The Magus Conspiracy, page 8
part #1 of Assassin's Creed: The Engine of History Series
As Simeon approached the little knot of people, he caught a glimpse of what was on the table. It looked like a piece of artillery for use by toy soldiers: a mouse-sized iron contraption consisting of a trestle and a long barrel, slimmer than a cannon’s. On one side, a slim, flexible tube ran from the side of the barrel.
The countess picked up this tube between two fingers. “This is the key, to connect the drill to the boiler. Do you see? It took a great deal of trial and error to get the material right, so that the steam wouldn’t lose its power on the way to the drill.”
“What about safety?” one of the women asked. “The steam, and the recoil?”
“This is safer than anything the miners use now,” the countess said. “Mining is a dangerous business. This device will save lives and reduce injuries. I don’t know whether you’ve ever watched two men wield those enormous hammers while a third man holds the drill, his fingers exposed. It’s taxing and difficult when they’re drilling sideways or even upwards. With a steam-powered rock drill, the men stand behind it, and they are perfectly safe. Not only that, but this drill can do in a day what it used to take an entire town’s worth of men to do in a week.”
He could see why Kane, with his hunger for innovation, seemed fascinated by the countess. Ada would have liked her, too. But, like Ada, she seemed too eager to believe in her own ideas.
Simeon asked, “And where do the men work, after this machine comes to their mine?”
The countess looked at him. “Ah, always the objection to any innovation. We want things to roll on the same as they have always been, don’t we? We can’t imagine a world in which people have more leisure, more freedom. But machines won’t ruin us. After all, someone has to build the machines. Humans will be free to use their minds, once we’re freed from banging on rocks like apes to get the metal we need.” She looked at Kane, and added, “As I have told your mentor, there were those who needed to be persuaded even within my uncle’s company.”
Kane said, “The countess hit upon a brilliant method of persuasion.”
Her eyes twinkled. “Mr Kane was very impressed with how an empty-headed nineteen year-old heiress turned out not to be so empty-headed after all, when I told him what I did. No, don’t object, it’s true. I will tell you, too, Mr Straw. It was very simple. I let them see the consequences of their cowardice. I identified a seam that would be difficult and time-consuming to get at in any traditional way, and I let them try their methods to get it. After the inevitable accidents with black powder, I suggested an alternative.”
Uneasy, Simeon glanced at Kane, whose expression was inscrutable. Kane had said that the countess could be useful to them. She seemed more dangerous than useful.
Kane said to the countess, “You promised us a demonstration, I think?”
A smile broke across her face. “Indeed I did. And this is where I tell you all, gentlemen, that we are demonstrating two devices at once: my mechanical drill, and Mr Kane’s new power cell, which I am trying to convince him ought to bear his name.”
She opened a cabinet on the underside of the table and lifted out a glass jar with a bulbous bottom that made it look a little like an electric arc lamp. Simeon had seen jars like this one, in various conditions, in Kane’s laboratory: some holding a blue liquid, some with no liquid at all, some blackened, some cracked. This one had a clear orange-red liquid inside that reminded Simeon of fresh blood. The lid of the jar had three tubes of metal sticking out of the top, the one in the middle taller than the others.
“It is much more reliable than a voltaic cell,” his teacher explained to the admiring audience. “And one can use it intermittently, simply by removing the zinc from the solution of potassium bichromate and sulfuric acid.”
The countess depressed the plunger – that was the tallest of the metal tubes. Then she carefully set the jar on the table near her model drill.
“If you’ll be so kind as to bring me that lump of granite,” she said, gesturing to another table, where a large rock sat alone. One of the men picked it up and brought it to her. She set the drill in front of it and connected the wire to the jar.
Simeon had to admit it was impressive. A thin iron rod, needle-sharp at one end, drove into the granite, over and over. Every time it rebounded into the mechanism, the mechanism sent it back.
After about a minute, the countess disconnected the wire, and they all clapped.
“You can see the dent it’s made,” she said, and they could: a small divot in the rock, with no muscles flexed. Just the chemicals in a jar, driving a machine.
“The larger model is steam-powered,” Kane added. “But I believe that electrical current can be reliably harnessed to power machinery. And in fact, many of our experiments with power cells have suggested methods for using electricity itself to separate ore from rock.”
“Is there anything electricity can’t do?” said one of the women, a gray-haired lady with a soft face and violets embroidered on her collar. Just then, a gong sounded from out in the hall.
“We can’t eat it as yet,” said the countess with a smile. “But lunch is served.”
Kane and Simeon held back as the others went to lunch.
“You weren’t impressed?” Kane asked quietly.
“If electricity can drive an iron bar into rock, it can drive an iron bar into human flesh too. Is that why you wanted me to see it?”
“Christ, no, you cynic. Weapons aren’t the only things that interest me. The countess comes from an old family with a respected name, but her parents left her with no estates, after some scandal. She’s had to build her own business up, using her wits and connections. The family history reminds me somewhat of Lord Byron and his clever daughter.”
“Yes,” Simeon said casually. He didn’t want to talk about Ada. He never wanted to talk about Ada. His friendship, and his grief, were private. “So, the countess herself is what really interests you. She’s too young for you, Kane.”
“She interests me greatly, but not in that way. The Templars have a massive practical advantage over us. They understand the value of science and industry. Of money. Of investment and innovation. We are, by nature, somewhat solitary, somewhat old-fashioned, I know. But we can’t let them get ahead of us. I monitor their achievements and learn from them. That is the role I play in the Brotherhood.”
The import suddenly dawned on Simeon, and he took Kane’s elbow to hold him back. “Wait. You don’t mean – the countess is a Templar?”
“Well, she’s from a Templar family. Didn’t I tell you? Didn’t you guess?”
Simeon shook his head. “I don’t suppose I thought you’d invite me to take lunch with our sworn enemies, no.”
He regarded the slightly dowdy assemblage of natural philosophy enthusiasts walking in front of them and wondered how many of them were Templars too.
Kane raised his eyebrows. “This is what ‘hiding in plain sight’ looks like. We learn from our enemies. We strike only in the right time and place. They watch us, and we watch them, and when they strike at us, we strike back. And they know this, so they don’t strike at us when they’re weakened or rattled. Right now, since Mayr’s death, they’re very rattled indeed. And the countess is young enough to have the good sense to be more interested in advancements in science than in pointless brawling.”
Simeon shook his head. Pointless brawling? He’d slashed a man’s throat. It mattered.
“So, it’s a game,” he said. “And who’s winning?”
“That’s impossible to say until the final move, isn’t it? Come on. I can smell the roast beef from here.”
But Simeon was reeling as though he were back on board a ship in a storm. As they came out into the corridor, he walked faster, leaving Kane behind, catching up with the countess just as she was entering the dining room. He caught sight of a gleaming table, with silver covered dishes.
He looked at her, and she looked at him. Her eyes held not a hint of suspicion, but maybe she was just a consummate actress. A Templar. A member of the age-old order that killed Assassins and was ready to sacrifice ordinary people in the service of their greater good. If Assassins believed that nothing was true, Templars believed that the truth was as sharp and singular as the point of a drill. She was his enemy, just as surely as Mayr had been his enemy.
And eventually, the day might come when Kane decided it was time to strike, and he would send Simeon here to this house to drive a knife into the countess’s delicate throat.
Simeon needed clarity. He needed to think. He turned to the right and coughed a request to the doorman for his hat and coat. Ignoring Kane calling after him, ignoring the silent, curious stare of the countess, making no polite excuses, he walked out into the snowy afternoon.
•••
Simeon felt better once he was out of the house in the clean, cold air. He wished he’d brought a scarf, and his top hat did little to help his ears. But no matter. He could breathe freely out here and think more clearly.
The countess lived on a wide street that easily accommodated carriages passing each other in both directions. Out here beyond the city gates, the streets were busier than Simeon would have expected, with men and women walking briskly, the smell of hot pies in the air. It was snowing softly, which might have been the reason so many pedestrians had their collars up, their hats low and their faces taut.
However, Simeon suspected it had something to do with the sound of soldiers shouting drill commands a few blocks away. His butcher friend, Joseph Ettenreich, had told Simeon that it had not been so common to see soldiers in Vienna, back in the old days. Ever since the uprisings five years ago, back in 1848, there were always knots of them around every corner, and the emperor took any excuse for a parade.
Simeon was somewhat grateful for the military activity, as it told him in which direction he could find the glacis. Part of the ring of open ground around the central fortified city was a drilling ground. If he walked that way, he’d find the city walls, and then home – or the closest thing he had to a home. He didn’t even particularly mind that the drill blocked his way, so he had to walk around them. It gave him more time to walk and think.
It was natural to have doubts, Kane always said. In fact, it was required of an Assassin. But what was he doubting? Kane’s judgment: certainly. His own morality: absolutely. The creed itself: well, no, not when it came to it. He didn’t doubt that. He did believe that the world was a place in which something could be true one day and false the next. He was not the same man he had been the day before, a year before, a decade before. He was a collection of thoughts and experiences and sensations, all informed by his life history. If that was wisdom, then he would use that to make his own judgments.
But other aspects of the creed were more difficult to countenance. Never shed the blood of an innocent: who was innocent? So far as he knew, Countess von Visler was guilty of nothing worse than putting some miners out of work. Very likely, if Simeon were ordered to kill her, he could rationalize it by making a list of her sins. But the terrifying thing was the sheer number of people in this city – in every city – of whom that would be true.
As for the rule to never compromise the Brotherhood, well, perhaps he already had, by leaving so abruptly today. Was loyalty to Kane the same as loyalty to the Brotherhood?
Simeon climbed a stone staircase and emerged on one of the city bastions. The soldiers below were a moving sea of men whose names didn’t matter, bright colored uniforms marching amid the falling snow. They stood upright in their uniforms and their drums beat a melancholy rumble. Military music drifted up, slightly out of phase somehow, but maybe it was Simeon who was off kilter.
He walked along the edge of the bastion, looking down across the green and brown belt of the glacis to the low and scattered suburbs beyond, to where the snowy sky hid the horizon. Other people were strolling too, watching the drill below. He had decided he should change course to avoid a small clump of people up ahead of him, when he spotted a man running past him, toward the crowd – and recognized him.
It was Ettenreich, the butcher. Always so sleek and dignified, it was strange to see him running flat out. Simeon looked behind him to make sure he wasn’t being chased, but there were no obvious pursuers. Even so, Simeon picked up his own pace. Ettenreich was running for a reason.
Then the reason became clear, and Simeon fell back again, relieved. There was Libenyi, up ahead. Ettenreich must have spotted his friend and was just jogging to catch up with him and say hello. Libenyi had his back turned and was standing with the half-dozen people Simeon had been trying to avoid. He’d assumed they were watching the drill down below, but he saw now that they were looking further along the bastion, at something Simeon couldn’t see.
Something was wrong… very wrong. He’d been learning observation under Kane’s tutelage, yet he’d failed to observe something. Simeon put his hand around the knife in his coat pocket and strode toward them.
When Ettenreich caught up with Libenyi, the tailor didn’t greet him. He just waved him away like he would an irritating fly. Had they quarreled or something? Now Libenyi broke with the little crowd and strode off, and Ettenreich was staring after him, dazed or baffled.
Simeon caught sight of two uniforms – two military men, standing up ahead of the little watching crowd, alone. Gold braid and high hats. They were studying the drill below.
No, they were reviewing the troops. That young man with the serious face was the emperor.
The young and hated emperor, walking out on the bastion, a single aide at his side.
Libenyi strode toward them like a man with a purpose. He drew a knife. Tiny snowflakes fell.
Simeon was running now, trying to stop Libenyi from stabbing the emperor, here in plain view of dozens of people. There was no way Libenyi would emerge from this situation with his life and freedom. A moment. That’s all Simeon had. If he could distract Libenyi – pull him down – there was still time.
A woman saw the knife and screamed.
The scream alerted the emperor, and both he and the aide standing next to him turned. Libenyi leapt forward, his knife high, and stabbed Emperor Franz Joseph in the neck.
Chapter Eight
There was blood on the emperor’s collar, and on the hand that he raised to the wound. Blood splashed on the snowy ground too. The aide standing beside him pushed the emperor to safety and Simeon tried to do the same for Libenyi, barreling into him like a rugby player, but Libenyi just stumbled and dropped the knife.
Then there were people all around them, and after a moment’s confusion Libenyi was on the ground, blood coming out of his temple. Ettenreich held Libenyi down, twisting his arm behind his back while looking up at the crowd, as if to show them that Libenyi was no danger to anyone. And Libenyi made no sign of resisting. Simeon pushed the little crowd back. He swore to himself that the first one to land a kick or a punch on Libenyi would have to deal with him, and he could see Ettenreich making the same resolution. But nobody moved.
The aide in the greatcoat and military hat who had been standing beside the emperor walked the few steps to them. He looked at Ettenreich holding Libenyi down and said, “Good man. You’ve done the empire a great service.” Then he knelt beside Libenyi and hissed, “Was there poison on the blade?”
Libenyi’s face was down on the snowy ground. He said nothing for a long time, then, weakly: “Long live the Hungarian republic.”
The aide grimaced and stood up, drawing his saber.
“Look at what he used,” Simeon stalled. He pointed at the knife on the ground. It was, pathetically, an ordinary kitchen knife, the kind used to chop vegetables, with a plain black handle. Newly sharpened metal gleamed on both the cutting side and the top of the blade, suggesting Libenyi had given it a double edge himself.
The aide looked at Simeon dubiously, then knelt and picked up the bloody knife by the handle.
“I see no poison on it,” Simeon said.
The aide said, “The doctor will be the judge.”
Simeon turned to see who was helping the emperor – or whether he was beyond help. But he was already back on his feet, with a group of soldiers around him. They must have run up the bastion stairs when they heard the commotion.
Emperor Franz Joseph was a young man, in his early twenties, much the same age as Simeon. But the emperor looked even younger. His boyish face showed no fear, no hatred, only confusion. He held a bloody handkerchief to his neck. That stiff collar might have turned the blade just enough. But truth be told, Libenyi had struck like a man who wasn’t sure he actually wanted to kill. Simeon recognized it, the hesitation at the last moment, the slight adjustment of angle, the weakness in the blow. It was almost a mirror of the business with the fountain pen, the day he had killed Mayr. But unlike Simeon, Libenyi would not have a second opportunity to finish the job.
More soldiers came and dispersed the crowd, taking Libenyi away in shackles.
•••
Libenyi’s sister looked like him. She made Simeon a cup of tea in the small apartment she had shared with her brother. She folded up a pattern book with a pencil and pins inside it, clearing the little table so they could rest their cups. There wasn’t much else in the room: a screen, with a bed on either side of it, and a bookshelf with works in various languages. A violin case leaned against the wall – Libenyi’s, or his sister’s? He had thought he knew the man, but it was all superficial. Shared grumblings about taxes and police and the price of bread.
