Lady of Mazes

by Karl Schroeder

  "Really, Filament, you don't need these people." Surprisingly, it was Lucius Xavier saying this. He had a protective hand on Maren Ellis's shoulder. EUis herself had a poisonous look on her face. Maybe the hand was there to keep her from leaping at Filament.

  Filament stood with one hand against the blue curve of the eschatus machine. She pouted at Lucius. "Oh, please," she said. "It's not about me. It's all about these people and what they want. And this will be my last chance to speak on their behalf. The time for words is almost passed."

  She smiled fondly out at the crowd. "But I — that is, they — hated to leave you full of misapprehensions and hate. They believe in reconciliation — well, maybe it's me and my nature as a vote. We would like to make things better between us before we transcend."

  Emblaze visibly started. "Before you — what?"

  "I'll be the seed around which the new 3340 crystal-izes," said Filament. "You should have figured that out, at least."

  "Don't tell me all this was your idea?" asked Emblaze.

  Filament preened. "Who am I, really?" she said. "I represent the Good Book. I can only do what it directs. Of course, the Book was specifically designed to go around the votes and the Government, which has always presented me with a bit of a problem. You might say I've had to ... loosely interpret what the Book wants."

  Emblaze laughed. "You were rejected by the Book. It didn't need you. But you're a vote, you had to find a way to serve your constituency even if it didn't want you. The only way you could see to do it was to become the Book."

  "Don't sell me short," said Filament. "There were lots of options open to me. And of all the Book's followers, only I could see deeply enough to realize where it had come from, because it's in my nature to perceive the sum of my constituents' actions. I saw that my constituency's ... style ... bore a striking resemblance to that of the rebel anecliptic who'd been destroyed just before I was born. Once I realized that connection I could see everything. I knew its intentions had been to conquer the Archipelago; so those became my intentions. I knew it had keys to places inaccessible to ordinary votes. The pass codes for the Lethe Nebula are encoded in subtle overtones of behavior that the Book brings out in large crowds. The numbers emerge when you get ten, twenty million people using the Book together. And many other things emerge as well — if you know how to look."

  To Livia's surprise, Cicada stepped forward. "You're crazy. Conquer the Archipelago? Topple the annies? How are you going to do that?"

  Filament squinted at him. "Do I know you?"

  Aaron spoke. "By making the annies irrelevant, that's how. It's already happening; people all over the Archipelago are doing what they think their role should do, and switching roles as conditions warrant — and everything's running smoothly. They don't need to consult the Government or listen to the votes. For the first time in their lives, they feel like they're in control."

  "And the annies?" asked Livia. She was looking past Filament to the buildings at the edge of the crowd. Tiny figures were moving there, along with larger bots who were dragging some strange-looking machines.

  "The annies have been caught napping," said Aaron, "by an enemy with no face."

  "Caught napping?" Livia shot back. "And yet, you haven't asked me how it is we were able to return here. Whose help would we have needed?"

  Aaron fell silent, but Filament just laughed. "Choron-zon is coming," she said. "So Maren Ellis tells me. He thinks he's going to liberate Teven Coronal — and he's right. But we have no more need of it. While he's busy doing that, the newborn god will have escaped back into the Archipelago, where it can confront the annies on their own ground.

  "Listen," she said, "I'm telling you this because I want people to understand what happened here today — how things came about. Your stories are important, that's why you have to survive and tell the world."

  Sophia's shoulders slumped. "Then you're not keeping us here when you set off that ... thing?"

  "Not you, no," said Filament. "Nor you," she said to Maren Ellis, "because you reek of the tech locks. I won't let you infect the kernel with them, however much you might deserve to be one of us. But you deserve the opportunity to stay," she said to Lucius Xavier, "for your adaptability. And so do you," she said to Livia, "for your courage. You proved your sheer audacity when you flew all the way to the Archipelago to find help for your people. That courage would be valuable if you started using the Book regularly."

  "What if I don't want to use it?" asked Livia past a tight throat.

  "Who else would you rather serve?" asked Filament. "Because that's your choice now, you know: whether to serve the annies as represented by Lady Ellis and Choronzon — or humanity as represented by the Book."

  "Did you know this was what she was planning?" Livia asked Aaron.

  "No," he said. "But I'm happy that you're being given the chance." She looked away in scorn and disbelief, but he pressed on: "No, listen, Liv. Our whole life we've lived in a world of softened edges and easy decisions. All except once. One time, when someone had to look at the world through adult eyes and even the grown-ups who survived the crash with us failed the test. Someone had to look at the world as it was, and make the hard decisions that were necessary — not to romanticize, not to retreat into illusions. You did it then. I'm asking you to do it again. See what's really going on here. See what's real."

  He held out his hand. "Come with me, Livia. We can be immortal. All these things you're fighting for — the agonies of the past, the honor of Westerhaven, even who's right and who's wrong — these aren't real. They're just abstractions. I need you to do now what you did before: be the adult. See what's real, and make your decision accordingly."

  "You're lying," she said evenly. "You've lied to me every day since we escaped the crash. It wasn't me who led everyone out of the zone. It was you. And why? I've been wracking my brains to figure it out. But it's really quite simple, isn't it? The hardest thing is to live with the consequences of your actions. You weren't afraid to be heroic at the time — but you were terrified of having to live up to your own reputation afterward."

  He looked horrified. "You know? But, Livy, I only wanted to protect you. Because — "

  "You thought you'd made me, and that I was fragile as glass. That if I found out, I might break. The way you broke the day you realized the kinds of roles your strength was going to condemn you to if Westerhaven found out about your heroism."

  "I wanted to be author of my own fate," he said. "And yes, I made you what you are. And look what you've done! Listen to me now, Livia. I was right then, I'm right now."

  She shook her head. "Only the dead are free of the influence of others," she said. "Everyone I ever met helped make me. I am them, and I am this place and these people, and I can no more step out of that reality than you can escape yourself.

  "I reject your offer," she said to Filament.

  But Filament was no longer listening. Nobody was.

  They were all staring downward, to where the sleepwalkers had fallen over.

  They had been knocked off their feet in one scything sweep that reminded Livia of when the votes had collapsed around her in Doran's plaza. The sighing sound of the fall filtered upward like distant thunder, and now Livia spotted dust pluming up at various places around the city. Moments later a distant grumbling sound rolled in. It didn't diminish with the seconds, but grew instead into a deafening roar.

  Livia caught Filament's eye. She knew the vote would be able to read her lips as she said, "Time's up."

  In every direction, on the outskirts of the city, dark clouds leapt up. As they cascaded outward the ground shook and twisted; buildings were leaning everywhere. With majestic slowness, a ring of anecliptic battleships rose like vast towers around the city. They had punctured the skin of the coronal like the teeth of some unimaginably huge monster; chunks of landscape and whole trees dribbled from their points as they shuddered to a halt high overhead.

  Lucius was pointing and shouting something. In the secon
ds before the vibrations racing along the cables made the platform buck under her, Livia looked up.

  Tiny, but perfectly etched against the sky, a single human figure stood in the air above the city. Choronzon had come.

  The sculptural shapes of Raven's monsters shook themselves to life all around the park. One by one they leaped into the sky. Livia had little time to watch this as the cable network she was balanced on was swinging and bouncing under her tike it was alive.

  "Take us down! Down!" Filament was shouting. Fuckers of light punctuated her words; Livia glanced up in time to see a strand of cable snap in a bright flash. Someone was using lasers to cut Cirrus's lines. Even as she realized this, the meshwork fell two meters and stopped with a sharp shock.

  Filament hung on to a tine like an old-time ship captain weathering a storm. "Protect the kernel at all costs!"

  Livia lost her grip on the meshwork. She left trails of blood from where it had cut her fingers as she slid down the now steeply-angled surface. Then Qiingi's hand caught her wrist and he hauled her up.

  "Must leave," he shouted. Livia shook her head.

  "I need to get to Maren — tell her about the locks — "

  A battle was erupting in the air above Barrastea. As the cableways of Cirrus lifted their floating towers and houses out of harm's way, Raven's monsters and other things Livia had never seen before hopped or shot into the air. Most vanished in fireballs before they cleared the rooftops. Sharp detonations peppered the air, their thunderous echoes rolling around and around the city. A dark mist was rising from the crowd of sleepwalkers: a shield of angel-stuff meters thick. Through the angle of her scrabbling legs Livia saw a flickering tine of laser light hit that fog just meters below her, and flash into white fire. The sleepwalkers were now rising to their feet again, and none had been touched by the laser shot.

  Swarms of dark specks poured out of the towering anecliptic battleships. Explosions spiraled around them like the sparks from a fire as 3340's forces engaged with the liberators. The air was filled with a steady, undifferen-tiatedroar.

  In the midst of this chaos the cable meshwork jerked down a few more meters, then settled majestically onto the crowd. None of the sleepwalkers tried to get out of the way; Livia screamed in horror as the eschatus machine landed on a knot of oblivious people, crushing them under its weight

  "A bit of an inconvenience," Filament shouted as she stepped over dying people. She ran her hands over the flanks of the machine. "The blast won't be able to physically absorb the people on the edges of the crowd. That's okay; it should still copy them into the kernel." She found what she was looking for: a large hatch swung open in the side of the eschatus machine. "Ah, well, looks like you're coming with me after all," said the vote as she reached up to pull herself into the sphere.

  "No!" Livia and Qiingi were both on their feet, but Cicada was faster. He leapt at Filament A meter away he was knocked aside in a violent explosion. Aaron stood up from where he'd been kneeling on the ground. He was holding a gun whose barrel was now wrapped in smoke.

  "Time for hard decisions, Livy," he snapped. Cicada thrashed on the ground, still trying to stand despite having his legs blown off.

  They faced each other tensely, Aaron between Filament and the others. Livia and Qiingi exchanged a glance; she could tell he was also wondering whether they could overwhelm Aaron before he could get them. It didn't seem likely.

  The crowd of sleepwalkers had been flattened by the fall of the eschatus machine's wire nest for a distance of six meters or so in every direction. A woman near Livia's foot moaned; a cable as thick as her wrist lay stretched taut across her lower back.

  Livia was about to chance an attack on Aaron when someone stepped out of the crowded sleepwalkers behind Filament Livia had time to realize that it was a man and mat he was holding a sword before Doran Morss leaped up and buried the blade in Filament's back.

  She didn't even cry out as Doran used the sword like a lever to drag her bodily out of the machine. As they hit the ground Aaron whirled to look and Lucius Xavier tackled him from the side.

  Livia caught only confused glimpses as she ran over to Maren Ellis: Doran hacking like a madman; Lucius and Aaron rolling over the dead and dying in the shadow of the sphere; Qiingi and Emblaze squaring off against Kale and his men. Livia grabbed Maren's arm. "Listen," she said, "Rene and the peers have brought tech lock machines to the edge of the park. I don't know what their range is, but you might be able to activate them from here — "

  Maren snatched her arm out of Livia's grasp. "You couldn't leave well enough alone, could you!" she hissed.

  "Use the locks!" Livia half drew her own sword, which 3340's men had contemptuously let her keep.

  Maren turned away, scowling, then closed her eyes and appeared to concentrate.

  Livia turned back to the fight — in time to see Lucius stumbling back from Aaron, who was raising his weapon. "No!" she yelled, but too late as Aaron fired. Lucius spun around and fell. Livia ran to him.

  As he gasped in her arms, Aaron waved his gun at Qiingi and Doran Morss, who were on their knees with Kale standing over them. Peaseblossom was tending to Cicada. "Up! Stand up!" Aaron commanded.

  "Shut up, Aaron," said Livia. She didn't care if he shot her.

  Lucius quivered. She smoothed back his lion's mane of hair, which was drenched in blood.

  He looked up at her, terror in his eyes. "Please, Livia. Don't let me be remembered as a traitor," he whispered. Then he coughed once and she laid him back as gently as she could.

  Filament staggered to her feet. One of her arms hung uselessly, and she had deep gashes and stab wounds across her upper body. One bisected her face, distorting her features hideously; but there was no blood.

  "Nice ... try," she slurred, glaring at Doran Morss. He sneered at her.

  "Decided not to leave after all," he said. "Found a sword its owner wasn't using ... Glad I stuck around."

  "Hold them for one minute, and it'll all be over," croaked Filament. She turned back to the eschatus machine.

  "Over, yes," said Maren Ellis. 'Take a look. Filament!" She swept her arm in a wide arc, encompassing the park and the sleepwalkers —

  — Who were suddenly awake. A crowd of a million or more souls abruptly found itself alert and cut off from the fantasy realm of the Book, with explosions and fire above and to all sides. All Livia could see for an instant were hundreds of eyes in panicked faces. Then there was screaming and motion everywhere.

  Aaron turned and gave Filament a hoist into the eschatus machine. Kale had backed up against it, shock and fear on his face. "I shut down inscape for a mile around!" shouted Maren recklessly. "Your precious dream world has been snuffed out like a candle!"

  Aaron growled in fury and once again swung his gun up. "Bring it back or I'll kill you," he said.

  "Put down that toy, little boy," she said. Aaron pulled the trigger, but nothing happened. He cursed and threw the gun down. Maren laughed at him; then Aaron reached down and snapped up the sword Doran Morss had dropped. He stepped forward and, with a single slash, cut Maren Ellis's throat.

  Maren's face showed pure surprise as the impact knocked her into the hurricane of rioting people. She vanished in a whirl of flailing limbs and screaming faces.

  Aaron stood staring after her. His hands were shaking; but all the anger had drained out of him. He seemed to be trying to say something.

  Deafening thunder rolled out of the sky. The anecliptic and Book forces had been fighting a delicate battle overhead, neither side willing to risk killing the helpless people below. Now the black and red nightmares of Raven's people were diving out of the air, sending bolts of fire toward the edge of the park. In seconds the tech lock generators would be destroyed.

  "This way!" Peaseblossom slapped Livia on the back. He was carrying Cicada across his shoulders like a sack of grain. He jerked his chin to the left, where Livia saw Doran Morss and Qiingi standing back to back, swords drawn. They were guarding a crumpled catwalk that
lay across the ground — just why, she couldn't tell for a few moments.

  Then she raised her eyes and saw that the catwalk was affixed to a cable that had not completely touched down. It rose slowly across a hundred meters until it was above the heads of the crowd, and its far end draped over the top of a building outside the park.

  "Come on!" Qiingi pushed into the hysterical mob and the others followed. Livia found herself flanked by Pease-blossom on one side and Emblaze on the other. Both struck out fiercely to protect her as they edged their way along the catwalk.

  She looked back at the eschatus machine. Aaron stood next to it, oblivious to the crowd, watching her. She met his eyes for a second, then turned away.

  Staggering and pulling, they made it up the cable and above the heads of the crowd. Livia ran along the catwalk, and as she ran she found she was singing — no one song, just nonsense scraps, anything she could think of to drown out the screaming of the crowd below her.

  Silence fell as if a switch had been thrown and for a few seconds all Livia could hear was her own ragged voice wailing the chorus to some old ditty. Then she staggered to a stop and looked down.

  The sleepwalkers had frozen in place, like bots with their power cut off. In midscream, midblow, they had stopped as inscape came back on. All across the park those who had fallen were standing and those standing lowered their arms to their sides and closed their mouths.

  "Hell," said Doran. "She's gonna set it off. Hurry!" He ran up the steepening slope of the catwalk without looking back.

  They made it to the edge of the park without any apocalyptic blast, though Livia's shoulders itched in anticipation. They were able to hop down off the catwalk to the roof and clamber into the building through a shattered upstairs window. And they made it down to the street without incident.

  The echoes of the battle were fading. Chunks of smoldering black and crimson monster lay everywhere as Livia stepped into the road and looked back at the crowd. The flying creatures from the anecliptic fleet were circling directly above the eschatus machine now, firing their lasers down into the black fog that had coalesced densely around it. But everywhere else, the battle seemed to be winding down.