Karl Schroeder - Queen of Candesce

And yes, the botanist was here, too. She glided through the celebrants as though on rails, nodding here and there, speaking strategic words on the outskirts of discussions, the same mysterious smile as always hovering just behind her lips. Eventually she made her way over to Venera. She hove to just this side of Eilen. Eilen herself moved away, suddenly quiet.

"I've always said that it pays to know your customers,” the botanist said. “I judged your potential rightly."

Venera eyed her. “Is that what you feel you do? Judge people's potential? Like the buds of flowers that might bloom or whither?"

"How apt. Yes, that's exactly right,” said the botanist. “Some are to be encouraged, others cut from the branch. You nod as though you understand."

"I've done a certain amount of… pruning… in my day,” said Venera. “So I've achieved a great victory for your tiny nation. Now what?"

"Now,” said the botanist in a breathless sort of sisterly way, “we talk about what to do next. You see, you've vindicated my methods. I believe Liris needs to be more open to the outside world—that we need to send our delegates farther, even outside Spyre itself."

The fog of Venera's sorrow lifted just a bit. “Leave Spyre? What do you mean?"

"I would like to send a trade mission to one of the principalities,” said the botanist. “You, of course, would lead it."

"I'd be honored,” said Venera with a straight face. “But isn't it Odess's job to arrange such things?"

"Odess?” The botanist waved her hand dismissively. “Prattling whiner. Take him if you'd like, but I can't see what good he'll do you. No, I picture you, perhaps Eilen, and one or two loyal soldiers. And a consignment of our treasure to tempt potential customers."

"That sounds reasonable.” Venera couldn't believe what she was hearing. Did the woman seriously believe she would come back if she got out of this place? But then, everyone in Spyre seemed dangerously naive.

"Good. Say nothing of this to the others,” instructed the botanist severely. “It won't do to let old wounds fester."

What did that mean? Venera thought about it as the botanist strolled away, but then Eilen returned and spilled her drink on Venera's shoes. The evening went downhill from there, and so she didn't really ponder the botanist's unlikely offer until she got back to her closet, near dawn.

She had just closed the ill-fitting door and was about to climb under the covers when there was a polite knock on the jamb. Venera cracked the door an inch.

Moss leaned like a decapitated tree outside her door. “Citizen F-f-fanning,” he said. “I j-just wanted to give you th-th-these."

In the faint lamplight of the hallway, she could just make out a tiny bouquet of posies in his hand.

The juxtaposition of his chiseled features with the emptiness of his eyes made her skin crawl. Venera slipped her hand out to snatch the little bundle of flowers from his nerveless fingers. “Thanks. You're not in love with me, are you?"

"I'm s-s-sorry you're so's-sad,” he murmured. “T-t-try not to be so's-s-sad."

Venera gaped at him. His words had been so quiet, but they seemed to echo on and on in the silent corridor. “Sad? Why do you think I'm sad?"

Nobody else had noticed—not even Eilen, who had been watching Venera like a mother hawk all evening. Venera narrowed her eyes. “I didn't see you at the party. Where were you?"

"I w-w-was there. In the c-corner."

Present yet absent. That seemed to sum Moss up. “Well.” Venera looked down at Moss's present. Somehow she had clenched her fist and had crushed the little white blossoms.

"Thank you,” she said. Moss turned away with a muted clattering noise. “Moss,” she said quickly. He looked back.

"I don't want you to be sad, either,” said Venera.

He shambled away and Venera closed the door softly. Once alone, she let loose one long shuddering sigh and tumbled face-first onto the bed.

The next morning, Venera wore the half-crushed posies on the breast of her jacket. If anybody noticed, they said nothing. She ate her breakfast with the members of the delegation in their designated dining room—a roofed-over air-shaft lined floor to invisible ceiling with stuffed animals—and followed them silently to their offices. She had discerned the routine by now: they would sit around for the rest of the day, occasionally engaging in desultory, short-lived dialogs, have lunch and then supper, and turn in.

If she had to live like this for more than a couple of days, Venera knew she would snap. So, at ten o'clock, she said, “Can't we at least play cards?"

One of the soldiers glanced over, then shook his head mournfully. “Odess always wins."

"But I'm here now,” said Venera. “What if I were to win?"

Slowly, they roused into a state resembling the attentive. With much cajoling and browbeating, Venera got them to reveal the location of the cards, and once she had these she energetically pulled a table and some chairs into the center of the room. “Sit,” she commanded, “and learn."

This was her opportunity to grill her compatriots properly—the party last night had been too hectic and strange, with everyone playing pal in transparent ways—and Venera made the best of it. After ten minutes Odess emerged from his office, looking bleary and cross, but his eyes lit up when he saw her shuffling the cards. Venera grinned sloppily at him and he drew up a chair.

"So,” she said as the others examined their cards, “tell me about the botanist."

The Pantry War had been dragging on for five years. Liris and the Duchy of Vatoris both claimed a five- by seven-foot room off one of the twisting corridors of the fair. The titles went back a hundred years, and the wording was ambiguous. Neither side would back down.

"War?” said Venera as she peered over her cards. “Don't you mean feud?"

The other players all shook their heads. No, explained Odess, a feud was a family thing. This was a conflict between professional soldiers, and it took the form of pitched battles—even if those battles were between a dozen or so soldiers on either side, which was all the manpower the tiny nations could muster. After years of ambushes, raids, firefights, and all manner of other mayhem, it had settled into a war of attrition. Barricades had been thrown up in the disputed corridor; a no-man's-land of broken furniture and cracked tile stretched for thirty feet between them. The entrance to the closet beckoned only yards away, and either side could capture it in seconds. The trick was to hold it.

The two sides dug in. The barricades were ramified and reinforced, then backed up with cannon and rifles. Days might pass without a shot fired, but the other tenants of the fair got used to sudden flurries of gunfire. Rarely was anyone actually hurt. The loss of a single man would constitute a disaster.

These things happened. Even now, the fair was riddled with strange tensions—empty passages paved in dust where no one had walked in generations because of just such disputes as this; neighbors who would think nothing of murdering one another in quiet corners if they had the chance; victims walled up in alcoves; and everywhere, conspiracies.

It was a random bullet that changed everything. The walls around the disputed hallway had never been strong, but the combatants had hired a neutral third party to shore them up at regular intervals. Perhaps it was inevitable, though, that chinks and cracks should develop. One day, a bullet fired from the Vatoris barricade slipped through such a crack, ricocheted sixty feet down an abandoned air shaft, and killed the heir of a major nation as he stood at a punch bowl.

Venera rubbed her jaw. “I can imagine the reaction."

"I'm not sure you can,” said Odess portentously. The nation in question was the mysterious Land of Sacrus, a country of “vast size,” according to Eilen.