Queen of Candesce v-2

by Karl Schroeder

  “You want it back?”

  He nodded.

  “Go fuck yourself!” She started to stalk toward the giant doorway but couldn’t resist turning and saying, “You tortured my man Garth! You think this is a game?”

  “The only way to win,” he said so quietly that the others couldn’t hear, “is to treat it as one.” Now his expression was serious, his gray eyes cold as a statue’s.

  It was suddenly clear to Venera that Sacrus already knew what she had been planning to say and do here today—and they approved. She made an excellent enemy for them to rally their own forces around. If they had needed an excuse to extend martial law over their neighbors, she had provided it. If civil war came, they would have their justification for marshaling the ancient Spyre fleet. The civil war would provide a nice smokescreen behind which they could seize Candesce. It wouldn’t matter then whether they won or lost back home.

  She had given them the enemy they needed. Sarto’s candid admission of the fact was a clear overture from him.

  Venera hesitated. Then, deliberately clamping down on her anger, she walked back to him. They were now the only council members remaining in the hall. The others had taken their seats, and she saw one or two craning their necks to watch their confrontation.

  “What do I get if I return the key?” she asked.

  He smiled again. “What you want. Power. For the rest, take your satisfaction by attacking us. We know you’ll be sincere. We’re counting on it. Only return the key, and at the end of the war you’ll get everything you want. You know we can deliver.” He held out his hand, palm up.

  She laughed lightly, though she felt sick. “I don’t have it with me,” she said. “And besides, I have no reason to trust you. None at all.”

  Now Sarto looked annoyed. “We thought you’d say that. You need a guarantee, a token of our sincerity. My masters have… instructed me… to provide you with one.”

  She laughed bitterly. “What could you possibly give me that would convince me you were sincere?”

  His expression darkened even further; for the first time he looked genuinely angry. Sarto spoke a single word. Venera gaped at him in undisguised astonishment, then laughed again. It was the bray of disdain she reserved for putting people down, and she was sure Sarto knew it.

  However, he merely bowed slightly and turned to indicate that she should precede him into the chamber. The doors were wide, and so they entered side by side. As they did so, Venera caught sight of Sarto’s expression and was amazed. In a few seconds he underwent a gruesome transformation, from the merely dark expression he’d displayed outside to a mask of twisted fury. By the time they split up halfway across the polished marble floor, he looked like he was ready to murder someone. Venera kept her own expression neutral, her eyes straight ahead of her as she climbed the red-carpeted steps to the long-disused seat of Buridan.

  The council members had been chatting, but one by one they fell silent and stared. Several of those were gazes of surprise; although they were masked, the ministers from Oxorn and Garatt were poised forward in their seats as if unsure whether to run or dive under their chairs. August Virilio’s usual expression of polite disdain was gone, in its place a brooding anger that seemed transplanted from an entirely different man.

  Pamela Anseratte stood as soon as they were seated and banged her gavel on a little table. “We were supposed to be gathering today to discuss the change of stewardship of the Spyre docks,” she began. “But obviously—”

  “She has started a war!”

  Jacoby Sarto was on his feet before the echoes of his voice died out—and so were the rest of the ministers. For a long moment everyone was talking at once while Anseratte pounded her gavel ineffectually. Then Sarto held up one hand in a magisterial gesture. He gravely hoisted a stack of papers over his head. “I hold the signed declarations in my hand,” he rumbled. “This is nothing less than the start of that civil conflict we have all been dreading—an unprovoked, vicious attack in the heartland of Sacrus itself—”

  “To rescue those people you kidnapped,” Venera said. She remained obstinately in her seat. “Citizens of sovereign states, abducted from their homes by agents of Sacrus.”

  “Impudence!” roared Sarto. Half the members were still on their feet; in the pillared gallery that opened up behind the council pew, the coteries of ministers, secretaries, courtiers, and generals that each council member held in reserve were glaring at one another and at her. Several clenched the pommels of half-drawn swords.

  “I have a partial list of names,” continued Venera, “of those we rescued from Sacrus’s dungeon last night. They include,” she shouted to drown out hecklers from the gallery, “citizens of every nation represented on this council, including Buridan. The council will not deny that I had every right to seek the repatriation of my own kinsmen?” She looked around, locking eyes with the unmasked members.

  Principe Guinevera’s jowls quivered as he thunked solidly into his seat. “You’re not going to claim that Sacrus stole one of my citizens? Surely—” He stopped as he saw her scan the list and then hold up her hand.

  “Her name is Melissa Ferania,” said Venera.

  “Ferania, Ferania… I know that name…” Guinevera’s brows knit. “It was a suicide. They never found a body.”

  Venera smiled. “Well, you’ll find her right now if you turn your head.” She gestured to the gallery.

  The whole council craned their necks to look. People had been filing into the Buridan section of the gallery for several minutes; in the ruckus, nobody on the council had noticed.

  On cue, Melissa Ferania stood up and bowed to Guinevera.

  “Oh my dear, my dear child,” he said, tears starting at the corners of his eyes.

  “I have more names,” said Venera, eyeing Jacoby Sarto. Everyone else was staring into the gallery, and he took the opportunity to meet her eye and nod slightly.

  Venera felt a sinking sensation in the pit of her stomach.

  She had stage-managed this confrontation for maximum effect, calling for volunteers from the recently rescued to attend the scheduled council meeting with her. Garth alone had refused to come; pale and still refusing to talk about his experience in the tower, he had remained outside in the street. But there were prisoners from Liris here as well as half a dozen other minor nations. As her trump card, she had brought people taken from the great nations of the council itself.

  Sarto seemed more than unfazed at this tactic. He seemed satisfied.

  She realized that a black silence had descended on the chamber. Everyone was looking at her. Clearing her throat, she said—her own words sounding distant to herself—”I move for immediate censure of Sacrus and the suspension of its rights on the Council of Spyre. Pending, uh… pending a thorough investigation of their recent activities.”

  For once, Pamela Anseratte looked out of her depth. “Ah… what?” She pulled her gaze back from the gallery.

  August Virilio laughed. “She wants us to expel Sacrus. A marvelous idea if I do say so myself—however impractical it may be.”

  Venera rallied herself. She shrugged. “Gain a seat, lose a seat… besides,” she said more loudly, “it’s a matter of justice.”

  Virilio toyed with a pen. “Maybe. Maybe—but Buridan forgot its own declaration of war before it invaded Sacrus. That nullifies your moral high ground, my dear.”

  “It doesn’t nullify them.” She swept her arm to indicate the people behind her.

  “Yes, marvelous grandstanding,” said Virilio dryly. “No doubt the majority of our council members are properly shocked at your revelation. Yet we must deal with practicalities. Sacrus is too important to Spyre to be turfed off the council for these misdemeanors, however serious they may seem. In fact, Jacoby Sarto was just now leveling some serious charges against you.”

  There was more shouting and hand-waving—and yet, for a few moments, it seemed to Venera as though she were alone in the room with Jacoby Sarto. She looked to him, and he me
t her gaze. All expression had drained from his face.

  When he opened his mouth again it would be to reveal her true identity to these people: he would name her as Venera Fanning and the sound of her name would act like a vast hand, toppling the whole edifice she had built. Though most of her allies knew or suspected she was an imposter, it had been neither polite nor expedient for them to admit it. If forced to admit what they already knew, however, they would find her the perfect person to blame for the impending war. All her allies would desert her, or if they didn’t, at least they would cease listening to her. Sarto had the power to cast her out, have her imprisoned… if she didn’t counter with her own bombshell.

  This was the great gamble she had known she would have to take if she came here today. She had rehearsed it in her mind over and over: Sarto would reveal that she was the notorious Venera Fanning, who was implicated in dastardly scandals in the principalities. Opinion would turn against her and so, in turn, she would have to tell the people of Spyre another great secret. She would reveal the existence of the key to Candesce and declare that it was the cause of the coming war—a war engineered by Sacrus for its own convenience.

  And now the moment had come. Sarto blinked slowly, looked away from her, and said, “I have here my own list. It is a list of innocent civilians killed last night by Amandera Thrace-Guiles and her men.”

  Braced as she was for one outcome, it took Venera some seconds to understand what Sarto had said. He had called her Amandera Thrace-Guiles. He was not going to reveal her secret.

  And in return, he expected her not to reveal his.

  The council members were shouting; Guinevera was embracing his long-lost country woman and weeping openly; August Virilio had his arms crossed as he stared around in obvious disgust. Swords had been drawn in the gallery, and the ceremonial guards were rushing to do their job for the first time in their lives. Abject, shoulders slumped, Pamela Anseratte stood with gesturing people and words swirling around her, her hand holding a slip of paper that might have been her original agenda for the meeting.

  It all felt distant and half real to Venera. She had to make a decision, right now.

  Jacoby Sarto’s eyes were drilling into her.

  She cleared her throat, hesitated one last second, and reached behind her.

  17

  Treble was a musician by day, and a member of Bryce’s underground by night. He’d always known that he might be called upon to abandon his façade of serene artistry and fight in the Cause—though like some of the others in the secret organization, he was uneasy with the direction things had taken lately. Bryce was becoming altogether too cozy with the imposing Amandera Thrace-Guiles.

  Not that it mattered anymore, as of this minute. Clinging to a knuckle of masonry high on the side of the Lesser Spyre Ministry of Justice, Treble was in an ideal position to watch the city descend into anarchy.

  Treble had gained access to the building disguised as a petitioner seeking information about an imprisoned relative. His assignment was to plant some false records in a Ministry file cabinet on the twelfth floor. He evaded the guards adroitly, made his way up the creaking stairs with no difficulty, and had just ensconced himself in the records office when two things happened simultaneously: the staccato sound of gunfire echoed in through the half-open window; and three minor bureaucrats approached the office, talking and laughing loudly.

  This was why Treble found himself clutching a rounded chunk of stone that might once have been a gargoyle, and why he was staring in fascination at the streets that lay below and wrapped up and around the ring of the town wheel. He hardly knew where to look. Little puffs of smoke were appearing around the Spyre docks directly overhead. The buildings there hovered in midair like child’s toys floating in a bathtub and seldom moved; now several were gliding slowly—and ominously—in collision courses. Several ships had cast off. Meanwhile, halfway up the curve of the wheel, some other commotion had sprung up around the Buridan Estate. Barnacled as it was by other buildings, he could never have identified the place had he not been familiar with the layout, but it was clearly the source of that tall pillar of smoke that stood up two hundred feet before bending over and wrapping itself in a fading spiral around and around the inner space of the wheel.

  People were running in the avenue below. Ever the conscientious spy, Treble shifted his position so that he straddled the gargoyle. He checked his watch, then pulled out a frayed notebook and a stub pencil. He dabbed the pencil on the tip of his tongue then squinted around.

  Item One: At four-fourteen o’clock, the preservationists broke our agreement by attempting to prevent Sacrus from occupying the docks. At least, that was what Treble assumed was happening. The hastily scrawled note from Bryce that had mobilized the resistance told of arguments during the Sacrus raid last night, hasty plans made and discarded in the heat of the moment. Thrace-Guiles wanted to rally the nations of Greater Spyre that had lost people to Sacrus. The preservationists had their own agenda, which involved cowing Sacrus into letting them run a railway line through the middle of the great nation’s lands. Sacrus itself was moving and activating its allies. So much was clear; but in the background of this fairly straightforward political situation, a greater upheaval was taking place.

  Bryce had said on more than one occasion that Spyre was like the mainspring of a watch wound too tight. A single tap in the right place might cause a vicious uncoiling—a snap. Many in Spyre had read about the Pantry War with envy; over centuries a thousand resentments and grudges had built up between the pocket nations, and it was glorious to watch someone else finally try to settle a score. Everyone kept ledgers accounting who had slighted whom and when. Nothing was forgotten and behind their ivy- and moss-softened walls, the monarchs and presidents of nations little bigger than swimming pools spent their lives plotting their revenges.

  The well-planned atrocities of the resistance were little trip-hammer blows on the watch’s case, each one an attempt to break the mechanism. Tap the watch, shake it, and listen. Tap it again. That had been Bryce’s strategy.

  Sacrus and Buridan had hit the sweet spot. Shop-fronts were slamming all over the place, like air-clams caught in a beam of sunlight, while gangs of men carrying truncheons and knives seemed to materialize like smoke out of the alleys. It was time for a settling of scores.

  Item Two: chaos in the streets. Maybe time to distribute currency?

  Treble peered at the line of smoke coiling inside the wheel. Item Three: Sacrus seems to have had more agents in place in the city than we thought. They appear to be moving against Buridan without council approval. So… Item Four: council no longer effective?

  He underlined the last sentence, then thought better and crossed it out. Obviously the council was no longer in control.

  He leaned over and examined the flagstoned street a hundred feet below. Some of those running figures were recognizable. In fact…

  Was that Amandera Thrace-Guiles? He shaded his eyes against Candesce’s fire and looked again. Yes, he recognized the shock of bleached hair that surmounted her head. She was hurrying along the avenue with one arm raised to shoulder height. Apparently she was aiming a pistol at the man walking ahead of her. Oh, that was definitely her then.

  Around her a mob swirled. Treble recognized some of his compatriots; there were others, assorted preservationists, soldiers of minor nations, even one or two council guards. Were they escorting Thrace-Guiles, or protecting someone else Treble hadn’t spotted?

  Item Five: council meeting ended around four o’clock.

  He sighted in the direction Thrace-Guiles’s party was taking. They were headed for Buridan Estate. From ground level they probably couldn’t tell that the place was besieged. At this rate they might walk right into a crowd of Sacrus soldiers.

  Treble could still hear voices in the room behind him. He tapped the file folder in his coat pocket and frowned. Then with a shrug he swung off his masonry perch and through the opened window.

  The three bure
aucrats stared at him in shock. Treble felt the way he did when he dropped a note in performance; he grinned apologetically, said, “Here, file this,” and tossed his now-redundant folder to one of the men. Then he ran out the door and made for the stairs.

  Garth Diamandis staggered and reached out to steady himself against the wall of a building. He had to keep up; Venera Fanning was striding in great steps along the avenue, her pistol held unwaveringly to Jacoby Sarto’s head. But Garth was confused; people were running and shouting while overhead even lines of smoke divided the sky. This was Lesser Spyre, he was sure of that. The granite voice of his interrogator still echoed in Garth’s mind, though, and his arms and legs bellowed pain from the many burns and cuts that ribbed them.

  He had insisted on coming today and now he regretted it. Once upon a time he’d been a young man and able to bounce back from anything. Not so anymore. The gravity here weighed heavily on him and for the first time he wished he was back on Greater Spyre where he could still climb trees like a boy. Alone all those years, he had reached an accommodation with himself and his past; there’d been days when he enjoyed himself as if he really were a youth again. And then the woman who now stalked down the center of the avenue ahead of him had appeared, like a burning cross in the sky, and proceeded to turn his solitary life upside down.

  He’d thought about abandoning Venera dozens of times. She was self-reliance personified, after all. She wouldn’t miss him. Once or twice he had gotten as far as stepping out the door of the Buridan estate. Looking down those half-familiar, secretive streets, he had realized that he had nowhere to go—nowhere, that is, unless he could find Selene, the daughter of the woman whose love had caused Garth’s exile.

  Logic told him that now was the time. Venera was bound to lose this foolish war she’d started with Sacrus. The prudent course for Garth would be to run and hide, lick his wounds in secret and then…