The Floating City Read online

  The Floating City

  Craig Cormick

  To Sharon and Caelan, who always float my city!

  I

  The story starts with a murder.

  It is a warm autumn night in the Floating City, and the waterways are still between the turning of the tides, and a little fetid. A dark gondola moves across the Grand Canal with a tall man and woman seated together in the boat. They wear ornate masks of birds, beset with tawny orange feathers and jewellery, and hold hands gently. Were there not such a large blood moon this evening it would be possible to see a soft glow emanating from where they touch.

  The gondolier also wears a mask – but his is a plain white face, as if all the features have been erased from it, except an enigmatic smile. Ahead of them is a large golden palace that seems to float on top of the water. It is ablaze with light as if there were a party for a hundred guests going on inside. But in fact it is empty except for servants. The master and mistress of the house are on their way back from a troubling meeting of the city’s Seers.

  They will need to discuss it with each other until late into the night, but for now they sit in silence, the only sound the soft splash, splash, splash of the gondolier’s oar, moving them forward.

  They are close to the palace now and the gondolier slows as he negotiates some debris in the water. It is not unknown to find barrels and logs and sometimes even a corpse floating in the canals. These are troubled times, after all. His master and mistress pay no attention as he turns the gondola a little to the side to negotiate a dark shape in the water. The reflection of the lights of the palace on the water is broken by its outline and he tries to see what it is. It is large. Perhaps a horse?

  He turns the gondola a little further away, not wanting to come too close to a putrid bloated corpse of any animal. He has seen rats sitting on such before and knows their hunger for survival would send them leaping towards the gondola. His master and mistress would surely chide him if he allowed a rat to climb into their vessel. It would be a waste of their powers to have to kill it, he knows.

  His mistress, he sees, lays her head on his master’s shoulder. She has always liked the pleasure of a gondola ride at midnight and is perhaps remembering other rides they have taken on similar warm nights. He knows that in the darkness, when their bodies touch, the unearthly blue glow it sends out makes the hairs all over his body stand up, so he would know what they were doing even if they were not half hidden under a cloak. But he has rowed their gondola for many years and his featureless mask is a mark of his discretion.

  He sees his mistress now turn her head to his master. Perhaps she is going to whisper something to him, or perhaps she is going to seek a kiss. The gondolier turns his head sideways and looks off towards the bright lights of the palace before them, and so he misses seeing the dark object in the water suddenly rise up in a hiss of foam.

  All three of them turn at once and they barely have time to make out the shape of the great beast there as it thrusts a taloned claw into the boat and rips open the throat of the Seer closest to it. It is the gondolier’s master and he gurgles something as life starts gushing out of him. The beast then reaches out to the lady, but she has one hand up to ward it away and a hot light crackles from her fingers.

  The beast gives a low roar and pulls back. Then it sinks back into the dark waters. The lady has one hand around the master’s as the light fades from her fingers. Then the soft glow is gone from where she holds his hand. His head lolls forward heavily and his now lifeless body tips to the edge of the boat and then falls into the water also.

  The gondolier, his masked face showing nothing, watches in horror as his mistress calls out after her husband and tries to stop him sinking into the waters. But he is gone. Then she sinks back into her seat in the gondola and turns her head to the palace. She knows what is going to happen. The gondolier stops the boat and tries desperately to turn it around.

  First the lights start flickering and then begin fading, but before the last window has turned black the palace crumbles apart and sinks heavily into the waters. A wave rushes at the side-on gondola and swamps it quickly. The gondolier tries to reach his mistress as she calls out and shrieks as the water bubbles around her. Then she, too, is gone.

  He alone survives to tell the story of what has happened this evening and let the city know that the stories of invading monsters living in the waterways are true. The Othmen have at their command mighty enchantment and are determined to use it to conquer their city.

  Every citizen needs to know they must be vigilant to the danger, and be willing to put their lives into the hands of the three remaining pairs of Seers. Only they have the power to defeat the Othmen and return their city to its position of power and splendour once more.

  * * *

  Vincenzo the scribe lays down his quill and reads over what he has written. He is not happy with that last paragraph and will have to rethink it. He knows he is meant to be working on his current commission – a history of the Montecchi family. Signor Montecchi who sat on the city’s Council of Ten and had three beautiful adopted daughters, Disdemona, Giulietta and Isabella – yet the manuscript of his family history has sat on a shelf above his desk, untouched for several days. For how could he work on that story when he has to tell the story of what is happening to his city? It is vital to capture the truth of it, he thinks. How could the petty trials and daily lives of three young women compare to the deaths of the city’s Autumn Seers?

  Signor Montecchi might not agree now, but surely years from this moment historians would look over this text to gain some understanding of what had transpired in his city in these dark days.

  And yet it was more than that too. Vincenzo was filled with a feeling that the world was all at odds with itself and could only realign when he was writing its story. And that was a feeling that often threatened to overwhelm the urge to eat or drink or sleep at times. A feeling that he was the only person preventing the world slipping into chaos.

  But how did you explain that urgency to a patron in a way that did not lead to you losing the commission that paid for your food and drink and gave you a roof to sleep under?

  II

  THE STORY OF DISDEMONA

  “You should obey and fear your husband,” Otello the Moor said to Disdemona, standing up from the table near the window where he had been studying his maps. “I said you must let me be.”

  “I would consider obeying my husband, but I’m unlikely to ever fear him,” she said, meeting his glare. “Yet I must ask, who is this angry tyrant I find seated at the table moping like a school child? He looks like my husband, it is true, but it can hardly be him.”

  “Do not mock me,” Otello said, trying to hide the pleasure he derived from her strong will. “I deserve your respect.”

  “You shall have it,” said Disdemona. “But come to bed and earn it.” She reached out for his hand. Otello took it and then pulled her to him and sat back down beside his maps, with her on his lap. She wore a silver silk nightdress that moved lightly against her skin as she sat there, and he felt the smoothness of her body beneath it.

  “I am not in the mood to come to bed just now,” he told her.

  “Not in the mood?” she asked with mock astonishment, leaning in closer to him. “Does my love have a fever?” She placed a hand upon his forehead. “No. Does he have some sickness in his stomach?” She poked a finger into his hard stomach muscles. “No. Perhaps he loves his maps more than he loves me?”

  “Of course not,” he said. “It is just that I am heavy with troubles and they weigh upon me too much to let me come to bed.”

  She pulled a face. The palazzo that the city had granted her husband was old and decrepit in places, but she had told him that when they wer
e in bed together they were kings and queens. Then she said, “Ah, troubles.” And she laid her head on his large dark shoulder, her light hair seeming golden in contrast. Then she felt some of the anger flowing out of him. She could always find the truth of what was worrying him, even when he did not know it himself.

  “Is it the Othmen?” she asked him.

  “Yes, it is the Othmen,” he said. “And the Council of Ten. And the Seers. And the future of the Floating City itself. So many troubles circling around my head like angry bees.”

  “Tell me,” she said.

  “I am sworn to secrecy.”

  “You are sworn to me,” she said. “My general.”

  He sat silently for a moment until she reached a hand into his shirt and took hold of his large dark nipple and gave it a twist. He said nothing and so she twisted harder. “I surrender,” he said suddenly, grabbing her hand and pulling it out of his shirt. “You should come and work for me as a torturer.”

  “I asked to come with you to the East.”

  He shook his head. “No. It was far too dangerous. We barely escaped the Othmen with our lives. Those men of ours that they captured they sawed in half while they were still alive.”

  She shuddered a little. “They are inhuman.”

  “They are very human,” he said, “but they possess inhuman abilities.”

  “What do they look like?” she asked. “They say the Othmen have horns on their heads and their bodies are covered in dark hair like a wolf.”

  He laughed. “The horns are a single spike worn on their helmets and they favour sharp pointed beards.”

  “They sound like men.”

  “They look like men.”

  “Then how did they slay the Autumn Seers?” she asked.

  Otello stared at her. “How did you hear about that?”

  “The whole city is talking about it,” she said. “Some Othmen beast rose out of the water and devoured them. Is it true?”

  He nodded his head. Just a little.

  “The whole city is in fear of them,” she said.

  “So they should be,” he replied. “They have destroyed our eastern colonies and now send ships and spies and monsters to destroy us.”

  “But they will not be able to defeat us here,” she said. “Surely.”

  “If we can protect the other Seers,” he said. “If we can form a defensive strategy against their vessels. If we can root out their spies. If we can counter their enchantments. A hundred ifs.”

  “And that’s what you have been charged with, by the Council of Ten,” she said. “Isn’t it?”

  He nodded his head again.

  “I think perhaps you have as much reason to be troubled then as the city has to be afraid.”

  They sat there together in silence for some moments. “The Othmen are enigmatic. Cruel and yet brilliant. Their jewellery is exquisite. Their textiles divine.” He reached across to a small leather pouch on the far corner of the table and said, “I have something to show you. I was saving this up, but perhaps now is as good a time as any.”

  “What is it?” she asked.

  “The Othmen call it the skin of the virgin.”

  “Is it skin?” she asked in horror.

  “The Othmen love their metaphors.”

  She watched him open the pouch and pull out a small parcel wrapped in light paper. He placed it in her hand.

  “It feels empty,” she said, giving the parcel a small squeeze.

  “Because what is inside it is as light as air,” he said.

  She knitted her eyebrows in curiosity, her eyes shining with delight as she carefully unwrapped the parcel. Inside was a silk kerchief. Or perhaps it was not silk. It felt like nothing in her fingers, like it really had been woven from air. She opened it up, wondering at the detail on it. It was embroidered with small green leaves and bright red strawberries. Such detail in each that it looked as if she could pick them off and eat them.

  “It is beautiful,” she said.

  “As are you,” he replied. “So it is a fitting gift.”

  She held it to her face to catch what felt like a tear of happiness forming there. Then she reached down and hugged him. Gave him a deep kiss. “Ah,” she said. “I think I have found my husband again. You pretend to be so angry and gruff, but it is all your armour. Inside you are loving and soft.”

  “That is a greater secret than any other held within this city of secrets,” he told her. “And I fear if anybody else should learn of it.”

  She kissed him again. “My lips are sealed. Tell me, what do the Othmen fear?”

  He thought on that for a moment and then spun her on his lap to face him. “They fear me,” he said. “They tell stories that I am twice the height of a man and my skin is black like the coals of a fire and to touch me is to be burned by me. They say that I am able to bite a man’s head off in my mouth and that I can rip a man’s arms from his torso without effort.”

  “And what else do they say?” she asked him, wrapping her arms about his neck.

  “They say that I am afraid of nothing!”

  “Then they don’t know how much you have to fear if you don’t come to bed now. And anyway, you’ll deal better with your troubles after a good night’s sleep.”

  “Are you planning to let me sleep?” he asked.

  “No. Not at once.”

  “And you’ll be wanting me to obey you?”

  “Of course.” Disdemona knew the bedchamber was the one place she was certain he would obey her. As she knew there was only one thing he truly feared. Failure in any challenge set him.

  III

  ELSEWHERE IN THE FLOATING CITY

  The room smelled of mildew and rats’ droppings and sweat. And menace.

  Half a dozen men were gathered in the dark basement of an old building in one of the more dangerous parts of the city. The basement leaked, and the men shuffled their feet amongst the puddles, trying to find drier spots in which to stand. None was entirely successful. There was a single lantern in the basement room, sending flickering shadows of the men along the wet walls. Some glanced quickly at those around then, noting scars and thick fingers and the way they stood. Clearly at home in this part of the city.

  The dancing light also showed that the men wore masks. All the same mask. White with black lines showing narrow eyes, arched eyebrows and a thin-line moustache, framing a mocking close-mouthed grin. And although grinning, the mask had a certain look of menace about it.

  The only sounds in the room were those of an incessant dripping and the coarse breathing of the men. They were also clearly used to waiting, eyes flicking about them like animals of prey. Then the sudden sound of a single furtive rodent making its way along the wall’s edge, its claws clicking softly as it scurried towards what it obviously thought to be safety. A hurtled piece of stone struck the wall just in front of its nose, startling it to change direction.

  It ran through a puddle, narrowly dodging a foot that kicked at it, and changed direction again. This time a cudgel struck the ground close to it, and it squealed and changed direction once more, making for the darkest shadows. But even the darkness was not enough to protect it from these men. It suddenly stopped, as if it had hit the wall, squealing again as the bones in its head and shoulders snapped, crunching into its brain in sharp shards.

  The man, less interested in toying with the creature than the others, lifted his foot off the dead rat and resumed his position. The men around him said nothing.

  And they waited.

  At the first sound of a door above them opening, all the men turned. Some moved hands into jerkins and grasped hold of knife handles or cudgels. Some just shifted their weight a little onto the balls of their feet. Two men came down the stairs. Both were hooded and wore dark cloaks. The one in front was thick-set and carried a lantern in one hand. In the other he carried a short sword. At the bottom of the steps the man behind him, a thin man, looked around the room and then put a hand on the other man’s arm, stepping in front of h
im. The two newcomers threw back their hoods to reveal the same white masks. In their black cloaks they seemed to float there in the darkness.

  The thin man stepped into the centre of the room, disregarding the puddles at his feet and said in a low voice, “I smell death here about.”

  Nobody moved. They could also smell the smoke of Othmen spices, or perhaps drugs.

  The thin man turned around slowly, regarding each of the men. “You are my brothers, assassins, and we shall fill the city with the smell of it.”

  IV

  THE STORY OF ISABELLA

  Isabella Montecchi sat at her large ornate desk high up in her tower room, looking out over the oceans beyond the Floating City. She loved this view. Fine tapestries and frescoes were lit by the soft light from outside, giving the room a golden hue. But she found the view out the window even more majestic. The first time her late husband had brought her into the room and showed her how she could look out beyond the cluster of the city’s floating islands, and the mouth of the lagoon, right out to the eastern sea, she knew it was a view of the world that she would always want to have.

  And now, she had the view every day, but she no longer had her husband. He had died six months ago aboard one of his many merchant ships lost to the Othmen pirates. He had been a good man, if not a little more obsessed with commerce than with romance. Other women she knew had lost men at sea and lived in vain hope that they’d somehow be miraculously found, living on a small island with wild men and strange beasts for company. Or perhaps their men had lost their memories and would come into port one day on board a strange ship and be recognized. But they were fanciful dreams, she knew. Her husband had certainly died slowly at the hands of the Othmen, who were now advancing upon their empire, cutting it off small piece by small piece. The same way they dealt with those they captured.