Pirate Sun (25 page)

Pouting, the pilot examined the key images for a while. Then he shrugged. “You and I know that,” he said to Kestrel. “But the people don’t know that. And it’s what the people think that I care about right now. Perhaps, after all, Falcon Formation does do fleet maneuvers with their army as ballast…We’ll come up with a good reason for that. It’s not a crisis, Kestrel—not now that we have the admiral himself.”

He flipped the folder closed and handed it back to Kestrel. Turning away he said, “Once again, you’re distracting me in my hour of triumph. Could you please get into the spirit of the moment, for once?”

Behind his back Kestrel glared at the pilot with murderous intensity.

“I just had a
great
idea,” said Sempeterna suddenly. “It’ll tie all of this up in a neat little package and restore the people’s confidence in me.

“We seem to have an unusually large audience this morning,” he mused, squinting out one of the transparent panes in the window. Chaison looked as well, and saw crowds of people—speckled dark clouds in the morning air—beginning to gather near the admiralty. Maybe they had come to gawk at the precipice moth, but somehow he suspected more. Things were coming to a head and they knew it. Maybe news of his capture had leaked out.

“It would be a shame to send them all home without a show,” said the pilot. “Kestrel!” He turned to face the seneschal, who had retreated to the marble floor twenty feet away. “What’s the plan for getting rid of that thing on my roof?”

Antonin frowned. “We’re planting charges in the eaves under its feet, your majesty. It will be blown into the open air and then hit with a precision rocket barrage.”

“Very good. Is it ready?”

“Almost.”

“Then here’s what we’re going to do.” The pilot smacked his palms together. “
I
will take out our little pest,” he said, jabbing a finger upward. “In full view of our assembled citizens. I need a shoulder-mounted rocket and more visible clothes. We’ll take the shot from my swimming pool. You,” he said to Chaison, “will come with me. I’m sure your monster won’t attack me if you’re standing right next to me, eh?”

Chaison shrugged. “It won’t attack you at all. It’s not my monster, and it didn’t come here to find you.”

Sempeterna raised one eyebrow in elegant disdain. “What other target could it have?”

“Her, actually.” Chaison pointed at Telen Argyre. The home guard members were still here, standing in a little knot by one of the pillars. Gonlin was watching Chaison and the pilot; he narrowed his eyes, but probably couldn’t hear them at this distance.

“Chaison, what
are
you talking about?” Sempeterna leaned against an unobtrusive railing that ran along the base of the window. He seemed highly relaxed and only mildly interested, as if this were some court ball and he was discussing dolphin-breeding.

“That monster is a precipice moth, and it’s that woman that it’s been following, not me. She’s not human. She’s from
outside
.”

“Oh? Like that interesting young woman you used to employ…what was her name again? Mahogany?”

“Mahallan. Aubri Mahallan. Exactly. Sir, this entity is a direct threat to the security of Virga itself. I know that sounds ridiculous, but—”

The pilot held up a hand. Turning to face the window, he said, very quietly, “I’m not a fool, Chaison. I know I don’t rate a visit by a precipice moth, and you may be many things, but a sorcerer who summons monsters of the deep you’re not. Thanks for identifying its real target, I’ll make sure she’s taken care of.”

Chaison turned as well, facing away from the home guard—and Telen’s gaze—as he said, “I doubt you have the firepower. Sir.”

“If I can kill a moth, I can kill her. Besides, it’s a risk I’m going to have to take,” muttered Sempeterna. He grimaced, showing for an instant a side to himself Chaison had never suspected was there. Here was someone clever and calculating, almost reserved in his moves. Chaison was reminded that words and appearances were one thing, actions were another—and this pilot had ruled for many years.

“The people need their show, and I need closure on this whole ugly interlude,” the pilot continued. “You’re one of the sacrificial lambs, and that moth is going to have to be another. That’s just the way it is.”

He turned, hooking his elbows behind the railing, and called out, “Kestrel! Go make sure things are ready. I want the crowd told that something momentous is about to happen.”

“Very good, your majesty.” Face blank, Kestrel turned and left the reception room.

“Once the moth is dead, I’ll reveal that I have you,” Sempeterna said to Chaison. “I’ll feed them the story that you summoned the moth out of the depths of winter to attack me, and I personally captured you and dispatched it. That ought to shut the rabble up for a while. The admiralty will come to terms. Who knows? I may even end up letting you live if that turns out to be part of the deal. Either way, though, I’ll see
that
thing,” he nodded in the general direction of the
Severance,
“scrapped.”

Chaison nodded, but he wasn’t listening anymore. He was watching Gonlin, Telen, and the other home guard. The humans were deep in discussion, as oblivious of Sempeterna as he was of them. Telen Argyre simply stood hipshot, staring at nothing—unless she was looking through the very masonry at something invisible to any mere mortal.

The pilot was utterly wrong about her, Chaison was sure. Why should human weapons have any effect on something crafted in the nearly omnipotent forges of artificial nature?

There would be plenty of theatrics today, but it would all be just that—a side show. The only actor who really mattered stood blank-eyed, waiting her turn. If the moth was destroyed or even temporarily incapacitated, the false Telen would reveal what she really was—would hunt down and seize the key to Candesce, and then turn her attention on the sun of suns itself.

The pilot grinned, unwinding his arms from the railing, and slapped his hands together.

“Come on, then,” he said. “Kestrel, go make arrangements to blow that pesky monster into the air. You,” he pointed at some guardsmen, “show the admiral to some comfortable accommodations. As for me,” he examined his nails, “I need to pick out my costume for the show.”

TIME DRAGGED. CHAISON
paced up and down the suite—glorified cell, really—that they had placed him in. He was thinking about Venera—whether she was alive, and if she was, whether she was here in the city. That monster that had the shape of Telen Argyre had made her its next target, and it was his fault. He should have been able to resist it somehow; the memory of its prying into the most private corners of his mind replayed in his head again and again.

Faint hammering noises echoed through the palace. They were either repairing the roof or, more likely, planting charges under it while pretending to. It’s what he would have done. But it was three hours now since the pilot had sent Chaison here and there was no word of what the next move was to be. He supposed he’d had his chance to plead for his life to the pilot, and had thrown it away. All decisions were out of his hands now, a fine irony since the fog of pain and shock from last night was finally lifting.

As to Antaea Argyre—well, he swung between wanting to shoot her on sight, and feeling proud of her brave escape from Gonlin’s people. Maybe she really didn’t give a damn what happened to him and maybe she had simply run off, but he doubted that. She was the guard’s local extraction expert, after all. She would be up to something. The crucial question was, had she discovered her sister’s fate? Or was she bending all her energies to free Telen, with the result that she would wind up trapping herself again?

There was a knock at the cell door and a servant spoke through its little window. “Excuse me, sir?” he said in a heavily accented voice. “I was asked to prepare a lunch here for you. May I come in?”

The irony of the question dispelled a little of Chaison’s despair; he laughed. “By all means,” he said. “I’m not going anywhere.”

The butler wheeled in a cart. “It’s cold cuts, I’m afraid, but there’s some orange juice from the pilot’s own trees.”

Chaison nodded politely. Then the cell door closed and the man’s demeanor changed. “Eat it all,” he said. “You’ll need your energy if we’re going to get you out of here.”

“Say again?”

“Look, if they choose to move you to the commons prison,” said the servant, pointing down, “then you’ll never get out. We have a narrow window of opportunity as it is. Are you fit to fight?”

“As well as I will be.” Chaison stared at him. “Who are you working for? Your accent is foreign.”

The servant bowed. “Gastony Mayfare, late of Oxorn, at your service. As to who I work for, that would be a very complicated question to answer. We are sympathetic to your cause.”

“Who’s this ‘we’?”

“We who owe our lives to the intercession of the lady Amandera Thrace-Guiles,” said Mayfare in a portentous tone. “The lady would like to see you safe.”

“Never heard of her.” But he wasn’t going to turn down an offer of help, no matter how obscure the source.

Mayfare took Chaison’s arm brusquely and led him to a mirror. He planted the admiral in front of the glass and started holding up tubes of makeup next to his face. He quickly picked out a foundation, blush, eyebrow pencil, and powder. He brought a wig out of the inside pockets of his jacket and handed it to Chaison. “Your job is to look like me,” he said. “We’ll swap clothes and—”

Chaison laughed out loud. “This is your plan? Hope that I can just saunter out of here looking like you? Do you think these people are mad? Or stupid?”

Mayfare scowled. “Well it’s the only plan we’ve got. Take it or leave it.”

“Even if I got out of this cell, I’d never get off the palace,” said Chaison. “They’ll have every possible exit manned and riflemen watching the air around the place.” Mayfare started to protest, but then looked aside and nodded. “So, leave it,” said Chaison. “I’ll not have you give up your freedom for no reason.”

“But what are you going to do?” Mayfare looked frustrated; Chaison suspected he had been itching to act on his successful infiltration of the palace for a long time. “We can’t just count down the hours until they hang you!”

“Believe me, I agree with that.” Chaison started to pace. “First of all, I need to know who you are and what’s been going on in this city. Who are the players? Who will the civilians back? Who do they hate? Who’s grabbing for power in all this chaos?”

Mayfare was glad to talk. His own party were foreigners, it turned out, expats from a ruined town-wheel called Spyre. They had been saved from its destruction and brought to Rush by the mysterious Amandera Thrace-Guiles, who had become their patroness. She, it seemed, was intent on toppling the pilot, though for what reason Mayfare couldn’t or wouldn’t say.

If Mayfare could be believed, Thrace-Guiles had contacts with both the Aerie rebels and the admiralty. She might be very useful.

As Mayfare described the mood of the city and the disposition of the various contending forces, Chaison found himself imagining various maneuvers that this group or that could pull. It was almost a compulsion—the deep habit of the tactician to mentally turn the field of battle around and picture what the opposition might do. Even if there was nothing he could do anymore to influence events, Chaison found himself unable to resist the urge to plan, as if he were still an admiral in command of a fleet.

And maybe he could be…

Chaison took a deep breath, and committed himself to what might be a last act of complete folly. “There is something you can do, Mayfare,” he said. When the man eagerly nodded, Chaison held up a cautioning hand and said, “It involves memorizing a very long and very detailed message, and then taking it to the last man in the palace you’re going to want to risk revealing yourself to…”

THE ROOFTOPS OF
the pilot’s palace reached above one another, long swooping curves of shingle and lead, some holding aloft platforms and balconies like waiters carrying trays. From a distance the roofs almost seemed like the storm-tossed waves of some terrestrial sea—save that they wrapped into a ring a half-mile across. Sempeterna’s palace was a town-wheel, albeit one covered almost entirely by one multiterraced, many-roofed building. Dozens of elevator shafts crisscrossed the empty interior of the ring, and at its axis of rotation were the usual docks for official and pleasure craft.

Something else glittered and spun like a golden confection in this freefall zone. Years before, Sempeterna had commissioned a grand swimming pool, one that would be unlike any in the world. Its innovation lay not in the fact that it was weightless—zero gravity water was the rule rather than the exception in Virga. No, it was how the water was shaped that made this chamber unique.

Antaea had felt her weight fading for several minutes as the elevator car rose. When it stopped, she and her guards bounced out into a hexagonal passageway at the palace’s axis of rotation. Ornate windows showed views of the city and the wheel that turned grandly around them. “This way, please,” said one of the guards.

The corridors were draped in red velvet and included numerous pull-cords and ropes. Since they were so well padded you could zip along such ways very quickly; Antaea’s escort preferred a slow deliberate glide. So it was that the full grandeur of the pilot’s pool emerged slowly for her around the edges of an entranceway shaped like an open mouth.

The building itself was a glass bulb, vaguely onion-shaped, whose ribs shone with gold. Long spires on its ends pointed into the city, and back through the axis to the docks. Various change rooms and drying nests were attached like cocoons to the rib-work.

A gigantic sphere of water hung at the center of the chamber, itself containing numerous man-sized bubbles, some of which had drinks cabinets and other amenities in them. You could swim through the sphere, poke your head into a bubble, and converse with friends there while sipping a fine liqueur. They reminded Antaea of the time she and Chaison had found a bubble in the flood that devoured Songly.

There was nothing exceptional about this pool. But around it were arrayed dozens of glittering, transparent animals—dolphins, whales, birds, and even humans—the smallest a foot across, the largest twenty or more feet in length. They were sculptures made of water, its surfaces teased into keeping these intricate shapes by nearly invisible nets of waxed hair that master artisans had positioned on gold-filigree racks. It was an art form whose medium was the surface tension of water.

Antaea had heard that Sempeterna swam into and through these animals during his morning constitutional. He would dive into an osprey or shark, making its sides quiver and break free of their delicate cages; he would glide like a fish from one end of the transparent beast to the other, emerging with a splash to arrow toward the next one, as the first beast either collapsed into myriad drops, or slowly righted itself into its fantastical shape.

Antaea had little time to admire the opulence as she was led to the narrowing neck of the structure’s city-facing end. There, a glass door had been swung back. She could see a sizable crowd of people waiting outside. “Through, please,” said the man at her back; so, Antaea climbed through and onto a vertiginous perch astride the golden flagpole that extended fifty feet past the tip of the glass onion.

Sempeterna was here, hovering limply behind a (presumably bulletproof) glass shield. His bodyguards formed a star pattern in the air around him, their feet oriented toward him, heads and weapons pointing outward. Closer in were various officials, engineers, a driver with an idling bike, a chef with a basket of sweet-meats, two doctors, the palace archivist with two scribes, Kestrel, and shadowed by a cloth screen, Chaison Fanning.

He turned around and saw her. Antaea flinched and looked away before she could see whatever expression came over his face. She didn’t want to know.

The city of Rush made a backdrop to all of this. Four immense quartets of grandly turning town-wheels flicked their gay banners in the turbulent noon air; past the swarming outrider buildings the asteroid was like a forested whale trailing sheets of cloud. Past that? Incandescence: the uninhabitable region surrounding Slipstream’s fusion sun, its whiteness washing out further detail.

The pilot was holding forth on some topic or other while a tailor adjusted his lime-colored clothing. A photographer looked on, squinting through his lens. The one incongruent element in the scene was the shoulder-mounted rocket launcher hanging near Sempeterna’s feet.

Gazing at the palace gave her a chance to avoid looking near Chaison again. The palace wheel turned slowly up and down around the swimming pool. To keep herself from thinking, Antaea counted, measuring its rotation: about one rpm. From here of course rooftops and gardens were all she could see—with one exception. The precipice moth was passing twelve o’clock and heading for two o’clock before she found it, but once located, it was impossible to lose. Its massive silver limbs had partially caved in the roof above the reception hall. Even as Antaea spotted it she saw some slate shingles skitter down the slope of the roof and bounce into freefall, traveling tangent to the wheel.

There was a bright flash; Antaea turned to find the pilot relaxing out of his pose. He held the rocket launcher. With a blithe wave he dismissed the photographer, and turned to address the small retinue perching like birds behind him.

“I’m going to shoot the monster now. When I do, there’ll be a big explosion so hang on, please. Kestrel’s kindly planted some…extra charges, under the roof. Below the monster, you know. It’ll be knocked into midair and then the rest of our fire team will take it out.” He waved in the general direction of the palace. Antaea looked again, but she couldn’t see anybody on the rooftops. Were the pilot’s fire teams sitting in windowsills or something?

“After the beast, next on the agenda is revealing Admiral Fanning to the crowd,” continued Sempeterna. “We’ll gauge their reaction and decide from that whether I shoot Fanning right here, or we take him inside to court. Right? Everybody ready?”

Kestrel was hand-walking along the flagpole, his face grim. He came next to Antaea and paused for just a moment. “I met a mutual friend in the hallway,” he said. Then he continued on.

He continued on to where Chaison Fanning waited under guard. Antaea watched him go, puzzled by what he’d just said.

Behind them, the pilot prepared to take his shot.

ANTAEA WOULDN’T LOOK
at Chaison, which was damned annoying because he really needed to get her attention right now. The pilot was settling the rocket launcher onto his shoulder, getting a feel for its mass by rocking it gently back and forth. All eyes were on him—all save Antonin Kestrel’s. The seneschal glided up to Chaison, his expression stark.

He paused in between Chaison and Antaea and said, “When he takes the shot, close your eyes,” just loudly enough for both of them to hear. Chaison saw a wonderful expression of surprise on Antaea’s face as she stared at the seneschal. He had to laugh.

“Quiet,” snapped Kestrel. “You’ll ruin the moment.”

“So you got my message?” he murmured. Kestrel ignored him. His eyes were on Sempeterna.

“And…we go,” said Slipstream’s monarch. He pulled the trigger on the launcher and a sudden
whoosh!
and shower of sparks engulfed him. Chaison closed his eyes.

The light was like a slap across the face, even through his closed eyes. The rapid chain of flashes was accompanied by cries of surprise and dismay from all around. A moment later Chaison felt a hand on his wrist and Kestrel shouted, “This way!”

Chaison opened his eyes. Everyone was pawing at their eyes, except he and Kestrel and Antaea. As one they jumped at the idling bike. Chaison grabbed it and started to swing into the passenger saddle only to find Antaea coming in from the other side. She shrank back. Chaison growled and reaching out took her jacket by the lapel, pulling her to him. “Brace yourselves!” yelled Kestrel as he opened the throttle.

The bike’s engine brayed, drowning out the confused shouts of the temporarily blinded crowd. Then before they’d gone ten feet there was a gunshot, then another. Chaison craned his neck to see who was shooting.

The pilot was pawing at his eyes, cursing, as were most of his bodyguards—but not all. Three of them had been dutifully watching for threats from other directions than the moth, and they had enough discipline that none had snuck a peek at the pilot’s shot. All three were firing their repeating rifles at the bike.

Still, the little jet made it a good fifty feet before something tore through its fans. The bike screamed and belched a black cloud of smoke, then began to tumble. All three of its riders held on for dear life, their legs flailing outward to form a three-sided star in the air. Helpless, they were nonetheless falling in the general direction of the
Severance.

“What is he trying to do?” shouted Antaea. “Take us to the
Severance
?”

Kestrel grimaced. “I thought it was a pretty good plan under the circumstances. Damn! Those guards were supposed to be too tempted to look the other way.”

Antaea laughed wildly. “Now what? Do we let go?”

“Hang on!” Bullets were hissing past them. The whole city had been watching the pilot’s pantomime and knew exactly where to look when he’d fired his missile. This part of Chaison’s plan had never been much more than a desperate gamble. Even if nearly everybody was blinded by the fireworks flash-pots Kestrel had planted under the moth instead of explosives, nearly everybody wasn’t good enough.

“What about the rest of my plan?” he asked.

Kestrel nodded. “As far as I know it’s in motion.”

“What plan?” Antaea was staring at them both with something close to horror. “What did you do?”

“I was instructed to oversee the planting of the explosives under the moth,” explained Kestrel. “After the first team of engineers placed their charges I sent them on an errand, then sent up a second team to take the bombs down, and then the royal fireworks team to plant flash-bombs. Pretty simple, really.”

Chaison looked back at the palace. The moth still sat on the roof, which was gouting a spiraling banner of woozy black smoke into the rotational winds. There were holes and splintered cornices everywhere; the carefully timed missiles that were supposed to finish the moth off had all missed their marks because it hadn’t been knocked off the roof as planned. Those errant missiles had mostly hit the palace itself.

He laughed. “What a mess! If nothing else, we’ve made Sempeterna look like the fool that he is.”

Two bikes shot into sight. They quickly looped around the disabled jet, the palace guardsmen on their backs leaning out to aim their guns at the three would-be escapees. “Prepare to be towed!” said one.

Kestrel and Chaison exchanged a glance. Kestrel shrugged. “I’m sorry I didn’t believe you, Chaison. You saw…Sempeterna admitted that Falcon had been out to invade us. The photos already made me doubt, and then your testimony during our flight over,” he said to Antaea, “made me even more uncertain. But when the pilot saw the pictures and just shrugged…you were right, and you did save Slipstream, Chaison. I still find it hard to believe that you weren’t in communication with the admiralty forces until last night—but—” He shrugged awkwardly.

Chaison grinned at his friend as the palace guard clamped a hook to the bike and turned to tow them back to the swimming pool. He looked wistfully at the receding shape of the
Severance
. So close…

“It’s moving,” he said, surprised even though he had known it might happen.

The
Severance
’s engines had come to life, blurring the air behind it. Heavy as it was, it was going to take it a few seconds to clear the cordon of hostile guns surrounding it—but those guns were still in disarray, since most of the soldiers manning them had been blinded like everyone else. Not everyone inside the
Severance
could have been watching from its tiny windows, though, and Chaison imagined that within seconds every crucial post had replaced its dazzled personnel. In all likelihood, by the time Kestrel had the bike in the air,
Severance
had its sight back. The failure of Kestrel’s breakout attempt had been seen, setting one of Chaison’s contingency plans into motion.

“They saw
you,
” said Antaea. “Chaison, they’re coming for you!”

Explosions suddenly shrouded the
Severance
. If it had recovered from its blindness quickly, so had the other large vessels. The police gunboats and palace cutters were all firing on the
Severance
now, heedless of the danger to the crowds clouding the air in the city beyond. Chaison saw one missile go wild and plow into a mansion on the other side of the admiralty. The building exploded in a roar of shattered glass and wood splinters.

The
Severance
disappeared behind smoke and fire. Hammer-blows of sound knocked Chaison about; he lost his grip on the bike and flailed out wildly, finding Antaea’s reaching hand. He realized he was swearing wildly and shut his mouth.

Antaea pulled him toward her. “This is the time,” he said. “You have to fight.”

She said, “Chaison, I—”

“I know why you did what you did,” he said gruffly. “And I know you tried to fix it.” She closed her eyes for a moment, then smiled tentatively. “Get ready to jump,” he continued, not looking at her. “We’re going to grab the pilot.”

But Sempeterna was already on the move under a huddle of bodyguards, swinging back into the onion-shaped pool building while his retinue variously clung to the flagpole and glass siding, or drifted helplessly in the shocked air.

Chaison was about to say something—maybe just to swear, he could never later remember—when the
Severance
reappeared. It nosed out of a roiling pall of smoke, dripping fire, not a quarter mile away. It was headed straight for Sempeterna’s swimming pool.