CHAPTER 12
Flaccus marched proudly along the top of the aqueduct, one of the many that fed the canals. The day was windy and getting dark, but hardly enough to merit the flickering torch he carried. The twelve children followed the Grand Selector like a trail of mourners, their robes and yellow ribbons fluttering. The aqueduct was the oldest structure above ground in Concord – only the sewers rivalled its antiquity – but Torbidda knew enough about Etruscan architecture to trust its stability.
He had less faith in his new classmates. He felt conspicuously vulnerable beside the third-years, a songbird in an eagle’s eyrie. A competitive tension had already settled over the small group, but for him they reserved special hostility. They had put in their time, won their position by merit; he heard them arguing about what species of cheat he was, whether it was patronage or skulduggery that had enabled him to join their table.
Only Agrippina spoke directly to him. ‘You don’t like heights?’
‘Heights I don’t mind. It’s the water. It doesn’t care for me.’
Agrippina took this as a joke. ‘I’m the same with dogs, got bit once. You fell in?’
‘Not technically. My mother, before she had me, she got … sick.’
‘How so?’
‘Her mind was ill. She claimed that a pseudonaiad visited her to warn her that the child she carried was “dry”. The best thing, it advised, was to kill herself. She jumped into the canal. They pulled her out half-drowned and raving. I protected her from my father, and when I was older from herself, but no matter what I did she said I was an abomination. She got rid of me as soon as she could.’
Flaccus had stopped by a set of narrow steps that wound around one of the aqueduct’s massive supporting pillars. ‘If you’re quite finished, Sixty?’ He looked around the class and brandished his torch in an apelike manner. ‘Fire is a club. Water is a scalpel. Engineers can increase that power by funnelling it into narrow canals, by letting it fall from heights. Our task is to harness that pressure by older means. Some of you are too sceptical, some insufficiently so. Water Style is about force, precision and – yes, belief. As we descend we will probe the very edges of Natural Philosophy. Keep your wits about you.’
The twelve followed Flaccus down the steps. Torbidda was last, trailing slowly, looking at the intersecting net of aqueducts.
‘What is it?’ Agrippina said.
‘All that water. Why did Concord never became a sea power?’
‘Is it all that surprising? To Bernoulli, water was something to be controlled. To sail is to put oneself in the sea’s hands. Besides a fleet’s not much use without a harbour.’
‘We’ve turned rivers on our enemies. Why not send one to join the sea? We’re slaves to geography until we do.’
‘I’ll be sure to remedy that when I wear yellow. Let’s get through today before conquering the world, shall we?’
They raced each other until they caught up with the rest. Halfway down, the stairs stopped winding around the pillar and plunged into it through an arch. The steep descent continued within and the darkness became so total that Flaccus’ torch became the single point of light. They emerged into a chamber somewhere far below the pillar’s base and continued through several more until they came to one much larger.
‘Welcome to History’s graveyard,’ said Flaccus.
‘He’s enjoying this a bit too much,’ Agrippina whispered to Torbidda.
As Flaccus lit the cressets they saw it was a deep, high-ceilinged place, too damp to be dusty. Tall pillars divided the space and between them stood spectral totems, statues shrouded in pale, half-rotted sheets.
Flaccus stopped at one and waited for the class to assemble around him. ‘This was one of the Guild’s first factories, long before Forty-Seven, back when Natural Philosophers were the Curia’s loyal servants, when Concord’s finest minds were enslaved by idiots. There is no better place to learn humility.’ And saying that, he pulled away the sheet.
The statue depicted Saint Barabbas, identifiable by his conventional symbol of a dagger half-concealed in his cloak. ‘These statues were meant to “decorate” the Molè, like lice infesting some noble beast’s skin. Those who carved them gladly tumbled them during the Re-Formation – heady times. This cemetery of saints are the ones who got away.’
Flaccus breathed out and suddenly struck the sculpture’s torso with a flat palm. The impact echoed around the vaulted roof and when it dissipated, there was a growing sound of fracture. The sculpture cracked into thirds and the head, torso and fist-gripping-dagger smashed as they hit the floor separately.
‘A rock’s destiny is the same as ours: to be dust. I merely helped it achieve that potential.’
The impression the demonstration had made on the Candidates swiftly dispelled; the Grand Selector was too obviously pleased with himself.
‘How?’ said Agrippina.
‘It’s hard to explain.’ He pursed his lips. ‘See, Time has a direction: after night comes morning. The Etruscans, clever buggers they were, created a martial art that harnessed that flow. It’s what made them so strong.’
‘Yet their empire fell,’ said Torbidda, looking at the broken statue.
There was a flicker of displeasure before Flaccus composed himself and returned to his Sage-like pose. ‘Well, night follows morning, doesn’t it? When the darkness fell, the Curia managed to hold onto a mangled version of Water Style, but it was as degraded as their Hebrew. Eventually it too was forgotten. Then, from the ashes, two powers rose up. Our war with the Rasenneisi ebbed and flowed for a generation, until he was born.’
‘Bernoulli,’ said one of the Candidates reverently.
Agrippina rolled her eyes.
‘Bernoulli,’ repeated Flaccus in a stage-whisper. ‘He rescued Concord from darkness and Water Style from the mystics.’
‘How?’ Agrippina asked again.
Flaccus cleared his throat. ‘By returning to first principles, I suppose. He interrogated the element itself until it confessed its secrets.’
Torbidda looked around uneasily, but none of them had been in Varro’s class the day of the incident. Flaccus led them deeper into the chamber and stopped in a space surrounded by five water-worn columns. In the centre was a puddle fed by a steady barrage of drips from the ceiling and leaks pouring down the columns. He turned before their footsteps had finished echoing.
‘Anyone know where we are now?’
Torbidda said, ‘Under the main canal?’
‘That’s right,’ Flaccus said, again slightly annoyed. ‘You can’t hear it, but it’s there, like a great wind.’ He pointed to the roof. ‘When you’ve learned more you’ll feel it in your bones. Now, do as I do. Do not disturb the water.’
He entered the circle and where he stepped, ripples did not spread out. ‘If you fight against it, your energy dissipates in thousand directions. Go with it—’
He slammed his foot down suddenly and the puddle exploded into a thousand floating drops. A Candidate with a toe in the puddle went flying back into a pillar; the rest were buffeted by a momentary gale-force wind. Just as suddenly, the drops rained down around Flaccus.
Do as I do.
A simple, effective method. The only drawback to the repetitious exercises that ate through the morning was that the Candidates never got to explore alternatives, or make mistakes. Flaccus corrected faults so intolerantly that it became difficult to do the most elementary things. But despite their teacher’s limitations, these children knew how to learn. By the first day’s end, the canal’s water was barely audible; within a week, it roared.
Each day they practised, each session extending as their stamina improved. The enervated Candidates at the high table in the refectory were a diverting spectacle for first- and second-years. The regular absence of two of the Candidates was remarked upon.
They worked until Agrippina gave in to exhaustion, then Torbidda continued alone. He had most to learn, so he practised longest, rising early, working till late. Agrippina confessed that she could hardly relate to old friends any more, and Torbidda sympathised. He saw Leto rarely, and when they met it was as if years had passed in the interval. Leto was excelling in Military Applications, but Torbidda could muster little enthusiasm for his tales of siege and stratagem.
The more he practised, the louder the current became. It drowned out the din of ordinary life. A shadow had slipped between his eyes and the world; it made everything that had once seemed important fade to grey. Torbidda knew that Candidacy entailed sacrifice, and he had resigned himself to seeing his other studies suffer, but instead he excelled as never before. Impossible problems were effortlessly solved, new connections made, the paradoxes of Bernoullian Wave Theory no longer benumbed him. He understood with new depth. How was unclear, and Flaccus had no answers: to him, Water Style was sets and drills; he certainly didn’t believe they were harnessing the power behind the Wave. He blithely exposed the Candidates to dangers he could not see, and it changed them in ways that they didn’t understand. The loud fell silent, the subtle became frankly violent.
One morning Agrippina and Torbidda discovered they had had the same dream, of sinking into cold water and darkness. They realised they could easily lose themselves, and swore to pull each other back if the other was going too deep.
For lack of such a partner, the other Candidates suffered. As weeks turned to months, casualities mounted: two were murdered, two died in a suicide pact and two more were expelled (one had become incapacitated, the other insane).
‘They broke because they were weak,’ was Flaccus’ pat, unvarying explanation. Although he didn’t know what, he knew that there was something in the depths. His solution was to avoid it. ‘You can’t draw on what’s down there. Once It feels your presence, it’ll draw you in and consume you. So learn to float and concentrate on controlling the water’s flow. Ignore the rest.’ Constant pressure was his answer: ‘If you wish to master any wild animal, you break it.’
‘You don’t think it’s possible that Water has more than animal instinct?’ Torbidda asked. ‘That it has some sort of higher intelligence?’
‘No. Intelligence is revealed by election, discrimination. Water is a slave to its nature.’
‘Men are no less bound by causality’ – Torbidda pursued his question – ‘and perhaps more so. We can’t choose to make effects precede cause, but the pseudonaiades exist in a state where Time is liquid—’
‘Bah! The anthropomorphic theory didn’t sound any less preposterous when it came drooling from Bernoulli on his deathbed. If the pseudonaiades could act on the past, they wouldn’t still be our prisoner. And if they could see the future, they wouldn’t have let us capture them.’
‘Not necessarily,’ said Torbidda. ‘They could be obliged to act a certain way, though aware it will be disastrous.’
‘Obliged by what?’
‘I don’t know,’ Torbidda admitted, ‘some force stronger than Time’s arrow—’
‘Stop embarrassing yourself. I told the Apprentices you had a child’s understanding of Wave Theory. Nothing’s stronger!’
The last Candidates were too exhausted to sneer at Torbidda, but only Agrippina took his side. ‘Then perhaps they know their bondage has a grander purpose.’
Flaccus rounded on her. ‘“Purpose?” I thought better of you. Soon you’ll be talking about God’s plan for us.’ Flaccus was extra-hard on Agrippina; he saw her solidarity with Torbidda as rank insubordination. He wanted the Candidates at each other’s necks, not cosying up together. ‘Water Style’s not the secret of the ages. It’s a way to fight. It won’t get you to Heaven but it might keep you alive through Conclave.’