The Shadow Master by Craig Cormick - sample chapters

his way quickly back to Palazzo di Medici, walking past the streets where statues of the ancients stood on pillars, looking down sternly. It was as if they knew that he had been arrogant and stupid. He had betrayed all his years of teaching. There was a story he recalled about one of the ancients who stole fire from the gods to give to mankind so that they could develop civilisation and industry, and he was punished by being chained to a rock where a large eagle would come and feast on his liver, only to have it grow back each day for the eagle to rip open his flesh and eat again.

He knew it was really a metaphor, but it suddenly seemed to be no more unreal that having one’s hands turn to metal claws. When he finally reached the Medici palace he found it ringed by soldiers. It took him some time to find one who recognised him and let him through. Inside the building there were more soldiers everywhere, arming themselves and searching through rooms as if looking for hidden enemies.

He found Galileo in his chambers, calmly making sketches of some new invention. He appeared a little older to Lorenzo’s eyes than he had the day before. He was dressed in black, with a white collar, as usual, his aged figure sitting squatly on his wooden chair. His skin seemed a little greyer. His fingers and limbs moved a little slower. Even his nose seemed a little more swollen, to Lorenzo, and his beard a little greyer, also, and his hair had surely receded a little more. Or was it just that he had been up all night once again, working on some fabulous device? All around him were cogs and wheels and lenses that he could assemble the most amazing things out of, and then disassemble again so that no one else could ever copy them. Only Cosimo the Great himself had copies of the final machines, and he guarded them closely.