Chapter XLIII

But Lorenzo could not. He wanted to spend hours walking around the vast machines around them, trying to understand how they worked. They were enormous. They were of a scale he had never imagined. Stone blocks and copper pipes and metal cogs were everywhere. It was like he had shrunk to the size of an insect and was walking around the insides of a vast and complicated machine. And all around them were statues of the ancients, like in the city above. But these were not mounted on pillars. They were standing about them, like people who had become petrified where they worked. What did they signify?

But the Shadow Master did not give him any more time to ponder it. He dragged him into the small chamber and Lorenzo saw there were controls of some kind on the wall in front of them. The Shadow Master manipulated them a moment and then said, “Ready yourself.”

“A life altering experience. And you’d better put that spring-punch glove of yours back on. You might need it.

As ever, Lorenzo didn’t quite understand what he meant, but then he felt his body growing. Not like he was turning into a giant, it was more like he was stretching, becoming thinner and thinner and climbing higher and higher. “It is disconcerting the first time,” said the Shadow Master. Lorenzo looked down at his hands, but they were already far, far down below him somewhere. He looked and saw the Shadow Master’s face had become so thin it no longer resembled a face.

“What is happening?” he tried to say, but found his mouth and tongue were too misshapen to get the words out properly. He looked at the walls of the small chamber and tried to look to its top and bottom. The top was still there above his head but the bottom was far out of sight, way, way down there where his feet were.

“Close your eyes,” said the Shadow Master. “It will help counter the disorientation. We will arrive shortly, and when we do you will need to be ready.”

“For what?” Lorenzo tried to ask him again, his mouth grown longer still than it had been a moment before.

“For anything,” he replied. “Expect the best but prepare for the worst.”

“I don’t understand,” Lorenzo tried to say.

“It will all be clear in a moment,” the Shadow Master told him, “as long as we have the timing right.”

“And if not?” Lorenzo was starting to get control of his mouth again. That was almost distinguishable.

“Too early will be forgivable, but too late will not be.” Then Lorenzo shut his eyes as he had been advised. He moved his arms and hands and they felt just normal to him, no longer stretched impossibly thin and tall. “Ready?” the Shadow Master asked.

Lorenzo opened his eyes. The chamber was normal sized again, as were they both. He felt a little giddy and disorientated. “Now your chronometer,” he said. “Get it out and be ready to activate it.” And then he drew his sword. It was a strange shape. Long and thin, with a slight curve and an even width along its length. Then the Shadow Master kicked at the wall in front of them. Nothing happened. “That wasn’t meant to happen,” he said. “Let me try that again.” He moved a little to the left and kicked once more, and this time the wall swung open in front of them like a door. Lorenzo looked out in shock. The hessian-clad men from the catacombs were climbing out of holes in the walls and falling upon the people in the room before him, stabbing them brutally. Then he realised they were in the Council chambers. He knew it from the many maps on the walls and the huge model globe of the world. And then he looked closer at the people in the room. Those at the table were the councillors. And there was the Duke and Duchess of Lorraine. And Cosimo Medici as well. He shook his head a little as if it might clear it and help make sense of this all. “Now would be a very good time to activate the chronometer,” the Shadow Master said and leapt out into the room. Lorenzo looked down at the device in his hands and then back at the Shadow Master, who was moving as if time had been slowed already. Lorenzo could only watch in amazement as he fiddled with suddenly clumsy fingers to activate the chronometer, forgetting to not hold it in his gloved hand. The man whirled like a demon, whipping his cape behind him so fast it cracked like a whip, and each time he spun past an assassin, the robed figure fell as if by magic. But Lorenzo could see the blood spilling on the floor from their insides or throats. The Shadow Master’s sword might have looked thin but it was obviously deadly sharp, severing limbs and disembowelling men with seeming ease.

It took a moment for the attackers to realise he was amongst them, and he had killed half of them by that time. The men at the table were trying to defend themselves from attack, which only made it easier for him to whip past the assailants from behind. He saw one man raise a dagger over the Duchess of Lorraine and smile before his head flew from his shoulders. The Shadow Master’s sword then whipped left, a flash of light striking down two more attackers.

One of the robed men got a lucky blow in, striking the Shadow Master with his dagger, but, seeing it coming, he actually opened his arms as if to invite it. The dagger broke on the armour beneath his clothes as if the blade was made of card and then the robed man’s legs fell out from under him as the full length of the Shadow Master’s blade ran through him before he could understand what had happened to his blade.

And then it was over. The attackers were all dead. The men at the table were still in shock, looking about them in astonishment as the Shadow Master stepped back into the small chamber. Lorenzo stood there with the chronometer in his hands. He had not managed to activate it. “I’m… I’m,,, I’m sorry,” he said, holding it up between them. “No matter,” the Shadow Master said. “It was really just to measure how fast I was. Less than ten heart beats, I’d think.”

“It was… it was…” Lorenzo said.

“Amazing, wasn’t it? You were amazing. No, perhaps courageous is better.”

“Me?” asked Lorenzo.

“Of course,” he said. “I don’t exist. Remember that. And when you explain things, you’d better make it good.” Then, as fast as he had moved amongst the assassins, he whipped his hood and cape off, had them around Lorenzo’s shoulders and had pushed him out the door into the chamber. Everyone in the room turned to stare at him. He looked down in his hands, but the chronometer was no longer there, having been replaced by the Shadow Master’s curved, bloodied sword. He heard the door close behind him with a click and imagined the Shadow Master was stretching back down to the cavern, way beneath them.

Lorenzo pushed the hood back from his head and surveyed the carnage about him. He held up his gloved hand to knock any guard across the room who might try to attack him, but no one did. There were dead and wounded men everywhere. A few of the city guardsmen were still alive, although badly wounded, and most of those at the table were uninjured, though clearly shaken. They looked at him, as if unsure if he was going to attack them or not, and he dropped the sword to the floor and lowered his gloved hand and detached it, then held up his empty hands to them. The Duke was nursing a wound on his hand. The Duchess seemed untouched and his master, Cosimo Medici, was staring at him fixedly. He could see one or two of the guardsmen grabbing for their pikes and he wondered if this was going to become another one of those “that wasn’t meant to happen” moments when the Duchess said, “You saved our lives. Who are you?”

“And how did you do that?” asked the Duke.

“Tell them nothing,” said Cosimo Medici, suddenly recognising Lorenzo. Then he heard a banging on the outer door and one of the councillors hurried over to unlock it. Things were going to move very, very quickly now, he thought and he was saved from having to explain himself until he was back inside the Medici household. And then, he knew, however he explained himself, it would need to be very, very good indeed.