Queen of Candesce v-2

by Karl Schroeder

  The commander bowed to Sarto, but then said, “I’m afraid we cannot trust this man. He is of the enemy.”

  “Lord Sarto has seen the light,” said Venera. “He has agreed to help us.”

  “Pah!” The commander sneered. “Sacrus are masters of deception. How can we trust him?”

  “The politics are complex,” she said. “But we have very good reasons to trust him. I do. That is why I brought him.”

  There were more glances thrown between the colonels and the aides. The commander twitched a frown for just a moment, then said, “No—I understand the dilemma we’re in, but my sovereign and commanding officer is Principe Guinevera, and he’s in danger. Politically, saving our leadership has to be the priority. I’ll not countenance any plan that weakens our chance of doing that.”

  Jacoby Sarto laughed. It was an ugly, contemptuous sound, delivered by a man who had spent decades using his voice to wither other men’s courage. The commander glared at him. “I fail to see the humor in any of this, Lord Sarto.”

  “Forgivable,” said Sarto dryly, “as you’re not aware of Sacrus’s objectives. They want Liris, not your management. They haven’t crushed the soldiers pinned down at the world’s edge because they’re dangling them as bait.”

  “What could they possibly want with Liris?”

  “Me,” said Venera, “because they surely think I’m still there—and the elevator cable. They need to cut it. All they have to do is capture me or make it impossible for me to leave Greater Spyre. Then they’ve won. It will just be a matter of time.”

  Now it was the commander’s turn to laugh. “I think you vastly overrate your own value, and underrate the potential of this army,” he said, sweeping his arm to indicate the paltry hundreds gathered in the cavernous shed. “You alone can’t hold this alliance together, Lady Thrace-Guiles. And I said it before, the elevator cables are of little strategic interest.”

  Venera was furious. She wanted to tell him that she’d seen more men gathered at circuses in Rush than he had in his vaunted army. But, remembering how she had thrown a lighted lamp at Garth in anger and his gentle chiding after, she bit back on what she wanted to say, and instead said, “You’ll change your mind once you know the true strategic situation. Sacrus wants—” She stopped as Sarto touched her arm.

  He was shaking his head. “This is not the right audience,” he said quietly.

  “Um.” In an instant her understanding of the situation flipped around. When she had walked in here she had seen this knot of officers in one corner of the roundhouse and assumed that they were debating their plan of attack. But that wasn’t what they were doing at all. They had been huddling here, as far as possible from the men they must command. They weren’t planning; they were hesitating.

  “Hmmm…” She quirked a transparently false smile at the commander. “If you men will excuse me for a few minutes?” He looked puzzled, then annoyed, then amused. Venera took Sarto’s arm and led him away from the table.

  “What are you going to do?” he asked.

  She stopped in an area of blank floor stained over the decades by engine oil and grease. At first Venera didn’t meet Sarto’s eyes. She was looking around at the towering wrought-iron pillars, the tessellated windows in the ceiling, the smoky beams of light that intersected on the black backs of the locomotives. A deep knot of some kind, loosened when she cried in Eilen’s arms, was unraveling.

  “They talk about places as being our homes,” she mused. “It’s not the place, really, but the people.”

  “I’m sure I don’t know what you mean,” he said. His dry irony had no effect on Venera. She merely shrugged.

  “You were right,” she said. He cocked his head to one side, crossing his arms, and waited. “After the confirmation, when you said I was still Sacrus’s,” she went on. “And in the council chamber, even when we talked in your cell earlier tonight. Even now. As long as I wanted to leave Spyre, I was theirs. As long as they’ve known what to dangle in front of me, there was nothing I could do but what they wanted me to do.”

  “Haven’t I said that repeatedly?” He sounded annoyed.

  “All along, there’s been a way to break their hold on me,” she said. “I just haven’t had the courage to do it.”

  He grumbled, “I’d like to think I made the right choice by throwing in with you. Takes you long enough to come to a decision, though.”

  Venera laughed. “All right. Let’s do this.” She started to walk toward the locomotives.

  “There you are!” Venera stumbled, cursed, and then flung out her arms.

  “Bryce!” He hugged her, but hesitantly—and she knew not to display too much enthusiasm herself. No one knew they were lovers; that knowledge would be one more piece of leverage against them. So she disengaged from him quickly and stepped back. “What happened? I saw the semaphore station blown up. We all assumed you were…”

  He shook his head. In the second-hand light he did look a bit disheveled and soot stained. “A bunch of us got knocked off the roof, but none of us were hurt.” He laughed. “We landed in the brambles and then had to claw our way through with Sacrus’s boys firing at our arses all the way. Damn near got shot by our own side as well, before we convinced them who we were.”

  Now she did hug him and damn the consequences. “Have you been able to contact any of our—your people?”

  He nodded. “There’s a semaphore station on the roof. The whole Buridan network’s in contact. Do you have orders?”

  As Venera realized what was possible, she grinned. “Yes!” She took Bryce by one arm and Sarto by the other and dragged them across the floor. “I think I know a way to break the siege and save the other commanders. You need to get up there and get Buridan to send us something. Jacoby, you get up there too. You need to convince Sacrus that I’m ready to double-cross my people.” She pushed them both away.

  “And what are you going to do?” asked Bryce.

  She smiled past the throbbing in her jaw. “What I do best,” she said. “I’ll set the ball rolling.”

  Venera stalked over to the black, bedewed snout of a locomotive and pulled herself up to stand in front of its headlamp. She was drenched in light from it and the overhead spots, aware that her pale face and hands must be as bright as lantern flames against the dark metal surrounding her. She raised her arms.

  “It is tüüüme!”

  She screamed it with all her might, squeezed all the anger and the pain from her twisted family and poisonous intrigues of her youth, the indifferent bullet and her loss of her husband Chaison, the blood on her hands after she stabbed Aubri Mahallan, the smoke from her pistols as she shot men and women alike, all of it into that one word. As the echoes subsided everyone in the roundhouse came to their feet. All eyes were on her and that was exactly right, exactly how it should be.

  “Today the old debts will be settled! Two hundred years and more the truth has waited in Buridan tower—the truth of what Sacrus is and what they have done! Nearly too late, but not too late, because you, here today, will be the ones to settle those debts and at the same time, prevent Sacrus from ever committing such atrocities again!

  “Let me describe my home. Let me describe Buridan tower!” Out of the corner of her eye she saw the army commanders running from their map table, but they had to shoulder their way through hundreds of soldiers to reach her, and the soldiers were raptly attentive to her alone. “Like a vast musical instrument, a flute thrust into the sky and played on by the ceaseless hurricane winds of the airfall. Cold, its corridors decorated with grit and wavering, torn ribbons that once were tapestries. Wet, with nothing to burn except the feathers of birds. Never silent, never still as the beams it stands on sway under the onslaught of air. A roaring tomb, that is Buridan tower! That is what Sacrus made. It is what they promise to make of your homes as well, make no mistake.

  “That’s right,” she nodded. “You’re fighting for far more than you may know. This isn’t just a matter of historical grudges, nor is
it a skirmish over Sacrus’s kidnapping and torture of your women and children. This is about your future. Do you want all of Spyre to become like Buridan, an empty tomb, a capricious playground for the winds? Because that is what Sacrus has planned for Spyre.”

  The officers had stopped at the head of the crowd. She could see that the commander was about to order her to be taken off her perch, so Venera hurried on to her main point. “You have not been told the truth about this war! Before we leave this place you need to know why Sacrus has moved against us all. It is because they believe they have outgrown Spyre the way a wasp outgrows its cocoon. Centuries ago they attacked and destroyed Buridan to gain a treasure from us. They failed to capture it, but never gave up their ambition. Ever since Buridan’s fall they have bided their time, awaiting the chance to get their hands on something Buridan has guarded for the sake of Spyre, since the very beginning of time.” She was really winding herself up now, and for the moment the officers had stopped, curious no doubt about what she was about to say.

  “Since the creation of Spyre, my family has guarded one of the most powerful relics in the world! It was for the sake of this trust that we kept to Buridan tower for generations, not venturing out because we feared Sacrus would learn that the tower is not the empty shell they believed—afraid they would learn that it can be entered. The thing we guarded is so dangerous that my brothers and sisters, my parents, grandparents, and their grandparents, all sacrificed their lives to prevent even a hint of its existence from escaping our walls.

  “Time came when we could no longer sustain ourselves,” she said more softly, “and I had to venture forth.” Dimly, Venera wondered at this grand fib she was making up on the spot; it was a rousing story, and if it proved rousing enough, then nobody would believe Guinevera if he survived to accuse her of being an imposter.

  “As soon as I came forth,” she said, “Sacrus knew that Buridan had survived, and they knew why we had stayed hidden. They knew that I carried with me the last key to Candesce!”

  She stopped, letting the echoes reverberate. Crossing her arms, she gazed out at the army, waiting. Two seconds, five, ten, and then they were muttering, talking, turning to one another with frowns and nods. Some who prided themselves on knowing old legends told the men standing next to them about the keys; word began to spread through the ranks. In the front row, the officers were looking at one another in consternation.

  Venera raised a hand for silence. “That is what this war is about,” she said. “Sacrus has known of the existence of this key for centuries. They tried to take it once, and Buridan and its allies resisted. Now they are after it again. If they get it, they will no longer need Spyre. To them it is like the hated chrysalis that has confined them for generations. They will shed it, and they don’t care if it unravels in pieces as they fly toward the light. At best, Spyre will prove a good capital for the world-spanning empire they plan—once they’ve scoured it clean of all the old estates, that is. Yes, this cylinder will make a fine park for the palace of Virga’s new rulers. They’ll need room for the governors of their new provinces, for prisoners, slaves, treasure houses, and barracks. They might not knock down all the buildings. But you and yours… well, I hope you have relatives in one of the principalities, because rabble like us won’t be allowed to live here anymore.”

  The soldiers were starting to argue and shout. Belatedly the officers had realized that they weren’t in control any more; several darted at the locomotive, but Venera crouched and glared at them, as if she was ready to pounce. They backed away.

  She stood up onto her tip-toes as she flung one fist high over her head. “We have to stop them! The key must be protected, for without it, Spyre itself is doomed. You fight for more than your lives—more than your homes. You are all that stands between Sacrus and the slow strangulation of the very world!

  “Will you stop them?” They shouted yes. “Will you?” They screamed it.

  Venera had never seen anyone give a speech like this, but she’d heard Chaison work a crowd and had read about such moments in books. It all took her back to those romantic stories she’d devoured as a little girl in her pink bedroom. Outrageous theatricality, but none of these men had ever seen its like either; few had probably ever been in a theater. For most, this roundhouse was the farthest they had ever been from home, and the looming locomotive was something they had only ever glimpsed in the far distance. They stood among peers, who before today had been dots seen through telescopes, and they were learning that however strange and foreign they were, all were united in their loyalty to Spyre itself. Of course the moment made them mad.

  Fist still raised, Venera smiled down at the commander who shook his head in defeat.

  Bryce and Jacoby Sarto clambered along the side of the locomotive to join her. “What’s the news?” she asked over the roar of the army at her feet.

  Bryce blinked at the scene. “Uh… they’re on their way.”

  Sarto nodded. “I semaphored the Sacrus army commander. Told him you realize your situation is hopeless, that you’re going to lead your army into a trap.”

  She grinned. “Good.” She turned back to the crowd and raised her fist again.

  “It—is—tüüüüüme!”

  20

  The sound of bullets hitting Liris’s walls reminded Garth Diamandis of those occasional big drops that fall from trees after a rain. Silence, then a pat followed in this case by the distant sound of a shot. From the gunslit where he was watching he could see the army of the Council Alliance assembling next to the rust-streaked roundhouse. In the early morning light it seemed like a dark carpet moving, in ominous silence, in the direction of Liris. Little puffs of smoke arose from the Sacrus line, but the firing was undisciplined.

  “Come away from there,” said Venera’s friend Eilen. They stood in a musty closet crammed with door lintels, broken drawers, cracked table legs: useless junk, but impossible for a tiny nation like Liris to throw away. Lantern light from the corridor shone through Eilen’s hair. She could have been attractive, a habitual part of his mind noted. At one time, he could have helped her with that.

  “I have a good view of the Sacrus camp,” he said. “And it’s too dangerous to be on the roof right now.”

  “You’ll get a bullet in the eye,” she said. He grunted and turned back to the view, and after a moment he heard her leave.

  He couldn’t tell her that he had recognized one of the uniformed figures moving down there—maybe two of them, he couldn’t be sure. Garth was sure that Eilen would tell him he was suffering an old man’s delusions if he said he’d recognized his daughter among the hundreds of crimson uniforms.

  He could be imagining it. He’d had scant moments to absorb the sight of her before she’d signaled her superiors and Sacrus’s thugs had moved in on him. Yet Garth had an eye for women, was able to recall the smallest detail about how this or that one moved or held herself. He could deduce much about character and vulnerability by a woman’s stance and habitual gestures, and he damned well knew how to recognize one at a distance. That was Selene standing hipshot by that tent, he was sure of it.

  Garth cursed under his breath. He’d never been one to probe at sore spots, but ever since they’d thrown him into that stinking cell in the Gray Infirmary, his thoughts had pivoted around the moment of Selene’s betrayal.

  He had told her that he was her father, just before she betrayed him. In the seconds between, he’d seen the doubt in her eye—and then the mad-eyed woman with the pink hair had come to stand next to Selene.

  “He said he’s my father,” Selene murmured as the soldiers cuffed Garth. The pink-haired woman behind her laughed.

  “And who knows?” she’d said. “He might well be.” She had laughed again, and Garth had glimpsed a terrible light in his daughter’s eye just before he was hauled out of her sight.

  There it was again, that mop of blossom-colored hair poking out from under a gray army cap. She was an officer. The last time Garth had seen her had been in
a bizarre fever dream where Venera was whispering his name urgently. This woman had been there, among glass cases, but she was naked and laved with crimson from head to toe. Venera had spoken her name then, but Garth didn’t remember it.

  The sound of firing suddenly intensified. Garth craned his neck to look in the direction of the roundhouse. Sacrus’s forces were moving out to engage the council troops on the inside of Liris. Behind him, though, he could see an equally large contingent of Sacrus’s soldiers circling back around the building—headed toward the edge of the world.

  Garth had some inkling of what the council army was doing. They were pressing up against the no-man’s land of thorn and tumbled masonry, a scant hundred yards from the walls of Liris. From there they could turn left or right—inward or toward world’s edge—at a moment’s notice. Sacrus would have to split their forces into two to guard against both possibilities.

  It was an intelligent plan and for a moment Garth’s spirits lifted. Then he saw more of Sacrus’s men abandon their positions below him. They were leaving a noisy and smoke-wreathed band of some two hundred men to defend the inward side while the rest of their forces marched behind Liris and out of sight from the roundhouse. They clearly expected the council army to split right and try to relieve Guinevera and Anseratte at the hurricane-wracked world’s edge. But how did they know what the council was planning?

  He cursed and jumped down off the ancient credenza he’d been perched upon. The corridors were stuffed with armed people, old men and women mostly (strange how he thought of other people his age as old, but not himself). He elbowed his way through them carelessly. “Where the hell is Moss?”

  Someone pointed down a narrow, packed hallway. Liris’s new botanist was deep in discussion with the only one of Bryce’s men left inside the walls. “I need semaphore flags,” Garth shouted over two shoulders. “We have to warn the troops what Sacrus is doing!”