Dogged application of two infinite resources, Concord’s money and Bombelli’s persistence, ensured that supplies arrived the morning before they were scheduled to begin. Giovanni left Tower Vanzetti with his nose buried in various plans, double-checking contingencies and measurements, oblivious to the shadow overhead. As he turned a corner, the shadow dropped in front of him, and he fell back, scattering his plans.
Sofia deftly caught them and handed them back.
“Thank you!” he stammered.
“Sure I’m not a courteous assassin?”
“Should I cry for help?”
“You could try,” said Sofia drily. “Don’t worry, you’re safe with me.”
“But you’re a northsider.”
“And proud. Your point?”
“This isn’t the northside.”
“The truce was extended. And as I keep telling you, I’m Contessa—you might not make distinctions, but Rasenneisi do. Southsiders pay rent to Morello, but they’re still loyal to Scaligeri.” She took his silence for skepticism. “You’ll see!”
Giovanni wondered if all Rasenneisi were as changeable as Etrurian weather; had she forgiven their quarrel or just forgotten it?
“So, big day. Nervous?”
“Why should I be?”
“Oh, little things like half your crew harboring vendette against the other half.”
“I get the feeling you don’t want a bridge.”
“Perceptive.”
“The Doctor wants it.”
“Who knows what he wants?”
He heard anger in her voice and assumed he had blundered again, but Sofia was simply tired of being treated like hired help. The Doctor had told her to shadow the engineer after his last visit, but he wouldn’t tell her more.
“Perhaps I’m overlooking something obvious, but surely the river makes life difficult?” he said, choosing his words carefully.
“You should have considered that before sending it,” she shot back.
“That wasn’t me personally—and it was another time. Rasenna was belligerent.”
“Some of us still are.”
“I’ve noticed—but I still don’t understand whether you really object to the bridge or just to Concord.”
“Why not both?”
“You can’t simultaneously object to being divided and to being united—that’s a contradiction!”
“Well, you’re not from around here.”
They were fast approaching Piazza Luna, where Vanzetti was assembling the crew.
“Thank you for your company, Signorina.”
“It’s ‘Contessa’ to you—and don’t thank me, thank the Doc.”
They passed out of the alley’s shadows to find the usually empty piazza thronging with two hundred men, all milling about in front of the town fathers, who were standing stiffly, lined up in the Signoria loggia. On seeing the Contessa, all of the crew, southsiders too, doffed their hats.
“Told you so,” whispered Sofia with a proudly jutting chin as they circled the crowd of tall and shoulder-sturdy men. “What’s so funny?” she added.
“Vettori calls these men the Small People.”
“They call themselves Woolsmen these days, but they know construction; their fathers erected these towers and many more. Can you handle them, Captain?”
“We’ll soon find out. Have a good day, Contessa.”
“Go to hell, Captain,” said Sofia, walking up to the loggia, where the Doctor waited with the rest. She glanced over her shoulder. “But until then, good day to you too.”
Vettori said the men were ready to begin, but Giovanni wanted to address them first.
“Rasenneisi, I’m here today for the same reason you are—to build a bridge.” A room full of politicians had daunted him, but now he spoke with assurance. “Signore Vanzetti is overseer. Signore Bombelli, his second. You’ll have noticed small engines along the surface of the water. They keep pseudonaiades—the buio—from breaking the surface.” He raised his voice so all could hear. “You’ll be safe while working—but fall in and you’ll drown all the same.”
“So put your harness on before you start!” Pedro interrupted.
“My apprentice, Pedro, will be around during the day to check. He can help you read plans if I am elsewhere.”
Fabbro grinned as Vettori failed to hide a big proud smile.
To those with no experience with Concordian machinery, the schedule looked impossible—it was one thing to hear of miracles, another to be expected to perform them—but by the time the engineer had finished speaking, few doubted his conviction. Like the Etruscans before them, Concordians were bridge builders, and that was the reason the Empire had expanded so swiftly despite the topography of Etruria: a narrow peninsula so river-riddled that some foreign cartographers described it as an archipelago.
A pale, wiry northsider raised his hand. He introduced himself as Little Frog and was dressed the part in an ill-fitting green worker’s tunic, his long legs painted moss-yellow by old hose ventilated with rips and large feet entombed in hand-me-down boots.
Giovanni waited. He had been expecting interruptions.
“No objection to your contraptions, Captain,” Frog said with an amiable drawl, “but we’re starting with a prayer, ain’t we?”
Giovanni could see the boy was not making trouble; the concern was genuine.
“He means a sacrifice,” Vettori whispered. “Tower builders use a pigeon. I brought one, just in case . . .”
Giovanni turned swiftly back to the crowd. “There’ll be no prayers and no sacrifices. This is a modern building site. We make do with stone and iron and each other’s strength.”
Older builders grumbled until another argument broke out. A short, sweaty dour southsider pointed at Fabbro, spit, and announced, “I don’t work for Bardini.”
“You know him?” Fabbro whispered.
Vettori nodded. “Unfortunately.”
“Bandieratoro?”
“No, that’d take salt. Hog Galati is just a lowlife cafone whose idea of work is betting on cockfights.” Vettori shook his head angrily and added, “His children eat tripe.”
“Signor, you work for me, not Bardini.”
“Oh,” said Hog with a quick grin. “You work for Morello, then.” His face was framed by black hair that curled into improbable ringlets stiff with grease.
He was answered by the shout “Bardini!” in turn answered by another, “Morello!”
In the loggia’s shade, Quintus Morello chuckled. The Doctor knew he expected the project to founder. “Don’t worry, Gonfaloniere. He’ll rein them in. Or do you want my men to restore order?”
“Try it, Bardini. The truce holds so long as you stay off this bridge.”
Sofia and Gaetano Morello exchanged a glance. She gripped her banner and prayed the engineer would do something, and quickly.
“Listen, please!” Giovanni held up his hands. “I am no one’s man. On my site, you are no one’s either.”
Tower owners frowned as one, a rare display of unity.
“Thought this was a groundbreaking,” said Hog, “not a wind breaking.”
But the idea that a man might not belong to another was singular enough to restore order.
“I came to build a bridge, that’s all. Your quarrels don’t concern me. Leave them off my site and pick them up at the end of the day. The bridge is no-man’s-land.”