protect them from the plague that ravages the Earth, but it only ensures they will receive the full might of the next curse sent upon them. Our city has been saved in order to prove that we are worthy – but we have failed in this. I tell you it will rain frogs and locusts across the city soon, and the armies of the undead will rise and march upon us, sparing only the righteous, who will be marked with the blood of the angel of the ancients.”

He paused and looked down at his congregation. He could see the fervour in their eyes. Their number had grown slowly over many months as more and more of the citizens of the Walled City become discontent with the way the two Houses ruled them. They wanted change. They wanted an end to the uncertainty and fear that had filled the city. They wanted an end to being besieged by the plague without and the whims of the two Houses within. And he willingly fed their need for such change and promised them that only they, his followers, would be spared when the day of reckoning came.

He made a small hand sign to an acolyte by his side who placed a bronze bowl on the altar. The masked priest glared at him and made another short hand sign, not unlike a throat being slit. The acolyte whisked the bronze bowl away and another acolyte lifted a hessian sack up on to the rough stone altar and fumbled with the rope binding it. The sack twisted and turned as the thing inside tried to escape. He reached in and pulled out the lamb by one foreleg, laying it upon the altar. The animal bleated in terror and tried to climb to its feet, slipping as the acolyte held it down. The priest made another sign with his hands and the first acolyte put the bronze bowl back on the altar. The priest glared again and made the throat cutting sign once more and the acolyte removed it and a third passed him a large ornate dagger. The priest raised it above his head and plunged it into the lamb's heart – as well as into the side of the hand of the acolyte holding the sacrifice. The lamb's legs went limp and it collapsed to the stone. The acolyte bit his tongue to prevent himself from screaming.