Hungerblade

Part Nine: Magnetic Forces

                Jacques could not help but feel that the sardines on the plate before him were regarding him balefully. Also, it  seemed to him that Isabelle had clattered them down on her table with a touch of undue relish. If he didn’t know better, he’d say she was taking a degree of pleasure in his suffering. The fish were stacked beside a pale cube of cheese, which wept a pool of salty liquid around them.

                “This is a hangover cure?” he asked. He’d stumbled back to her villa with the cruel morning sun pounding at him. The metallic clamor of the city still echoed through his throbbing head.

                “The Romari are experts in the field.” Isabelle stood at a distance, her arms folded before her, in a knot of neatly contained disapproval.

                “I know what you’re thinking,” he said.

                “Do you?”

                “I value your concern.” He picked up a fork to poke at one of the frowning sardines. “And not to make any promises, but there may come a time when, ah, my, ah...”

                “Prolonged meeting with the Senator?” Isabelle volunteered.

                “When my decisions of the previous evening may not seem entirely foolish.” He popped a chunk of cheese into his mouth.

                “Like the way they worked out with the Duchess de Pegoux?”

                “If I didn’t know you as a respected colleague first and foremost, Isabelle, I’d say your attitude was, I don’t know... possessive.”

                 Isabelle blanched, and Jacques immediately regretted his words. The crawling sensation under his scalp intensified. He cut the flesh from one of the sardines and swallowed a forkful. “Let’s say, for sake of argument, that Nero has been ensorcelled. What has the ultimate effect of this been?”

                “Guntram surely won’t approve of a fellow Emperor being subjected to a ritual of influence.”

                “The Emperor made nothing clear, except that he sought my kind of judgment. You’ve been in the city for many months now. Would it be better off if Nero returned to public life?”

                “My contacts seemed to breathe easier for the first few months of Nero’s withdrawal, although at the time we all thought he was merely diverted with a new hobby. As the withdrawal lengthened they fell in amongst the senators. Soon it was clear the senate was divided into three powerful factions headed Orientius, Julius Laminus and your new friend Circe, although there are certainly many slightly less powerful factions apart from those three. Some of my contacts have suffered financial setbacks, now that there is less call for gladiators, performers, fighting beasts, parading animals and prisoners. But where some fall, others rise—those who sponsor armories and construction teams are busy counting their denarii. Anyone who can take part in a ritual of magnetic enchantment finds his purse bursting with coin.”

                Jacques rubbed his head. “But what of the ordinary citizen?”

                The question surprised her. “It is hard to say. . . perhaps they miss Nero’s circuses? I could ask the servants . . .”

                Gardien stood. “Never mind. I know someone who can show me.”

***

                The urchin girl, Giovanna, led Gardien toward a warren of apparently abandoned domus. Some had partially collapsed; others were surrounded by a rubble of broken, rotting planks and torn-up paving stones. “It has become easier for you, then, in the last few months?” Jacques asked. He had started by asking how conditions had changed since Nero turned governance over to the Senate, but the question, put that way, had only annoyed her. It was not the place of beggar girls, she’d explained, to concern themselves with such things.

                “It is easier to beg, so I do not so much have to steal,” she said, cheerfully.

                “You prefer begging to stealing?”

                “Yes,” she said brightly.

                “But not so much that you can resist taking a sword from the occasional foreigner,” he said, lightly.

                The girl shrank back from him, as if expecting a smack on the head. “I told you, I am sorry.”

                He put on his best reassuring smile. “I am only joking with you. The sword has that effect on people.”

                She took him inside the network of domus, and found them bustling with lowly commerce. Ragged citizens laid out goods ranging from pots to cutlery to pieces of statuary. Dented and dusty, their wares appeared to have been salvaged from the city’s ruined districts, or perhaps the trash heaps of the wealthy. Peddlers in frayed tunics dickered over the items, loading their purchases into sacks for resale. Others purchased bundles of firewood, cakes of soap, or mended garments.

                “This market is new,” Giovanna told him. “Until a few months ago, it was smaller, and had to move around all the time.”

                “Why is that?”

                A nearby peddler, an old woman missing the majority of her front teeth, volunteered a reply. “Thugs would come and rob us. Now there are auxilliae, patrolling even in the ruins, and they run the brigands off. Until a few months back, there weren’t enough of them to police any but the best neighborhoods.”

                “And the auxilliae don’t rob you?”

                The peddler picked up a copper lamp and inspected it for holes. “We pay them a courtesy fee, naturally. Give ‘em the occasional gift. Much better than the thugs, who’d take everything you had and then beat you all the same.”

                “What happened to the thugs?” Jacques asked.

                “Hard to believe, but most have taken to honest labor. Between the new forum and the Serracum, a man with a strong back can earn himself far more than he can by terrorizing the likes of us. ”

                A cross-legged scrounger chimed in. “And them what used to be deserted soldiers have gone back to their legions, which are paying wages again.”

                Jacques looked to Giovanna. “Serracum? I don’t know that word.”

Giovanna smiled. “I’ll show you.”

“Isn’t a serracum a wagon?”

Giovanna smiled even more. “A serracum is a wagon. This is the Serracum; a wagon that floats in the sky.”

                She led him from the peddler’s market down the winding avenue called the Via Arcana. Pointing to a series of bronze pylons rising several stories around the surrounding buildings, she said, “That is the Serracum.” Some of the far distant Jacques could see a string of similar pylons connected by slightly drooping cables. He counted over 20 pylons before the cables disappeared from view.

                “That is where I will someday live,” she said, indicating a district of well-kept domus, not far from Isabelle’s.

                “Is that so?”

                “If I tell you a secret, you won’t repeat it, will you?”

                “Certainly not.”

                “Even when I am hungry, I do not spend all I earn. Especially now that I have this job working for you and Isabelle.”

                “You must eat, Giovanna.”

                The urchin dropped her voice to a whisper. “There is a place where I keep my money. Because coins are like rabbits. You put them together in the right way, and they multiply.”

                “Perhaps I should introduce you to Wigandus.”

                She grabbed him by the sleeve. “Who is this Wigandus? Someone who can help me grow my money?”

                He laughed. “Excuse my rudeness. It was a private joke.”

                “Because one day the goddesses of fortune will favor me with the right chance. Or maybe I will just work very, very hard, until I have one hundred aurei.”

                “That is a great deal of gold, Giovanna.”

                “That is what the license costs, here, to buy your way into the curia, and to become a magician, or scribe, or maybe an artisan. Are you of the curia in your homeland?”

                Jacques winced; her excited exclamations were drilling into his aching skull. “Uh, no, I suppose I am of what you would call the equestrian class.”

                “Is the license cheaper, in Dotur, to join the curia?”

                “There is no license. In my homeland, a girl like you could rise in the world through talent and ambition.”

                “Truly?”

                “Truly.”

                “I would ask to move north with you, but I do not speak the language there and I hear it is very cold. Instead I will stick to my original plan, as hard as it will be.”

                Giovanna’s chirping voice no longer the worst threat to Jacques’ headache. As they drew closer to the nearest vast bronze pylon, it was eclipsed by the piercing clangs of hammers on metal.

                “If you came to Dotur I am sure you would take it over in a few short years. You will plot your rise with care, Giovanna, I hope.”

                “What do you mean?”

                “This city has a thousand ways to devour a girl like you.”

                The hammers ceased for a moment, to be replaced by chanting in the Romari High Tongue. To his half-trained ear, it seemed that the singers were divided into two groups, their haunting voices rising and falling in what Jacques recognized as an antiphonal pattern. Jacques could not tell this for sure, because a large curtain on portable stanchions had been erected around the base of the pylon. Symbolic representations of the Romari gods were embroidered across its red silk surface. Grim faced auxilliae formed another circle outside the curtain, keeping onlookers well away.

                Jacques stood well back from the scene, but climbed a short set of steps and rested in the doorway of a nearby domus. Above the crowd he had a good view of the proceedings, at least as good a view as any outside the curtain. The chanting continued to rise and fall in volume and pitch. A times it one group would pause amid a series of hammer blows, while the other continued. Then the second would pause while the first continued. Smoke rose from behind the curtain, but Jacques was upwind and could not determine the source, although the light blue color was certainly unusual.

                “The curtain is there so you can’t see the ritual they’re performing inside,” whispered Giovanna.

                “Yes, I know,” said Jacques, his eyes never leaving the scene.

                “They don’t want anyone to steal the secrets of their construction magic,” she further explained.

                “That certainly makes sense.”

                With a cry from both groups, a thick wall of smoke mushroomed into the sky, bathing the pylon in light blue smoke along its entire height. Jacques noticed, or thought he noticed, some of the smoke clinging to the pylon, almost like small serpent working their way into the ornate bronze. Dark blue flares of energy lingered along the pylon like twinkling, dark stars and then slowly went out. For moments nothing happened, then Jacques realized the ritualists were chanting again, swiftly increasing the volume and tempo.

On the pylon immediately to the north, a set of copper cables came to life, like a family of gigantic serpents. They undulated above the gawking crowd in rhythmic accord with the chanting, defying gravity, threading themselves through hollow reaching-arms protruding from the top of the curtained pylon. As they fully attached themselves the chanting slowed, and then stopped. After an instant of silence a bright blue flare ran up the pylon and down the copper line, shooting northward to the next pylon. When that pylon flared blue a cheer went up from a throng of plebeian onlookers.

                As the crowd dispersed, Jacques remained entranced. In the distance he could make a out a large coach moving silently southward. Suspended on the cable, it moved from pylon to pylon. At the head of the coach Jacques could just make out a horse’s head, it’s eyes aflame with the same blue shine he’d seen earlier. As he watched a crowd of well dressed equestrians exited the coach and descended a set of marble stairs that led to the top of the platform. They were quickly lost in the crowd to be replaced by a larger group who returned to the north. Jacques made a conscious effort to close his mouth. Self-propelled barges suddenly seemed like child’s play. His mind was still whirling with implications and possibilities when a commotion in the crowd caught his eye. He slipped Giovanna an additional coin. “Wait here for me, will you, Giovanna?”

                Outside the curtain stood Wigandus and Orientius. The Doturi merchant leaned in toward the Romari senator, who edged away as if seeking a graceful exit from their conversation. Wigandus was clearly agitated and beginning to make a scene. Behind them, workmen removed the curtain, revealing the massive, claw-like base of the pylon, gripping deep into the street like a bird of prey tightly clutching a snake. Dozens of ritualists slipped masks, censers, and strangely decorated staves into a large wooden box, which was then loaded onto a cart. A massive golden mallet was placed carefully into a silk lined box, which was, in turn, placed inside a metal strongbox. Their work done, the ritualists gathered into groups, chatting and laughing. A crew of broad-backed workmen, clad only in loin cloths, trooped past them, carrying heavy hammers and strange, box-like devices made of bronze and what seemed to be ironstone. They clambered up the side of the pylon on wooden scaffolds. Once atop the pylons, they began to secure the cables by hooking them into the box-shaped objects.

                Orientius, noticing Jacques, brightened visibly and headed his way and Jacques had to abandon his examination of the pylon.

                Wigandus dogged his heels. “If it’s a matter of remuneration, I can assure you that the North Coast League fully appreciates the value of a project such as this—“

                Orientius bore the pained look of a man laboring to seem cordial. “It is not a matter of remuneration, as I’m sure you understand. Roma is simply not in a position to share its  construction or magnetic magic—just as your empire would rightly rebuff me, were I to seek the rituals to build your self-propelled barges or bolt-throwing rifles. Isn’t that correct, Sir Gardien?”

                Jacques grimaced; any answer to the question would offend one of the two men. He pretended to be distracted by the arrival of several large carts. In each cart were marble slabs of different sizes and shapes. A third group of ritualists followed the carts and began instructing the workers where to place the slabs. So the stairs would be raised magically as well, and likely before the day is over, Jacques thought. He pulled his attention back to the senator. “I have been taking a tour of the city, to assess the current state of its governance,” he said.

                “And what have you concluded?” Orientius asked.

                “That your empire has set aside circuses for more permanent wonders.”

                “Well-answered, messenger. Perhaps your compatriot here could stand a lesson in the virtues of diplomatic indirection.” Orientius blessed them with a regal wave and padded off, joining his ritualists and workers as they traveled south to the next pylon.

                Wigandus wheeled on Jacques. “Some help you are!”

                Jacques sighed. “I’ve always thought subtlety a virtue. Particularly when demanding the impossible.”

                “Nothing is impossible,” Wigandus exploded. “You’ll see the proof of that soon enough, you cocky, libidinous lackwit.” The merchant paused and drew a deep breath, glaring at Jacques. “And speaking of your reckless choice in bed partners, I hope you derived some advantage from your tryst with Circe. What did you learn from her? I don’t suppose your thrashings with her gained us any valuable contracts or rituals?”

                Jacques counted silently to seven. “I am sorry that your discussion with Orientius disappointed you.” He turned and walked away.

                He stood with Giovanna and watched as the merchant stomped off, flanked by Hemwold and Berchtold. The troll snarled at him as they went. Giovanna slid up to him as the trio departed.

                “Giovanna, I have a new task for you. I’d like to you—very carefully, mind you—follow my friend Wigandus for a while, and tell me where he goes and who he meets with.”

                Giovanna jumped to attention. “Yes, my lord!”

                “Something tells me that I need to know how, exactly, he means to prove me wrong...”

To be continued...

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