Every venture has its own risk. Betrayal attends love, death attends war, ruin attends commerce, but the penalty for avoiding risk is always the same: nothing happens. For Rasenna’s merchants that had been the worst penalty: years of self-imposed stagnation.
Now they were bold, and boldness made them rich.
Rasenna’s new affluence showed in a wealth of different ways, from elaborate weather vanes on her tower tops to expensive clothes on her citizens below. Color used to be reserved for essentials such as banners, but now black, gray, and tan retreated before vivid yellow, brilliant scarlet, lush Cambria green.
Both rivers seemed to flow faster—who could deny that the steady pulse of people to market was a river too—and as wealth breathed in new life, it brought new people; there was novelty everywhere. Strangers stopped to marvel at the engines used to construct the riverside towers or the mills and, passing through the new walls, admired the engineering skill their design revealed: octagonal—eminently defensible—towers projecting from each corner; the slope, to turn aside the impact of bombardments. If the stranger understood such things, he saw the builders’ chief concern was imminent siege, but he could not pause for long, as others pushed behind him, eager to see the miracle of Etruria. After all, it was not aesthetics that drew the pilgrims but commerce.
Stepping onto the bridge, our stranger might rub one of the Lions’ paws and pray for good bargains that day. Although one of the northside plinths remained empty, the other three Lions, intact and virile, were now back in their traditional perches—dragging the remaining two sentinels from the riverbed had been the first task for Rasenna’s growing Engineers’ Guild and its visionary podesta.
The bridge lured them all with the clamor of wares advertised and sold. Bombelli’s currency-changing stall was set up beside the broken balustrade—just as one Lion was left broken in memory of the Wave, so the gap remained as tribute to the fallen of the uprising. The clinking of coins was a constant heady accompaniment to the din of bargaining. Thieves attracted by the sound of easy money soon learned that the risk of working the markets far outweighed the putative rewards. And just as Rasenna changed, so the bridge changed daily, with different stalls selling different goods, each taking its turn.
Bandieratori no longer loitered at street corners; like everyone else they had business to attend to. While some were on duty, patrolling walls, manning towers, and policing the markets, the rest were drilled in new tactics and weapons.
“Salute,” Pedro said without looking up from his work. “Sorry about the dust.” It was late, and Giovanni had sent the other apprentices home. They were young and enthusiastic, but they’d been going without sleep to get Rasenna’s defenses ready, and he needed alert minds.
“What’s that you’re working on, Pedro?”
“Just a distraction. The Doc gave me the parts, asked me if I could put them back together.”
“It’s the annunciator I gave—” Giovanni was quiet for a moment, then said, “He still thinks she’s coming back.” Without its cover, the angel looked undressed, its gown’s elaborate whalebone showing. “You’ve changed it?”
“Not really; the old design’s sound but for a few redundancies.” Pedro held up a discarded part. “These gears were sparking off each other.”
Giovanni held it up appraisingly. “Lighter, easier to reproduce.”
Pedro was embarrassed. “Too bad we need weapons, not toys. I just needed a break.”
They’d both been coordinating other work with defensive engineering—Giovanni rehearsed battle plans with the Doctor while Pedro kept busy overseeing workshops across town.
“You think we’ve got a chance?” It wasn’t a question Pedro would have asked around the others. Giovanni understood by now that he’d taken on much more than authority when he had become Rasenna’s podesta.
“Last time Concord didn’t have to beat us; they just had to show up.”
“We’re still one town against an Empire.”
“That’s the thinking that let Concord build that Empire. True, we’re only a town, but we won’t have to defeat an Empire.”
Pedro gave a careless Rasenneisi shrug. “Oh, just a legion. No problem, then.”
Giovanni smiled. “If we can bloody their nose, every town in Etruria under the Concordian boot will join us. And that’s a fight we have a chance of winning. Our mistake was trying to overpower them. Rasenna’s got the greatest fighters in Etruria, but against disciplined troops holding a line—well, you saw what the Twelfth did. Our particular skills, we need to get close, and to get close, we need to change the rules. Look here—”
There were four powder piles on his desk: “Charcoal, saltpeter, and sulfur.” He carefully held up the forth saucer. “Together, it’s called serpentine. Bernoulli found the recipe in an Ebionite alchemical text.”
“How do you—?” Pedro began, then asked, “What does it do?”
“Give me that gear you took out of the angel.”
He watched as Giovanni crouched and poured a small pile with a trail to it.
“Stand back and cover your ears.”
Giovanni struck the gear. There was a sudden hiss as the trail lit up, then, as it reached the pile, there was a loud Pop! that sent a cloud of dirty yellow smoke spiraling into the air.
Pedro laughed when Giovanni looked up coughing, his face blackened.
“It’s used for propulsion in cannons and such.”
“Pity we can’t lob a cauldron of it at them. That would even the odds quickly.”
Giovanni shook his head. “Thank the Virgin it’s too unstable for that. Our new walls can withstand arquebuses and cannonballs but not direct explosions. Any large amount is liable to explode prematurely, killing the wrong person.”
“Then what’s it good for?”
“Changing the rules. Concord will try to make our walls our prison—they’ll want to starve us, bomb us, and burn us, then roll up their siege towers and spit out an invasion. With serpentine, we can decapitate their towers when they approach. They’ll have to approach on foot, between rows of burning toppling stacks.”
“We need to cast cannons then?”
“Small ones, with tempered iron. I already have smiths working on prototypes.”
Pedro tried to conceal his misgivings on finding the engineer so adept at the art of war. “This isn’t just for Rasenna, is it?”
Giovanni wasn’t listening. He rubbed tired eyes, feeling the chemical sting. “When I came here, I’d lost faith in myself; she believed in me.”
Pedro saw his discomfort and changed the subject. “What do you suppose Bernoulli was looking for in alchemists’ recipe books?”
“I don’t have to guess,” Giovanni said, suddenly angry. “Power. In whatever form he could harness it. That’s all he was ever looking for and—” He stopped himself, then went on more calmly, “In any case, it gives Concord’s legions tactical advantage in battle, just as hydroengineering gives them strategic advantage. The Ebionites didn’t know how to use it safely.”
“They kept blowing themselves up?”
“It’s prone to accidental combustion when dusty. Bernoulli found a solution: just add water. It makes a better weapon, too. The flame spreads evenly before exploding. You can change the ratio depending on whether you want noise, light, or power. I haven’t perfected the mixture, but I’ll make sure it’s loud and smoky. Legions are used to winning, so anything we can do to puncture their complacency is to our advantage.”
Pedro looked serious. “We can’t win a war by avoiding battle. Sooner or later, we’ll have to make contact.”
“Superior discipline beat us, not technology. Up until now, our bandieratori have been expending too much energy on noise and color. The Doctor is training them to coordinate like a Concordian phalanx.”
Pedro interrupted abruptly, “Can you increase the speed serpentine burns?”
“Yes, but increased pressure explodes cannon.”
“We need many small explosions, not one big one.”
“Then we’d have to get close, give up the advantage of our walls. We can’t plant them like caltrops either. It’s impossible to keep the fuse and powder dry.”
“I know how we can get close and keep our distance.”
Giovanni smiled. “Tell me more, Maestro.”