Queen of Candesce (18 page)

Moss indicated for her to take the single wooden chair; he managed one of his mangled smiles as he plunked himself down on the bed. “Wh-who says I w-w-won't?” he said. “H-have to get the sm-smell out first.”

Venera laughed, then winced at the shards of pain that shot through her jaw and skull. “Good for you,” she said past gritted teeth. “I trust you've been well since I left?” He shrugged. “And Liris? Made any new sales?”

“W-what do you want?”

Tired and in pain as she was, Venera would have been more than happy to come to the point. But, “First of all, I have to ask you something,” she said. “Do you know who I am?”

“Of c-course. You are V-Venera F-Fanning, from—”

“Oh, but I'm not.—At least, not anymore.” She grimaced at his annoyed expression. “I have a new name, Moss. Have you heard of Amandera Thrace-Guiles?”

His reaction was comically perfect. He stared, his eyes wide and his mouth open, for a good five seconds. Then he brayed his difficult laugh. “Odess was r-right! And h-here I thought he was m-mistaking every new face for s-somebody he knew.” He laughed again.

Venera examined her nails coolly. “I'm glad I amuse you,” she said. “But my own adventures hardly seem unique these days.”

The grin left his face. “Wh-what do you mean?”

“Not that you have any obligation to tell me anything,” she said, “but…surely you've seen that there are odd things afoot in Greater Spyre. Gangs of soldiers wandering in the dark…back-room alliances being made and broken. Something's afoot, don't you agree?”

He sat up straight. “Th-the Fair is full of rumors. Some of the l-lesser nations have been losing people.”

“Losing them? What do you mean?”

“When the f-first of our people v-vanished, we assumed M-Margit's supporters were leaving. I th-thought it was o-only us. But others have also lost people.”

“How many of yours have left?” she asked seriously.

He held up one hand, fingers splayed. Five, then. For a miniature nation like Liris, that was too many.

Moss stood up, walked to the door, and listened at it for a moment. Then he turned and leaned on it. “Sacrus,” he said flatly.

“It can't be a coincidence,” she said. “I came here to talk to you about them. They…they have one of my people. Moss, you know what they're capable of. I have to get him back.”

Her words had a powerful effect on Moss. He drew himself up to his full height and for a moment his face lost its devastated expression; in that moment she glimpsed the determined, intelligent man who hid deep inside his ravaged psyche. Then his features collapsed back to their normal, woebegone state. He raised shaking hands and pressed his palms against his ears.

He said something, almost unintelligibly; after a moment Venera realized he'd said, “Are they toying with th-these recruits?”

“No,” she countered hastily. “My man is a prisoner. The recruits or whatever they are…Moss, Sacrus has a reason to want an army of their own, possibly for the first time. They've finally discovered an ambition worth leaving their own doorstep.” She said this with contempt, but in her imagination she saw the vast glowing bubble of nations that made up the principalities of Candesce. “They don't have the population to support what I think they're planning. But it wouldn't surprise me if they've been recruiting from the more secretive nations. Maybe they've always done it but never needed them all before. Now they're activating them.”

Puzzlement spread slowly across Moss's face. “An a-army? What for?”

Venera took a deep breath, then said, “They believe they have the means to conquer the principalities of Candesce.”

He stared at her. “A-and do they?”

“Yes,” she admitted, looking at her hands. “I brought it to them.”

He said nothing; Venera's mind was already racing ahead. “Their force must be small by my standards,” she said. “Maybe two thousand people. They'd be overwhelmed in any fair fight but they don't intend to fight fair. If we could warn the principalities, they could blockade Spyre. But we'd need to get a ship out.”

“Uh-unlikely,” said Moss with a sour expression. “One thing I d-do know about Sacrus is that they have been buying ships.”

“What else can we do?” she asked tiredly. “Attack them ourselves?”

“Y-you didn't come to ask me to h-help you do that?”

She laughed humorlessly. “Buridan and Liris against Sacrus? That would be suicidal.”

He nodded, but suddenly had a faraway look in his eye. “No,” Venera continued. “I came to ask you to help me break into Sacrus's prison and extract my man. I have a plan that I think will work. Margit told me where they keep their ‘acquisitions.' I believe they view people as objects too, so he's likely to be in that place.”

“Th-they guard their lands on the ground and a-above it,” said Moss skeptically.

“I don't intend to come in by either route,” she said. “But I need a squad of soldiers, at least a score of them. I have some of the forces I need, or I will.” She half-smiled. “But I need others I can trust. Will your people do it?”

Now it was his turn to smile. “S-strike a blow against Sacrus? Of c-course! But once the other nations who've l-lost people find out it was S-Sacrus that stole them, y-you'll have more allies. A d-dozen at least.”

Venera hadn't considered such a possibility.
Allies?
“I suppose we could count on one or two of the countries whose debts we forgave,” she said slowly. “A couple of others might join us just out of devilment.” She was thinking of Pamela Anseratte as she said this. Then she shook her head. “No—it's still not enough.”

Moss gave his damaged laugh. “Y-you've f-forgotten the most important faction, Venera,” he said. “And they have no l-love for Sacrus.”

Venera rubbed her eyes. She was too tired and her head hurt too much to guess his meaning. “Who?” she asked irritably.

Moss opened the door and bowed slightly as he held it for her. “You c-came in s-secret. You should return before Candesce l-lights. We will assemble a force f-for you.

“And I will t-talk…to the preservationists.”

“This is the window she was signaling from,” said Bryce. He had his arms folded tightly to his chest and a muscle jumped in his jaw. Long tonguelike curls of wallpaper trembled over his shoulder in the constantly moving air. “I watched her send the whole message, clicking the little door of her lantern like she'd been doing light codes her whole life. She didn't even bother to encrypt it.”

Venera had gotten the story out of him in fits and starts, as memory and anger distracted him in turn. Cassia had been one of Bryce's first recruits. They had argued with their foreheads together in the dark bars that peppered Lesser Spyre's red-light district, and defaced buildings and thrown rocks at council parades. It was her urging that had led him down the path to terrorism, he admitted. “And all along, I was a project of hers—some kind of entrance exam to the academy of traitors in Sacrus!” He slammed his fist against the wall.

“Well.” Venera shaded her eyes with her hand and peered through the freshly installed glass. “In the end, you were the one who fooled her. And she's the one pent up in a locker downstairs.”

He didn't look mollified. The false attack plan had been Venera's idea, after all; all Bryce had done was bring his lieutenants together to reveal the target of their next bombing, a Sacrus warehouse in Lesser Spyre. All three of the lieutenants had expressed enthusiasm, Cassia perhaps most of all. But as soon as the planning meeting broke up she had come down to this disused pantry midway up the side of Buridan Tower—and had started signaling.

Venera could see why she would have favored this room for more than its writhing, peeled wallpaper. From here you had a clear line of sight to the walls of Sacrus, which ran in uneven mazelike lines just past a hedge of trees and a preservationist siding. From the center of the vast estate, a single monolithic building rose hundreds of feet into the afternoon air. Venera imagined a tiny flicker of light appearing somewhere on the side of that edifice—the rapid blink-blink of a message or instruction for Cassia. Bryce was having the place watched round the clock, but so far Sacrus had not responded to Cassia's warning.

“‘Target is Coaver Street warehouse in two days,' she told them.” Bryce shook his head in disgust. “‘Urge evac of assets unless I can change target.'”

“You've done well,” said Venera. She turned and sat on the window casement. “Listen, I know you're upset—you feel unmanned. Fair enough, it's a humiliation. No more so than this, though.” She held out a sheet of paper—a letter that had arrived for her this morning. She watched Bryce unfold it sullenly.

“‘Vote for Proposition forty-four at council tomorrow,'” he read. “What's that mean?”

She grimaced. “Proposition forty-four gives Sacrus control of the docks at Upper Spyre. Supposedly it's a demotion, since the docks aren't used much. Sacrus has modestly agreed to take that job and give up a plumb post in the exchequer that they've held for decades. Nobody's likely to object.”

Bryce managed a grim smile. “So they're ordering you around like a lackey now?”

“At least they respected you enough to manipulate you instead,” she said. “And don't forget, Bryce: your people follow
you
. Cassia recognized the leader in you, otherwise she wouldn't have singled you out for her attention. She may have been manipulating you all this time—but she was also training you.”

He grumbled, but she could see her words had pleased him. At that moment, though, they heard rapid footsteps in the hall outside. Gray-haired Pasternak, one of Bryce's remaining two lieutenants, stuck his head in the doorway and said, “They're here.”

Venera spared a last glance out the window. From up here the airfall was an insubstantial mesh of fabric where ground should be. Rushing clouds spun by beneath that faint skein, which she knew was really a gridwork of I-beams and stout cable—the tough inner skeleton of Spyre, visible now that the skin was stripped away. A small jumble of gantries and cranes perched timidly at the edge of the ruined land. The official story was that Amandera Thrace-Guiles was trying to build a bridge across the airfall to rejoin Buridan Tower to the rest of Spyre.

She followed Bryce out of the room. The truth was that the bridge site was a ruse, a distraction to cover up the real link between Buridan and the rest of the world. In the few days that had passed since Venera's conversation with Moss, a great deal of activity had taken place in the pipeworks that Venera and Garth had used to reach Buridan Tower the first time. A camouflaged entrance had been built near the railway siding a few hundred yards back from the airfall's edge. A man, or even a large group of men, could jump off a slow-moving train and after a sprint under some trees be in a hidden tunnel that led all the way to the tower. True, there were still long sections where men had to walk separated by thirty feet or more lest the pipe give way…but that would be fixed.

As she and Bryce strode down the long ramp that coiled from the tower's top to its bottom, they passed numerous work sites, each comprising half a dozen or more men and women. It was much like the controlled chaos of her estate's renovation, except that these people weren't fixing the plaster. They were assembling weapons, inventorying armor and supplies, and fencing in the ballrooms. Bryce's entire organization was here, as well as gray-eyed soldiers from Liris and exotics from allies of that country. They had started arriving last night, after Bryce gave the all-clear that he'd found his traitor.

Bryce's people were still in shock. They watched the newcomers with mixed loathing and suspicion; but the shock of Cassia's betrayal had been effective, and their loyalty to him still held. Venera knew they would need something to do—and soon—or their natural hatred of the status quo would assert itself. They were born agitators, cutthroats, and bomb builders, but that was why they would be useful.

A new group was just tromping up from the stairs to the pipeworks as Venera and Bryce reached the main hall. They wore oil-stained leathers and outlandish fur hats. Venera had seen these uniforms at a distance, usually wreathed in steam from some engine they were working on. These burly men were from the Preservation Society of Spyre, and they were sworn enemies of Sacrus.

For the moment they were acting more like overawed boys, though, staring around at the inside of Buridan Tower like they'd been transported into a storybook. In a sense, they had; the preservationists were indoctrinated in the history of the airfall, which remained the greatest threat to Spyre's structural integrity and which all now knew had been caused partly by Sacrus. Buridan Tower had probably been a symbol to them for centuries of defiance against decay and treachery. To stand inside it now was clearly a shock.

Good. She could use that fact.

“Gentlemen.” She curtsied to the group. “I am Amandera Thrace-Guiles. If you'll follow me, I'll show you where you can freshen up, and then we can get started.”

They murmured amongst themselves as they walked behind her. Venera exchanged a glance with Bryce, who seemed amused at her formality.

The preservationists headed off to the washrooms and Venera and Bryce turned the other way, entering the tower's now-familiar library. Venera had ordered some of the emptied armor of the tower's long-ago attackers mounted here. The holed and burned crests of Sacrus and its allies were quite visible on breastplate and shoulder. As a pointed message, Venera'd had the suits posed like sentries around the long map table in the middle of the room. One even held a lantern.

Bryce's lieutenants were already at the table, pointing to things and talking in low tones with the commander of the Liris detachment. As the preservationists trooped back in, the other generals and colonels entered from a door opposite. Moss had exceeded Venera's wildest expectations: at the head of this group were generals from Carasthant and Scoman, old allies of Liris in its war with Vatoris—and they had brought friends of their own. Most prominent was the towering, frizzy-haired Corinne, princess of Fin. Normally Venera didn't like women who were social equals—in Hale they always represented a threat—but she'd taken an instant liking to Corinne.

Venera nodded around at them all. “Welcome,” she said. “This is an extraordinary meeting. Circumstances are dire. I'm sure you all know by now that Sacrus has recruited an army, plundering its neighbors of manpower in the process. So far the council at Lesser Spyre is acting like it never happened. I think they're in a tailspin. Does anyone here believe that the council should be the ones to deal with the situation?”

There were grins round the table. One of the preservationists held up a hand. He would have been handsome were it not for the beard—Venera hated beards—that obscured the lower half of his face. “You're on the council,” he said. “Can't you bring a motion for them to act?”

“I can, but the next morning I'll receive the head of my man Flance in the mail,” she said. “Sacrus has him. So I'm highly motivated, though not in the ways that Sacrus probably expects. Still…I won't act through the council.”

“Sacrus blocked one of our main lines,” said the preservationist. “All of Spyre is in danger unless we can get a counterbalance running through their land. Beyond that, we don't give a damn who they conquer.”

It was Venera's turn to nod. The preservationists were dedicated to keeping the giant wheel together. Most of their decisions were therefore pragmatic and dealt with engineering issues. They wouldn't care if they were ruled by the council or Sacrus itself, as long as the engineering was sound.

“Are you saying they could buy your loyalty by just giving you a siding?” she asked.

“They could,” said the bearded man. There were protests up and down the table, but Venera smiled.

“I applaud your honesty,” she said. “Your problem is that you'd need to give them a reason before they did that. They've never had any use for you and you've never been a threat to them. So you've come here to buy that leverage?”

He shrugged. “Or see them destroyed. It's all the same to us.”

Bryce leaned out to look at the man. “And the fact that they used poison gas to kill twenty-five of your workers a generation ago…?”

“…Gives us a certain bias in the
destroy
direction. Who are you?” added the bearded man, who had been briefed on the identities of the other players.

With obvious distaste, Bryce said what they'd decided he would say: “Bryce. Chief of intelligence for Buridan.” He nodded at Venera.

“You've a
spy network
?” The preservationist grinned at her ironically.

“I do, Mister…?”

“Thinblood.” It could have been a name or a title.

“I do, Mr. Thinblood—and
you've
got a secret warehouse full of artillery at junction sixteen,” she said with a return smile. Thinblood turned red; out of the corner of her eye Venera saw Princess Corinne stifle a laugh.

“We are all to be taken seriously,” Venera went on. “As is Sacrus. Let's return to discussing them.”

“Hang on,” said Thinblood. “What are we discussing? War?”

She shook her head. “Not yet. But clearly, Sacrus needs its wings clipped.”

The lean, cadaverous general from Carasthant made a violent shushing gesture that made everyone turn to stare at him. “What can little guppies like us do?” he said in a buzzing voice that seemed to emanate from his bobbing Adam's appple. “Begging your pardon, Madam Buridan, Mr. Preservationist sir. Do you propose we take down a shark by worrying at its gills?”

His compatriot from Scoman waggled his head in agreement. The one tiny clock built into his armor clicked ahead a second. “Sacrus is bounded by high walls and barbed wire,” he said over the quiet snicking of his clothing, “and they have sniper towers and machine-gun positions. Even if we fought our way in, what would we do? Piss on their lawn?”

That was an expression Venera had never heard before.

Venera had thought long and hard about what to say when this question came up. These men and women were gathered here because their homes had all been injured or insulted by Sacrus—but were they here merely to vent their indignation? Would they back down in the face of actual action?

She didn't want to tell them that she knew what Sacrus was up to. The key to Candesce was a prize worth betraying old friends for. If they knew Sacrus had it, half these people would defect to Sacrus's side immediately, and the other half would proceed to plan how to get it themselves. It might turn into a night of long knives inside Buridan Tower.

“Sacrus's primary assets lie inside the Grey Infirmary,” she said. “Whatever it is that they manufacture and sell, that is its origin. At the very least, we need to know what we're up against, what they're planning to do. I propose that we invade the Grey Infirmary.”

There was a momentary, stunned silence from the new arrivals. Princess Corinne's broad sunburnt face was squinched up in a failed attempt to hide a smile. Then Thinblood, the Carasthant general, and two of the minor house representatives all started talking at once.

“Impossible!” she heard, and “Suicide!” through the general babble. Venera let it run on for a minute or so, then held up her hand.

“Consider the benefits if it could be done,” she said. “We could rescue my man Flance, assuming he's there. We could find out what Sacrus trades in—though I think we all know—but in any case find out what its tools and devices are. We might be able to seize their records. Certainly we can find out what it is they're doing.

“If we want, we can blow up the tower.

“And it
can
be done,” she said. “I admit I was pretty hopeless myself until last night. We'd talked through all sorts of plans, from sneaking over the walls to shimmying down ropes from Lesser Spyre. All our scenarios ended up with us being machine-gunned, either on the way in or on the way out. Then I had a long talk with Princess Corinne, here.”