City of Stars (5 page)

‘How would they know?' asked Georgia.

‘By the colours,' said Cesare simply, pointing to the neckcloth he was wearing. It was the same red and yellow that Georgia had seen on one of the banners in the streets of the Ram. She realised that she was wearing one too, another badge of loyalty. She shook her head. It was like street gangs in Los Angeles.

‘Can't you be independent?' she asked. ‘I mean, not belong to any Twelfth?'

‘Not belong to a Twelfth?' said Cesare incredulously. It reminded Georgia of the way Russell said ‘does not compute' about anything he didn't understand.

‘Everyone in Remora is born into a Twelfth,' Cesare tried again. ‘Even if a baby comes unexpectedly while the woman is visiting in another part of the city, she will have travelled with a sack of earth from her Twelfth so that it can be spread under the bed and the child can be born on its own native soil.'

Up until now, Georgia had imagined the city as being like a collection of fanatical football club supporters, but now she began to see that it was something far deeper.

‘OK,' she said. ‘You have two close allies and one enemy. What about the other eight?'

‘Oh, it is safe enough to walk in those Twelfths,' said Cesare. ‘Would you like to visit one?'

They strolled across the Campo, which was full of stalls selling food and drink and banners and flags in a whole rainbow of colours. Georgia picked out the red and yellow ones of the Ram. She began noticing that every passer-by wore a neckcloth or some other coloured token. Some more grandly-dressed people sported satin ribbons instead.

Blue and purple, green and yellow, red and black, Cesare pointed them out and assigned them without thinking: Scorpion, Goat, Lioness. And then they passed a group of young men wearing pink and blue ribbons. Immediately they started to point and jeer at Cesare and Georgia.

‘Quick,' hissed Cesare. ‘Fishes!' He dragged her into an alley on the far side of the Campo from where they had entered it. ‘This is Archer territory; they won't follow us in here.'

The Fish boys went clattering up a neighbouring alley. ‘They've gone into Scorpion,' said Cesare, listening. ‘That's one of their allies, of course.'

‘Of course,' said Georgia sarcastically.

Cesare gave her a serious look. ‘This is not a game,' he said. ‘You need to learn these rules, if you want to be safe in Remora.'

Georgia noticed that the Twelfth of the Archer was arranged very much like that of the Ram. There were the same statues everywhere – though these were of a centaur with bow and arrows – the same square in front of a church, with its fountain in the centre. This one was called the Fonte Dolorosa, according to Cesare. He nodded to a couple of boys who passed wearing red and purple colours and they waved back. ‘Archers,' he whispered.

‘Dolorosa,' said Georgia, rolling the syllables on her tongue. ‘That sounds so sad. Why?'

Cesare shrugged. ‘I don't know. The church is San Sebastiano; maybe it's sad because of the arrows.'

‘Hang on,' said Georgia. ‘You have these churches in all the Twelfths, and saints and things, but everything is arranged according to the signs of the zodiac. Isn't that a problem? I mean in my world, the church is anti-astrology – it's a bit too much like mumbo-jumbo. Mind you, the non-believers – which is most people – think the church is mumbo-jumbo too.'

She could see that Cesare had no idea what she was talking about. So she dropped it and asked, ‘Which guild is the Archer associated with?'

‘Horsemen,' said Cesare happily. ‘We are fortunate in our allies, aren't we?'

‘Does every Twelfth have a stable?' asked Georgia. She suddenly felt as if she could really belong in this city.

‘Of course,' said Cesare. ‘Every Twelfth has its stable and its Horsemaster. They are responsible for the horse ridden in the Stellata.'

‘That's the race your dad was talking about, isn't it?' asked Georgia.

‘Yes, the Race of the Stars,' said Cesare. ‘We are running Arcangelo this year.'

‘The big chestnut?' said Georgia. ‘He's gorgeous. I wouldn't mind riding him myself. Who will be the jockey?'

‘I will be, I hope,' said Cesare modestly, but Georgia could tell he was bursting with pride.

‘The race is run in the Campo,' he went on, ‘the Campo delle Stelle.'

‘What, that circular one we just crossed?' said Georgia. ‘But it's so small! I mean it's huge for a Piazza but not for a race-track. How long does the race take?'

Cesare looked offended. ‘At least a minute and a half,' he said.

Georgia could tell from his face that she wasn't supposed to laugh. Cesare wasn't joking. This race, which was such a big deal in this extraordinary city, would be over in less time than it took to write a text message. But if she was going to come here again, she had to learn to respect its customs. And she realised she did want to come back. Very much.

As if he had read her mind, Cesare looked up at the sky. ‘It'll be dark in an hour,' he said. ‘We'd better get back to the Ram.'

Georgia sat up in bed with a jolt. She was sweating and her mother was hammering on the door.

‘Georgia, hurry up, you'll be late for school,' yelled Maura. ‘I wish you wouldn't lock your door.'

‘What's happened?' thought Georgia groggily. It was taking her a while to adjust to being back in her proper life. The prospect of a day in Barnsbury Comp. seemed suddenly unbearably dreary.

She had lain down on a rough mattress in Paolo's hayloft and fallen asleep with the model of the winged horse in her hand. The last thing she remembered was Paolo and Cesare preparing to take Merla to her refuge in Santa Fina, wherever that was.

‘I must remember to ask,' she muttered, heading for the shower. And then she realised she was still holding the little Etruscan horse. She thrust it quickly into the pocket of her sweatpants. She didn't want Russell to see it.

Whatever it all meant and wherever the horse city of Remora might really be, that little winged horse was the key to the way back to it.

Chapter 4

A Ghost

A horse-drawn carriage pulled to a stop outside the Horsemaster's house in the Twelfth of the Ram. Two passengers descended, one stiffly, moving his joints with caution. The other, much younger, jumped down with a lithe step and offered his arm for the older man to lean on. There was an obvious affection between the two. Father and son, an observer might have said, but they looked very different. The boy was slender with a profusion of curly black hair, allowed to grow long in the Talian fashion and tied back loosely with a purple ribbon. His clothes indicated wealth but not extravagance.

The older man was broad and vigorous looking, in spite of his stiffness. His hair was white and he had a distinguished look; he might have been a professor at a university, yet he had the calloused hands of one who does practical work.

The two of them now stood on the cobbles of Remora in the early morning air, looking round them in evident curiosity.

‘Anothire citee, Lucian,' said the older man. ‘And a fyne one too. Yet whatte wolde they saye if they knewe from how farre we hadde really travelled?'

The young man had no time to answer before the door of the house opened and a large, grizzled man stood before them.

‘Maestro!' he said, his eyes lighting up. ‘Well met! I'm glad to see you. And your son, too.'

The two men hugged like brothers and the Horsemaster then took the younger man into his burly arms.

‘You must meet my Cesare – you're much of an age. Come in, come in, both of you. Teresa will give you a hearty breakfast.'

Georgia passed most of the day in a daze. She didn't even notice when Russell called her Dopey at breakfast. For the first time in years she had something to think about which took her attention away from him.

She had known, even when she was there, that the star city would seem like a dream when she returned to her own world. But she knew it hadn't been a dream. She might not have had a shadow there, but she had been perfectly solid, had drunk some ale and eaten some bread and olives before settling down to sleep in the hayloft. She had thought it would take her ages to drift off, especially since she knew that Cesare and Paolo were going to move the winged horse and her mother during the night.

She would have loved to stay and be part of that adventure, but Paolo had explained that, if she remained in Talia at night, her body would be found unconscious in her bed in the morning in her own world.

‘Your parents would be frightened,' he had said. ‘They would think you were sick. You must go back and you will, as soon as you fall asleep – as long as you are holding your talisman.'

And he had been right. Whether it was the ale or having lived two days one on top of the other, Georgia soon fell into a deep sleep.

She found it very difficult waking up in her own room. Everything seemed loud and harsh – the radio blaring out the news and weather, even the toaster and kettle carrying out their morning duties and Maura checking if everyone had what they needed for the day. When Ralph's mobile rang, Georgia nearly jumped out of her chair.

But in spite of the noise and bustle, her world also suddenly seemed thin – a meaningless jumble of events and busyness without purpose and focus. Georgia realised that the formal design and the many rules of Remora, as well as its obsession with horses, made her feel oddly at home in a way she no longer seemed to be in her own world.

‘Ridiculous,' she thought. ‘I've spent one afternoon there and I don't know if I'll ever be able to get back.' And yet she couldn't stop thinking about it – the Twelfths, the Campo delle Stelle, the winged horse, Cesare. It was like being in love, but not with a person, with a whole place. This struck her with a sudden force. She had liked Cesare and he was a nice-looking boy two years older than her. Theoretically, she should have had an enormous crush on him, mad though that would have been – like falling for a young man in a Renaissance painting – but she hadn't.

It had just been so good to spend time with a boy who didn't hate her. She realised with a shock that it must be like that to have a proper brother. And for the first time she dared to think that the problems with Russell were his, not hers.

She spent the lunch-break in the library, using the school computer to look up ‘
Talia
', ‘
Remora
', ‘
di Chimici
' and ‘
Stellata
'. There was nothing under any of them, though she tried several spellings. She gave up on the computer and tried a dictionary of Greek and Roman mythology, which told her that Romulus and Remus had been the twin sons of Rhea Silvia and the god Mars.

Their birth was a shameful secret and their great uncle had thrown them in a river and stolen their grandfather's kingdom. After being fed by the she-wolf – the one bit of the story that Georgia already knew – they had been brought up by shepherds and, when grown up, had recovered their rights and decided to build a city. They couldn't agree on a site and so each twin had started his own. When Romulus had built a boundary-wall of a few inches high, Remus had jumped over it in scorn and his brother had killed him in a rage.

There was a lot more about Romulus, including the interesting fact that no one knew what had happened to his body after his death and so he had been made a god. But what really caught Georgia's eye was a small footnote that said the twins had argued about whether to call their city Roma or Remora. Georgia sat back in astonishment. So in Talia the fight had gone the other way and Remus had founded the city she had visited and it had gone on to take the place in Talia's history that Rome had in Italy's.

That means Romulus
didn't
kill Remus in Talia, she thought.

After school, she called in at Mr Goldsmith's shop. He was delighted to see her. ‘Back so soon?' he said. ‘I hope you don't want to return the horse?'

‘No, far from it,' said Georgia, who had transferred it to her jeans' pocket. ‘I love it. I wanted to ask you more about it, in fact.'

‘Ask away,' said Mr Goldsmith. ‘But first let me make us a cup of tea.'

‘OK,' said Georgia, ‘though I can't stay long – I've got a violin lesson.'

Gaetano and his father were making their tour of the stables in Remora. Wherever they went, the Remorans, although startled, were honoured by the visit. Stable after stable showed off their racing horses – the greys and the chestnuts, the browns and the bays, the roans and piebalds.

They left their visit to the Scales till last. This was tricky. The Lady and the Scales were adversaries. It had already been a little awkward in the Twelfth of the Bull, because although Niccolò and his son were lords of Giglia, the Lady's city, they were hand in glove with Remora and the Twins were the Bull's sworn enemy. These enmities and alliances were ancient in Remora; they went back centuries.

The Scales' Horsemaster, Giacomo, greeted Duke Niccolò and the young princeling cordially enough. After all, though the Lady was their foe, the Twins were one of the Scales' allies, whose own guild, strangely enough, was that of the chemists – the chimici.

Still, it irked Giacomo to see the green and purple ribbons in his stable and it took all his reserves of politeness to keep the anger out of his voice. ‘This is our mount for the Stellata, your Grace,' he said, as neutrally as he could. ‘Il Corvo.' Gaetano felt an immediate sympathy with the black horse. He was proud and highly strung like all the best Reman horses, but he was also beautiful, with strong clean lines. Gaetano would have loved to ride him.

That of course was out of the question and the Duke brought their visit to the stable of the Scales to an end as soon as he decently could.

‘That's that, then,' he said to his son. ‘Duty done. Now I've visited them all. What did you think of that one?'

‘A real beauty,' said Gaetano. ‘A pity it won't win.'

Niccolò gave him a quizzical look. ‘Prophecy now, is it? “There is no winner till the race is run” – isn't that one of Remora's most ancient sayings?'

‘Yes,' said Gaetano, ‘and that might have been true when it was first said. When the Stellata was run fair and above board – before it was all rigged in favour of our family.'

They had come back out into the Campo and automatically crossed the cobbles back to the Lady's segment. Even the Duke of Giglia wouldn't want to stand on enemy territory a minute longer than was necessary.

Niccolò frowned. This was not the sort of conversation he wanted to have in broad daylight, especially so close to the Twelfth of the Scales.

‘Let's go somewhere neutral,' he said, and steered Gaetano down the Strada delle Stelle. They walked on the Goat's side of the street, down into a little square near the Porta della Luna where there was a sleepy little inn.

‘I'm not so well known down here,' said Niccolò, ‘so we can have a quiet talk in peace.'

The inn-keeper brought a greenish wine for both of them and a large plate of sugary cakes, which only Gaetano paid any attention to.

‘There's obviously something on your mind,' said Niccolò, eyeing his son as he contemplated the cakes. ‘Do you want to tell me what it is?'

‘It's this city,' said Gaetano evasively, through a mouthful of crumbly pastry. ‘It's so false. Everything divided up so neatly and everything run according to the rules. And yet when it comes to its precious race, all the rules are broken. It's the Twelfth that can afford the biggest bribes that wins.'

The Duke looked round cautiously. Even in neutral territory, there were things best said in a low voice if they had to be said at all.

‘You know how much this city believes in omens and portents,' he said quietly. ‘If the winner isn't the Lady or Twins, they take it as a sign that our power is waning.'

‘It could be the Bull or the Scorpion or the Goat, come to that,' said Gaetano. ‘Our family rules all their cities. Or even the Scales, since Bellona's one of ours too.'

Niccolò sighed. It was of course maddening that Remora housed these ancient feudal loyalties within itself. But the tradition of each Twelfth owing allegiance to one of the twelve city-states went back centuries, much further than the di Chimici family; it couldn't be changed overnight. Of course, all its citizens were Remorans and when outside the city they had nothing but fierce loyalty to it. Two Remorans in a foreign city would sit and drink together even if they were from rival Twelfths.