The Shadow Master Read Online Free PDF

rise above his station. Use them to rise above the very city and climb Lucia’s tower. Science would help him understand what it was that drew him to Lucia so. It was something he needed to understand, though even after having been with her now, he could never hope to explain it to another. Even Galileo. Now they had met. They had talked. They had touched. Something wonderful had happened between them. It was so powerful that he felt that he had emerged into a changed version of his city. As he felt changed himself. He could still feel where Lucia’s skin had touched his. Could still feel the fluttering inside his chest where something had transformed. He was both frightened and awed by it. And an invasion of the city, or a battle, seemed minor by comparison. He placed one finger to his chest, where he had felt the flesh open. It was more amazing than watching the metal gloves and all their cogs and wires melding with his hands and feet when he put them on.
    He suddenly stopped walking. The gloves! He had left them in Lucia’s tower. He felt a sudden sense of dread. Heard the bells tolling disaster loudly. His feet felt very heavy as he made his way quickly back to Palazzo di Medici, walking past the streets where statues of the ancients stood on pillars, looking down sternly. It was as if they knew that he had been arrogant and stupid. He had betrayed all his years of teaching. There was a story he recalled about one of the ancients who stole fire from the gods to give to mankind so that they could develop civilisation and industry, and he was punished by being chained to a rock where a large eagle would come and feast on his liver, only to have it grow back each day for the eagle to rip open his flesh and eat again.
    He knew it was really a metaphor, but it suddenly seemed to be no more unreal that having one’s hands turn to metal claws. When he finally reached the Medici palace he found it ringed by soldiers. It took him some time to find one who recognised him and let him through. Inside the building there were more soldiers everywhere, arming themselves and searching through rooms as if looking for hidden enemies.
    He found Galileo in his chambers, calmly making sketches of some new invention. He appeared a little older to Lorenzo’s eyes than he had the day before. He was dressed in black, with a white collar, as usual, his aged figure sitting squatly on his wooden chair. His skin seemed a little greyer. His fingers and limbs moved a little slower. Even his nose seemed a little more swollen, to Lorenzo, and his beard a little greyer, also, and his hair had surely receded a little more. Or was it just that he had been up all night once again, working on some fabulous device? All around him were cogs and wheels and lenses that he could assemble the most amazing things out of, and then disassemble again so that no one else could ever copy them. Only Cosimo the Great himself had copies of the final machines, and he guarded them closely.
    Galileo’s latest interest was in reflecting light and images. He was convinced he could capture images in some way. Freeze time into a single moment. It was incredible, but so many of his ideas were incredible. As his apprentice, Lorenzo had learned more than he could ever have learned in fifty years at school. And the master used his young and steady hands, and good eyes, to manufacture and assemble many of his experiments. The old man’s eyes were failing, as was his steady grip, which was as closely a guarded secret as his inventions themselves.
    â€œAh, there you are,” the old man said, glancing up at Lorenzo, which was his usual greeting to the boy.
    Lorenzo could not say anything for some time and waited for the old man to ask about the missing metal gloves. But he did not. And he did not ask him where he had been. He was glad for being saved the need to lie. “What is happening?” Lorenzo asked Galileo. “The city is in an uproar! Have