CHAPTER 52

Tremellius finished with a sigh that contained years. “The end.”

Sofia leaped to her cell window with wide-eyed interest. “It can’t be! What happened next?”

“You can stop now—the act. It’s the end for you, Contessa. Not my book—that’ll never be finished. I know what you’ve been doing these last few weeks. I know how wretched it is to live without hope.”

Sofia’s smile faded.

“And I know I’m just a slave with useful talents—nobody studies the Humanities these days. This place feeds on hope. Call me sentimental, but I wanted to deny it yours.”

“Why?”

“Because it’s stolen mine. Because you are the last Contessa of Rasenna. Because blood matters.”

“You don’t believe anything you write, do you?” she said sadly.

“Of course not!” Tremellius shouted. “It’s not History, it’s a creation myth—it’s all obfuscation and mystery when really it couldn’t be simpler: an exceptional generation of engineers sought a king. One got lucky—King Bernoulli, though of course none may call him such. The engineers insist that they came to liberate, that our religion and aristocracy were shackles. Well, maybe they were, but they just took our place! I write this story and weave a pattern into it, confidently explain the reasons why this followed that, but nobody really knows how we were made small. A power came into the world and swept us all away. My family were gonfalonieres! I know what we lost.” His voice tailed off. “I just don’t know how.”

“You have to help me!” Sofa cried. “I need more time.”

“Dear child, I’m just a noble—nobody listens to me.” He sighed and composed himself. “Best that you’re weak when the end comes.”

“What are you doing?” she screamed. “No, don’t—!”

He pulled the lever calmly, and blue light flooded her cell. Sofia fell and her head hit the ground, and the sound it made was TAP.

Her body sank into the cold water like the star falling. All the pain, the anger, she left them behind on the surface. Behind the darkness was the infinity of what might have been and might yet be.

But first she had to face the Darkness—or go back to the cell, to the drip, to a slow death. No. She swore that she’d drown before that. She swam down.

Fear, the Dark Ancient, boiled furiously, a black sun being born. A tentacle shot out of the darkness and another. It pulled her in. She didn’t fight it. She prayed:

And suddenly it was the moment before dawn, an electric hum in the air; nothing was different, but everything had changed completely. The tentacles loosened, the Darkness fled. And then there was light.

And Sofia beheld Her: the Handmaid, adrift in timeless space, incubating salvation as She waited patiently. Then Sofia heard an insistent sound like becalmed thunder. A heart fiercely beating—Her sacred heart!—beating in the darkness most silent and terrible, waiting to synchronize with History’s slow pulse once more. Then eyes that were old as the stars opened and beheld Sofia at last. Heaven roared in joy, but the world did not hear it. The voice that spoke was kind and whispered not in words but in music.

Do not be afraid. Years beyond counting, I waited for you. I see you now.

“I’m nothing!”

No, you are strong enough to break through fear, strong enough for what lies ahead.

“I’m not ready!”

Lies and all your fear, all your grief.

Giovanni fell again, slowly tumbling into nothing, into the black water.

Sofia closed her eyes to block out the vision, and when she realized she saw it still, she knew that She too saw. Those eyes that had looked upon the most terrible grief now looked on hers. A rumble then, like a storm brewing in the distance, and once more She spoke:

Changed but stronger, it will return.

“I’m not strong like you.”

I am not strong. Only my love was strong. That is what sustained me then, sustains me now, and no other power but Love can sustain you in the coming darkness. Only Love.

Love.

Sofia opened her eyes. The next drop fell, but it did not land. She had it now. Control did not feel like something she had learned, it felt like something recalled.

Tremellius talked on, obliviously. “The Heavens revolved around us until King Bernoulli taught us there’s no scheme to History, no Music around the Spheres, only a bloody vacuum. Man’s triumphs and failures, his laws, his crimes, they’re nothing but dust—just stories for children. God’s breath does not warm us, nor inspire men to prophesy, nor virgins to conceive.”

Tap.

The water didn’t drop because it had to. It dropped because Sofia let it. She focused on the next drop and instead of catching it made it change direction. It splashed against the door.

Tap.

“If there is no pattern, there are no constraints. We’re free of Commandments. Free of God. Madonna help us, we’re free.”

Anger rose up, but she didn’t release it. She let the drop hang in space as another fell into it, and another, until it was trembling under the growing weight . . . just a few seconds more . . .

She grabbed the banner she’d used as a pillow.

Tremellius sighed again and made his way back to the coffin. “Farewell, Contessa. Dream golden dreams.”

It blasted through the window and out across the void, and Sofia dived though the gap, rolling as she landed on the walkway.

Levi woke to see the fist-size hole blasted in his door.

“Ungrateful troia, get back in your box!” Tremellius screamed.

Feeble as they were, Sofia couldn’t block his kicks.

“After all I’ve done for you, you’ll get me in trouble! I should drown you right here!”

Water had pushed back, and Sofia could hardly move her arms, let alone fight. As she fell back on the walkway, her hand touched the lake surface. Seeing how weak she was, Tremellius was emboldened to catch her in a choke hold, using his weight to push her head down. She saw buio rising from the depths toward her.

Suddenly, Tremellius slumped over. Behind him stood Levi, brandishing the window bar from his cell. He pulled her up as the buio lunged.

“Thanks,” she coughed.

“Thank you, Contessa! Technically, this is your breakout.”

“I thought you were dead.”

“Takes more than a few days’ fast to kill me. I’ve endured army food.” He laughed.

A metallic groan heralded a new revolution of the pit.

“Help me!” Sofia shouted, and together they dragged Tremellius into the coffin with them.

“Didn’t he just try to kill you?” said Levi conversationally.

“He kept me alive first. Besides, we might need help up there.”

“It’s going to be awfully tight. How do you make this thing go up?”

“I don’t know; someone up there always operated it. Wake him up!”

“I shouldn’t have hit him so hard,” Levi lamented. “There’s got to be a button!”

“Is it this?”

“How the hell do I know? Just hit it!”

The coffin stopped in front of the second colossus. Levi jumped out, ready to fight, but the great hall was empty. The darkness was barely dented by scattered candles and the last faint rose glow of sunset spilling in misty wisps through the open doorway.

Sofia looked up at the statue, wondering if it was the original or the shadow. Whichever it was, there was something about it that made her heart glow despite the circumstances.

“Getting dark. Well, that’s lucky.” Levi was talking to himself nervously as he looked around for another weapon.

She walked toward the base of the colossus until she was standing in front of the carved letters, each a braccia tall: Although changed, I shall arise the same.

She realized suddenly why the angel’s smile was comforting; the statue’s idealized portrait was familiar. Horribly familiar.

She went to the coffin and dragged Tremellius to his feet. He was groggy but conscious.

“The statue,” she demanded. “Who is it?”

“The angel?” he said dazedly, trying to keep up, “T—that is Saint Michael triumphant, he who cast out the Serpent. An allegory of the Re-Formation, I suppose. The artist was, let me see—”

“Whose face does it have?”

“Oh, I see; well, naturally the portrait is he who cast out Superstition.”

It hit her like a blow. Choking back tears, she asked, “What was Giovanni’s surname?”

“Oh, no need to be coy with me, Contessa. I’m not an Apprentice.”

“What was it?” she screamed.

“Bernoulli—”

Sofia pushed him against the glass. “You lying cazzo!”

“Giovanni was his grandson—I can prove it,” he gurgled.

“The darkness will help, but we need some kind of distraction,” Levi said, prying an antique sword from the wall, oblivious to what was happening in the coffin. He turned to see Sofia getting back into the coffin. “Hey! Where are you going?” Tremellius was still with her.

“I have to see something. I’ll be back,” she promised, and before Levi could protest, the coffin door hissed shut.

“If you’re not back in five, I’m leaving!”

Tremellius led the way from the coffin to his desk between the towering stacks of books, babbling nervously. “I just assumed he would have told you—it’s only natural to be proud of that lineage. But having proved himself unworthy, perhaps it was natural to be ashamed—”

This last finally penetrated Sofia’s stupor, and she mumbled, “It’s certainly a name to be ashamed of.”

“Well, you are not Concordian,” he said reasonably. He pushed some heavy volumes out of the way and fished out a scroll. “Look, this is Girolamo Bernoulli’s family tree.”

“What about those stories of him floating down the river?” Sofia said as she took it from him.

His fat little fingers scrambled for a paper cutter under the books. “Oh, more nonsense: the Bernoullis were just common masons. He appeared to come from nowhere because Small People were invisible to the Curia.”

Seeing her staring at the family tree, totally absorbed, he lunged.

Almost without looking up Sofia caught his wrist, took the knife away, and slapped him hard across the face. “Don’t.”

As he raised his hand to his cheek, she said, as if nothing had happened, “He proved unworthy, you said.”

“At first, he did live up to expectations,” he gibbered. “This was a boy expected to be the youngest First Apprentice ever. He had his grandfather’s intelligence, and not just that, he had his ambition and ferocity too—it was he who revealed his father’s plot.”

“No!” she cried. “Giovanni wasn’t a traitor!”

“Technically, Jacopo Bernoulli was the traitor. But yes, the Giovanni you knew was very different. Something went wrong in his third year at the Guild Halls.”

Sofia looked at the scroll. The tree narrowed to Girolamo Bernoulli, his son Jacopo, and his grandson Giovanni. The truth had been staring her in the face all along.

Tremellius’s eyes darted to the waiting coffin—this might be his last opportunity. He leaped up.

She slammed the knife into his hand.

“Ahhhh! Ah ah ahhh!”

“What went wrong?”

He squealed, “I don’t know! No one does. He was—how to put it?—active at Gubbio.” He glanced timidly at Sofia’s face. “In the aftermath of the Wave he was engaged in fieldwork with the pseudonaiades, continuing his grandfather’s research. All was going well until he was attacked by one, or so he said. Most people just thought he lost his nerve—burnout’s common among young engineers—but whatever happened, he returned to Concord different, though at first he seemed just the same. Before, well, everyone knows about Gubbio—he had no qualms, he was willing to do anything, but when he came back—”

Tremellius wiped sweat from his brow. “Dissection’s nasty work by all accounts, and I can see that most people don’t have the stomach for it, but with his lineage—and after such a promising start—you can imagine the disappointment. Gradually the Apprentices lost confidence in him, and interest, until the, um, incident that brought you here. The last chapter, you know, a disappointing career ending in the disgrace of mutiny.”

Sofia cocked her head to the ceiling. “Why did they care if he’d told me his name?”

“Hard to say. The current First Apprentice has taken a rather mystical turn. He’s convinced that the second meeting of Scaligeri and Bernoulli was more than coincidence. I assume he wanted to know if Giovanni was simply a traitor like his father or if it was more than that.

“Certain secrets are not written in books, Contessa, but whispered over the years. The First Apprentice believes that a new age is dawning. More than that I cannot say.”

Sofia twisted the knife handle.

“Ahhh! I can’t say because I don’t know! That’s all I know, I swear!” He looked shifty for a moment. “Why do you care, Contessa? The boy’s dead; his history’s of no consequence. All that lives of Bernoulli is this temple.”

“I loved him,” Sofia said more to herself than to the historian.

“You—aha ha—”

She could feel it even as she stood there: the Darkness was regenerating, more powerfully this time. Anger is stronger meat than grief. She was angry at herself, angry at the nun for keeping the truth from her, but most of all angry at him—she would not say his name—angry for making her love him, for making her grieve him.

She held the paper to the candle.

“What are you doing?”

“Blood matters,” she whispered as she walked back to the coffin, dragging the burning scroll behind her.

The historian watched as scraps of paper lit up in her wake. He tentatively touched the dagger’s handle, but the pain was too great. As the hungry flames climbed the bookshelves, as the towers tumbled, he wept.

Levi breathed a sigh of relief as the star ascended once more.

“We should leave,” he said quickly.

“This is Bernoulli’s tower, Levi.” When he looked at her blankly, she shouted, “We have to burn it!”

“Are you all right? You seem—”

“Just help me!”

The angel watched impassively as they took torches to the tapestries of the great hall.

As the library became an inferno, Tremellius’s fear of death routed his fear of pain. The Apprentices would save him. He wrestled the blade out and scrambled to the glass column. The engine room was empty but for the Third Apprentice, who was serenely cleaning the slate.

“Scoundrels! They have left us to burn!” the historian cried.

“Be calm,” the boy said. “The others are in the lantern.”

Sofia rammed the glass column with a candelabrum until great cracks splintered up the shaft.

Levi had to pull her away before she hurt herself. “That’s enough, Contessa. The heat will do the rest.”

Scraps of burning paper were falling from the distant dome. They pushed the massive doors closed as they left. Sofia gave the angel no final glance. It would not see her cry.

Tremellius was unconvinced. The “lantern” was the Grecian mausoleum crowning the Molè’s triple dome. “Perhaps we’d be better off going down.”

Far below, the water shot up though the pit. When it reached the great hall, the pressure was enough to finally shatter the fissured glass.

Tremellius toggled the coffin’s handle ineffectually. “It’s not working. We’re trapped!”

“Just follow me,” the boy said, walking to one of the walls. He turned and watched the pendulum as the historian waddled over to join him. The wall parted for a moment, a piston lowered, and the boy stepped into the darkness. The historian scampered after him. They ascended from piston to piston in the space between the inner dome and outer dome. The noise was deafening and the light was dim, but the boy, comfortable as a sewer rat, led the way confidently.

Finally he threw open a trapdoor to a breathtaking night. Tremellius was gasping already from the climb, but the sky was so fretted with stars that he fancied he could pry his fingers into them and tear night aside for day. He felt he could breathe freely for the first time in decades, that he had escaped Girolamo Bernoulli’s mind. Red and orange, the First and Second Apprentices stood in the open door of the mausoleum, watching.

“My Lords, what are you thinking?” he asked. “That is Bernoulli’s tomb.”

The First Apprentice answered, “I’m surprised there are rumors you haven’t heard. The tomb is empty. It will be our refuge from the fire.”

“Calm yourself,” the Second Apprentice added. “He has not returned; he waits where he always has, in his real tomb. In the real Molè.”

“This is not the Molè?”

“The Beast is the real wonder of our age. This imperfect reflection shall burn.”

“You knew this was coming?”

“Bernoulli told us the Signs that would herald his return. The destruction of his greatest lie was one. His monument is concealed, just as his secrets are revealed only to initiates.”

Tremellius’s eyes widened. “I am an initiate?”

“You are redundant. There is no need for historians at History’s end.”

“Then—what shall I do?” he said with a nervous laugh.

The man in red gave a smile worthy of a wolf. “You shall be free.”

They picked at random one of many long stairways winding from the mountain’s summit to the canals and were lucky. At the bottom, Levi untied one of the boats while admiring the layout from a soldierly perspective. “It’s a citadel. Even if you took the city, you couldn’t hold it without the Molè.”

Sofia couldn’t bring herself to look back at it, still less praise it.

Levi soon discovered that the canals had parallel currents, leading to and from the mountain, and once he got the boat into the right one, they speedily crossed over the new city.

“They made it so hard to get in,” Levi said. “Getting out will be easy!”

He glanced back nervously at Sofia, who was staring at the water passing by them, clutching her banner tightly. Once they reached garrisoned city walls they could no longer count on mere luck. They’d have to fight their way out. Was she up to it?

Through a sea of thick fog below, Sofia finally saw the great city again. Its smooth streets were set in a perfect grid, the few curves allowed graceful and restrained. Marble columns gleamed, their cold beauty illuminated by orbs of blue fire. Everywhere there was proportion and order, balance and harmony. It was an alien beauty, and her soul shrank from it. There were no citizens abroad, only soldiers. It was a city remade as a prison for its population, and for a terrifying moment she saw the world from Girolamo Bernoulli’s remote perspective, a beautiful sphere infested by swarming pests, perfection riddled with human maggots with all their corrosive lies and hopes.

She risked a look back at the Molè and was startled to see the sky empty, washed white by fog, and tall columns fading into nothingness like tired brushstrokes. The Molè’s upturned whale’s belly left no impression on a sky it should have dominated.

“Levi, where—?” she began.

“Should be a big enough distraction,” he chuckled as the dome became suddenly illuminated by flames.

“Look, the lantern,” she said, pointing at the summit of the third dome.

A man slid and rolled and bounced and finally shot though the wall of flames at the base of the last dome, emerging into the empty air, burning like a falling star. They were too far away to hear his scream. All over the city, bells rang out.

The city walls emerged from mist.

“Get down, Sofia,” Levi said in an undertone.

A sentry called out a challenge, “Hey, who goes there?”

Levi saluted casually. “Me. Tie this off, will you?” he said, preparing to throw the rope.

When the sentry reached out for it, a noose fell around him, and he yelped as he landed in the water. The cold would finish him before the buio could get there.

Levi helped Sofia out of the boat. “What happened up there, Contessa?”

“Nothing. I’m all right,” she said.

“You don’t look all right. I don’t know how you did that trick with the water, but it obviously costs something. We’re going to have to get down and out as fast as possible. I need you to keep up. Got it?”

Sofia rubbed her arms, trying to get warm. “Is it the only way? How many men are down there? I’m weak, and you’re half starved.”

“Just the odds I like. Just stay behind me, kid.”

Levi opened the door and then closed it just as quickly. “Hmm, this could get ugly.” He made the Sign of the Sword and said, “Madonna, help us out and I swear I will live a better life. Contessa?”

“What?”

“Swear!”

“Oh, right. I swear.”

He opened it again and leaped in with a yell. A guard coming up the stairs got kicked in the chest, brawler fashion.

“You weren’t kidding—that was ugly.”

“You going to be this helpful all through this escape?”

“Look behind you!”

Levi gave an involuntary cry as two more guards bundled up from the landing. He slipped, luckily, as the first guard swung. He kicked, and the guard fell to the ground, clutching his groin. His helmet came off when he landed. Levi scrambled to his feet, just avoiding the second soldier’s sword. The blade sparked on stone with a clang. Before the swordsman recovered, Levi had grabbed the helmet and whacked him.

He rubbed his hands with satisfaction and winked at Sofia as he reached for the door at the end of the corridor. “And that’s how condottieri do it.”

His smile faded. The room was full of guards drinking and playing cards. Levi stood there as the laughter stopped. Behind him, Sofia quickly sized up the situation. Levi was doing well for a civilian. But they were both weak and now outnumbered. If even a single guard escaped to raise the alarm, they were done for.

“Catch,” she said, throwing Levi her bundle.

Before any of the guards had moved, Sofia was inside, striking with precision, bouncing between preselected targets. She knew where every blow landed, what effect it had. A moment later, all the guards were on the floor and Sofia was filling a satchel with food from the table. She threw Levi a chicken drumstick.

“And that is how Rasenneisi do it,” she said with a grin. “What’s the matter? Not hungry?”

Levi lost the dazed look and cleared his throat. “All right, I’ll admit you’ve got some skills, but stay behind me next time! I don’t need you hurt before I break us out.”

“Sure thing.” She was glowing; it was good to be in a straight fight again. “What are you looking for?”

“Someone you haven’t concussed. This fine fellow will do!” Levi threw a mug of beer in the moaning soldier’s face. When he started struggling, Levi held a sword to his neck and brought him to the window. A red glow lit up the night.

“See that? That’s not the sun coming up early; that’s the Molè. This nice young Signorina did that. You don’t want her angry. We need fast rides out of town.”

“Heralds get the best horses. Their stable’s on the other side of the Ponte Bernoulliana.”

“How do we open the gate?”

The solider explained, and Levi thanked him with a whack of the tankard.

Before they got to the bridge, Levi had several more opportunities to admire Sofia’s skills. Only when they reached it did she hesitate. Like the statue, it was a reflection: a dark mirror of Giovanni’s bridge. She remembered talk of a Rasenneisi Engineers’ Guild with a shudder.

“Sofia, we can’t wait for sunup,” Levi said urgently. “Come on!”

They galloped away from the dark white city, swift hooves echoing in the night, not stopping to rest until they’d had an hour’s hard riding. Dawn broke, but the air was still frigid with winter sparseness and snow blew down from the northern mountains. They didn’t notice; they were too glad to have left that unnatural desert surrounding Concord behind.

“We made it!” said Levi with a savage whoop. “Can you believe it? The only man to ever escape from the Beast! Levi, you are an immortal!”

Sofia slumped in the saddle, more tired than she had ever been.

“Going home, Contessa?”

“Where are you going?”

“Southeast. The Hawk’s Company’s rendezvous was in the Ariminumese contato—they might not have gotten there in one piece after Tagliacozzo, but that’s where I’ll start looking. If there’s truly a traitor in the Company, I’d be partly responsible if I didn’t warn John Acuto.”

Sofia gave no indication of having heard. The emotional rush of the escape was fading, leaving her with a host of truths she’d sooner not face.

Giovanni had lied to her. He had hidden his name, his past, and who knows what else. He was capable of betraying his own father to the engineers. What else had he done—what else had he planned? She had accused the Doctor of betraying her, but how much worse was her own betrayal? Whatever Doc’s methods, at least he always fought for Rasenna.

She had never before questioned if she was worthy to be Contessa. Now the answer was unavoidable.

“I can’t go back,” she whispered.

Levi pretended not to notice her tears. She’d been strong for him, so he’d be strong for her.

“You want to keep fighting? Come with me.”

“I’ve got nothing worth fighting for.”

“Don’t they have money where you come from? There’s a home for anyone who can fight in the Hawk’s Company, and Contessa, you can fight!”

“I don’t want to be a condottiere,” Sofia said, wavering.

“You get to fight Concord,”

That settled it.

“Send your horse south anyway. Two tracks will slow them up if they try tracking us.”

She did it and then begged a favor: “Never call me Contessa again. It’s Sofia, just Sofia.”