Queen of Candesce (24 page)

Venera paused long enough to shrug at him, then grabbed his arm and hauled him after her into the corridor.

The whole population of Liris was running up the stairs. They carried pikes, kitchen knives, makeshift shields, and clubs. None had on more than the clothing they normally wore, but that meant they were formidably armored. There were one or two soldiers in the mix—probably the men who had been guarding Jacoby Sarto. They were frantically trying to keep order in the pushing mass of people.

Garth stared at the crowd and shook his head. “We'll never get through that.”

Venera eyed the window. “I have an idea.”

As she slung her leg over the lintel Garth poked his head out next to her and looked up. “It's risky,” he said. “Somebody could just kick us off before we can get to our feet.”

“In this gravity, you're looking at a sprained ankle. Come on.” She climbed rapidly, emerging from the stairs into the light of flares and the sound of gunfire. Half the country was struggling with something at the far end of the roof. Venera blinked and squinted, and realized what it was: they were trying to dislodge a stout ladder that had been swung against the battlements. Even as that came clear to her, she saw the gray cross-hatch of another emerge from the darkness to thud against the stonework.

Withering fire from below prevented the Lirisians from getting near the things. They were forced to crouch a few feet back and poke at them with their pikes.

A third ladder appeared and now men were swarming onto the roof. The Lirisians stood up. Venera saw Eilen raise a rusted old sword as a figure in red-painted iron armor reared above her.

Venera raised her pistol and fired. She walked toward Eilen, firing steadily until the man who'd threatened her friend fell. He wasn't dead—his armor was so thick that the bullets probably hadn't penetrated—but she'd rattled his skull for sure.

She was five feet away when her pistol clicked empty. This was the gun Corinne had given her; she had no idea whether it took the same caliber of bullets as anything the Lirisians used. Examining it quickly, she decided she didn't even know how to breech it to check. At that moment two men like metal beetles surmounted the battlement, firelight glistening off their carapaces.

She tripped Eilen and when the woman had fallen behind her Venera stepped between her and the two men. She drop-kicked the leader and he windmilled his arms for a moment before falling back. The force of her kick had propelled Venera back ten feet. She landed badly, located Eilen, and shouted, “Come on!”

Moss straight-armed a pike into the helmet of the other man. Beside him Odess shoved a lighted torch at a third who was stepping off the ladder. Gunfire sounded and somebody fell but she couldn't see who through the press of bodies.

She grabbed Eilen's arm. “We need guns! Are there more in the lockers?”

Eilen shook her head. “We barely had enough for the soldiers. There's that.” She pointed.

Around the corner of the courtyard shaft, the ancient, filigreed morning gun still sat on a tripod under its little canopy. Venera started to laugh but the sound died in her throat. “Come on!”

The two women wrestled the weapon off its stand. It was a massive thing and though it weighed little in this gravity it was difficult to maneuver. “Do we have shells?” Venera asked.

“Bullets, no shells,” said Eilen. “There's black powder in that bin.”

Venera opened the gun's breech. It was of a pointlessly primitive design. You poured black powder into it and then inserted the bullet and closed the breech. It had a spark wheel instead of a percussion trigger. “Well, then, come on.”

Eilen grabbed up the box of bullets and a sack of powder and they ran along the inner edge of the roof. In the darkness and confusion Eilen stumbled, and Venera watched as the bullets spilled out into the air over the courtyard. Eilen screamed in frustration.

One bullet spun on the flagstones at Venera's feet. Cradling the gun, she bent to pick up the metal slug. A wave of cold prickles swept over her shoulders and up her neck.

This bullet was identical to the one that nestled inside her jacket—identical save for the fact that it had never been fired.

The bullet she carried—that had sailed a thousand miles through the airs and clouds of Virga, avoiding cities and farms, adeptly swerving to avoid fish and rocks and oceanic balls of water—this bullet that had lined up on Slipstream and the city of Rush and the window in the admiralty where Venera stood so innocently; had smashed the glass in a split-second and buried itself in her jaw, spinning her around and nailing a sense of injured outrage to Venera forever—it had come from here. It had not been fired in combat. Not in spite. Not for any murderous purpose, but for tradition, and to celebrate the calmness of a morning like any other.

Venera had fantasized about this moment many times. She had rehearsed what she would say to the owner of the gun when she finally found him. It was a high, grand, and glorious speech that, in her imagination, always ended with her putting a bullet in the villain. Cradling this picture of revenge to herself had gotten her through many nights, many cocktail parties where out of the corner of her eye she could see the ladies of the admiralty pointing to her scar and murmuring to one another behind their fans.

“Huh,” she said.

“Venera? Are you all right?”

Venera shook her head violently. “Powder. Quick!” She held out the gun and Eilen filled it. Then she jammed the clean new bullet into the breech and closed it. She lofted the gun and spun the wheel.

“Everybody down!” Nobody heard her but luckily a gap opened in the line at the last second. The gun made a huge noise and nearly blew Venera off the roof. When the vast plume of smoke cleared she saw nearly everybody in sight recovering from having ducked.

It might not be powerful or accurate, but the thing was
loud.
That fact might just save them.

She ran toward the Lirisians. “The cannons! Start shouting stuff about cannons!” She breeched the smoking weapon and handed it to Eilen. “Reload.”

“But we lost the rest of the bullets.”

“We've got one.” She reached into her jacket pocket. There it was, its contours familiar from years of touching. She brought out her bullet. Her fingers trembled now as she held it up to the red flare-light.

“Damn you anyway,” she whispered to it.

Eilen glanced up, said, “Oh,” and held up the gun. There was no time for ceremony; Venera slid the hated slug into the breech and it fit perfectly. She clicked it shut.

“Out of my way!” She crossed the roof in great bounding steps, dodging between fighting men to reach the battlement where the ladders jutted up. The gunfire from below had stopped; the snipers didn't want to hit their own men as they topped the wall. Venera hopped up onto a crenelation and sighted nearly straight down. She saw the startled eyes of a Sacrus soldier between her feet, and half a dozen heads below his. She spun the spark wheel.

The explosion lifted her off her feet. Everything disappeared behind a ball of smoke. When she staggered upright some yards away Venera found herself surrounded by cheering people. Several of Sacrus's soldiers were being thrown off the roof and for the moment no more were appearing. As the smoke cleared she saw that the top of the ladder she'd fired down was missing.

“Keep filling it,” she said, thrusting the gun at Eilen. “Bullets don't matter—as long as it's bright and loud.”

Moss's grinning face emerged from the gloom. “They're hesitating!”

She nodded. Sacrus didn't have so many people that they could afford to sacrifice them in wave attacks. The darkness and confusion would help; and though they had probably heard it every day of their lives, the thunderous sound of the morning gun at this close range would give pause to the men holding the ladders.

“It's not going to keep them at bay for long, though,” she said. “Where are the rest of our people?”

Now Moss frowned. “T-trapped, I fear. Guinevera l-led them into an ambush. Now they have their backs to the open air.” He pointed toward the edge of the world and the night skies beyond.

Venera hopped up on the edge of the elevator platform and took a quick look around. Sacrus's people were spread in a thin line around two of the approaches to Liris. On their third side ragged girders and scoured metal jutted off the end of the world. And on the fourth—behind her—a jumble of brambles, thornbushes, and broken masonry formed a natural barrier that Sacrus wasn't bothering to police.

In the darkness beyond, hundreds of torches lit the contours of an army small by Venera's standards but huge for Spyre. There might be no more than a thousand men there, but that was all the forces that opposed Sacrus on this world.

Spreading away behind that army was the maze of estates that made up Greater Spyre. Somewhere out there was the long low building where the hollowed bomb hung, with its promise of escape.

She turned to Moss. “You need to break through Sacrus's lines. Otherwise, they'll overwhelm us and then they can turn and face our army with a secure fortress behind them.”

He nodded. “But all our leaders are t-trapped.”

“Well, not all.” She strode across the roof to the battlements that overlooked the bramble-choked acres. He came to stand at her side. Together they gazed out at the army that lay tantalizingly out of reach.

“If the semaphore were working—” She stopped, remembering Bryce. Moss shook his head anyway.

“S-Sacrus has encircled the t-tower. They would read every letter.”

“But we need to coordinate an attack—from outside and inside at the same time. To break through…”

He shrugged. “Simple matter. If we c-can get one p-person through the lines.”

She speculated. If she showed up there among the brambles, would the generals of that army have her arrested? How far had news of her deceptions spread?

“Get them ready,” she said. “Everyone into armor, everyone armed. I'll be back in two minutes.” She headed for the stairs.

“Where are you g-going?”

She shot him a grim smile. “To check in on our bargaining chip.”

 

Venera ran through empty halls to the old prison on the main floor.

As she'd suspected, the guards had deserted their posts when the roof was attacked. The main door was ajar; Venera slowed when she saw this. Warily, she toed it open and aimed her pistol through. There was nobody in the antechamber. She sidled in.

“Hello?” That was Jacoby Sarto's voice. Venera had never heard him sound worried, but he was clearly rattled by what was happening.
He's never been in a battle before,
she realized—nor had any of these people. It was shocking to think that she was the veteran here.

Venera went on her tiptoes to look through the door's little window into the green-walled reception room. Sarto was the sole occupant of a bench designed to seat thirty; he sat in the very center of a room that could have held a hundred. He squinted at the door, then said, “Fanning?”

She threw open the door and stepped in. “Did you tell them?”

He appeared puzzled. “Tell who what?”

She showed him her pistol; he wouldn't know it was empty. “Don't play games, Sarto. Someone told Guinevera who I really am. Was it you?”

He smiled with a trace of his usual arrogance. He stood up and adjusted the sleeves of the formal shirt he still wore. “Things not going your way out there?”

“Two points,” said Venera, holding up two fingers. “First: I'm holding a gun on you. Second: you're rapidly becoming expendable.”

“All right, all right,” he said irritably. “Don't be so prickly. After all, I came here of my own free will.”

“And that's supposed to impress me?” She leaned on the doorjamb and crossed her arms.

“Think about it,” he said. “What do I have to gain from revealing who you are?”

“I don't know. Suppose you tell me?”

Now he scowled at her, as if she were some common servant girl who'd had the temerity to interrupt him while he was talking. “I have spent thirty-two years learning the ins and outs of council politics. All that time, becoming an expert—maybe
the
expert—on Spyre, learning who is beholden to who, who's ambitious, and who just wants to keep their heads down. I have been the public face of Sacrus for much of that time, their most important operative, because for all those years, Spyre's politics were all that mattered. But look at what's happening.” He waved a hand to indicate the siege and battle going on beyond Liris's thick walls. “Everything that made me valuable is being swept away.”

This was not what Venera had been expecting to hear from him. She came into the room and sat down on a bench facing Sarto. He looked at her levelly and said, “Change is inconceivable to most people in Spyre; to them a catastrophe is a tree falling across their fence. A vast political upheaval would be somebody snubbing somebody else at a party. That's the system I was bred and trained to work in. But my masters have always known that there's much bigger game out there. They've been biding their time, lo these many centuries. Now they finally have in their grasp a tool with which to conquer the world—the
real
world, not just this squalid imitation we're standing in. On the scale of Sacrus's new ambitions, all of my accomplishments count for nothing.”

Venera nodded slowly. “Spyre is having all its borders redrawn around you. Even if they never get the key from me, Sacrus will be facing a new Spyre once the fighting stops. I'll bet they've been grooming someone young and malleable to take your place in that new world.”

He grimaced. “No one likes to be discarded. I could see it coming, though. It was inevitable, really, unless…”

“Unless you could prove your continuing usefulness to your masters,” she said. “Say, by personally bringing them the key?”