Cassandra's Lantern

Chapter 1: The First Cut

The wall had been built high and of the best stone that could be bought, its strength in the depth of its footings and the quality of the mortar that bound it together. It was as much a statement of intent as a practical measure of security, keeping away many would be thieves with the mere sight of it, let alone the ominous task of successfully scaling it. Though it guarded many things of great value, perhaps the most precious of all was something that could not be slipped into a sack and spirited away in the night. Alongside its duty to guard the physical wealth of the estate that lay beyond it, the wall was also there to safeguard the knowledge that was dispensed daily upon the lawns of the great house as well.

Despite the lateness of the age and the fact that men had moved on from the need to settle all but the most important of their squabbles with violence and bloodshed, there was still the need in the mind of the nobility and those of the lower orders with the money to spare for the education of a young man to include the art of the sword. Refined down the years from the swinging of a blade almost fully a man’s height in both hands to the modern art in which a needle of tempered steel and quick reflexes were favoured, masters of fencing were valued on the quality of the techniques they could impart and the exclusive tricks they had learned in their lifetimes. To them this knowledge was more valuable than any worldly possession and so the wise kept their secrets behind walls such as this and shared them only with those who paid for their services.

Emmanuel Icarno was just such a master of the blade, so skilled in his art and prized for his ability to pass that knowledge on to his pupils that he had earned wealth sufficient to purchase an estate on the outlying islands of the lagoon and raise the wall around it. Loathe to place the reputation of his school in the hands of another, Icarno was known for scorning the fashion of employing trusted graduates to lead classes so that greater numbers could be taught and thus raise his profits. Instead he led the classes himself, from mid-morning and then late into the afternoon once the heat of the sun had faded. He did this every day, secure in the knowledge that he was the sole guardian of his teachings and in complete control of how and when they were passed on and to whom.

That surety in of itself would have been enough to assure most with knowledge of the remarkable city in which he had chosen to settle that Icarno was not a native Venetian. For a Spaniard there may have been no better security than walls of stone behind which to hide, but few citizens of Venice would have shared his trust. They may have smiled and nodded at his opulent estate, thankful for the education he was giving their favourite sons, but all the same they marvelled at the way in which anyone could believe that a city built upon the waters of a lagoon and influenced so fundamentally by the tides for its fortunes would produce minds so easily baffled.

And such was the case, on account of the tiny sliver of silver which caught the light from its ingenious hiding place between the stones of the wall.

Alone the small shard of mirrored glass that had been expertly positioned to reflect the movements of the master swordsman would have been nothing but an oddity. But in truth it was only the first in an intricate network of similar shards, each reflecting the image that it captured onto the next.

As Icarno led his pupils through the exercises on that sweltering morning in the late summer, his every movement was reflected in the surface of that shard. From there it was sent, literally at the speed of light, across the island upon which the walled estate stood and then out across the waters of the lagoon.

From there the network of shards began to dart and zigzag amongst the ever more crowded and cramped canals of the central islands, hopping over the grand canals and making its way over the heads of the population as they went about their daily chores in happy ignorance of its existence.

Lost in the chaotic avenues of towering buildings and precarious residences that housed the lower end of the city’s denizens, the chain of mirror shards began to climb ever closer to the tiled roofs. It passed balconies, shuttered windows and the sound of their inhabitants filing the air with voices raised in song, argument or prayer.