The Duca had a feeling that if he stood there at the window of his chamber long enough he would see the Floating City sink beneath the waters there in front of him. But he also felt that he didn’t have that much time left in him. The city was dying, but so was he. He was an old man pretending to still have power, when in fact it was slipping away from him each day. This was an autumn of great discontent.
He looked out onto the streets and courtyards and buildings and canals of the city that he loved so much that he felt stronger for it than he had ever felt for his children. He loved its grandeur and he loved its areas of decay. He loved the plazas and the waterways and the stagnant backwaters. He loved each island and the buildings upon it, whether they be palazzo or shack. He loved it all and not just his own island, or the immediate vicinity of where he lived, unlike some. The city was his mistress and he thought her beautiful in all her moods and weathers. He had dedicated his life to serving the city, and knew that he had failed her. Under other circumstances it would be time to step down and spend his days writing up his history so that he had a chance to influence how he would be remembered. But that was no longer a realistic option. He knew he would have to hang onto power until it was forcibly taken from him and then throw his legacy to chance. For no legacy was as rich as honesty.
Yet his father would have been disappointed, he felt. The man who had also dedicated his life to public office and right at the end of his rule had offset all of his wise decisions with one poor decision. And that he was remembered for and that the Duca had spent much of his adult life trying to avoid replicating. And yet, here he was, standing at the window’s edge, contemplating a similar decision to his father.
He turned from the window and walked across to a bird cage that held four brightly-coloured songbirds in it. There had originally been five, but one had become slowly aggressive and had started attacking the other birds. He had let it do so for far too long before finally deciding to remove it. But the damage was done. The other songbirds huddled apart from each other, as if expecting the other bird to return at any moment. Too scarred or scared to sing for him anymore.
He opened a small door in the cage and reached in his hand slowly. The birds flittered away from him. He moved his hand around gently until he was able to coax one of the birds onto his fingers. Then he drew it out of the cage slowly, talking to it in a soft cooing voice. He brought the bird close to his face and looked at it closely. It turned its head this way and that, ducking and bobbing in nervousness. Once it would have let him kiss it on the head.
He took the bird across to the window and paused just a moment before casting it out. The surprised bird fell like a stone and he leaned out the window to watch it plummet towards the city streets below before recovering and taking to the air, rising and circling and then flying out of sight. He would like to lean further out the window and watch it, but feared he might emulate its fall – without the recovery.
What should he do with the plague people? he wondered. He had hoped that resettling them on the Isle of Sorrows would provide them the safety of the city while they were treated. But they were little better than prisoners there. No wonder so many stole across to the city and into hiding. He had been brought news that plague had appeared in many quarters. In the poorer streets and in the city jails. Should he round them all up and send them off to the Isle of Sorrows as well? Or should he have them moved further away, as Signor de Abbacio advocated? Turn the boats back or sink them out at sea. Go from house to house and find anybody with plague and have them put on old boats and towed outside the mouth of the lagoon. With luck the Othmen might even capture them as slaves, Signor de Abbacio had said, and they’d then get a taste of their own medicine – or pestilence.
The Duca went back to the bird cage and put his hand in once more. Again the birds moved away from him, reluctant to let him touch them. “I am offering you your freedom,” he said, but the birds still flitted and squawked at him. He enticed a second bird onto his hand and brought it slowly out of the cage. This one was mostly green, with flashes of red and yellow on its wings.
“Will you sing for me?” the Duca asked, but the bird just ducked its head at his words. He took it over to the window and cast it out too. This one took to the air at once and was gone in an instant. He felt a soft pang of envy. Then he went back to the cage again.
“Come to me,” he said, moving his hand about slowly, but neither of the two remaining birds would. He had to grab one, as if it was a soft fruit he was plucking from a tree. He felt the bird struggling a little in his hands and bore it to the window quickly. He opened his hand and let it recover, before holding it out, waiting for it to make its own decision to fly away. But it just stood there, bending its head and grooming its feathers.
If he even gave an indication that he was considering taking flight like these birds, Signor de Abbacio would seize control of the council at once. He would have his Djinn-slayer installed as general of the city. He may even have Othmen advisors sitting in the empty council seats before anybody could offer the slightest protest.
And he would have access to the secrets of the city that were reserved only for the Duca. Secrets that were not even shared with the Seers. What would he do with that knowledge?
“Fly away,” he said, giving his hand a shake and the bird took flight. So easily.
He went back to the cage and tried to coax the last bird to climb onto his hand. But it would not. He had to grab it too. He brought it out of the now empty cage and held it close to his face. The bird seemed scared of him. He could feel its heart beating rapidly within his closed fist. Is that what it felt like to hold a beating heart? he wondered. And would it be so easy to cast it into the air to freedom.
He wished for a moment that it was his own heavy heart that he held in his hand right now. He would like to throw it into the air and watch it take flight, lighter than the breezes and the clouds. On his death bed his father told him not only how he had torched the Isle of Sorrows, where the victims of the black lung disease had been quarantined, killing everyone there, but of the day he had decided to do it. It was something that haunted his dreams every night since, he had said.
And he told him of a woman who had come to him to beg permission to become a citizen of the city. Well, to become a citizen once more. She had renounced her citizenship to marry a Son of David and move away. She had come to him as a widow whose husband had contracted the black lung disease and now had the early signs of it herself. She also came to him as a mother, as she had a young babe with her. The son of the Son of David. And she came to him as an outcast, as her in-laws had sent her away as not a true believer.
Her name was Ruth. But he knew that, for he remembered her from when he was younger. In fact he had been quite in love with her growing up. But she had rejected him for the Son of David. And now here she was, begging him to let her return to the city of her birth, with a young child in her arms.
And he, who had strived to be a fair man most of his life, found a sudden coldness in his heart. He looked at the woman as if she was a stranger. As if her tears meant nothing to him. All he could think of was her lying with the Son of David and bearing his child.
The Duca stood there by the window, his palm open and the bird gone. He had taken her to his chamber and induced her to lie with him, and afterwards he had sent her to the Isle of Sorrows. And the next day he gave the order to purge it clean with flame. That act became his legacy and the source of his nightmares. And for his sins he contracted the black lung disease from her.
The Duca held up his hand and looked at the sores that were developing on his wrists. He would not be able to hide them soon. They would advance down his hands. They were already blossoming at his armpits, and from there would spread to his upper torso and neck. Ugly black welts that would burst yellow pus when pressed too hard.
His father’s last words to him were that he should know the agony of bearing the deaths of others on his conscience, and should never be tempted to do what he had done. It was a promise he had made him swear over and over again. And after he was gone, and he was but an unfillable empty hole in his young life, he had clung onto that vow, in memory of the man who had also loved the city more than he had loved him.
The Duca closed his hands and let his cuffs fall down over the sores on his hands. Signor de Abbacio would be delighted to know the agony he had contracted, and would certainly have him sent straight to the Isle of Sorrows. In the interests of the city’s wellbeing, of course. But, as he stood at the window, looking not down on his city now, but up in the air, searching for any trace of his songbirds, he was more concerned with knowing what his father might have chosen to do if he had stood beside him.