The Shadow Master Read Online Free PDF Page B

we been invaded?”
    â€œOnly by hysteria,” the old man said. “Which will prove a much harder foe to fight than any army.”
    â€œWhy?” Lorenzo asked. “What has happened?”
    The old man put down his quill pen and looked at the young man. “There was an assassination attempt made upon Cosimo Medici in the cathedral this morning. His brother Giuliano is slain. Cosimo has been wounded, but not severely.”
    Lorenzo’s face showed his shock. Galileo watched his apprentice and then said, “So, what can we assume from this using logic?” Lorenzo stammered for a moment. “Well there will be vengeance on the assailants.”
    â€œOf course,” said Galileo.
    â€œAnd who is responsible?” asked Lorenzo.
    â€œThe Lorraines are being accused of the attacks,” said Galileo.
    Again the shock showed on Lorenzo’s face. “But… but… that means…”
    â€œIt means civil war. It means an end to the peace accords within the city walls.” Lorenzo nodded his head, but he was thinking of Lucia. He was feeling a hole slowly growing in his heart where the butterfly had been. She would now be separated by rows of armed soldiers that would proclaim him a mortal enemy. He could not expect to see her at service again and could not expect to be able to climb up her tower wall unseen again. He felt sick in his stomach. Perhaps she would be taken to a nunnery where he would never see her again.
    â€œAnd where was the attack?” Galileo asked him.
    â€œYou said in the Grand Cathedral,” he replied.
    â€œWhich means?”
    â€œI don’t know. What?”
    â€œInside the sanctity of the Grand Cathedral,” Galileo said.
    Lorenzo nodded his head, as if he knew what that meant, but Galileo could see that he didn’t. “And that means the rules of order have been broken,” he told him. “ Daemonicus ex machine . We are entering a time when we will be ruled by demons.”
    Â 
    Â 

V
    â€œBreak another finger,” Cosimo Medici said, staring fixedly at the man tied to the seat before him.
    â€œThey are all broken already,” the torturer said nervously. But still the man refused to speak. Or even scream. It was unnatural, he thought. The man was either drugged or insane. They were the only people in his experience who could tolerate the pain. But they all talked in the end.
    Cosimo Medici took two steps towards the stairs up to the half-demolished tower above them, then turned and came back. He wanted to leave the man there, dead or half-dead, for the Lorraine men to find when they came back to resume their demolition of the Medici tower. The cost of losing a ship was the loss of a tower that the Lorraines would use the stones from to build their own tower somewhere in their own part of the city. It was like moving pieces around a chessboard, this continual tearing down and building of towers in the Walled City.
    A servant fussed over Cosimo’s bandage, insisting that it be changed, but Cosimo kept waving the man away. He wanted to be present when the assassin gave up the names of his employers. He wanted to hear him say the name, “Lorraine”.
    The machine that they had him strapped to was a primitive thing, not like the wonderful torture cabinets made of metal cogs and sharp spikes that were in the basement of the Medici Palace, but this one would suffice. It was basically a wooden rack that had been roughly constructed to tie the man to. The art was going to be in the instruments used on him. Torture was a fine art, Cosimo the Great had long ago decided, and needed an experienced artisan to practice it. As one would only employ the best sculptors to extract the best sculpture from a block of marble, so one should only employ the best torturers to extract the best confession from a man. He had admired the Medici torturer’s work for many years, watching the way he could extract a confession