The Stargazer (37 page)

“It’s all right, men,” Tristan told the two servants, “I have the captives.” He held up the chains that were still binding Ian’s and Crispin’s hands so the servingmen could see them. “Go upstairs and tell the head of the household guard that everything is under control. I will see to the dogs and bring these two traitors,” he spit at his cousins with contempt, “as soon as I have finished.”

The relief on the faces of the two servingmen was unmistakable. “Yes, sir.” They bowed to him. “We will go immediately.” Tristan inclined his head slightly to acknowledge their bows, then moved toward the dogs, emitting a low whistle that quieted them immediately. As the servingmen scurried off, Nilo emerged from behind the door of the passageway. The admiration on his face as he approached Tristan made even Ian envious.

“That was fantastic, Master Tristan,” he said breathlessly.

“Did you have to spit at me?” Crispin demanded.

Tristan waved aside his cousin’s demand. “It’s just an old trick,” he told Nilo dismissively. “But it won’t be worth anything if we don’t get out of here quickly. Lead on!”

Nilo nimbly moved ahead, following the path he had found earlier that night. They wound past the kitchens then down and to the left. Finally, after what felt like fifty hours to Ian and Crispin but was really no more than three minutes, they ended up in the narrow
calle
that ran the length of the house. Never had Ian and Crispin been so happy to find themselves standing, underdressed, in the midst of a raging storm.

“It’s just a few more steps to the gondola.” Tristan spoke to the brothers over his shoulders. “We’re home free.”

No sooner were the words out of his mouth than the shouting started. “There they are!” someone called behind the escaping Arboretti. “Follow them!”

Tristan spun around to see three large guards emerge from a different side door of the house and take after them. Nilo had run ahead and was long gone, but Ian and Crispin were too weak to move quickly. Tristan watched with horror as the guards gained on and finally overtook the brothers, who seemed to be moving hardly at all.

But his horror turned to amusement when he saw that Ian and Crispin had only been feigning incapacity. On the count of three, they each raised their manacled hands and brought them down on the heads of two of the guards. The third guard, witnessing the treatment of his peers, turned on his heel and sped away faster than he had come.

If it hadn’t been for the possibility that he was summoning reinforcements, Tristan would have burst into laughter right there. Instead, he and the two brothers made haste around the corner of the palace, to where Nilo was already waiting in the gondola.

“San Marco, as fast as you can,” Tristan shouted, leaping after Ian and Crispin into the boat. “I think I just heard the clock strike eleven.”

The wind blew torrents of water into their faces as Miles and Sebastian ran from their boat to the clock tower. There was no doubt that someone had been there. The lock on the door had been broken, leaving it to flap around in the gale-force wind, banging against the structure in time with the rhythmic ringing of the hour. Miles mounted the stairs, three at a time, and stood panting before the huge clock mechanism as it struck for the eleventh time and fell quiet.

His eyes took a moment to adjust to the darkness, but as soon as they did, he saw it. The apparatus was almost as complex as the clock mechanism itself, with four wheels and several weights. Miles walked around the narrow platform put in place to enable artisans to fix or clean the clock, and maneuvered himself for a better view. Sebastian stayed where he was, not sure he wanted to be any nearer to such a sinister-looking device.

“
Madonna!
” Miles whistled through his teeth in admiration. “This is a fine piece of work.” As his admiration grew, so did his despair, for he hadn’t the vaguest clue how to begin dismantling such a device. He tentatively reached out a hand to touch it, then drew it back, as if the little device had hissed at him.

“Does it bite?” Sebastian asked, not entirely joking. With all those gears and pulleys it certainly looked like some infernal automaton.

“It’s too early to say.” Miles’s voice was not playful. “Did you remember the leather pouch?”

Sebastian edged over to Miles, extending the pouch of tools in his hand. Miles opened it, looked from it to the device, then carefully selected a long, thin metal implement with a flat end.

“Can you see?” Sebastian asked as Miles moved with his tool toward the device.

“No,” was the encouraging reply.

“I hope you know what you are doing,” Sebastian added after a brief pause.

“I don’t,” Miles said calmly, then reached down with his tool and began prying at one side of the device. Sebastian could not see what Miles was doing, but he heard the scraping of metal.

Suddenly, there was a loud snap, and the clock tower filled with a blazing white light. Sebastian hurled himself against the wall, shading his eyes and face from being scorched. As quickly as it had come, it left, leaving behind the acrid smell of exploded gunpowder and a massive quantity of smoke.

“What happened?” Sebastian demanded into the darkness. Getting no answer, he struggled to get to his feet, coughing out the thick, grim-tasting smoke. “Miles?
Miles?
” he shouted with growing alarm.

The only response he got was the echo of his words off the stone walls of the chamber. “Miles!” he tried again.
Miles-Miles-Miles
, the walls whispered back.

The silence was almost worse than the unsettling echoes. Sebastian had just cupped his hands over his mouth when he heard a cough, then another.

“Here… I’m down… here,” a voice said with difficulty from below the floor. Squinting into the smoky darkness in the direction of the voice, Sebastian was finally able to make out the top of Miles’s head, hovering somewhere under the platform on which Sebastian was standing.

It took a moment to register. Miles was dangling by his fingertips from the narrow platform, hanging in space at least seven body-lengths from the ground.

“Sebastian…” the voice said plaintively, “my grip…slipping.”

Before he had finished speaking, Sebastian had leaned over, grabbed his wrists, and pulled him up. He allowed Miles a minute to cough, then began the questions.

“What happened? How did you get down there? Was that it? Is the Palace exploded?”

Miles shook his head, using his cuff to wipe the soot off his face. “I am not completely sure, but I think that was only a protective measure. The real fuse has to be much more potent than that one, but it was enough to do its job.”

“Which was?” Sebastian demanded.

“To discourage anyone from tampering with the apparatus. I’m telling you, whoever constructed this is a genius. I can’t do anything to it without risking another explosion like that, or possibly worse.”

The two men regarded each other in silence as the full import of Miles’s words sank in. “Are you saying,” Sebastian clarified, “that there is nothing at all you can do? That we are just going to sit here while the Doge’s Palace explodes?”

When Miles didn’t respond but continued staring unhelpfully into space, Sebastian decided to needle him. “Are you just going to let Bianca die like that?”

“It is hardly my problem, she is not my betrothed,” Miles said with a petulant indifference that Sebastian saw through immediately.

“Of course,” Sebastian agreed. “All I meant is that she is practically one of us. And you would not just stand about idly while one of our lives was on the line.”

“Who said I was standing idly by?” Miles demanded fiercely.

“I thought when you said that there was nothing you could do that meant—”

“Nothing I could do with that machine,” Miles corrected him, pushing his hair off his forehead and leaving a sooty streak in its place. “There is still one more solution to try.”

“Which is?” Sebastian asked, not allowing himself to feel excited.

“We could stop the clock, and keep it from chiming twelve,” Miles explained simply.

Sebastian regarded his cousin with alarm. Had he lost his mind? “But you know that this clock was designed to run perpetually, and that they say if it stops the entire Venetian Empire will fall into ruins.”

Miles shrugged.

“What does that mean?” Sebastian demanded with exasperation.

Miles shrugged again, then seeing that Sebastian was on the point of throttling him, opened his mouth. “I think it is the only chance we have. If we are lucky, the entire Venetian Empire is snug in their beds and no one will notice that the clock has stopped. That is, if it is stoppable.”

“Couldn’t we just go position ourselves near the bells and stop them from moving when it becomes time to ring the hour?” Sebastian offered.

“Obviously you’ve never seen them up close. Each of the bells is large enough to crush a man with its clapper. Besides, that would only solve the problem temporarily. As soon as we moved away, the clock would strike twelve and the fuse would ignite. What we need to do is stop the clock entirely. At least until tomorrow, when the gunpowder can be traced and that thing,” he said, gesturing at the device with a mixture of ire and awe, “can be removed.”

“All right. I agree that is the best way left. Go ahead. Stop it.” Sebastian spoke with the stoic determination of a man who has just been told he has to have his arm removed.

“Just like that?” Miles asked with disbelief. “You yourself pointed out that the clock is designed to run perpetually. Do you expect me to stop it by snapping my fingers? I am flattered by your assessment of my abilities, but I must confess, I haven’t the faintest idea of how to halt it.”

Sebastian was still gazing at him with his blue eyes wide open when the wheels began to spin and a loud bell struck above him. It was half-past eleven.

The gondoliers fought staunchly against the relentless storm. Not only had their cargo been augmented by the two large forms of Crispin and Ian, not made any lighter by the irons they were sporting, but the wind had picked up. The Grand Canal more strongly resembled a tempestuous sea than the peaceful main artery of the city as the boatmen struggled toward San Marco.

Even in the best of weather, Ian recalled from the protected enclosure of the cabin, the trip from Mora’s palace to the main square took almost half an hour, but this day it was interminable. If only his arms, newly freed by Tristan’s magic from the restrictive iron jewelry Mora had so thoughtfully provided, didn’t ache quite so much, and if only his legs did not throb, he would get out and face the storm himself. Instead, he had to be content with sitting and muttering impatiently.

They were nearing the
bacino
in front of San Marco when they heard the first gong of the clock.

“Was that…?” Crispin started to ask, but let the question hang in the air when he saw the grim expression on Ian’s face. The pulses of the three men and the boy in the gondola began to race.

They had just passed the point of Dorsoduro and come into sight of the Doge’s Palace when the second gong came.

“Tell them to hurry,” Nilo pleaded to everyone and no one in particular.

As the boatmen struggled to turn the gondola in toward the boat landing, the third gong arrived.

“Does this mean that Miles…?” Tristan ventured without a hint of playfulness, but left off and lapsed into silence.

The clock rang four.

Ian’s throat was dry and his heart was pounding. Everywhere he had previously felt pain, he now felt expectation.

He had just decided to jump in and swim for shore when the boat pulled up alongside a mooring. One of the gondoliers threw out a rope to secure it to the post. It caught by the slimmest possible margin, and he moved to tighten it.

Just then, the fifth gong resounded across the square.

The wind whipped up from the outer lagoon, and the gondola bucked against the posts. With a snap, the mooring rope broke in two, sending the gondola spinning back into the basin.

The sixth gong sounded.

Ian could wait no longer. Ignoring the protests of Crispin and Tristan, he climbed out of the cabin of the boat and leapt into the churning water.

When he brought his head up for air, he heard the seventh gong.

The water was freezing. He had to fight against the downward pull of the current, which was doing its best to drag him to the bottom of the basin. Breathing hard, he forced first one arm, then the other, to pull him through the freezing water, and propel him toward the shore.

The clock struck for the eighth time.

He hauled himself up, panting and sopping wet, onto the marble boat landing in front of the ducal palace. Without even turning to check the progress of the boat, he stood and lumbered toward the clock tower.

The ninth gong struck.

He was only vaguely aware that he was probably moving toward his death. His only coherent thought was that he had to stop the clock from ringing, and it did not matter if he had to use his entire body to do it. He had to stop the clock and then save Bianca. He would not be happy until he had her in his arms again. Heedless of the rain and the chilling wind, he ran ahead toward his goal.

He heard the tenth gong as he finally reached the clock.

From behind him came the sound of voices, but Ian neither paused nor turned to look toward them. He found the door open, still banging in the wind, and ascended the stairs.

The eleventh gong was so loud that it seemed to come from within his head. He was momentarily so stunned by the noise and the reverberations that he did not immediately perceive Miles and Sebastian hanging perilously from two of the large gears of the clock.

“Stop this thing!” he ordered them fiercely. “You must stop it! Stop it!”

Stop-it-stop-it-stop-it
. His words reverberated around the stone room.
Stop-it-stop-it-stop
.

When the reverberations stopped, there was silence. Miles held his breath. Sebastian said a Turkish prayer he thought he had forgotten. Ian clenched his jaw.

The silence continued. And continued.

“I think,” Miles began, his voice low and unsteady, “I think we stopped it.”