The Warring States (The Wave Trilogy) by Aidan Harte Read Free Book Online Page A

competition.I’ll need competent allies when I become Third Apprentice.’
    ‘Don’t you mean
if?’
    ‘I mean when.’
    He offered his hand. ‘My name’s Torbidda.’

    First-bloods were students to watch. He’d set a record in so quickly learning the Guild’s key lesson – that notoriety was safer than anonymity – but it would take more than one killing to impress the selectors; they had seen the passage of numerous prodigies. A few, including the current Third Apprentice, fulfilled their promise. Most, like Giovanni Bernoulli, grandson of the
Stupor Mundi
, did not.
    A fearsome season followed as Torbidda’s peers raced to catch up, but still there was more to learn than fear; there was delight, discovery and inspiration as Cadets began to discover their particular affinities for individual subjects.
    ‘… Architecture begins and ends with Man. Literally. The Etruscans compared man’s footprint with his height and replicated the ratio in their temples. See, the capita of this column, one sixth. There are no accidents. What made this idea important, anyone? You, Spinther.’
    Leto yawned. Aside from the practicalities of bridges and siege-engines, architecture bored him. ‘It was new?’
    ‘Even bad ideas are young once,’ Varro said impatiently. ‘Anyone?’
    ‘A pleasing ratio,’ Torbidda said, ‘applied consistently makes a pleasing building.’
    The Drawing Hall was a huge space embellished with a brighter touch than Bernoulli’s. It had once been a scriptorium, and the dappled light that filled it hummed of noble dreams and honeyed memories. A line drawn here had clarity as nowhere else. Before the Guild overthrew the Curia, before her engineers became soldiers, their study was innocent; you couldsee it in the spiralling plant motifs tumbling joyfully from the columns that interlaced like bending trees. The scribes had willingly shared their desks with the Guild’s draftsmen, and both celebrated the Word of God: the scribes paid homage by embellishing it, the engineers by uncovering the gears of his great work, Nature.
    The light was dispersed further by several three-braccia-wide parabolic mirrors. The artefacts, dating from the Guild’s early days, leaned against the walls like the discarded shields of some Homeric band. Inspired by fanciful legends of Archimedes, the Curia had attempted to create a weapon using giant mirrors to focus and target light. These optical experiments were discontinued after Bernoulli demonstrated water’s vastly greater potential.
    But the Maestro was gone, and the few draftsmen required now worked under the harsh mechanical lights of the factories. An age of synthesis required different men, Flaccus said; he called it Progress. Like the old scribes, these new draftsmen were copyists who looked upon original creation as vanity. If a war-machine was needed, no one sat down to draw it. Instead, one filed a request to the Collegio dei Consoli, who forwarded it to a clerk, who consulted the index and rooted out the appropriate design. But it was obvious that the age of discovery had never ended for Varro. He especially enjoyed the paradoxical aspects of architecture, the illusions employed to flood the hearts of men with joy or awe or dread. ‘See how a pillar will appear straight only if it bulges at the centre. If it
was
straight it would not
appear
straight.’
    ‘Entasis,’
said Torbidda, struggling with the Greek.
    ‘Don’t be embarrassed,’ Varro laughed. ‘It’s good to know words you can’t pronounce; a true student must outstrip his teacher’s pace!
Entasis
. What perversion that lovely word implies – that perfection displeases Man. And experience bears this out,does it not? A perfectly tuned instrument sounds
wrong;
there must be twelve uneven semitones in an octave to please our imperfect ears. Yes children, we prefer the lie.’

    While Varro carelessly imparted his eccentric doctrines, Flaccus trod a more cautious path. Any interpretation of