The Empire of Glass - Andy Lane [75]
Steven sighed as he remembered arriving at one of those piers.
How long ago had it been? One day? Two? It seemed that when you were a time traveller, time lost all meaning to you. Events seemed to crowd together until your life was a succession of freeze-frames: run, hide, fight, run, hide, fight. He was tired. He wanted to stop, just for a while. Just for a rest.
The Doge's guards pushed past him and began clearing a path through the crowds of Venetians and foreign travellers. Two of them appeared to have acquired a horse from somewhere, and were leading it over. Steven gazed up the crumbling red brick of the bell tower. This was it. Make or break.
"Please, lead the way," the Doge's dry voice murmured behind him. Steven took a deep breath, and walked across the flagstones towards the portico. He could feel the eyes of the crowd on him as he walked. No doubt they were wondering what he was doing there. He was beginning to wonder the same thing himself.
At the portico he turned to see the Doge and his advisers following like a row of chicks. The black-clad advisers were bent over as they walked, and their little nodding heads reminded him of the gondolas. He sniggered, and the Doge shot him a dark glance.
"My apologies," Steven muttered, coughing into his handkerchief.
"The belfry is small," the Doge said. "You will demonstrate your spyglass to us one at a time." He gestured to one of the guards.
"Starting with me."
After an uncomfortable moment while Steven waited for someone to go first, he realized that he should be leading the way. The shadowed portico led immediately onto a narrow ramp that spiralled around the inside of the tower. Bell ropes hung down its centre. Steven began to climb. Within ten steps his calf muscles were beginning to ache and within twenty his breath was hissing in his ears. By the time he got to thirty steps he could feel the thudding of his pulse in his ears and he had lost track of how many revolutions around the tower he had made.
By the time he got to the top of the bell tower, sweat was running down his face. He stood in the cold breeze for a moment, his eyes closed, the sound of the crowd far below just a murmur in his ears.
When he opened his eyes, he found himself on a square wooden platform surrounded by stone pillars and topped with a pointed roof in which bells gleamed. Through the pillars Steven could see all the way across Venice. Gilded domes and roofs glowed in the sunlight while whitewashed walls were tinted a rosy pink. Flocks of pigeons wheeled and swooped in a pattern too large to appreciate from any aspect except above. Beyond the city, beyond the island, the view reached to the distant white-capped mountains in one direction and the mist that hid the far reaches of the lagoon in the other.
Steven's heart was still thudding in his ears, and he took a deep breath to calm it down. It didn't help: the pounding just got louder.
For a moment he started to panic, until he realized that the wooden platform of the bell tower was vibrating in time to the thudding. He turned towards the source of the noise when, from the dark hole in the floor that led to the ramp, the Doge appeared.
On a horse, led by one of his guards.
"Have you been up here before?" he murmured, not making any effort to dismount.
"Er... no, your most Serene Highness," Steven stammered.
The Doge raised his eyes and gazed upward, into the pointed roof.
"But you must have heard these bells ring out across Venice, tolling sunrise, noon and sundown, calling councillors to Council and senators to Senate?"
"Of