PART FOUR
May
CHAPTER ONE
As he had expected, the sanctuary was busy. Even the streets outside were full of aimless people, as if Florence had been smitten with a plague of insomnia. He had dismounted and loosened the girths before one of the inevitable horse urchins appeared to hold his reins.
'Business is good tonight?' he asked.
'
'His name is Smeorach. He won't cause you trouble.' He thought of adding, 'And if I don't come back before dawn, he is yours,' but of course no one would believe the boy. 'He needs water.'
He walked stiffly over to the door, feeling a huge load of fatigue settling on his shoulders. When the attack came, it would come from so many directions at once that he would be as bewildered as anyone. From then on there would be no central command, only terror and bloody struggle. He would have little more to do than try to die as bravely as other men. He had done everything he could do, and it would not be nearly enough.
The interior was a vast darkness, packed with unseen humanity, many of them singing along with the choir that stood before the altar at the end of the long nave. That was where the candles burned, illuminating the altar and the incarnation on the throne — which was a small child at the moment. The heady odor of incense could not hide the reek of too many people, suffocating heat, the palpable oppression of dread. Alas, poor Florence, doomed to join the ghostly ranks of cities Nevil had razed. Weep for her!
Men did not normally visit the sanctuary wearing swords and carrying steel helmets. He began to edge his way forward, trying not to frighten people or disturb their singing. Finding he was making little progress, he stopped, and quietly said, 'Help?'
The elderly man in front of him turned around. 'Is it not about time you asked our help?' He was stooped and toothless and ragged; he did not smell very pleasant, but the air around him had taken on a pearly shimmer.
'I have been busy, Holiness.'
'We are well aware of what you have been doing. Come with us.'
When the incarnation led him, the crowd parted unasked, people moving out of the way without realizing that they were doing so. They first went forward, toward the altar, and then over to one side. Above them the great dome soared unseen. Toby's guide halted at an insignificant door near the north entrance.
'Go up, Tobias, all the way to the top. We shall meet you again there.'
He bowed, but the old man was already just an old man again, looking around in surprise. Toby began to climb the stairs.
It was a long climb for a man in full battle gear, and the night was sweltering. He was puffing hard when he emerged on the gallery around the lantern at the top of the great dome, fifty spans above the ground. Another incarnation was waiting there for him, an elderly woman. In the darkness, she was an indistinct, humped little shape.
The view was awe-inspiring. He could overlook everything — the dark and silent streets far below, the blank no-man's-land beyond the walls, and the whole valley of the Arno, which twinkled with myriad campfires as if half the stars of heaven had fallen. The cooks were already preparing breakfast so the troops could fight on full stomachs. Probably the guns would be ready by dawn to begin the brutal business of battering down the walls. It was surprising that the Fiend's demons had not begun their attack already.
He had never failed to take a city that defied him, nor had he ever shown mercy to the inhabitants.
'What are your plans, Captain-General?' asked the tutelary. 'The damage so far has been serious but not unendurable. Tell me of the Allied forces that will arrive to lift the siege.'
'Allies?' Toby laughed bitterly. 'Milan's army is guarding Milan, Rome's guards Rome, Venice's Venice. They would not listen. They would not cooperate. Nevil will pluck them one by one. We are but the first.'
'So this failure is as serious as it looks?'
Did the spirit expect him to deny the obvious?
'I see no hope at all. The fault is mine, and I accept the blame.' He would not plead for mercy when he did not deserve it. He would not even beg for a quick death, for that would be too great a favor when everyone knew how the Fiend would treat the citizens after he took the city. Whatever form of execution the Florentines might decree for Toby Longdirk would be infinitely more merciful than anything the Fiend would do to him if he caught him. 'I shall be surprised if the city lasts beyond sunset, Holiness.'
The eastern sky was perceptibly lighter than the rest. Traitors were traditionally executed at dawn, but if the failed captain-general was to be subjected to some pretense of a trial, he would apparently live through this dawn and die another day. He wished the tutelary would just throw him in a cell and let him sleep, although that might mean he would fall into the Fiend's hands. It would be better to die on the battlements. Meanwhile, the responsibility was still his, so he ought to be down there on the walls, inspecting the sentries, guarding against one of Nevil's sneak dawn attacks like the Bloody Sunrise that had destroyed Nuremberg.
The incarnation had fallen silent, staring out motionless at the night as if the tutelary had gone away on other business and forgotten to summon the woman back to inhabit her own body. Toby paced restlessly off along the gallery, half-wishing the darkness would fade so he could see the enemy's deployments; wishing much more that it would never lift, that this one night would go on for ever and ever, preserving fair Florence in a bubble of time, a butterfly in amber eternally safe from the forces now poised to destroy her.
When he returned to his starting point, the woman had disappeared. The tutelary had made no farewells, pronounced no sentence, granted no forgiveness. He still did not know why it had summoned him to this aerie in the middle of the night, and he could not guess what he was supposed to do next — report to a dungeon in the palace of justice, or go off and lead the defense of the city through an endless day of fire and blood? The one option closed to him was sleep.
Puzzled and irritated, he walked around again. The eight ribs of the octagonal dome and the eight corners of the lantern joined across the gallery in stone arches. He counted them as he walked and at eight concluded he was now alone. There was no one else there — no one human, for a blur of white in the darkness and a breeze in his hair became an owl settling on his shoulder. Startled, he jumped. Then he reached up to stroke a finger over her downy breast. She made her odd little purring noise.
'Chabi! I'm glad you're back. I was afraid the Fiend's archers would get you.' The Fiend's demons would be a greater threat. They must be all around the city now, like his army, and they would know she was more than merely owl.
A faint golden glow in the nearest arch heralded the return of the incarnation, apparently following him around the lantern. Why would a tutelary play childish tricks? 'We hope you recognize the honor she pays you,' said the tuneless voice. 'For a shaman's familiar to befriend anyone else is close to a miracle.'
'As long as she doesn't sick up a dead mouse in my ear, I don't mind her.'
'Have you made progress, Holiness?' asked Sorghaghtani's voice from his other side. Where had she come from? She did not seem winded as if she had climbed all those interminable stairs. He was glad she was safe, too. Safe for the moment, at least. She was even smaller than the woman.
'None,' the tutelary answered. 'He has forgotten.'
'Forgotten what?' Toby snapped. What were these two plotting? Shaman and tutelary? What an unholy combination! Or a too-holy combination. He had never considered this pair as likely partners, and the idea disturbed him.
'If you remembered you would not need to ask, Tobias. Why did the Fiend come to Florence? Why did he not start with Milan or Venice?'
'Isn't that obvious? Because of Blanche. Having the suzerain here must have tempted him, Nevil's wife and daughter even more so, but I suspect he could have ignored them if they had kept their heads down. Even when
