16 - The Empire of Glass

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THE EMPIRE OF GLASS by ANDY LANE
PROLOGUE
July 1587
One month.
Mary Harries gazed out across the sparkling blue ocean at the departing ship. From her
position on the cliff she was looking down upon its deck - freshly scrubbed and glistening in
the hot summer sunlight. Its sails were swollen with the breeze, and it listed slightly to one
side as it began its long tack out of the harbour and its longer journey home. Gulls swooped
low around its bows and, higher in the sky, the black squiggles of larger birds were wheeling
and soaring. She couldn't tell what sort of birds they were, but there was a lot about New
Albion that she couldn't recognize.
Turning her attention back to the ship, she could see sailors scurry across the rigging like
spiders on a cobweb. One of them turned around and gazed back toward the coast, shielding
his eyes with his hand. His chest was bare, and he wore a bandana around his head. Seeing
her, he waved in big, sweeping gestures. She waved too, choking back a sob. It was Jim:
even at that distance she recognised his sun-bleached hair, drawn back in a tarred pig-tail
and bouncing against his back as his powerful arms moved. Those arms, which had pulled her
close and held her, tight. Those arms, in whose embrace she had slept on many a night.
Those powerful, tender arms.
One month.
She blinked, and the ship was blotted out by tears as if by a sudden squall. They spilled, hot
and salty, down her cheeks and across her lips, and it was like tasting the salt on Jim's skin
again as her mouth explored his body. A sudden sob made her shoulders convulse. Grief and
loss twisted her stomach, and she hugged herself despite the heat that made her dress stick
to her body, wishing that her arms were Jim's arms and her tears were his lips. But it would
never be so again.
One month.
That's how long she and Jim had been given together. That was how long it had been since
the ship docked and the colonists had emerged, blinking and unsteady, into the heavy heat
and the ever-present humidity. The voyage from England had taken three months, and of the
seven score and ten colonists who had started the journey, the inspirational words of Sir
Walter Ralegh still ringing in their ears, almost two score were now held in the bosom of Jesus.
The rest had followed Governor White onto the soil of New Albion. While he sketched the
strange new plants and the strange, rust-skinned primitives, they had built their cabins and
planted their crops. The sailors - who, on the ship, had laughed at them and called them
'puke-stockings' - watched at first, amused, but after a few days some had joined in, lending
their expertise and their strength. Mary had been cooking one night when Jim had walked over
and told her that she was beautiful. He had a sailor's directness and a sailor's weatherbeaten
face, but he had the eyes of an angel, and nobody had ever told her that before.
She had been happy, for a while. So happy that she hadn't minded rising at dawn and working
until long after the sun had set, trying to put the colony on a firm footing. Then the fever
came, and the crops showed no sign of growing, and some of the sheep that they had
brought with them from England sickened and died, and Governor White had decided to return
to England when the ship left and ask advice. And the perfect idyll of hard days working and
long nights spent in Jim's arms were at an end.
The ship was smaller now, and Mary's eyes were half-blinded by the sparkle of the sun on the
water, but she could still see Jim's arm waving. It would be six months at least before
Governor White returned, and it might not even be on the same ship. Perhaps the colony
would survive, or Good Queen Bess might decide that it was not worth sustaining. Wherever
she ended up, Mary knew that it would not be with Jim.
A movement in the sky caught Mary's attention. Glancing up, she noticed that the large birds
were swooping lower, almost as if they had been waiting for the ship to leave. She dismissed
the notion as fanciful: even in the New World, birds were just birds. Casting one last glance at
the departing ship - just a piece of flotsam, dark against the blue of the waves - she turned
away toward the trees that hid the settlement. No doubt there would be half a hundred things
to do when she got back. There always were. Governor White's daughter was almost seven
months with child now, her belly stretched like the canvas of the ship's sails, and she was
almost unable to work. That meant more for the rest of the women to do. More to do and
nothing to show for it, not even a pair of strong arms in the night.
The birds were plunging down behind the treeline now, and it occurred to Mary that they were
larger than any birds that she had ever seen before. Their bodies looked more like the shells of
crabs, and their wings were the red of fresh blood. Perhaps the tears gumming her eyelashes
together were magnifying things, or perhaps her grief at losing Jim was unhinging her reason,
but surely no bird that ever flew looked like that.
Mary began to move faster through the underbrush towards the trees, and the path that led
to the settlement. Bushes whipped at her legs, scratching her as she broke into a stumbling
run. Someone in the settlement had started to scream like a pig about to be slaughtered, and
behind the screams Mary could hear the flapping of huge wings. What was happening? What in
God's good name was happening?
She was barely ten feet from the trees when the demon settled to the ground in front of her,
furling its wings across its hard, red back. Eyes on the end of stalks, like those of a snail,
regarded her curiously.
And as its claws reached out for her, she screamed. And screamed.
And for all the years following that moment, after everything that was done to her, in her
head she still screamed.
August, 1592
Matt Jobswortham pulled back on the horse's reins, slowing his dray down by just a jot. The
streets of Deptford were crowded with people going about their business - some in fine
clothes, some in sailors' garb, some in rags - and he didn't want any of them going under his
wheels. The barrels of cider on the back of the dray were so heavy that the wheels were
already cutting great ruts in the road. They would cut through a limb with equal ease and
what would happen to him then, eh? He'd be finished for sure, banged up in prison for months
until someone bothered to determine whether or not there was a case to answer.
He glanced around, impressed as ever with the bustle of the place. Deptford was near London,
and the houses reflected that proximity. Why, some of them were three storeys or more! All
these people, living above each other in small rooms, day in and day out. It wasn't natural. He
liked coming to London, but he wouldn't like to live there. Give him his farmhouse any day.
It was a hot day, and he could smell something thick and cloying on the back of the wind, like
an animal that had been dead for weeks. It was the river of course. He'd crossed it a good
half hour before, but he could still smell it. Raw with sewage it was, raw and stinking, like a
festering wound running through the centre of the city. He didn't know how people here could
stand it.
Matt had been on the road since dawn, bringing the barrels up from Sussex. He'd been
dreaming of the cider: imagining the sharp, bitter taste of it as it cut through the dirt in his
mouth and the sewer smell at the back of his throat. Surely the landlord of the inn couldn't
begrudge him a drop, not after he'd come all this way. It was a long way back, after all. Just
a flagon, that's all he asked.
"Mary! Mary Harries!"
Preoccupied with thoughts of drink, he jumped when the voice cut across the rumble of the
wheels. It was a cultured voice, foil of surprise, and he looked around for its owner. The man
wasn't hard to find: he was ten yards or so ahead of the dray, young and fine-featured, and
he wore a black velvet jacket slashed to show a red silk lining. He was of the nobility, that
much was certain, and yet he was standing outside a Deptford drinking house with a flagon in
his hand. "Mary!" he called again. "I thought you were dead!"
Matt followed the young man's gaze. He was calling to a woman wearing plain black clothes on
the same side of the road but nearer to the dray. She gazed at the man with a puzzled
expression on her face, as if she recognized him from somewhere, but wasn't sure where.
The young man started to run toward her. "I thought you all died at Roanoake," he cried, "and
I was the only one left. What happened?"
A spasm of alarm crossed the woman's face. She took a step backward, one hand raised to
her head. "Mary!" the man called. "It is you."
She turned and ran stiff-legged out into the road, oblivious of the traffic. Her odd gait took
her straight in front of Matt's dray. He cried out incoherently but she didn't seem to hear him.
He caught one last glimpse of her face - calm and expressionless - before she fell beneath the
horse's hooves. By a miracle, the horse managed to step over her as she tried to get to her
feet. Matt heaved desperately on the reins to pull the horse in, but the momentum of the
heavy barrels pushed the dray forward, carrying the horse with it. Matt glanced down as he
passed the woman's body. She looked up at him, and there was nothing in her eyes at all: no
concern, no fear, nothing.
And then a sound cut through the air, stopping conversations and making heads turn. It
sounded like a sapling, bent to breaking point, suddenly snapping. It was a wet, final sound,
and it occurred just as the dray's front right wheel passed over the woman's leg.
The young man stopped, his face ashen with horror. Matt hauled on the reins, trying urgently
to stop the dray before its second set of wheels compounded the damage. He kept waiting for
her to scream, but there was nothing but silence from beneath the dray. Everything seemed
to have stopped in the street: faces were frozen, voices stilled. Time itself had paused.
The horse neighed loudly, jerking back onto its hind legs as the reins bit home. The dray
lurched to a halt. Matt quickly scrambled down to the rutted, dusty road, dreading what he
would find, but the sight that met his eyes was so bizarre, so unbelievable, that he just
stared uncomprehendingly for a moment, unable to take it in and make sense of it.
The woman was getting to her feet. She frowned slightly, as one might when bothered by a
mosquito. Her left leg was crushed to half its width beneath the knee, and her calf slanted at
a crazy angle to her thigh. Shards of bone projected from the wound, startlingly white against
the red-raw flesh. She started to walk, lurching wildly like an upside-down pendulum, and she
was across the road and into a side alley before anybody could think to stop her.
CHAPTER ONE
The first thing that Vicki saw when she walked into the TARDIS's control room was Steven
Taylor's hand hovering over the central, mushroom-shaped console.
"Don't touch those controls!" she snapped, her voice echoing around the room.
Steven's shoulders hunched defensively, and he glanced towards her. Gradually the echoes of
her voice faded away, leaving only the deep hum that meant the TARDIS was still in flight.
"Why not?" he asked truculently, brows heavy, jaw thrust forward. "I'm a qualified space pilot,
aren't I? These switches and levers may look complicated, but I'm sure I can figure them out.
And the Doctor's been gone for hours. He may never come back. We need to be able to fly
this thing." His fingers closed around a large red switch on one facet of the control console.
His fingers caressed it hesitantly. It was obvious to Vicki that he hadn't got a clue what he
was doing, but didn't want to admit it. "This thing must make us materialize," he added. "Once
we've landed, we can take a look around, find out where we are." He sounded as if he was
trying to convince himself as much as her.
"I think that's the door control," she said quietly.
He hesitated, his indecisive frown quickly replaced by one of exasperation. "Look, if you've got
any better ideas, let me know: Otherwise, trust me for once."
"Why can't we just wait?" she said, already knowing the answer. Because Steven was
incapable of waiting for anything, that was why. Because he'd spent so long impotently pacing
around his prison cell on Mechanus before the Doctor had rescued him that his patience had
been used up. Not that he would ever admit it, of course. Not even to himself. It was odd,
Vicki thought as she gazed at Steven's older yet somehow more innocent face, that her time
spent stranded had been perhaps the most idyllic of her life. She'd only had Bennett and
Sandy the Sand Monster for company on Dido, but she'd been content. Now, although she
was learning so much by travelling with the Doctor, that contentment had been lost. Every
moment of her life, every person that she met, demanded something of her.
"We can't just wait," Steven explained, breaking her chain of introspection, "because the
Doctor might be in trouble. The way he just... just vanished, right in front of us..." He
hesitated, and rubbed a hand across his face. He was tired. Tired and scared, Vicki realized.
He'd been alone for so long that he found the prospect of taking responsibility terrifying. 'It
was like the Doc had been kidnapped.'
"But we haven't explored the TARDIS completely yet," she said, trying to inject a note of
calmness into her voice. Getting angry with Steven didn't work - he just grew more stubborn
and defensive. "The Doctor could still be here."
"Where?" Steven challenged, hand still on the switch. The door control switch, Vicki reminded
herself. She didn't know what would happen if he pulled it while the TARDIS was in flight, but
she suspected the results wouldn't be pleasant. "We've checked the bedrooms, the food
machine alcove, the lounge -"
"What about the locked doors?" she interrupted. "The Doctor won't tell us what's behind them.
There might be more rooms, rooms that the Doctor didn't want us to see."
Steven slammed his fist against the console. "Look, we have to do something! And I still think
that if we can just materialize somewhere, we can find a trail, or a clue,"
"And what are you young people doing to my TARDIS?" a peremptory voice demanded from the
other side of the console. Steven and Vicki whirled around and gaped at the blurred, fractured
bubble of darkness that had appeared - apparently inside the wall - and at the elderly figure
within it. "Doctor!" they cried together.
He appeared to be sitting in a triangular framework, and he was frowning at them. Standing,
not without some effort, he walked forward. Behind him, both the frame and the dark bubble
were pulled apart into a coruscating web of lines which retreated into the far distance until
they were lost from sight, leaving only the solid walls of the TARDIS behind the old man's
figure.
"Doctor, we were -" Vicki began.
"Where have you been?" Steven demanded.
The Doctor fixed the space pilot with an imperious gaze. "Never mind where I've been," he
snapped, "you were about to meddle with the ship's controls, weren't you?"
"No!" Steven protested. "I... I was just trying to -"
"Steven was trying to help," Vicki said calmingly. "You vanished without telling us where you
were going. We were worried about you: we thought... Oh, I don't know what we thought.
What happened?"
The Doctor's stern expression softened, as she had known it would. The one thing he couldn't
resist was wide-eyed concern. "My dear child," he said, "of course you were worried, and I
have no right to scold you, hmm? If you must know, I've been... " He frowned. "Well, that's
most extraordinary. I can't remember where I've been. The memory has gone. All I can
remember is a dandy and a clown. A dandy and a clown." Ignoring the puzzled looks that Vicki
and Steven exchanged, he raised a hand to caress his lapel, and appeared surprised to find
that he was holding a small white envelope. "Hmm. Perhaps this will tell us something."
As Vicki and Steven watched, he opened the envelope and took out a slip of cardboard. He
peered at it for a few moments, then took his pince-nez out of his waistcoat pocket and
slipped them on. "Most extraordinary," he repeated, and proffered the card to Steven, who
took it warily. Vicki had to pull his arm down to see.
The card was small and white. On it, in very small letters, were the words:
INVITATION
Formal dress required.
R.S.V.P.
"An invitation to what?" Steven asked.
"An invitation to a mystery," the Doctor replied, frowning and looking away.
Vicki took the card from Steven. "Who gave it to you?" she asked the Doctor.
"I don't... I don't remember," the old man admitted.
"It's a trap," Steven said firmly. Vicki watched with some amusement as he narrowed his eyes,
squared his shoulders and generally tried to look heroic.
"Don't be stupid, Steven," she said, and placed the card carefully upon the top of the
translucent cylinder in the centre of the control console. "How can it be a trap if it doesn't
even tell us where to go?"
With a low hum, the collection of fragile objects in the centre of the translucent column, the
things that had always reminded Vicki of a cross between a child's mobile and a butterfly
collection, began to revolve around their central axis. The column itself began to rise and fall
rhythmically, whilst lights flashed on the console and the deep vibration of the TARDIS in flight
slowly spiralled down towards the grinding, clashing noise of landing.
"Well," the Doctor said, "it would appear that someone knows where we are going."
There was a rat on the stairs again.
Carlo Zeno came face to face with it as he rounded the corner. He was standing on the tiny
landing that lay between his own rooms on the second floor and his tenant's rooms on the
third. The rat was seven steps higher than he was, on a level with his face. Bright afternoon
sunlight streamed through the holes in the rotted window shutters, illuminating it: fat and
fearless, its black hair matted and its tail coiled like a pink worm. Zeno could even see the
avaricious, calculating gleam in its eye.
"Back to the Devil, you garbage-eating fiend," he snarled, and started up the stairs towards it,
stamping his boots on the wood. The rat watched for a moment, then calmly turned and
scuttled towards a hole in the plaster-covered laths of the wall. As Zeno advanced past the
stair, he thought he saw its whiskers twitching in the darkness. God and the Doge alone knew
how many rats infested his house. Hundreds perhaps. The scrabbling of their claws kept him
awake at night as they ran across the floor, scuttled behind the walls and scrabbled between
the joists of the ceiling. Rats were the bane of Venice. Rats and Turks.
The door to the top floor of the house was closed, and Carlo pounded on it. "I've come for the
rent!" he shouted, but there was no sound from within. Perhaps his tenant had gone out for a
walk, or to buy some food, although Carlo hadn't heard him on the stairs. Perhaps he was
asleep. Grimani the barkeeper said that the man drank until he could hardly stand up some
nights, and the widow Carpaccio across the alley said she often saw his lamp shining until
sunrise. Carlo hadn't asked what the widow Carpaccio was doing awake at that time: it was
well known in the district of San Polo that she entertained gentlemen in order to pay her bills.
Carlo, on the other hand, was forced to depend on those temporary visitors to Venice who
wanted more freedom than that offered by a hotel.
"The rent!" he shouted again, slamming the heel of his hand against the wood. "Do you hear,
you lazy slugabed?"
The door was suddenly pulled open. The room was dark, and smelled of sour wine, old fruit
and unwashed bedding. The scant light from the window down on the landing barely
illuminated the sullen figure of Carlo's tenant. His shirt was undone, and his breeches were
creased as if he had been sleeping in them.
"You fat oaf," he said in his haughty Florentine accent. "Unless you've come to tell me that
the Doge has finally granted me an audience, or that the lagoon is flooding, I'll have your
tongue for a garter."
Carlo stared blankly at his tenant's plump, bearded face for a few moments. He could barely
stop himself from picking the man up and throwing him bodily down the stairs. What incredible
arrogance! He'd been occupying Carlo's top floor and the roof platform for two weeks now,
and Carlo had yet to receive a pleasant word from him. Or any money.
"You think you frighten me with your talk of the Doge?" Carlo snapped. "If you think I'm going
to waive the rent you owe me just to curry favour then your brain is addled and your wits
have run away."
"You'll get your money when I've got mine," the man said, running a hand through his tousled
hair. "The Doge will reward me well for what I can give him."
"If I could spend your promises then I'd be eating peacock tonight. If I don't get the money
owing to me by sundown, I'll throw you and your belongings into the canal!"
Carlo turned to go, but a hand descended on his shoulder, stopping him. He turned, ready for
an attack, but his tenant had twisted his mouth into what he probably hoped was an
ingratiating smile. The expression didn't look at home on his face: the fleshy lips beneath that
beard were more suited to a sneer.
"I... please, I apologize for my manner," the man said. "I find myself embarrassed by a
temporary shortage of funds, not a position that a gentleman of noble birth and breeding,
such as myself, is used to -"
"Not too embarrassed to drink your weight in wine every night," Carlo grumbled, slightly
mollified by the man's tone. "Or do you pay Grimani in stories too?"
"- but, as I was about to say, I have just enough left to pay you what I owe." He turned
away and disappeared into the gloom of his rooms. He was muttering something beneath his
breath: elaborate Florentine curses, no doubt. Carlo heard him rummage among his
possessions for a moment, then he was back, appearing suddenly in the slice of light from the
landing like a demon on stage. "Here," he said, handing over a small leather bag with obvious
reluctance. "It should -" he winced slightly "- suffice, until the Doge pays me for my
services."
Carlo weighed the bag in his hand. The coins chinked comfortingly, and he ran through all the
things he could do with the money. He'd go and pay his own bill at Grimani's tavern, then
perhaps the widow Carpaccio might be willing to accept a few coins in exchange for an hour
or two of pleasure.
"That'll do," he said gruffly. "For now. But mind you pay me promptly next week, otherwise I'll
have the police call round! He spat to one side, making sure that his tenant knew he didn't
believe these stories about audiences with the ruling authority of Venice, then turned and
clattered down the stairs. Turning at the landing, he saw the man's eyes gleaming in the dark
gap between door and jamb. The thought put him in mind of the rat he had seen earlier.
Shivering, he crossed himself and continued round the corner and down, past his own rooms,
to the door.
As he walked out into the narrow alley that separated his house from the widow Carpaccio's,
he glanced upwards. The lip of the roof platform jutted over the edge of the roof towards a
similar platform on the widow's house. He could still remember the way she used to sit up
there for hours bleaching her hair in the bright sunlight. That was when she had been young
and beautiful, and Carlo had been younger and full of life. He used to watch her from his
bedroom window, waiting for the wind off the Adriatic to skim the roofs of the houses and lift
her skirts a few inches. Ah, the follies of youth.
He squinted for a moment. Was there something on the platform? Something long and tubular,
shrouded in a velvet cloth?
He shook his head. He had coins and Grimani had a new consignment of Bardolino wine from
the mainland. By the end of the evening, he hoped that their respective positions would be a
little more equitable.
Steven Taylor stood in the TARDIS doorway and looked around. They had landed on a beach
of mixed sand and pebbles that fell steeply to a blue sea. A few hundred yards away, a mist
hovered over the waves, hiding the horizon and turning the low sun into a dull circle. The mist
thinned overhead to reveal a purple sky. Steven couldn't tell whether it was naturally that
colour or whether it was a temporary meteorological condition.
He took a cautious sniff of air. It smelt... well, it melt like nothing else he had ever smelt. That
was one of the problems about being a space pilot. He'd gone from living in a cramped
apartment in the middle of an Earth Hiveblock to living in a cockpit in the middle of deep
space, with only the occasional night in a space station to relieve the monotony. Even his
time imprisoned on Mechanus had been spent in a small, sterile metal room. The first new
thing he had smelt since childhood had been the burning forests during the Dalek attack, and
since then he had been plunged from new world to new world, each one of which didn't smell
like anything he had ever smelt before. Things always looked like other things he'd seen,
things even sounded like things he'd heard, but smells were unique. Individual. Incomparable.
"What can you see?" Vicki asked from behind him. "Oh, get out of the way Steven."
He stepped out of the TARDIS, feeling the sand crunch beneath his boots. It was hot and
humid, and he could feel sweat prickle beneath his tunic and across his scalp.
Vicki pushed past him and walked a couple of steps towards the water. "I love oceans," she
said cheerfully. "There weren't any on Dido - not within walking distance, anyway, and I used
to dream about them."
"Don't touch that liquid, my dear," the Doctor fussed as he left the TARDIS and carefully
locked the door behind him. "It might be acid, or... or all manner of things." He slipped the key
into his waistcoat pocket, and cast a quick glance at Steven. That key had been the source
of several arguments between them. Steven felt that he should have his own key, just in case
anything ever happened to the Doctor. The Doctor dismissed the idea, claiming that Steven
was just scaremongering. The truth was, of course, that he didn't trust Steven an inch.
The one thing they were both agreed on was that Vicki shouldn't have one.
"What a wonderful place," the Doctor said, gazing around. He sniffed the air in the same way
that Steven had seen him sniff fine wines. "Salt marshes, I think you'll find. Ah, yes, and wood
smoke. There must be a settlement of some sort nearby." He walked a few steps down the
beach and bent down to pick up a dried out strand of seaweed. "No sign of tides," he said,
examining it carefully. He moved towards the water's edge. Taking a small strip of paper from
a pocket, he bent forward and dipped it in the water. "And the neutral pH indicates that this
liquid is safe. You may go paddling if you wish." He turned to find Vicki already standing
ankle-deep in the water. She smiled apologetically. He frowned and wagged a finger at her.
"Foolish child," he chided. "You might have got yourself into all sorts of trouble, and then
where would you be, hmm?"
"Sorry, Doctor." Vicki looked genuinely crestfallen. The Doctor turned to Steven. "Salt water
but no tides. What does that suggest to you, my boy?"
"No moon?"
The Doctor nodded judiciously. "Yes, or... ?"
Steven shrugged. "Or a lagoon. Is it important?"
"Most instructive, hmm? A lagoon. Yes." A breeze ruffled the Doctor's long, white hair. Steven
stared at him, wondering what the old man was getting at. Sometimes, just sometimes, it
occurred to him that the Doctor possessed a laser-sharp intelligence that he chose to hide in
vague mutterings and abrupt changes in mood and conversation, but most of the time he just
thought that the Doctor was a senile old fool.
"Doctor! Steven!" Vicki's voice cut through his thoughts. He turned, crouching, ready to
protect her from whatever threat had sprung from hiding, fight any monster that was lurking in
the vicinity, but the beach was empty apart from the three of them and the TARDIS. Vicki
was pointing out to sea, into the mist. Or, rather, into where the mist had been. The breeze
had thinned it out and shredded it, revealing sketchy details of the waterscape beyond. Near
at hand there were islands, some barely more than sandbanks with sparse vegetation, some
rocky and covered with bushes. Beyond them, scarcely more than a darker grey shadow
against the grey mist, there was a city: a fabulous city of towers and minarets, steeples and
domes, all seeming to float upon the water like a mirage.
"Ah," the Doctor said, "just as I thought - we've arrived at Venice."
"Venice?" Steven and Vicki chorused together.
"A city built on sandbanks and wooden pilings, just off the Italian coast. It sank beneath the
waves centuries before either of you were born. Well, I rather think I know where we're meant
to go, hmm? Vicki, my dear, why don't you go back inside the TARDIS and retrieve the dinghy
from the store cupboard by the food machine?"
Vicki nodded and, taking the key which the Doctor proffered, vanished inside the time and
space machine. As soon as she was out of earshot, Steven turned to the Doctor. "I don't like
this. It smells like a trap to me."
"And to me, dear boy." The Doctor nodded. "A trap, indeed. I am in complete agreement."
"And you're just going to walk into it?" Steven said, aghast.
"Whoever gave me that invitation had me in their power, and let me go," the Doctor mused. "If
this is a trap, and it has all of the classic signs, then perhaps we aren't the intended victims."
"No?" Steven frowned. "But if we're not the victims, then what are we?"
The Doctor's bright blue eyes twinkled. "Perhaps we're the bait!"
Galileo Galilei, ex-tutor to Prince Cosimo of Tuscany, Professor of Mathematics at the
University of Padua, equal of scholars and natural philosophers and heir to the mantle of Bruno
and Brahe, burped and took another swig of wine from the bottle.
Light trickled between the curtains, casting a bruised purple illumination across the strewn
clothes, piles of manuscripts and half-eaten plates of food that filled the space in the room.
Nearly sunset, then. Nearly time to start work.
That damned landlord had irritated him to the point where he had almost struck the man
down. Venice should be paying him to be there, not the other way around. Things would
change soon. Oh yes, things would change. All he needed was five minutes with the Doge on
top of the bell tower in St Mark's Square, and his fortune would be made. All of Italy - no, all
of Europe - would defer to him. The name of Galileo Galilei would resound through the ages.
He staggered across the rotting, creaking floorboards towards the tiny stairway that led
upwards, towards the platform on the roof. This place was a death-trap, what with the
galloping rot and the rats both competing to see who could gnaw their way through the
timbers fastest. One good sneeze could bring the place down around his ears.
Things had been different on his previous visits. He was used to whoring and drinking with
Gianfrancesco Sagredo in his palace on the Grand Canal, or debating natural philosophy with
Friar Paulo Sarpi in the Doge's Palace. Sagredo was in Syria now, drawing a diplomat's salary
and, no doubt, raking commissions off crooked merchants and rapacious pirates. Sarpi, by
contrast, was still recovering from the fifteen stab wounds he had suffered during the attempt
on his life by agents of the Pope. Galileo had seen the wounds, and was amazed at his old
friend's survival. One of the stilettos had entered Sarpi's right ear, passed through his temple,
shattered his jaw and exited through his right cheek. Sarpi had claimed that God was smiling
on him that day. Galileo couldn't help thinking that if that was God smiling, what must his
wrath be like?
He hauled himself up the ladder and on to the platform. The air was cold, and the platform
gave slightly beneath his bulk. Just his luck if a strut snapped, sending the greatest
philosophical mind in Christendom tumbling into the alley below. Thus did God check the
excess pride of man.
He walked to the edge of the platform, past the velvet-shrouded object in the centre and the
chair beside it, and gazed out across the city. The sky was the deep purple of grapes, and
tinged with fire along one edge where the sun had descended beneath the line of houses.
摘要：

THEEMPIREOFGLASSbyANDYLANEPROLOGUEJuly1587Onemonth.MaryHarriesgazedoutacrossthesparklingblueoceanatthedepartingship.Fromherpositiononthecliffshewaslookingdownuponitsdeck-freshlyscrubbedandglisteninginthehotsummersunlight.Itssailswereswollenwiththebreeze,anditlistedslightlytoonesideasitbeganitslongta...

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