Queen of Candesce (13 page)

Venera pried open the lid of the grease can and picked up a brush. “But now that the nation of Buridan has returned, the horses are our responsibility. There are costs…it seems a dozen or more great nations have acted as caretakers for one or another part of the Buridan estate. Some are tenants of ours who haven't paid rent in centuries. Others are like Guinevera, who've been tending the horses. There's an immense web of relationships and dependencies here, and we have a little under a week to figure it all out.”

Garth thought about it for a while. “First of all,” he said eventually, “you need to bring a foal or two up here and raise it in the estate.” He grimaced at her expression. “I know what I just said, but it's an important symbol. Besides, these rooms will just fill up with people if you give them a chance. Why not set some aside for the horses now?”

“I'll think about that.”

They cleared out the space behind the rack and slid it against the wall. It fit comfortably over the exit hole. As they stood back to admire their work, Garth said, “It's a funny thing about time, you know. It sweeps away anger and hate. But it leaves love untouched.”

She threaded her hand through his arm. “Ah, Garth, you're so sentimental. Did it ever occur to you that's why you ended up scrabbling about on Greater Spyre for the past twenty years?”

He looked her in the eye. “Truthfully, no. That had never occurred to me. If anything, I'd say I ended up there because I didn't love well enough, not because I ever loved too well.”

She sighed. “You're hopeless. It's a good thing I'm here to take care of you.”

“And here I thought it was I taking care of you.”

They left the cellar and reentered the bedlam of construction that had taken over the manor.

 

The headache began that night.

Venera knew exactly what it was; she'd suffered these before. All day her jaw had been bothering her; it was like an iron hand was inside her throat, reaching up to clench her skull. Around dinner a strange pulsating squiggly spot appeared in her vision and slowly expanded until she could see nothing around it. She retired to her room and waited.

How long was this one going to last? They could go on for days, and she didn't have days. Venera paced up and down, stumbling, wondering whether she could just sleep it off. But no, she had mounds of paperwork to go through and no time.

She called Garth. He exclaimed when he saw her and ran to her side. “You're white as a new wall!”

“Never mind,” she said, detaching herself from him and climbing into bed. “Bring in the accounts books. It's just a headache. I get them. I'm sick but we need to go through these papers.”

He started to read the details of Buridan's various contracts. Each word was like a little explosion in her head. Venera tried to concentrate, but after ten minutes she suddenly leaned over the edge of the bed and retched.

“You need to sleep!” Garth's hands were on her shoulders. He eased her back on the bed.

“Don't be ridiculous,” she mumbled. “If we don't get this stuff straight, we won't convince the council and they'll cart us both away in chains.” A blossom of agony had unfurled behind her left eye. Despite her brave words Venera knew she was down for however long the migraine decided to hold her.

Garth darkened the lamps and tiptoed around while she lay sprawled like a discarded doll. Distant hammering sounded like it was coming from inside her own head, but she couldn't hold up the renovations.

Sleep eventually came, but she awoke to pain that was abstract only until she moved her head and opened one eye.
This is how it's going to be.
These headaches were the bullet's fault; when it smashed her jaw it had tripped some switch inside her head and now agony ambushed her at the worst times. Always before, she'd had the safe haven of her bedroom at home to retreat to—her time on the
Rook
had been mercifully free of such episodes. She used such times to indulge in her worst behavior: whining, accusing, insulting anyone who came near her, and demanding that her every whim be catered to. She wallowed in self-pity, letting everyone know that she was the sad victim of fate and that no one, ever, had felt the agonies she was enduring so bravely.

But she really was going to die if she let the thing rule her this time. It wasn't that there was nobody around to indulge her; but in a moment of clarity she realized that all the sympathy in the world wasn't going to save her life if she didn't follow through on the deception she and Garth had planned. So, halfway through morning, Venera resolutely climbed out of bed. She tied a silk sash over her eyes, jammed candle wax in her ears, and picked up an empty chamber pot. Carrying this, she tottered out of the room. “Bring me a dressing gown,” she said in reply to a half-heard question from a maid. “And fetch Master Flance.”

Blindfolded, half-deaf, she nonetheless managed to make her rounds of the work crews, while Garth followed her and read from the books. She told him what points to underline for her to look at later; inquired of the work and made suggestions; and, every now and then, she turned aside to daintily vomit into the chamber pot. Her world narrowed down to the feel of carpet or stone under her feet, the murmur of words in her ear, and the cataclysmic pounding that reverberated inside her skull. She kept going by imagining herself whipping, shooting, stomping on, and setting fire to Jacoby Sarto and the rest of this self-important council who had the temerity to oppose her will. This interior savagery was invisible from without, as she mumbled and queried politely, and let herself be led about.

All of this busywork seemed to be getting her somewhere, but that evening when she collapsed onto her bed, Venera realized that she had no memory of anything she had said or done that day. It was all obscured by the angry red haze of pain that had followed her everywhere.

She was doomed. She'd never be ready in time for the interrogation the council had planned. Venera rolled over, cried into her pillow, and finally just lay there, accepting her fate. The bullet had defeated her.

With that understanding came a kind of peace, but she was in too much pain to analyze it. She just lay there, dry-eyed, frowning, until sleep overcame her.

“What is
this?”
Jacoby Sarto glared at the rickshaws clustering in the courtyard below the Buridan estate's newly rebuilt entrance. It was seven
P
.
M
. and Candesce was extinguishing itself, its amber glories drenching the building tops. Down in the purpled courtyard the upstart princess's new footmen were lighting lanterns to guide in dozens of carts and palanquins from the crowded alley.

Someone of a minor noble nation had heard him and turned, smirking. “You didn't receive an invitation?” asked the impertinent youth. “It's a gala reception!”

“Bah!” Sarto turned to his companion, the duke of Ennersin. “What is she up to? This is a feeding frenzy. I'll wager half these people have come to gawk at the legendary Buridans, and the other half to watch us drag her out of the place in chains. What does she gain out of such a spectacle?”

“I'm afraid we'll find out shortly,” said the duke. He was as stocky as Sarto, with similarly graying temples and the sort of paternal scowl that could freeze the blood of anyone under forty. Together the two men radiated gravitas to such an extent that the crowds automatically parted for them. True, most of those assembling here knew them, by sight and reputation at least. The nations of Sacrus and Ennersin were feared and respected by all.—All, it seemed, save for newly reborn Buridan. These two were here tonight to make sure that this new situation didn't last.

“In any case, such entertainments as this are rare, Jacoby. It's sure to attract the curious and the morbid, yes. But it's the third audience that worries me,” Duke Ennersin commented as they strode up the steps to the entrance.

Sarto glared at a footman who had the temerity to approach them at the entrance. “What third audience?”

“Do you see the Guineveras there? They've been keeping Buridan's horses for generations. Make no mistake, they'd be happy to be free of the burden—or to own the beasts outright.”

“Which they will after tonight.”

“I wouldn't be too sure of that,” said Ennersin. “Proof that this Amandera Thrace-Guiles is an imposter is not proof that the real heirs aren't out there.”

“What are you saying, man? She's been in the tower! Clearly it's empty after all. There are no heirs to be had.”

“Not there, no…But don't forget there are sixteen nations that claim to be related by blood to the Thrace-Guileses. The moment this Amandera's declared a fake the other pretenders will pounce on the property rights. It'll be a legal free-for-all—maybe even a civil war. Many of these people are here to warn their nations the instant it becomes a possibility.”

“Ridiculous!” Sarto forgot what he was going to say next, as they entered the lofting front hall of the Buridan estate.

It smelled of fresh paint and drying plaster. Lanterns and braziers burned along the pillared staircases, lighting a frescoed ceiling crawling with allegorical figures. The painted blues, yellows, and reds were freshly cleaned and vibrant to the point of being nauseating, as were the heroic poses of the men and half-clad women variously hanging off, riding, or being devoured by hundreds of ridiculously posed horses. Sarto gaped at this vision for a while, then shuddered. “The past is sometimes best left buried,” he said.

Ennersin chuckled. “Or at least strategically unlit.”

Sarto had been expecting chaos inside the estate; after all, nobody had set foot in here in centuries, so Thrace-Guiles's new servants would be unfamiliar with the layout of their own home. They would be a motley collection of rejects and near-criminals hired from the dregs of Lesser Spyre, after all, and he fully expected to see waiters spilling drinks down the decolletage of the ladies when they weren't banging into one another in their haste to please.

There was none of that. Instead, a string quartet played a soothing pavane in the corner, while men and women in black tails and white gloves glided to and fro, gracefully presenting silver platters and unobtrusively refilling casually tilted glasses. The waitstaff were, in fact, almost mesmerizing in their movements; they were better than Sarto's own servants.

“Where did she get this chattel?” he muttered as a man with a stentorian voice announced their arrival. Lady Pamela Anseratte, who had known Sarto for decades and was quite unafraid of him, laughed and trotted over in a swirl of skirts. “Oh, she's a clever one, this Thrace-Guiles,” she said, laying her lace-covered hand on Sarto's arm. “She's hired the acrobats of the Spyre Circus to serve drinks! I hear they rehearsed blindfolded.”

Indeed, Sarto glanced around and realized there was a young lady with the compact muscled body of a dancer standing at his elbow. She held out a glass. “Champagne?” Automatically, he took it, and she vanished into the crowd without a sound.

“Well, we'll credit the woman with being a genius in domestic matters,” he growled. “But surely you haven't been taken in by her act, Pamela? She's an imposter!”

“That's as may be,” said the lady with a flick of her fan. “But your imposter has just forgiven Virilio's debt to Buridan. It seems that with interest it would now be worth enough to outfit a small fleet of merchant ships! And she's just erased it! Here, look! There's August Virilio himself, drinking himself into happy idiocy under that stallion statue.”

Sarto stared. The limestone stallion appeared to be sneering over Virilio's shoulder at the small crowd of hangers-on he was holding forth to. He was conspicuously unmasked, like most of the other council representatives. The place was crowded with masked faces, though—some immediately identifiable, others unfamiliar even to his experienced eye. “Who are all these people?” he wondered aloud.

“Debtors, apparently,” said Lady Pamela with some relish. “And creditors…everyone who's taken care of Buridan's affairs or profited by their absence over the past two hundred years. They all look…happy, don't you think, Jacoby?”

Ennersin cleared his throat and leaned in to say, “Thrace-Guiles has clearly been doing her homework.”

Despite himself, Sarto was impressed. This woman was continuing to confound his expectations. Was it possible that she might go on doing so? The thought was unexpected—and nothing unexpected had happened in Jacoby Sarto's life in a very long time.

He resisted where this line of thought led; after all, he had his instructions. Sarto dashed his champagne glass on the floor. Heads turned. “Let her enjoy her little party,” he said in his darkest voice. “Amandera Thrace-Guiles, or whatever her real name is, has about one hour of freedom left.

“And no more than a day to live.”

 

Venera strode through the crowd, nodding and smiling. She felt unsteady and vulnerable, and though her headache had finally faded she had to rein in an automatic cringe-reaction to bright lights and loud sounds. She felt hideously unready for the evening and had overdressed to compensate. Most of the people in Spyre wore dark colors, so she had chosen to dress in red—her corset was a glossy crimson inset with designs sewn in scarlet thread, with a wide-shouldered, open jacket atop that. She wore a necklace from the Anetene hoard. Her skin was recovering from the burns she'd suffered near Candesce, but the contrasts were still effective. To hide the scar on her chin she'd adopted one of the strange local skullcaps, this one of black feathers. It swept up behind her ears and down to a point in the middle of her forehead, where a single red Anetene gem glowed above her heavily drawn eyebrows—but it also thrust two small wings along her jawline. They tickled her chin annoyingly, but that was a small distraction compared with the sensations that the ankle-length skirt gave her. Dresses and skirts were considered obscene in most of Virga, where one might become weightless at any time. Back home, the prostitutes wore them. Venera wore a pair of breeches under the thing, which made her feel a bit better, but the long heavy drape still moved and turned like it had a mind of its own.

The one spot of white in her apparel was the fan she held before her like a shield. Nobody but Garth would know that its near side was covered with names and family trees, drawn in tiny spiked letters. She hadn't had time to read the complicated genealogies and financial records of Buridan and its dependents; this fan was her lifeline.

As she recovered from her migraine in the last day or so, the reconstruction work had caught up and the servants learned where everything was. To her relief Garth had orchestrated the ball without supervision, making sometimes brilliant decisions. Twenty years of pent-up social appetite, she supposed. The estate's pantries had been cleared of rats and spiders and re-stocked; the ancient plumbing system had been largely replaced (not without messy accidents) and the gas lines to the stoves reconnected.

In a way, she was grateful for having been distracted these past few days. This afternoon she'd had a brief moment with nothing to do, and into her mind had drifted memories of Chaison. Standing in her chambers, her hand half-lifted to her hair, she was suddenly miserable. Pain and anxiety had masked her grief until now.

She had to battle through it all—play her part. So now she marched up to a tight knot of masked nobles from the mysterious nation of Faddeste and bowed. “Welcome to my house. Speaking as someone who has seen few human beings in her life, outside her immediate family, I know how much it must cost you to attend a crowded event such as this.”

“We find it…hard.” The speaker could be a man or a woman, it was impossible to tell. Its accent was so thick she had to puzzle out the words. Tall and thickly robed, this ambassador from a ten-acre nation flicked a finger at the sweeping dancers now beginning to fill up the center of the hall. “Such frivolity should be banned. How are you so calm? Not raised to this, crowd should frighten.”

Venera bowed. “I lived in my imagination as a girl.” That much was true. “Lacking real people to talk to, I invented a whole court—a whole nation!—who followed me everywhere. I was never alone. So perhaps this isn't so strange for me.”

“Doubtful. We don't believe you are of Buridan.”

“Hmm. I could say the same—how do I know you're really from Faddeste?”

“Sacrilege!” But the robed figure didn't turn away.

“Whether either of us is who we say we are,” said Venera with a smug smile, “it remains a fact that Buridan owes Faddeste twenty thousand Spyre sovereigns. Imposter or not, I am willing to repay that debt.”

Now she stepped in close, raising one black eyebrow and glancing around at the crowd. “Do you trust the pretenders in the crowd to do the same, if they acquire the title to Buridan? Think hard on that.”

The ambassador reared back as though afraid Venera would touch it. “You have money?”

“Go see Master Flance.” She pointed at Garth who, despite being masked, had characteristically surrounded himself with women young and old. All were laughing at some story he was telling. Seeing this, for a moment Venera forgot her worries and felt a pulse of warmth for the aging dandy. She turned back to the Faddestes, but they were already maneuvering across the dance floor like a frightened but determined flock of crows.

She blew out a held breath. Seven or eight more minor nations to bribe, and no time to do it. All the members of the Spyre council were here now, some clustered in little groups talking and pointing at her. It would all be decided soon, one way or another.

Before she could reach her next target a majordomo in the livery of the Spyre Council approached and bowed. “They are ready for you upstairs, madam,” he said coolly.

She kept her gaze fixed on the top of his head as she bowed in return. All eyes were on her, she was certain. This was the moment when all would be decided.

As she clattered up the marble steps she tried to remember the lines and gambits she had crammed into her head over the past day or so. It hadn't been enough time, and the hangover of her migraine had interfered. She was not ready; she just had herself, the passing lanterns, the looming shadows above, and the single rectangle of light from a pair of doors in the upstairs hall. She told herself to slow down, control her breathing, count to ten—but finally just cursed and strode down the newly laid crimson carpet to pivot on one heel and step into the room.

Jacoby Sarto's leonine features crinkled into something like a smirk as he saw her. He was placing the final chair behind the long conference table in the high-ceilinged minor reception hall. Damn him, he'd moved everything! Where Venera had contrived a single long table with chairs along two sides, with her at the end, Sarto had turned the table sideways, crammed all the seats on one side of it (behind it, now), and left one solitary chair in the center of the carpet. What had been a conference room was now a court, with her as the defendant.

The rest of the council were standing around behind Sarto as the servants finished the new placement.

She had an overwhelming urge to pick a seat behind the table and put her feet up, then point to the solitary position and ask, “Who sits there?” Only memory of how badly her recent outbursts had gone stopped her.

Well, he had won this round, but she wasn't going to let him revel in it. Venera stopped one of the servants and said, “Bring me a side table, and a bottle of wine and a glass. Some cheese might be good too.” She sat graciously in the exposed chair and draped her skirts as she'd seen the other ladies do. Then she locked eyes with Sarto and smiled.

The others began to take their places. There were twelve of them. Jacoby Sarto of Sacrus, who was rumored to be merely an errand boy to the true heads of the family, sat on the far left. The arch-conservative duke Ennersin, who had conspicuously arrived with Sarto, sat next to him, frowning in disapproval at Venera. She could count on those two to oppose her confirmation. Of the others…

Pamela Anseratte was smiling at something, but wouldn't meet Venera's eye. Principe Guinevera
was
trying to meet her eye and apparently attempting to wink; he took up two spaces at the table and his fleshy hands were planted on the tabletop as if he were, at any second, about to leap to his feet and proclaim something. Next to him sat August Virilio, who looked contented, half-asleep even—and probably was, after the heroic drinking he'd gotten up to after she forgave his nation's debt. These three were on her side—or so she hoped.