Queen of Candesce v-2

by Karl Schroeder

  The wind was now a harsh constant moan, flickering past her in gusts. It spun in little permanent tornadoes over gaps and holes in Spyre's skin. There were more and more such holes as the slope rose to the edge. The edge itself was ragged, a crenellation of collapsed galleries, up-thrusting spars and flapping plates that added to the din.

  She heard something else, too. A regular creaking sound seemed to be coming from overhead. Venera looked up.

  Six wooden platforms had been lowered over the top of the stone cube and were being winched down. Each was crowded with men in tall steel helmets and outlandish spiked armor. They clutched pikes and rifles with barrels longer than they were tall. Several were pointing at her excitedly.

  Venera swore and took off up the rubble-strewn slope. The wind was at her back, and it became stronger the closer she got to the edge. Several gusts lifted her off her feet. Venera noticed that the metal skin of Spyre was completely exposed in the final yards leading up to the edge. Only fair-sized rocks inhabited the area behind it. As she watched, a stone the size of her foot rolled up the metal and spun off into the air. A few more yards and the wind would take her, too.

  Her foot sank into the slope and Venera fell in ridiculous slow-motion. As she pried herself upright again she saw that the metal plate bent by her foot was vibrating madly in the square hole it had made. Then with a loud pop it disappeared and suddenly a hurricane was howling into the bright aperture it had left.

  Venera was sucked down and slid forward until she was right over the hole. She reached out and braced her hands on either side while the air screamed past her. It was trying to escape Spyre with even more passion than hers. For a few seconds she could only stare down and see what faced her if she made it to the edge and jumped.

  Many long flagpole-like beams thrust out below the edge of the world. They trailed wire nets into the furious wind; anyone caught on those nets would suffocate before they could be pulled up. Far beneath the nets, where scudding clouds spun past, Venera glimpsed thousands of black specks and grayish veins in the air. Mines? More razor wire? Diamandis had not been lying, after all.

  "Damn! Shit!” She tried to scream more curses—every one she could think of—but the air was being pulled out of her lungs. She was about to faint into the hole and die.

  Strong hands took her by the arms and legs and hauled her back. Venera was hoisted onto someone's back and unceremoniously toted back down the slope. With every jolting step escape, and home, and Chaison receded past the frame of her grasping fingers.

  3

  Although he was her favorite uncle, Venera never saw much of Prince Albard. He was a mysterious figure on the periphery of the court, sweeping into Hale in his yacht to regale her with tales of strange cities and the outlandish women he'd met there (always sighing when he talked of them). His face was split down the center by a saber scar, putting his lips into a permanent twist that made it look like he was smirking. Unlike most of the people who encountered him, Venera knew that he was smirking—laughing inside at all the pointless desperation and petty recrimination of life. In that regard he was the polar opposite of her father, a man with a mind focused by a single lens of suspicion; maybe that was why she clung to Albard's knees when he did appear, and treasured the odd-shaped dolls and toys he brought.

  They recognized each other, this vagabond prince in his motley and the pouting princess in clothes she systematically tattered as soon as she was in them. So maybe it was natural that when the time came, it was in her bedroom that Albard barricaded himself.

  He only noticed her after he had dragged her wardrobe across the door and piled some chairs and tables around it. “Damn, girl, what are you doing here?"

  Venera had cocked her head and squinted at him. “This is my room."

  "I know it's your room, dammit. Shouldn't you be at lessons?"

  "I bit the tutor.” Banished and bored, she had (not out of anger but a more scientific impulse) been beheading some of her dolls when Albard swept in. Venera had assumed that he was there to talk to her and had politely waited, limp headless body in one hand, while he proceeded to move all the furniture. So he wasn't there to see her? What, then, was this all about?

  "Oh, never mind,” he said irritably, “just stay out of sight. This could get ugly."

  Now she could hear shouting outside, sounds of people running. “What did you do?” she asked.

  He was leaning back against the pile of furniture as though trying to propel it out the room. “I bit someone, too,” he said. “Or, rather, I was about to, and they found out."

  Venera came and sat down on the fuchsia carpet near him. “My father, right?"

  His eyebrows rose comically. “How did you guess?"

  Venera thought about this for a while. Then she said, “Does that mean that everybody who makes Father mad has to come to this room?"

  Albard laughed. “Niece, if that were true, the whole damn kingdom would be in here with us."

  "Oh.” She was slightly reassured.

  "Give it up, Albard!” someone shouted from outside. It sounded like her father. There was some sort of mumbling discussion, then: “Is, uh… is Venera in there with you?"

  "No!” The prince put a finger to his lips and knelt next to her. “The one thing I absolutely will not do,” he said gently, “is use you as a bargaining chip. If you want to leave, I will tear down this barricade and let you go."

  "What will they do to you?"

  "Put me in chains, take me away… then it all depends on your father's mood. There's a black cloud behind his eyes lately, have you seen it?” She nodded vigorously. “It's getting bigger and bigger, that cloud, and I think it's starting to crowd out everything else. That worries me."

  "I know what you mean."

  "I daresay you do.” There followed a long interval during which Albard negotiated with the people on the other side of the furniture. Venera retreated to the window, but she was far from bored now. At last Albard blew out his cheeks and turned to her.

  "Things are not going well,” he said. “Do you have a pen and some writing material?” She pointed to the desk that perched on top of the barricade. “Ah. Much obliged."

  He clambered up and retrieved a pen and some paper. Then, frowning, he dropped the paper. He went to his knees and began hunting around for something, while Venera watched closely. He came up with one of her dolls, a favorite that had a porcelain head and cloth body.

  "Do you mind if I borrow this for a minute?” he asked her. She shrugged.

  Albard rubbed the doll's face against the stone floor for a while, while crashing sounds started from the hallway. The barricade shook. Holding the doll up critically, the prince grunted in satisfaction. Then he hunched over and began delicately pressing the pen against its face.

  He was standing in the center of the room with his hands behind his back when the barricade finally fell. A dozen solders came in, and they marched him out; he only had time to look back and wink at Venera before he was gone.

  After they'd taken him away, some members of the secret police ransacked her room. (That it looked substantially the same when they left as before Albard had arrived was a testament to her own habits.) They seized everything that could write or be written on, even prying the plaster off the wall where she'd scribbled on it. Venera herself was frisked several times, and then they swirled out, all clinking metal and bandoliers, leaving her sitting in the exact spot where he had been standing.

  Neither she, nor anyone she would later meet, ever saw Albard again.

  Eventually, she moved over to the window and picked up a particular doll. Its tunic was ripped where the secret policemen had cut it open looking for hidden notes. Venera held it up to the window and frowned.

  So that was what he'd been doing. Albard had rubbed its eyebrows off against the stone. Then, in meticulous tiny lines and curls, he had repainted them. From a distance of more than a few inches they seemed normal. Up close, though, she could see what they were made of:
/>   Letters.

  * * * *

  The nation of Liris curled around its interior courtyard as though doubled up in pain. Every window stared down at that courtyard. Every balcony overhung it. The bottom of this well would be in permanent shadow if not for the giant mirrors mounted on the roof, which were aimed at Candesce.

  Venera could plainly see that the courtyard was the focus of everything—but she couldn't see what was down there. For the first two days of her stay she was shuttled from small room to small room, all of them lined up in a short hallway painted institution green. After a brief interview in each chamber she was taken back to a drab waiting room, where she sat and ate and slept fitfully on the benches. She was startled awake every morning by a single gunshot sounding somewhere nearby. Morning executions?

  It seemed unlikely; she was the sole inhabitant of this little prison. Prison it clearly was. She had to fill out forms just to use the one washroom, a cold cube with wooden stalls defaced by centuries of carven graffiti. Its high, grated windows gave her a view of the upper stories of the inner courtyard. They hinted at freedom.

  "B-b-back to waking?” Venera sat up warily on the third morning and tried to smile at her jailor.

  He was tall, athletically muscled, and possessed the sort of chiseled good looks one saw in actors, career diplomats, or con artists. As dapper as could be expected for a man dressed in iron and creaking leather, he might have melted any lady's heart—provided she never looked in his eyes or heard him speak. Either of those maneuvers would have revealed the awful truth about Moss: his mind was damaged somehow. He seemed more marionette than man and, sadly, appeared to be painfully aware of his deficit.

  Just as he had yesterday, Moss carried a stack of forms in one hand, bearing it as though it were a silver platter. Venera sighed when she saw this. “How long is it going to take to process me into your prison?” she asked as he clattered to a stop in front of her.

  "P-p-prison?” Moss gaped at her. Carefully, as though they were gold, he placed the papers on the peeling bench. His metal clothing gnashed quietly as he straightened up. “You're n-not in p-p-prison, my lady."

  "Then what is this place?” She gestured around at the sound-deadening plaster walls, the smoke-stained light sconces and battered benches. “Why am I here? When do I get my things back?” They'd gone through her jacket and taken its contents—jewelry, key, and bullet. She wasn't sure which loss worried her most.

  Moss's face never changed expression as he spoke, but his eyes radiated some sort of desperate plea. They always did, even if he was staring at the wall. Those eyes seemed eloquent, but Venera was beginning to think that nothing about Moss's looks or demeanor meant anything about his inner state. Now he said, in his intensely flat way, “This is the im-immigration department of the g-g-government of Liris. You were brought here to't-t-take your citizenship-ip exams."

  "Citizenship?” But now it all made sense—the forms, the sense of being processed, and the succession of minor officials who'd taken up hours of her time over the past days. They had grilled her mercilessly, but not about how or why she had come here, or about what her plans or allegiances might be. They didn't even want to know about her peeling sunburns. No, they'd wanted to know the medical histories of her extended family, whether there was madness in her line (a question that had made her laugh), and what was the incidence of criminality among her relatives.

  "Well, my father stole a country once,” she had answered. She had of course asked them to let her go, in perhaps a dozen different ways. Her assumption was that she would be ransomed or otherwise used as a bargaining chip. With this in mind, she had sat anxiously for hours, wondering about her value to this or that state or person. It had never occurred to Venera that she might be adopted by Liris as one of its own.

  Now as she realized what was going on, Venera had one of the strangest moments of her life. She felt, for just a second, relief at the prospect of spending the rest of her life hidden away here, like a jewel in a safe. She shook herself, and the moment passed. Disturbed, she stood and turned away from Moss.

  "B-b-but the news is good,” said Moss, who looked like he was begging for death as he said it. “D-don't fret. You have p-p-passed all the't-t-tests so far. J-just one set of forms to g-go."

  Venera gnawed at her knuckle, each bite sending little pulses of pain up her jaw. “What if I don't want to be a citizen of Liris?"

  Moss proceeded to laugh, and Venera swore to herself she would do anything to avoid seeing that again. “F-Fill these out,” he said. “A-and you're done."

  It wasn't eagerness to become a citizen of a nation the size of a garden that made her sign the papers. Venera just wanted to get her things back—and get out of the waiting room. What she'd felt a moment ago was just a craving for anonymity, she told herself. Citizenship of any nation meant nothing to her, except as a sign of lowly status. Her father was hardly a citizen of Hale, after all; he was Hale, and other people were citizens of him. Venera had grown up believing she, too, was above such categories.

  "Come,” was all Moss said when she was finished. He led her out into the hallway, and at its end, he unlocked the great metal door with its wire-mesh window. Before pushing the portal open, he picked up an open-topped box and held it out to her.

  Inside were the necklace and earrings he'd confiscated from her jacket when she arrived. Rolling next to them was her bullet.

  The key to Candesce was not there.

  Venera frowned but decided not to press the matter just now. Moss gestured with one hand and she edged past him into her new country.

  Shafts of dusty sunlight silhouetted tall stone pillars. Their arched capitals were muted in shadow, but the polished floors gleamed like mirrors. Save for a wall where the edge of the courtyard should be, the whole bottom floor of the great cubic building seemed open. Filling the space were dozens and dozens of cubicles, desks, worktables, and stalls.

  Indeed, it seemed as if all the roles of a midsized town were duplicated here—tailor over here, doctor there, carpenters on this side, bricklayers on that—but all gathered in one room. Bolts of cloth were stacked with bags of cement. Drying racks and looms had been folded up under the ceiling to make way for chopping blocks and flour-covered counters. And working in determined silence throughout this shadow-cut space was a small army of silent, focused people.

  Each was isolated at some chair or desk, and Venera had the startled impression that these work stations had grown up and around some of the people, like shells secreted around water creatures. It must have taken years for that man there to build the small ziggurat of green bottles that reared above his desk; nearby a woman had buried herself in a miniature jungle of ferns. Mirrors on stands and hanging from strings cunningly directed every stray beam of light within ten feet at her green fronds. Each position had its eruption of individuality or downright eccentricity, but their limits were strictly kept; nobody's keepsakes and oddities spilled beyond an invisible line about five feet in radius.

  Moss led her to an outer wall, where he opened a dim chamber that reminded her of Diamandis's warren. Here were crates and boxes full of what looked like armor—except she knew it for what it was. “You are required to wear four hundred and fifty p-p-pounds of mass during the day,” said Moss. “That will offset our r-reduced g-gravity and maintain the health of your bones.” He stood back, arms crossed, while Venera rooted through the mess looking for something suitable.

  It seemed that Spyre's tailors were an unimaginative lot. The room contained an abundance of blouses, dresses and skirts, pants and jackets, but all were done in intricately tooled and hinged metal. Only undergarments—those directly in contact with the skin—were made of suppler materials, mostly leather, though to her relief she did find some cloth. Venera tried on a vest made of verdigrised copper scales, added a skirt made of overlapping iron plates and weighed herself. Barely one hundred pounds. She went back and found greaves and wrist bracers, a platinum torque, and a steel jacket with
tails. Better, but still too light. Moss waited patiently while she layered herself like a battleship. Finally when she topped the scales at one hundred pounds weight—five hundred pounds mass—he grunted in satisfaction. “B-but you need a h-h-hat,” he said.

  "What?” She glared at him. He had something like a belaying pin tied to his head; it wobbled when he moved. “Isn't all this humiliating enough?"

  "We m-must put p-p-pressure on the's-spine. For l-long-term health."

  "Oh, all right.” She hunted through a cache of ridiculous alternatives, ranging from flowerpots with chinstraps to a glass fish bowl, currently empty but encrusted with rime. Finally she settled on the least offensive piece, a chrome helmet with earflaps and crow's wings mounted behind the temples.

  With all of this on her, Venera's feet made a satisfactory smack when they hit the ground. She could feel the weight and it was indeed nearly normal, but spread all over her surface instead of internally. And she quickly discovered that it took a good hard push to start walking and that turning and stopping were not operations to be taken lightly. She had a quarter-ton of inertia now. After walking into several walls and doorjambs, she started to get the hang of it.

  "N-now,” said Moss in evident satisfaction, “you are f-fit to see the B-B-Botanist."

  "The what?” He threaded his way among the pillars without further comment. Venera nodded and smiled at the men and women who were putting down their work to openly stare as she passed. She tried to unobtrusively discern what they were working on, but the light here was too uneven. Shadow and glare thwarted her.

  Sunlight reflecting off the polished floor washed out whatever was ahead. Venera glanced back one more time before entering the lit area. Blackness and curving arches framed a dozen white ovals—faces—all turned toward her. On those faces she read every emotion: amazement, curiosity, anger, fear. None avoided her gaze. They goggled at her as though they'd never seen a stranger before.