Queen of Candesce (27 page)

 

Garth could see it all. They'd tied his hands behind him and stood him near the body of the man who'd come with him to the roof. From behind him came the sounds of Sacrus's forces mopping up on the lower floors of Liris. Prisoners were being led onto the roof under the direction of Margit, who had climbed up the ladder with ferocious energy a few minutes before.

Garth had turned away when his daughter stepped onto the roof behind her.

Turning, he saw what was developing under the shadow of the building, and despite all the tragedy it made him smile.

A dozen horses, each one at least ten feet tall at the shoulder, were stepping daintily but rapidly through no-man's-land. The closely packed thornbushes and tumbled masonry were no barrier to them at all. Each mount held two riders except the one in the lead. Venera Fanning rode that one, a rifle held high over her head. Garth could see that her mouth was wide open—mother of Virga, was she howling some outlandish battle cry? Garth had to laugh.

“What's so funny, you?” A soldier cuffed him on the side of his head. Garth looked him in the eye and nodded in Venera's direction.

“That,” he said.

After he finished swearing, the man ran toward Margit, shouting, “Sir! Sir!” Garth turned back to the view.

Sacrus had taken Liris with a comparatively small force and were now depleted on the Spyre side of the building. The bulk of the council army was wheeling in that direction, pushing back the few defenders on the barricades. They'd take the siege ladders on that side in no time. It shouldn't have been a problem for Sacrus; they now held the roof and could lower ladders, ropes, and platforms to relieve their own forces from the other side of the building. Now that they knew where the council army was going, their ground forces had started running back in that direction from the world's edge. This seemed safe because they had a large force below no-man's-land to block any access from the direction of the roundhouse.

But Venera's cavalry had just crossed
over
no-man's-land and were now stepping into the strip of cleared land next to the building. Without hesitation they turned right and galloped at the rear of the Sacrus line. Simultaneously those council troops fronting the roundhouse assaulted them head-on.

A hysterical laugh pierced the air. Garth turned to see Margit perched atop the wall. She was staring down at the horses with a wild look in her eye. “I'm seeing things in broad daylight now,” she said, and laughed again. “This is a strange dream, this one. Things with four legs…taller than a man…”

Selene reached up to take Margit's arm but the former botanist batted her hand aside. Stepping back, her face full of doubt, Selene looked around—and her eyes met Garth's. He frowned and shook his head slowly.

Angrily, she turned away.

The twelve horses stepped over a barricade while their riders shot the men behind it. The horses were armored, Garth saw, although he was sure it wouldn't prove too effective under direct fire. Sacrus's men weren't firing, though. They were too amazed at what they were seeing. The beasts towered over them, huge masses of muscle on impossibly long legs, festooned with sheet metal barding that half-hid their giant eyes and broad teeth. The monsters were overtop and past and wheeling before the defenders could organize. And by then bullets and flicking hooves were finding them, and they all fell.

Margit stood there and watched while the commanders on the ground shouted and waved. The other men on the rooftop stared at the fiasco unfolding below them, then looked to Margit. The seconds dragged.

In that time the horses reached a point midway between the bottled-up council leadership and the Sacrus force below no-man's-land. Now they split into two squads of six. Venera led hers in a thunderous charge directly at the men who had pinned down Guinevera and the Liris army.

Selene jumped onto the wall beside Margit. She stared for a second, then cursed, and whirling, shouted, “Shoot! Shoot, you idiots! They're going to—”

Margit seemed to wake out of her trance. She stepped grandly down from the wall and frowned at the line of prisoners that had been led onto the roof. She strolled over, loosening a pistol at her belt.

“Where is Venera Fanning?” she shouted.

A sick feeling came over Garth. He watched Margit walk up and down the line, saw her pause before Moss, sneer at Samson Odess, and finally stop in front of Eilen.

“You were her friend,” she said. “You'll know where she is.” She raised the pistol and aimed it between Eilen's eyes.

Garth tried to run over to her but a soldier kicked his legs out from under him and only the light gravity saved him from breaking his nose as he fell. “She's right there!” Garth hollered at Margit. “Riding a horse! You were just looking at her.”

Margit glanced back. Her eyes found Garth lying prone on the flagstones.

“Don't be ridiculous,” she said with a smile. “Those things weren't
real.
”

She shot Eilen in the head.

Venera's friend flopped to the rooftop in a tumble of limbs. The other captives screamed and quailed. “Where is she?” shrieked Margit, waving the pistol. Now, too late, Selene was running to her side. The younger woman put her hand on Margit's arm, spoke in her ear, tugged her away from the prisoners.

As she led Margit away Selene glanced over at Garth. It was his turn to look away.

There was a lot of running and shouting then, though little shooting because, he supposed, the men on the roof were afraid of hitting their own men. Garth didn't care. He lay on his stomach, with his cheek pressed against the cold stone, and cried.

Someone hauled him to his feet. Dimly he realized that a great roaring sound was coming from beyond the roof's edge. Now the men on the roof did start firing—and cursing, and looking at one another helplessly.

Garth knew exactly what had happened. Venera had broken the line around Guinevera's men. They were pouring out of their defensive position and attacking Sacrus's force beneath no-man's-land. That group was now itself isolated and surrounded.

He wouldn't be surprised if Venera herself had moved on, perhaps circling the building to connect up with the main bulk of the council army. If she did that, then none of the ladders and elevator platforms to this roof would be safe for Sacrus.

“Come on.” Garth was hauled to his feet and pushed to the middle of the roof. He coughed and realized that black smoke was pouring up from the courtyard. The prisoners were wailing and screaming.

Margit's soldiers had set the cherry trees alight.

“Get on the platform or I'll shoot you.” Garth blinked, and saw that he was standing next to the elevator that climbed Liris's cable. Margit and Selene were already on the platform, with a crowd of soldiers and several Liris prisoners, including Moss and Odess.

He climbed aboard.

Margit smiled with supreme confidence. “This,” she said as if to no one in particular, “is where we'll defeat her.”

 

Venera looked down from her saddle at Guinevera, who stared at her with his bloody sword half-raised. “You spoke out of turn, Principe,” she called down. “Even if I wasn't Buridan before, I am now.”

He ducked his head slightly, conceding the point. “We're grateful, Fanning,” he said.

Venera finally let herself feel her triumph and relief, and slumped a bit in her saddle. Fragmentary memories of the past minutes came and went; who would have thought that the skin of Spyre would
bounce
under the gallop of a horse?

Scattered gunfire echoed around the corner of the building, but Sacrus's army was in full retreat. Their force below no-man's-land had surrendered. No one had any stomach for fighting anyway; Sacrus and council soldiers stood side by side, exchanging uneasy glances as another long slow undulation moved through the ground. Council troops were swarming up the sides of Liris, but there was no sound from up there and an ominous flag of black smoke was fluttering from the roofline.

Seeing that, Venera's anxiety about her friends returned. Garth, Eilen, and Moss—what had become of them during Sacrus's brief occupation? Her eyes were drawn to the cable that stretched from Liris up to Lesser Spyre. It seemed oddly slack, and somehow that tiny detail filled her with more fear than anything else she'd seen today.

Closer at hand, she spotted Jacoby Sarto walking, unescorted, past ranks of huddling Sacrus prisoners. He looked up at her, his face eloquently expressing the unease she too felt.

Another undulation, stronger this time. She saw trees sway, and a sharp
crack!
echoed from Liris's masonry wall. Some of the soldiers cried out.

Guinevera looked around. Ever the dramatist, his florid lips quivered as he said, “This should have been our moment of triumph. But what have we won? What have we done to Spyre?”

Venera did her best to look unimpressed, though she was worried too. “Look, there's no way to know,” she said. That was a lie: she could feel it, they all could. Something was wrong.

A captain ran up. He saluted them both but it was almost an afterthought. “Ma'am,” he said to Venera. “It's…they're waiting for you. On the roof.”

A cold feeling came over her. For just a second she remembered lying on the marble floor of the Rush admiralty, bleeding from the mouth and sure she would die there alone. And then, curled around herself inside Candesce, feeling the Sun of Suns come to life, minutes to go before she was burnt alive. She'd almost lost it all. She could lose it all now.

She flipped down the little ladder attached to her saddle and climbed down. Her thighs and lower back spasmed with pain, but there was no echo from her jaw. She wouldn't have cared if there had been. As a tremor ran through the earth Jacoby Sarto reached to steady her. She looked him in the eye.

“If you come with me,” she said, “whose side will you be on?”

He shrugged and staggered as the ground lurched again. “I don't think sides matter anymore,” he said.

“Then come.” They ran for the ladders.

All across Spyre, metal that had been without voice for a thousand years was groaning. The distant moan seemed half-real to Venera, here at the world's edge where the roar of the wind was perpetual; but it was there. Spyre was waking, trembling, and dying. Everybody knew it.

She put one hand over the other and tried to focus on the rungs above her. She could see the peaked helmets of some of Guinevera's men up there and was pathetically glad that she wouldn't have to face this alone.

Sarto was climbing a ladder next to hers. Even a month ago, the very idea of trusting him would have seemed insane to her. And anyway, if she were some romantic heroine and this were the sort of story that would turn out well, it would be her lover Bryce offering to go into danger at her side—not a man who until recently she would have been perfectly happy to see skewered on a pike.

“Pfah,” she said, and climbed out onto the roof.

Thick smoke crawled out of the broad square opening in the center of the roof. Black and ominous, it billowed up twenty feet and then was torn to ribbons by the world's-edge hurricanes. The smoke made an undulating black tapestry behind Margit, her soldiers, and their hostages.

The elevator platform had been raised six feet. It was closely ringed by council troops whose weapons were aimed at Margit and her people. Venera recognized Garth Diamandis, Moss, and little Samson Odess among the captives. All had gun muzzles pressed against their cheeks.

A young woman in a uniform stood next to Margit. With Garth's face hovering just behind her own Venera could be in no doubt as to who she was; she had the same high cheekbones and gray eyes as her father.

Her gaze was fixed on Margit, her face expressionless.

“Come closer, Venera,” called Margit. She held a pistol and had propped her elbow on her hip, aiming it casually upward. “Don't be shy.”

Venera cursed under her breath. Margit had managed to corral all of her friends—no, not all. Where was Eilen? She glanced around the roof, not seeing her among the other newly freed Lirisians. Maybe she was downstairs fighting the fires; that was probably it….

Her eye was drawn despite herself to a huddled figure lying on the roof. Freed of life, Eilen was difficult to recognize; her clothes were no longer clothes but some odd drapes of cloth covering a shape whose limbs weren't bent in any human pose. She stared straight up, her face a blank under the burnt wound in her forehead.

“Oh no…” Venera ran to her and knelt. She reached out, hesitated, then looked up at Margit.

Black smoke roiled behind the former botanist of Liris. She smiled triumphantly. “Always wanted an excuse to do that,” she said. “And I'd love an excuse to do the same to these.” Her pistol waved at the prisoners behind her. “But that's not going to happen, is it? Because you're going to…” She seemed to lose the thread of what she was saying, staring off into the distance for a few seconds. Then, starting, she looked at Venera again and said, “Going to give me the key to Candesce.”

Venera glanced behind her. None of the army staff who knew about the key were here. Neither was Guinevera nor Pamela Anseratte. There was no one to prevent her from making such a deal.

Margit barked a surprised laugh. “Is this your solution? You thought to do a trade, did you?” Jacoby Sarto had stepped into view, paces behind Venera. Margit was sneering at him with undisguised contempt.

“That man-shaped
thing
might have been valuable once, but not anymore. It's not worth the least of these fools.” She flipped up the pistol and fired; instantly hundreds of weapons rose across the roof, hammers cocking, men straining. Venera's heart was thudding painfully in her chest; she raised a hand, lowered it slowly. Gratefully, she saw the council soldiers obey her gesture and relax slightly.

She ventured a look behind her. Jacoby Sarto was staring down at a hole in the rooftop, right between his feet. His face was dark with anger, but his shoulders were slumped in defeat. He had nothing now, and he knew it.

“Your choice is clear, oh would-be queen of Candesce,” shouted Margit over the shuddering of the wind. “You can keep your trophy, and maybe even use it again if you can evade us. Maybe these soldiers will follow you all the way to Candesce, though I doubt it. But go ahead: all you have to do is give the order and they'll fire. I'll be dead—and so will your friends. But you can walk away with your trinket.

“Or,” she said with relish, “you can hand it to me now. Then I'll let your friends go—well, all save one, maybe. I need
some
guarantee that you won't have us shot on our way up to the docks. But I promise I'll let the last one go when we get there. Sacrus keeps its promises.”

Venera played for time. “And who's going to use the key when you get to Candesce? Not you.”

Margit shrugged. “They are wise, those that made me and healed me after you…” Her brows knit as though she were trying to remember something. “You…Those that made me—yes, those ones, not this one and his former cronies.” She nodded to Sarto. “No, Sacrus underwent a…change of government…some weeks ago. People with a far better understanding of what the key represents, and who we might bargain with using it, are in charge now. Their glory shall extend beyond merely cowing the principalities with some show of force from the Sun of Suns. The bargain they've struck…the forces they've struck it with…well, suffice it to say, Virga itself will be our toy when they're done.”

An ugly suspicion was forming in Venera's mind. “Do these forces have a name? Maybe—Artificial Nature?”

Margit shrugged again, looking pleased. “A lady doesn't tell.” Then her expression hardened. She extended her hand. “Hand it over.
Now.
We have a lot to do, and you're wasting my time.”

The rooftop trembled under Venera's feet. Past the pall of smoke, Spyre itself shimmered like a dissolving dream.

She'd almost had the power she needed; power to take revenge against the Pilot of Slipstream for the death of her husband. Enough wealth to set herself up somewhere in independence. Maybe she was even growing past the need for vengeance. It was possible she could have stayed here with her newfound friends, maybe in the mansion of Buridan in Lesser Spyre. Such possibilities had trembled just out of reach ever since her arrival among these baroque, ancient, and inward-turned people. It had all been within her grasp.

And Margit was right: she could still turn away. The key was hers and with it untold power and riches if she chose to exercise it. True, she would have to move immediately to secure her own safety, else the council would try to take it from her. But she was sure she could do that, with Sarto's help and Bryce's. Maybe Spyre would survive, if they spun its rotation down in time and repaired it under lesser gravity. She could still have Buridan, her place on the council, and power. All she had to do was sacrifice the prisoners who stood watching her now.

The Venera Fanning who had woken in Garth Diamandis's bed those scant weeks ago could have done that.

She reached slowly into her jacket and brought out the slim white wand that had caused so much grief—and doubtless would be the cause of much more. Step by step she closed the distance between herself and Margit's outstretched hand. Venera raised her hand and Margit leaned forward, but Venera would not look her in the eye.

Selene Diamandis put her foot in Margit's lower back and
pushed.

As the former botanist sprawled onto Venera, bringing them both down, Selene pulled her own pistol and aimed it at the face of the man whose gun was touching Garth's ear. “Father, jump!” she cried.

Margit snarled and punched Venera in the chin. The explosion of pain was nothing compared to the spasms she usually got there so Venera didn't even blink. She grabbed Margit's wrist and the two rolled over and away from the platform.

“Lower your guns,” Selene was shouting. Venera caught a confused glimpse of men and women stepping out of the way as she and Margit tumbled to the edge of the roof by the courtyard. Nobody moved to help her—if anyone laid a hand on either her or Margit, everyone would start shooting.

Margit elbowed Venera in the face and her head snapped back. She had an upside-down view of the courtyard below; it was an inferno.

“That red looks good on the trees, don't you think?” Margit muttered. She struck Venera again. Dazed, Venera couldn't recover fast enough and suddenly found Margit standing over her, pistol aimed at her.

“The key,” she said, “or you die.”

A shadow flickered from overhead. Margit glanced up, said, “What—,” and then Moss collided with her and the two of them sailed off the roof. In the blink of an eye they were gone, disappearing silently into the smoke.

No one spoke. On her knees, gazing into the fire, Venera realized that she was waiting like everyone else for the end: a scream, a crash, or some other evidence that Margit and Moss had landed. It didn't come. There was only the dry crackle of the flames. Someone coughed and the spell was broken. Venera took a proffered arm and stood up.

It was Samson Odess who had helped her to her feet. A short distance away Garth Diamandis was hugging his daughter fiercely as the remaining Sacrus troops climbed down from the platform. The building was swaying, its stones cracking and grinding now. The whole landscape of Spyre was transforming as trees fell and buildings quivered on the verge of collapse. Soldiers and officers of both sides looked at one another in wonder and terror. Their alliances suddenly didn't matter.

Odess pointed to the grandly spinning town-wheels miles overhead. “Come on,” he said. “Lesser Spyre will survive when the world comes apart. It'll all fall away from the town-wheels.”

Venera followed his gaze, then looked around. The little elevator platform might hold twelve or fifteen people; she could save her friends. Then what? Repeat the standoff she'd just undergone, this time at the docks? Sacrus's leaders were there. They probably held the entire city by now.

“Who are you going to save, Samson?” she asked him. “These are your people now. You're the senior official in Liris—you're the new botanist now, do you understand? These people are your responsibility.”

She saw the realization hit him, but the result wasn't what she might have expected. Samson seemed to stand a little taller. His eyes, which had always darted around nervously, were now steady. He walked over to where Eilen lay crumpled. Kneeling, he arranged her limbs and closed her eyes so that it looked like she was sleeping with her cheek and the palm of one hand pressed against the stones of Liris. Then he looked up at Venera. “We have to save them all,” he said.

It seemed hopeless, if the very fabric of Spyre was about to come apart around them. Even burying the dead in the thin earth of their ancestral home seemed pointless. In hours or minutes they would be emptied into the airs of Virga. The alternative for the living was to rise to the city, to probably become prisoners in Lesser Spyre.

The air…

“I know what to do,” Venera said. “Gather all your people. We might just make it if we go now.”

“Where?” he asked. “If the whole world's coming apart—”

“Fin,” she shouted as she ran to the edge of the roof. “We have to get to Fin!”

 

She mounted her horse and led them at a walk. At first only a trickle of people followed, just those who had been on the rooftop, but soon soldiers of Liris and Sacrus threw down their weapons and joined the crowd. Their officers trailed them. Guinevera and Anseratte appeared, but they were silent when anyone asked them what to do.

As they passed the roundhouse Bryce emerged with some of his own followers. They fell into step next to Venera's horse but, while their eyes met, they exchanged no words. Both knew that their time together had ended, as certainly as Spyre's.

In the clear daylight, Venera was able to behold the intricacies of Greater Spyre's estates for the first and last time. Always before she had skulked past them at night or raced along the few awning-covered roads that were tolerated by this paranoid civilization. Now, atop a ten-foot-tall beast striding the narrow strip of no-man's-land between the walls, she could see it all. She was glad she had never known before what lay here.

The work of untold ages, of countless lives, had gone into the making of Spyre. There was not a square inch of it that was untouched by some lifetime of contemplation and planning. Any garden corner or low stone wall could tell a thousand tales of lovers who'd met there, children who built forts or cried alone, of petty disputes with neighbors settled there with blood or marriage. Time had never stopped in Spyre, but it had slowed like the sluggish blood of some fantastically old beast, and now for generations the people had lived nearly identical lives. Their hopes and dreams were channeled by the walls under which they walked—influenced by the same storybooks, paintings, and music as their ancestors—until they had become gray copies of their parents or grandparents. Each had added perhaps one small item to Spyre's vast stockpile of bric-a-brac, unknowingly placing one more barrier before any thoughts of flight their own children might nurture. Strange languages never spoken by more than a dozen people thrived. Venera had been told how the lightless inner rooms of some estates had become bizarre shrines as beloved patriarchs died and because of tradition or fear no one could touch the body. More than one nation had died too as its own mausoleum ate it from the inside, its last inhabitants living out their lives in an ivy-strangled gatehouse without once stepping beyond the walls.

Now the staggered rows of hedge and wall were toppling. From half-hidden buildings came the sound of glass shattering as pillars shifted. Doors unopened for centuries suddenly gaped revealing blackness or sights that seared themselves into memory but not the understanding—glimpses, as they were, of cultures and rituals gone so insular and self-referential as to be forever opaque to outsiders.