The Warring States (The Wave Trilogy) (11 page)

‘Oh no, no one had to teach you. You’re a natural. I needn’t have worried – you’ll fight her because you want the yellow more than anyone.’ He leaned down and pressed Torbidda’s face until his nose and mouth went under.

Torbidda tried to lift himself up, but it was impossible under Flaccus’ much greater weight. He was drowning. He twisted his lower half and spread his legs wide and brought them together against Flaccus’ supporting leg. The Grand Selector fell, and Torbidda rolled over, gasping for air.

Flaccus picked himself up triumphantly. ‘See?’ He walked away laughing, ‘When the moment comes, you’ll fight. There’s a wolf in you and I can’t wait to see its teeth.’

The embarrassed streak of yellow was the nearest thing to colour in an otherwise grey sky. They sat on the roof and looked down the barren earth laid out hopeless as a corpse. Winter had withdrawn its stranglehold and the sun resumed its faithful passage, but it was a pointless trudge, with no warmth to wake the slumbering roots.

Talk was exhausted.

No one else understood the transformation they were undergoing but their rivals. They huddled together like lotus-eaters, yearning for the next dose and terrified of it. Their senses had attained a new pitch of sensitivity, resulting not in clarity but cacophony. Everything was too loud, too sharp, too bright, too cold. The canal below them pulsed with energy. The Molè behind them was a malevolent hunger, and they were always aware of it, just as magnetised needles always know the poles. It was a relief to watch the pathetic sun and know they were not the only ones struggling.

Before the cold broke their feeble bones, Agrippina suggested they walk the city walls. She was on edge. Earlier that evening, Torbidda had discovered her unconscious in the crypts. ‘I went deep,’ was all she said when she awoke. The sentinels saluted as they passed. Strange feeling, to be recognised – in the Guild Halls everyone was a number, anonymous, divisible, easily substituted.

She took him to the southern wall and pointed to the Wastes. The flat horizon shifted as grey winds passed over. The emptiness was perfect, but for a few sun-blackened husks that had once been trees and a long straight road covered in parts by the creeping dust.

‘Beyond that,’ she said, ‘a few leagues before the Rasenneisi contato begins, near Montaperti, that’s where my father’s farm is. It gets green eventually – well, greener, I should say. Nothing prospers. The Molè leached all the good out of the land,’ she added without looking over her shoulder, ‘like a big greedy tree spreading death with its shadow. The higher the Molè rose, the worse the land got, my father used to say. I told him it was a consequence of diverting the rivers, and that when the trees died, erosion made the land barren.’ She turned to him with a vehemence he’d never seen before. ‘I was
wrong
, Torbidda! There’s
something
else, deep in the roots of the city, and it’s hungry. You’ve sensed it too, haven’t you?’

Torbidda demurred, and sought to change the subject. Half a mile out, a dust-trail rose from a procession, slowly circling the city, crossed the road to the city as if wasn’t there, making their own path across the dry thorns and sharp stones.

‘Who are they?’

‘Fraticelli,’ said Agrippina with distaste.

Torbidda had seen mendicants before; some wandered into the city every few years. Many were haruspices of sorts. Lacking schooling, they invented rituals and preached eccentric sermons to the Small People who were seeking entertainment more than enlightenment. The Guild ignored new preachers until they began to preach sedition – all of them did eventually – and then they hanged them.

‘My father called the Fraticelli chickens coming home to roost. Lots of lost souls end up in the Wastes, people ruined by our legions or condottieri, but the refugees from Gubbio are unique.
They think they
deserved
punishment. They believe that the Wave that made them homeless was God’s opening salvo in a new war on Man. They wander Etruria like Noahs warning of deluge, recruiting as they go. I’ve seen whole farms emptied in a day, families throwing away everything to join the pilgrimage.’

‘Where are they going?’

‘Jerusalem – at least, that’s what the Fraticelli tell them. But they all end up here, circling. It’s the Molè that does it: it draws and repels them at once.’

‘One desert’s as good as another, I suppose.’

‘No. This is the worst.’ She turned back to the city. Tears rolled down her face as she whispered, ‘Torbidda, what will become of us?’

‘We stick to the plan.’ He spoke with an assurance he didn’t feel. ‘You’ll win the Conclave and become Third, ally with the new Second, kill the First and both move up a step. Then you can make the argument that I’m still eligible since I moved up a year. Who’s going to argue with the Second Apprentice?’

‘Won’t the orange grow pale in turn? And when I’m First and you’re Second, and some other young villain is Third, what then? Aren’t we just putting off the inevitable? The day one of us must—’

Torbidda grabbed her by the shoulder and spun her round to look at him. ‘That day will
never
come! We’re powerless now, but when we’re Apprentices, we can change the world.’

She smiled sadly. ‘You’re right. We can change it. Anything’s possible.’

‘Come on,’ he said. He wondered if she really believed it. ‘I want to show you something.’

They walked down through the keep to the city gates, then took an old stairway to the Old Town. Agrippina had never been before, and he wanted to show her the boarded-up corner house he’d grown up in.

They paused in Piazzetta Bocca della Verità to read the latest Truth. The small landing halfway between worlds was named after its antique fountain. Water had never flowed from the leering Mouth of Truth; instead, a stream of innuendo, gossip and satire poured from the satyr’s lolling tongue. Those too lazy for conspiracy could exercise their spleen with epigrams and rhyming couplets. It didn’t matter whether one’s complaint was trivial or weighty or if the target was Guild bureaucracy, imperial wars or a particularly inept general; what did matter was the elegance of the attack. Especially good Truths would be swiftly replicated around the city. Like the Curia before them, the Collegio took a tolerant attitude: let the Small People vent – it was harmless, and a useful gauge of the public mood.

As Torbidda read, he fancied the satyr was laughing at him:

Torbidda was surprised that the circumstances of Argenti’s murder were known outside the Guild Halls. Cadets always imagined themselves privy to great mysteries, but the poem made it clear their imagined secrets were common knowledge, even as it satirised their pious protestations of fidelity to each other.

Agrippina seemed to share his thoughts. ‘Let’s get drunk.’

Theology students were a thing of the past and Cadets were generally too conservative to drink, but old Concord’s taverns
were still busy. The nobility had nothing else to do. Cadets were not supposed to leave the Guild Halls, but Torbidda and Agrippina felt no fear. Though the streets were unsafe for ordinary Old Towners this late, engineers roamed where they pleased, no matter what the hour – everyone understood the dire consequences of offending engineers. They found a suitably derelict tavern in the Depths and an hour later were toasting each other loudly. The Rule and Compass, formerly The Cardinal’s Hat, was one of the older drinking holes in the so-called officers’ quarter. Though its population possessed that blood formerly considered noble, this part of old Concord was as filthy as any other slum in the Depths. What would be the point of improvements when the residents were just passing through, or so they insisted as decade followed decade.

Torbidda tilted his mug at the corner. ‘Bloody cheek. That soldier’s been staring at us all night.’

Agrippina tossed her head back. ‘Let him stare.’ She toasted the man. ‘Salute, Signore!’

Clearly inebriated, and clearly surprised to be noticed, the man lurched to his feet and stumbled towards them. The barman, following every unsteady step, mumbled warningly, ‘Geta …’

But the soldier ignored him and stopped in front of the Cadets. ‘Why don’t you lovebirds keep it down?’ he growled.

As Torbidda stood, he took his hood down to show his number. ‘How dare you—?’ he started, but Agrippina pulled him back down.

‘Forget it,’ she said. ‘He’s just a drunken fool.’

The drunk spun around. ‘I
beg
your bloody pardon, Signorina, but I’m a hero of a dozen sieges! While you bloody engineers sat around and plotted, I’m the one who scaled the bloody walls. I opened the bloody gates. And who gets the bloody credit? Bloody engineers, that’s who. But you baldies look like Cadets
to me.’ He turned to look at the rest of the tavern’s clientele. ‘Baby lice,’ he announced, ‘know how get ’em? Pinch the head, that’s how—’ and he reached for Agrippina.

She allowed him to get close, which gave her time to grab the bottle. A streak of green smashed over his head and wet emeralds rained down. She kicked forcefully into the soldier’s knee and he fell forwards and smashed his chin against the table.

She pushed his unconscious body off the table into the fragments of the broken bottle.

The barman insisted that their drinks were free, and offered to call a night guard. ‘I needs my licence,’ he said, his voice low.

Agrippina just wanted to leave. ‘No harm done.’

‘You
do
have some Rasenneisi in you,’ said Torbidda, smiling to hide his disquiet. It was not the drunk noble – nothing strange there – but the speed with which Agrippina had put him down. Perhaps it
was
an accident that she had gone so deep this morning, but he was now certain that she
had
been holding back in practise – just as he was.

‘Cin cin,’
he said, and clinked her glass.

She smiled back.

In their hearts, each knew the competition was real.

Even before the first stone of St Eco’s was laid, the Cathedral’s singular aspect atop Monte Nero made it unique. Most of Etruria’s great cathedrals were built in urban settings, which placed restrictions on construction. Free of these considerations, the Opera del Duomo of St Eco’s decided to forgo scaffolding in lieu of the large ramps used by the Ancients. This is just one of the ways that the Curia’s plans reflect the rebirth of interest in the Etruscans. They were inspired by newly translated texts that revealed that the sun-bleached temples still standing in the remote pastures of our contato
⁴
had once been full of colour. Consequently, it was decided that St Eco’s façade should blend coloured marble with playful ornament
.

Given the contemporary pace of discovery and innovation, St Eco’s architects assumed that the ambitious dome they sketched would be possible by the time the walls to support it were built.
⁵
The Curia intended St Eco to proclaim Concordian superiority to all Etruria. They were to be disappointed. As successive capomaestri grew to manhood and sank to senility, the cathedral’s walls grew ever more elaborate, but not a braccia taller. St Eco, the domeless cathedral, became instead a byword for Concordian hubris
.

Her body leaned back in elegant surprise; the smooth undulations that composed Her face invited reverence. He leaned forward with parted lips.

‘She’s the real enemy, you know.’

Torbidda dropped the veil quickly and looked around. No one. Just the frozen ethereal silhouettes of shrouded statues. He cursed his stupidity in isolating himself with no escape route and prepared for ambush.

‘You’ll catch your death standing in a puddle all day,’ said Varro, emerging from behind a column. ‘I’d thought you’d have enough of it after that accident with the Confession Box.’

Torbidda stepped away from the statue as the old selector shuffled towards him. ‘How did you get in?’