Queen of Candesce (23 page)

“This way!” Venera gestured for Sarto to precede her, then stalked toward the distant pile of buttresses and roofs that was the Fair.

Garth followed, but as the fog of exhaustion and pain slowly lifted from him he found himself considering their chances. It was folly for Venera to involve herself in this war. Sidelined, she might be safe.

Sacrus had known what to reveal about her to draw her fangs, but they had chosen not to reveal it. The only person on this side of the conflict who knew was Garth himself. If word got out, Venera would naturally assume that it was Sacrus's doing. It would be so simple…

Troubled but determined to follow this thought to its conclusion, Garth put an extra effort into his footsteps and kept up with Venera as she made for the Fair.

 

Liris perched on the very lip of the abyss. At sunoff the building's roof was soaked with light, all gold and purple and rose. The sky that opened beyond the battlement was open to all sides; Venera could almost imagine that she was back in the provinces of Meridian, where the town-wheels were small and manageable and you could fly through the free air whenever you chose. She leaned out, the better to lose herself in the radiance.

Tents had been set up on the rooftop behind her, and Moss was holding court to a wild variety of Spyre dignitaries. They came in all shapes and sizes, masked and unmasked, lords and ladies and diplomats and generalissimos. United by their fear of Sacrus and its allies, they were hastily assembling a battle plan while their tiny armies traveled here from across Greater Spyre. Venera had looked for those armies earlier—but who could spot a dozen men here or there making their way between the mazelike walls of the estates?

It would be an eerie journey, she knew. Garth had shown her the overgrown gates to estates whose windows were slathered with black paint, whose occupants had not been seen in generations. Smoke drifted from their chimneys; someone was home. The soldiers of her alliance might stop at one or two of those gateways and shout and rattle the iron, hoping to find allies within. But there would be no answer, unless it be a rifle shot from behind a wall.

For the first time in days, Venera found herself idle. She was too tired to look for something to do, and so as she gazed out at the endless skies that familiar deep melancholy stole over her. This time, she let it happen.

She wanted Chaison back. It was time to admit it. There were many moments every day when Venera longed to turn to him and grin, and say, “Look what I did!” or “Have you ever seen anything like it?” She'd had such a moment only an hour ago, as the first of the Dali horses were led into their new paddock in the far corner of Liris's lot. The spindly steeds had been trained to be ridden and she had mounted up herself and trotted one in a circle. Oh, she'd wanted to catch someone's eye at that moment! But she was Amandera Thrace-Guiles now. There was no one to appeal to, not even Garth, who had been making himself scarce since their arrival.

She heard a footstep behind her. Bryce leaned on the stones and casually reached out to take her hand. She almost snatched it back, but his touch awoke something in her. This was not the man she wanted; but there was some value in him wanting her. She smiled at him.

“All the pawns and knights are in play,” he said. His thumb rubbed the back of her hand. “It's our opponent's move. What would you like to do while we wait?”

Venera's pulse quickened. His strong fingers were kneading her hand now, almost painfully.

“Uh…,” she said, then before she could talk herself out of it, “they've given me an actual room this time.”

“Well.” He smiled ironically. “That's an honor. Let's go try it out.”

He walked toward the stairs. Venera hesitated, turning to look out at the dimming sky. No: the pang was still there, and no amount of time with Bryce was going to make it go away. But what was she to do?

Venera followed him down the stairs, her excitement mounting. Several people hailed her but she simply waved and hurried past. “This way,” she said, grabbing Bryce's arm as he made to descend the main stairs. She dragged him through a doorway hidden behind a faded tapestry. This led to a narrow and dusty little corridor with several doors leading off of it. Hers was at the end.

She barely had time to open the door before his arms were around her waist. He kissed her with passionate force and together they staggered back to the bed under its little pebbled-glass window.

“Shut the door!” she gasped, and as he went to comply she undid her blouse. As he knelt on the bed she guided his hand under the silk. They kept their mouths locked together as they undressed one another, then she took his cock in her hands and didn't let go as they sank back onto the cushions.

Later as they sprawled across the demolished bed, he turned to her and said, “Are we partners?”

Venera blinked at him for a moment. Her mind had been entirely elsewhere—or, more exact, nowhere. “What?”

He shrugged onto his side and his hand casually fell on her hip. “Am I your employee? Or are we pursuing parallel interests?”

“Oh. Well, that's your decision, isn't it?”

“Hmm.” He smiled, but she could tell he wasn't satisfied with that reply. “My people have been acting as your spies for the past few days. They're not happy about it. Truth to tell, Amandera,
I'm
not happy about it.”

“Aaahhh…” She stretched and leaned back. “So the past hour was your way of softening me up for this conversation?”

“Well, no, but if there's going to be a good strategic moment to raise the issue, this has got to be it.” She laughed at his audacity. He was no longer smiling, though.

“You'd be mistaken if you thought I was picking sides in this war,” he said. “I don't give a damn whether it's Sacrus or your faction that wins. It's still titled nobles and it'll make no difference to the common people.”

Now she sat up. “You want your printing press.”

“I
have
my printing press. I forged your signature on some orders and it was delivered yesterday. Those of my people who aren't in the field right now are running it. Turning out bills by the thousands.”

She examined his face in the candlelight. “So…how many of your people really
are
in the field?”

“A half-dozen.”

“You told me they were all out!” She glared at him as a spasm of pain shot up her jaw. “A half-dozen? Is this why we had no warning that the estate was being attacked? Because you were keeping a handful of people where they'd be visible to me?—So I'd think they were all out?”

“That's about the size of it, yes.”

She punched him in the chest. “You lost me my estate! My house! What else have you given to Sacrus?”

“Sacrus is not my affair,” he said. Bryce was deadly earnest now. Clearly she had misjudged him. “Restoring emergent democracy in Virga is my only interest,” he said. “But I don't want you to die in this war, and I'm sorry about your house if it's any consolation. But what choice did I have? If everything descends into chaos, when am I going to get my ink? My paper? When were you going to do what I needed you to do? Look me in the eye and tell me it was a priority for you.”

Venera groaned. “Oh, Bryce. This is the worst possible time…”

“—The only time I have!”

“All right, all right, I see your point.” She glowered at the plaster ceiling. “What if…what if I send some of my people in to run the press? We don't need trained insurgents to do that. All I want is to get your people out in the field! I'll give you as much ink and paper as you want.”

He flopped onto his back. “I'll think about that.”

There was a brief silence.

“You could have asked,” she said.

“I did!”

Venera was trying to think of some way to reply to that when there was a loud bang and she found herself inside a storm of glass, shouting in surprise and trying to jump out of the way, banging her chin while shards like claws scrawled up her ribs and along her thigh.

Scratched and stunned, she sat up to find herself on the floor. Bryce was kneeling next to her. The candle had gone out and she sensed rather than saw the carpet of broken glass between her and her boots. The little window gaped, the leading bent and twisted to let in a puff of cold night air. “What was…” Now she heard gunfire.

“Oh shit.” Bryce stood up and reached down to draw her to her feet. “We've got to get out there.

“Sacrus has arrived.”

There was still a splinter in the ball of her foot but Venera had no time to find it and dig it out. She and Bryce raced up the stairs to the roof as shouts and thundering feet began to sound on the steps below.

They reached the roof and Bryce immediately ran off somewhere to the right. “I need to get to the semaphore!” he shouted before disappearing into the gloom. All the lanterns had been put out, Venera realized; she could just see the silhouettes of the tents where her people had been meeting. The black cutout shapes of men roved to and fro and she made out the gleam of a rifle barrel here and there. It was strangely quiet, though.

She found the flap to the main tent, more by instinct than anything else, and stepped in. Lanterns were still lit here, and Thinblood, Pamela Anseratte, Principe Guinevera, Moss, and the other leaders were all standing around a map table. They all looked over as she entered.

“Ah, there you are,” said Guinevera in a strangely jovial tone. “We think we know what they're up to.”

She moved over to the table to look at the map. Little counters representing Sacrus's forces were scattered around the unrolled rectangle of Greater Spyre. A big handful of tokens was clustered at the very edge of the sheet, where Liris had its land.

“It's an insane amount of men,” said Thinblood. He appeared nervous. “We think over a thousand. Never seen anything like it in Spyre.”

Guinevera snorted. “Obviously they hope to capture our entire command all at once and end the war before it begins. And it looks like they stand a good chance of succeeding. What do you think, Venera?”

“Well, I—” She froze.

They were all staring at her. All silent.

Guinevera reached into his brocaded coat and drew out a sheet of paper. With shocking violence he slammed it down on the table in front of her. Venera found herself looking at a poor likeness of herself—with her former hairstyle—on a poster that said,
WANTED FOR EXTRADITION TO GEHELLEN
,
VENERA FANNING
.

“So it's true,” said Guinevera. His voice was husky with anger, and his hand, still flattening the poster, was shaking.

She chewed her lip and tried to stare him down. “This is hardly the time—”

“This
is
the time!” he bellowed. “
You
have
started
a
war!
”

“Sacrus started it,” she said. “They started it when they—”

But he struck her full across the face and she spun to the floor.

She tasted blood in her mouth. Where was Bryce? Why wasn't Moss rushing to her defense?

Why wasn't Chaison here?

Guinevera reared over her, his dense mass making her flinch back. “Don't try to blame others for what you've done! You brought this catastrophe on us, imposter! I say we hang her over the battlement and let Sacrus use her for target practice.” He reached down to take her arm as Venera scrambled to get her feet under her.

Light knifed through the tent's entrance flap and then miraculously the whole tent lifted up as though tugged off the roof by a giant. The giant's cough was still echoing in Venera's ears as the tent sailed into the permanent maelstrom at the edge of the world and was snatched away like a torn kerchief.

Another bright explosion, and everyone ducked. Then they were all running and shouting at once and soldiers were popping up to fire their blunderbusses then squatting to refill them as trails of smoke and fire corkscrewed overhead. Venera's ears were still ringing, everything strangely aloof as she stood up and watched the big map on the table lift in the sudden breeze and slide horizontally into the night.

Who had it been? she wondered dimly. Had Moss turned on her? Or had Odess said something injudicious? Probably some soldier or servant of Liris had spoken out of turn…But then, maybe Jacoby Sarto had become bored of his confinement and decided to liven things up a bit.

Venera was half-aware that the squat cube of Liris was surrounded on three sides by an arcing constellation of torches. The red light served to illuminate the grim faces of the soldiers rushing past her. She raised her hand to stop one of them, then thought better of it. What if Guinevera had remembered to order her arrest?—Or death? As she thought about her new situation, Venera began to be afraid.

Maybe she should go inside. Liris had stout walls, and she still had friends there—she was almost sure of that. She could, what—go chat with Jacoby Sarto in his cell?

And where was Bryce? Semaphore, that was it; he'd gone to send a semaphore. She forced herself to think: the semaphore station was over there…where a big gap now yawned in the side of the battlement. Some soldiers were laying planks across it.

“Oh no.”
No no no.

Deep inside Venera a quiet snide voice that had always been there was saying, “Of course, of course. They all abandon you in the end.” She shouldn't be surprised at this turn of events; she had even planned for it, in the days following her confirmation. It shouldn't come as a shock to her. So it seemed strange to watch herself, as if from outside, as she hunkered down next to the elevator mechanism at the center of the roof, and wrapped her arms around herself and cried.

I don't do this.
She wiped at her face.
I don't.

Maybe she did, though; she couldn't clearly remember those minutes in Candesce after she had killed Aubri Mahallan and she had been alone. Hayden Griffin had pulled Mahallan's body out of sight, leaving a few bright drops of blood to twirl in the weightless air. Griffin was her only way out of Candesce, and Venera had just killed his lover. It hardly mattered that she'd done it to save the world from Mahallan and her allies. No one would ever know, and she was certain she would die there; she had only to wait for Candesce to open its fusion eyes and bring morning to the world.

Griffin had asked her to come with him. He had said he wouldn't kill her; Venera hadn't believed him. It was too big a risk. In the end she had snuck after him and ridden out of Candesce on the cargo net he was towing. Now the thought of running to the stairs and throwing herself on the mercy of her former compatriots filled her with a similar dread. Better to make herself very small here and risk being found by Guinevera or his men than to find out that even Liris now rejected her.

“There they are!” Someone pointed excitedly. Staccato runs of gunfire sounded in the distance—they were oddly distant, in fact. If Venera had cared about anything at that moment she might have stood up to look.

“We're gonna outflank them!”

Something blew up on the outskirts of Liris's territory. The orange mushroom lit the whole world for a moment, a flicker of estates and ornamental ponds overhead. Her ground forces must have made it here just after Sacrus's.

Well. Not
my
forces,
she thought bitterly.
Not anymore.

“There she is!” Venera jerked and tried to back up but she was already pressed against the elevator platform. A squat silhouette reared up in front of her and something whipped toward her. She cringed. Nothing happened; after a moment she looked up.

An open hand hovered a few inches above her. A distant flicker of red lit the extended hand and behind it, the toadish features of Samson Odess. His broad face wore an expression of concern. “Venera, are you hurt?”

“N-no…” Suspiciously, she reached to take his hand. He drew her to her feet and draped an arm across her shoulder.

“Quickly now,” he said as he drew her toward the stairs. “While everyone's busy.”

“What—” She was having trouble finding words. “What are you doing?”

He stopped, reared back, and stared at her. “I'm taking you home.”

“Home? Whose home?”

“Yours, you silly woman. Liris.”

“But why are you helping me?”

Now he looked annoyed. “You never ceased to be a citizen of Liris, Venera. And technically, I never stopped being your boss. You're still my responsibility, you know. Come on.”

She paused at the top of the steps and looked around. The soldiers who had crowded the roof all seemed to be leaping off one side, in momentary silhouetted flashes showing an arm brandishing a blunderbuss, another waving a sword. There was fighting down in the bramble-choked lot that surrounded Liris. Farther out, she glimpsed squads of men running back and forth, some piling up debris to form barricades, others raising archaic weapons.

“Venera! Get off the roof!” She blinked and turned to follow Odess.

They descended several levels and Venera found herself entering, of all places, the apartments of the former botanist. The furniture and art that had borne the stamp of Margit of Sacrus was gone, and there were still burn marks on the walls and ceiling. Someone had moved in new couches and chairs, and one particularly charred wall was covered with a crepuscular tapestry depicting cherry trees shooting beams of light all over an idealized tableau of dryads and fairies.

Venera sat down under a dryad and looked around. Eilen was there with the rest of the diplomatic corps. “Bring a blanket,” said Odess, “and a stiff drink. She's in shock.” Eilen ran to fetch a comforter and somebody else shoved a tumbler of amber liquid into Venera's hand. She stared at it for a moment, then drank.

For a few minutes she listened without comprehension to their conversation; then as if a switch had been thrown somewhere inside her, she realized where she must be and she understood something. She looked at Odess. “This is your new office,” she said.

They all stopped talking. Odess came to sit next to her. “That's right,” he said. “The diplomatic corps has been exalted since you left.”

Eilen laughed. “We're the new stars of Liris! Not that the cherry trees are any less important, but—”

“Moss understands that we need to open up to the outside world,” interrupted Odess. “It could never have happened under Margit.”

Venera half-smiled. “I suppose I can take some credit for making that possible.”

“My dear lady!” Odess patted her hand. “The credit is all yours! Liris has come alive again because of you. You don't think we would abandon you in your hour of need, do you?”

“You will always have a place here,” said Eilen.

Venera started to cry.

 

“We would never have told,” Odess said a few minutes later. “None of us.”

Venera grimaced. She stood at a mirror where she was dabbing at her eyes, trying to erase the evidence of tears. She didn't know what had come over her. A momentary madness; at least it was only the Lirisians who had witnessed her little breakdown. “I suppose it was Sarto,” she said. “It hardly matters now. I can't show my face up there without Guinevera putting a bullet in me.”

Odess
hmmph
ed, wrapping his arms around his barrel chest and pacing. “Guinevera has impressed no one since he arrived. Why should any of your other allies listen to him?”

She turned, raising an eyebrow. “Because he's the ruler of a council nation?”

Odess made a flicking motion. “Aside from that.”

With a shake of her head Venera returned to the divan. She could hear gunfire and shouting through the opened window, but it was filtered through the roar of the world-edge winds that tumbled above the courtyard shaft. You could almost ignore it.

In similar fashion, Venera could almost ignore the emotions overflowing her. She'd always survived through keeping a cool head and this was no time to have that desert her. It was inconvenient that she felt so abandoned and lost. Inconvenient to feel so grateful for the simple company of her former coworkers. She needed to recover her poise, then act in her own interests as she always had before.

There was a commotion in the corridor, then someone burst through the doors. He was covered in soot and dust, his hair a shock, the left arm of his jacket in tatters.

Venera leaped to her feet. “Garth!”

“There you are!” He rushed over and hugged her fiercely. “You're alive!”

“I'm—oof! Fine. But what happened to you?”

He stepped back, keeping his hands on her arms. Garth had a crazed look in his eye she'd never seen before. He wouldn't meet her gaze. “I was looking for you,” he said. “Outside. The rest of them, they're all out there, fighting around the foot of the building. Sacrus has ringed us, they want something here very badly, and our relief force is trying to break through from the outside. So Anseratte and Thinblood are leading the Liris squads in an attempt to break out—make a corridor…”

Venera nodded. The irony was that this fight was almost certainly about her, but Anseratte and the others wouldn't know it. Sacrus wanted the key and they knew Venera was here. Naturally they would throw whatever they had at Liris to get it.

If Guinevera had thrown her over the walls half an hour ago, the battle would already be over.

Garth toyed with the ripped fringe of his coat for a moment, then burst out with, “Venera, I am so, so sorry!”

“What?” She shook her head, uncomprehending. “Things aren't so bad. Or do you mean…?” She thought of Bryce, who might be lying twisted and broken at the foot of the wall. “Oh,” she said, a twisting feeling running through her.

He had just opened his mouth—doubtless to tell her that Bryce was dead—when the noises outside changed. The gunfire, which had been muffled with distance and indirection, suddenly sounded loud and close. Shouts and screams rang through the open windows.

Venera ran over, and with Odess and Eilen craned her neck to look up the shaft of the courtyard. There were people on the roof.

She and Odess exchanged a look. “Are those our…?” she started to say, but the answer was clear.

“Sacrus is inside the walls!” The cry was taken up by the others and everyone ran for the doors, streaming past Garth Diamandis, who was speaking but inaudible through the jumble of shouts.