Railroad to Zanzibar Volume I: Florence and Genova (section 3)

Claire stood still and the one knife she had left fell from her shaking hand. She swayed as if she might fall over, and blinked once or twice, then seemed to come back to herself. She said to the Ottolenghi woman, “Do you now perform precisely as I say, or whatever should befall me, I will surely come for you as well.”

She was an accidental exile. Claire was visiting the garden district when the storm came to Zanzibar. She was a carefree youth, pampered and beautiful. The cloud heaved her on its mighty shoulder – Claire and her electric cart, the gold palanquin – and carried them east across a quarter of the world.

When she landed, she was somewhere between Florence and Genova, two city-states fighting an endless war. Worse, they were fighting it with swords and spears. Claire is a patricia. By law, she needs at least a railroad train to return to Zanzibar with dignity befitting her rank.

Claire is scarcely more than a girl, strong of will and too young to understand what can and can’t be done. Cursing the grim force of history, she will bend her hosts toward peace, and dominion, and the leap from the age of bronze to the age of steam. She is ready to steal anything, even the bones of the dead, to get home again. Her only slogan is: The exile must return.

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In this section, Claire travels the road toward Florence, meeting noblemen and soldiers, priests and queens and madmen. She makes terrible discoveries about the capacity for violence, in men, in women, and in herself.

She said, “But why should you choose me from all the others?” The fat man said, “Why it is obvious, don’t you think? You are foremost among the ranks of those who break things.” Claire quailed in her terror and said, “O Stranger, why should you think I am foremost among the ranks of those who break things?” And the man smiled his idiot’s smile and said, “Because you are trying to break the world.”