Queen of Candesce (28 page)

And now the people were visible, running outside as the ground quaked and the metal skin of Spyre groaned beneath them. They were like grubs ejected from a wasp's nest split by some indifferent boy; many lay thrashing on the ground, unable to cope with the strangeness of the greater world they had been thrown into. Others ran screaming, or tore at themselves or one another, or stood mutely or laughed.

As a many-veranda'd manor collapsed in on itself Venera caught a glimpse of the people still inside: the very old, parchment hands crossed over their laps as they sat unmoved beneath their collapsing ceilings; and the panicked who stood staring wide-eyed at open fields where walls had been. The building's floors came down one atop the other, pancaking in a wallop of dust, and they were all gone.

“Liris's cable has snapped,” someone said. Venera didn't look around. She felt strangely calm; after all, what lay ahead of them all but a return to the skies of Virga? She knew those skies, had flown in them many times. There, of course, lay the irony: for those who fell into the air with the cascading pieces of the great wheel, this would not be the end, but a beginning. Few, if any, could comprehend that. So she said nothing.

And for her? She had saved herself from her scheming sisters and her father's homicidal court by marrying a dashing admiral. In the end he had lived up to her expectations, but he had also died. Venera had been taught exactly one way to deal with such crises, which was through vengeance. Now she patted the front of her jacket, where the key to Candesce nestled once again in its inner pocket. It was a useless trinket, she realized; nothing worthwhile had come of using it and nothing would.

For her, what was ending here was the luxury of being able to hide within herself. If she was to survive, she would have to begin to take other people's emotions seriously. Lacking power, she must accommodate.

Glancing affectionately at Garth, who was talking intensely with his red-uniformed daughter, Venera had to admit that the prospect wasn't so frightening as it used to be.

It became harder to walk as gravity began to vary between nearly nothing and something crushingly more than one g. Her horse balked and Venera had to dismount; and when he ran off, she shrugged and fell into step next to Bryce and Sarto, who were arguing politics to distract themselves. They paused to smile at her, then continued. Slowly, with many pauses and some panicked milling about as gaps appeared in the land ahead, they made their way to Fin.

They were nearly there when Buridan finally consigned itself to the air. The shouting and pointing made Venera lift her eyes from the splitting soil, and she was in time to see the black tower fold its spiderweb of girders around itself like a man spinning a robe over his shoulders. Then it lowered itself in stately majesty through the gaping rent in the land until only blue sky remained.

She looked at Bryce. He shrugged. “They knew it might happen. I told them to scatter all the copies of the book and currency to the winds if they fell. They're to seed the skies of Virga with democracy. I hope that's a good enough task to keep them sane for the next few minutes; and then, maybe, they'll be able to see to their own safety.”

The tower would quickly disintegrate as it arrowed through the skies. Its pieces would become missiles that might do vast harm to the houses and farms of the neighboring principalities; much more so would be the larger shreds of Spyre itself when it all finally went. That was tragic; but the new citizens of Buridan, and the men and women of Bryce's organization, would soon find themselves gliding through a warm blue sky. They might kick their way from stone to tumbling stone and so make their way out of the wreckage. And then they would be like everyone else in the world: sunlit and free in an endless sky.

Venera smiled. Ahead she saw the doors of the low bunker that led to Fin, and broke into a run. “We're there!”

Her logic had been simple. Fin was a wing, aerodynamic like nothing else in Spyre. Of all the parts that might come loose and fall in the next little while, it was bound to travel fastest and farthest. So, it would almost certainly outrun the rest of the wreckage. And Venera had a hunch that Fin's inhabitants had given thought, over the centuries, about what they would do when Spyre died.

She was right. Although the guards at the door were initially reluctant to let in the mob, Corinne appeared and ordered them to stand down. As the motley collection of soldiers and citizens streamed down the steps she turned to Venera and grinned, just a little hysterically. “We have parachutes,” she said. “And the fin can be detached and let drop. It was always our plan of last resort if we ever got invaded. Now…” She shrugged.

“But do you have boats? Bikes? Any means of traveling once we're in the air?” Corinne grinned and nodded, and Venera let out a sigh of relief. She had led her people to the right place.

Spyre's final death agony began as the last were stumbling inside. Venera stood with Corinne, Bryce, and Sarto at the top of the stairs and watched a bright line start at the rim of the world, high up past the sedately spinning wheels of Lesser Spyre. The line became a visible split, its edges pulling in trees and buildings; and Spyre peeled apart from that point. Its ancient fusion engines had proven incapable of slowing it safely—it might have been the stress they generated as much as centripetal force that finally did in the titanium structure. The details didn't matter; all that Venera saw was a thousand ancient cultures ending in one stroke of burgeoning sunlight.

A trembling shockwave raced around the curve of the world. It was beautiful in the blued distance but Venera knew it was headed straight for her. She should go inside before it arrived. She didn't move.

Other splits appeared in the peeling halves of the world and now the land simply shredded like paper. A roar like the howl of a furious god was approaching and a tremble went through the ground as gravity failed for good.

Just before Bryce grabbed her wrist and hauled her inside, Venera saw a herd of Dali horses gallop with grace and courage off the rim of the world.

They would survive, she was sure. Kicking and neighing, they would sail through the skies of Virga until they landed in the lap of someone unsuspecting. Gravity would be found for them, somewhere; they were too mythic and beautiful to be left to die.

Then Corinne's men threw the levers that detached Fin from the rest of Spyre. Suddenly weightless, Venera hovered in the open doorway and watched a wall of speed ivy recede very quickly and disappear behind the clouds.

Nobody spoke as she drifted inside. Hollow-eyed men and women glanced at one another, all crowded together in the thin antechamber of the tiny nation. They were all refugees now; it was clear from their faces that they expected some terrible fate to befall them, perhaps within the next few minutes. None could imagine what that might be, of course, and seeing that confusion, Venera didn't know whether to laugh or cry for them.

“Relax,” she said to a weeping woman. “This is a time to hope, not to despair. You'll like where we're going.”

Silence. Then somebody said, “And where is that?”

Somebody else said, “Home.”

Venera looked over, puzzled. The voice hadn't been familiar, but the accent…

A man was looking back at her steadily. He held one of Fin's metal stanchions with one hand but otherwise looked quite comfortable in freefall. She did recognize the rags he was wearing, though—they marked him as one of the prisoners she had liberated from the Grey Infirmary.

“You're not from here,” she said.

He grinned. “And you're not Amandera Thrace-Guiles,” he said. “You're the admiral's wife.”

A shock went through her. “What?”

“I only saw you from a distance when they rescued us,” said the man. “And then lost sight of you when we got here to Fin. Everyone was talking about the mysterious lady of Buridan. But now I see you up close, I know you.”

“Your accent,” she said. “It's
Slipstream.
”

He nodded. “I was part of the expedition, ma'am—aboard the
Arrest.
I was there for the big battle, when we defeated Falcon Formation. When your husband defeated them. I saw him plunge the
Rook
into the enemy's dreadnought like a knife into another man's heart. Had time to watch the bastard blow up, before they netted me out of the air and threw me into prison.” He grimaced in anger.

Venera's heart was in her throat. “You saw…Chaison die?”

“Die?” The ex-airman looked at her incredulously. “
Die?
He's not dead. I spent two weeks in the same cell with him before Falcon traded me to Sacrus like a sack of grain.”

Venera's vision grayed and she would have fallen over had she been under gravity. Oblivious, the other continued: “I might'a wished he were dead a couple times over those weeks. It's hard sharing your space with another man, particularly one you've respected. You come to see all his faults.”

Venera recovered enough to croak, “Yes, I know how he can be.” Then she turned away to hide her tears.

The giant metal wing shuddered as it knifed through the air. Past the opened doorway, where Bryce and Sarto were silhouetted, the sky seemed to be boiling. Cloud and air were being torn by the shattering of a world. The sound of it finally caught up with Fin, a cacophony like a belfry being blown up that went on and on. It was a knell that should warn the principalities in time for them to mount some sort of emergency response. Nothing could be done, though, if square miles of metal skin were to plow into a town-wheel somewhere.

To Venera, the churning air and the noise of it all seemed to originate in her own heart. He was alive! Absurdly, the image came to her of how she would tell him this story—tell him about Garth rescuing her, about her first impressions of Spyre as seen from a roofless crumbling cube of stone; about Lesser Spyre and Sacrus and Buridan Tower. Moments ago they had been mere facts, memories of a confused and drifting time. With the possibility that she could tell him about them, they suddenly became episodes of a great drama, a rousing tale she would laugh and cry to tell.

She turned to Garth, grinning wildly. “Did you hear that? He's alive!”

Garth smiled weakly.

Venera shook him by the shoulders. “Don't you understand? There is a place for you, for all of you, if you've the courage to get there. Come with me. Come to Slipstream, and on to Falcon, where he's imprisoned. We'll free him and then you'll have a home again. I swear it.”

He didn't move, just kept his grip on his daughter while the wind whistled through Fin and the rest of the refugees looked from him to Venera and back again.

“Well, what are you scared of?” she demanded. “Are you afraid I can't do what I say?”

Now Garth smiled ruefully and shook his head. “No, Venera,” he said. “I'm afraid that you can.”

She laughed and went to the door. Bracing her hands and feet on the cold metal, she looked out. The gray turbulence of Spyre's destruction was fading with the distance. In its place was endless blue.

“You'll see,” she said into the rushing air. “It'll all work out. I'll make sure of it.”