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

Bernoulli’s legacy necessarily favoured one of the factions at war for the Guild. The Empiricists championed the
antediluvian
Bernoulli, the youthful iconoclast, the first among a generation of enginers of equal wisdom, with all his energy, his anti-clericalism, his military triumphs. The Naturalists’ idol was the
postdiluvian
philosopher passing from mere knowledge into wisdom, soberly weighing his famous deeds and finding them petty, electing instead to remake the world after he had washed it clean. He was David
and
Goliath, joyful giant-killer and tyrant executioner. All of the Collegio and two of the Apprentices were Empiricists, so naturally Flaccus concentrated on the younger Bernoulli, skating over those later years with no stronger admonition than ‘Regrettable’.
    Expedience was the real lesson, and the Guild took only fast learners
    Torbidda wasn’t surprised to see how quickly his example was emulated; the lesson required no further explanation. As the boy who killed first (anatomical subjects didn’t count), he enjoyed brief notoriety, but others soon joined the club and the more time passed, the more gruesome proofs of the principle, the more attentive every student became in Anatomy and Military History class. Cliques formed and sundered as the lambs scrambled to find security, but the truth was plain: there was no safety in numbers, nor any place to stand aloof from the race. If the Guild was a family, it was a family of wolves, all against all. To the average citizen, this brood of killers, merciless, inventive and quick, were devils, but even Hell has itsreasons, and even in its depths there were all the games and laughter that make up childhood. After a fashion.
    And there were friendships.

    The storm was vicious enough for Ballistics to be cancelled. Cadets used free time to work on their own projects – it was good practise; in their second year they would be expected to be autonomous. While Torbidda lost himself in Wave Theory, Leto’s interests were more practical: he was designing a trebuchet that used the recoil of the throw to load its next. Torbidda had been sitting in a nook parsing a particularly thorny theorem when he had spotted the Fuscus twins surreptitiously edging towards the Drawing Room, where Leto was working alone.
    Five minutes had passed. Instead of rushing to his friend’s aid, Torbidda was walking the Halls, struggling to justify his inaction. Leto had breezed through first year so far, aside from occasional confrontations with the Fuscus siblings. His winning manner, his connections and his father’s reputation had seen to that. The only thing that fazed him was Anatomy. He could dissect cadavers perfectly well, but whether from tender feeling or sheer queasiness, he hated to work wet. Torbidda had long worried that Leto could not leap this most important hurdle. He knew he was being logical – helping someone who wouldn’t help themselves was pointless – but that didn’t make him feel any better.

    The Drawing Hall was empty. Dust motes hung expectantly in light shafts, waiting to baptise new creations with their soft veil. ‘Leto?’
    He’s not here. Just go.
    Cursing his sentimental weakness, Torbidda walked through the empty rows of desks. Automatically he glanced at his owndesk. Strange: his pair of compasses was gone. Something else too was
off
– what? He scanned the light-filled space, marvelling, in passing, at the thick iron windowpanes, wrought into the semblance of ivy. That was it— The light. The uppermost window was open.
    He prayed that the ivy was strong enough to bear him; though it groaned when he began climbing, it held fast.
    Don’t get involved.

    The roof was a rounded vault of beaten metal held fast with studs and tar that gleamed in the rain as if new. It was cold, but that wasn’t what worried him. One false step on the slippery roof would send him plummeting.
    On the top of the roof Leto sat hugging his legs, thoroughly soaked,