Karl Schroeder - Queen of Candesce

She nodded, but the council officers were already ordering a retreat. For a few seconds she watched the soldiers scampering back under relentless fire. Then she cocked an eyebrow at Bryce, and grinned.

“We’ve lost our momentum? When did you decide this was your fight?”

“People are dying,” he said angrily. “Anyway, if what you say is true, there’s far more at stake than any of us knew.” She shrugged and glanced again at the retreat, but then noticed he was staring at her.

“What?”

“Who are you, really? Surely not Amandera Thrace-Guiles?”

Venera laughed. He hadn’t been there for her moment of humiliation at the feet of Guinevera—had, in fact, been flying through the air over brambles and scrub just about then.

She stuck out her hand for him to shake. “Venera Fanning. Pleased to meet you.”

He shook it, a puzzled expression on his face, but then a new commotion distracted him. “Look! Your friends…”

Through the drifting smoke, she could see a dozen spindly ladders wobbling against the building’s walls. Men were swarming up them and there was fighting on the roof. In seconds she could lose the people who had become most precious to her. “Come on!”

They braved rifle fire and ran back. The army commander was crouched over a map. He looked up grimly as Venera approached. “Can you feel it?” When she frowned, he pointed down at the ground. Now she realized that for some time now, she had been feeling a slow, almost subliminal sensation of rising and falling. It was the kind of faint instability of weight that you sometimes felt when a town’s engines were working to spin it back up to speed.

“I think Sacrus cut one too many cables.”

“Let the preservationists deal with it when we’re finished,” she said. “Right now we need to cut down those ladders.”

He shook his head. “Don’t you understand? This is more than just a piece or two falling off the world. Something’s happened. It—we…” She realized that he was very, very frightened. So were the officers kneeling with him.

Venera felt it again, that long slow waver, unsettling to the inner ear. Way out past the smoke, it seemed like the curving landscape of Spyre was crawling, somehow, like the itchy skin of a giant beast twitching in slow motion.

“We can’t do anything about that,” she said. “We have to focus on saving lives here and now! Look, I don’t think there’s more than three dozen men on those barricades. The rest of their men are waiting on the far side for us to try to relieve Guinevera.”

With an effort he pulled himself together. “Your plan… Can you do it?”

“They’ll start to pull back as soon as they realize we’re concentrating here,” she said. “When they do, we’ll have them.”

“All right. We have to… do something.” He got to his feet and began issuing orders. The frightened officers sprinted off in all directions. Venera and Bryce ran back in the direction of the roundhouse and as they passed the fringe of the no-man’s land she saw scores of men standing up from concealment in the bushes. Suddenly they were all bellowing and as more popped up from unexpected places Venera found herself being swept back by a vast mob of howling armored men. She and Bryce fought their way forward as hundreds of bodies plunged past them. She had no time to look back but could imagine the Sacrus barricades being overwhelmed in seconds; the ladders would tremble and fall, and when they rose again it would be council soldiers climbing them.

A small copse of trees stood at the end of no-man’s land; bedraggled and half-burnt, they still made a good screen for what hid behind them. Venera smelled the things before she saw them, and her spirits soared as she heard their nervous snorting and stamping.

With murmurs and an outstretched hand, she approached her Dali horse. A dozen others stood huddled together, flanks twitching, their heads a dozen feet off the earth. All were saddled and some of the horsemen were already mounted.

Bryce stopped short, a wondering expression on his face. Venera put her hand on the rope ladder that led up to her beast’s saddle, then looked back at him. “See to your people,” she said. “Run your presses. If I live, I’ll see you after.”

He smiled and for a moment looked boyishly mischievous. “The presses have been running for days, and I’ve sent my messages. But just in case… here.” He dug inside his jacket and handed her a cloth-wrapped square. Venera unwrapped it, puzzled, then laughed out loud. It was a brand-new copy of the book Rights Currencies . She raised it to her nose and smelled the fresh ink, then stuffed it in her own jacket.

She laughed again as Bryce stepped back and the rest of her force mounted up behind her. Venera turned and waved to them, and as Bryce ran back toward the roundhouse and safety, she yelled, “Come on! They’re not going to be expecting this!”

Garth could see it all. They’d tied his hands behind him and stood him near the body of the man who’d come with him to the roof. From behind him came the sounds of Sacrus’s forces mopping up on the lower floors of Liris. Prisoners were being led onto the roof under the direction of the pink-haired woman, whose name, he now remembered, was Margit. She had climbed up the ladder with ferocious energy a few minutes before.

Garth had turned away when his daughter stepped onto the roof behind her.

Turning, he saw what was developing under the shadow of the building, and despite all the tragedy it made him smile.

A dozen horses, each one at least ten feet tall at the shoulder, were stepping daintily but rapidly through no-man’s land. The closely packed thorn bushes and tumbled masonry were no barrier to them at all. Each mount held two riders except the one in the lead. Venera Fanning rode that one, a rifle held high over her head. Garth could see that her mouth was wide open—Mother of Virga, was she howling some outlandish battle cry? Garth had to laugh.

“What’s so funny, you?” A soldier cuffed him on the side of his head. Garth looked him in the eye and nodded in Venera’s direction.

“That,” he said.

After he finished swearing, the man ran toward Margit, shouting, “Sir! Sir!” Garth turned back to the view.

Sacrus had taken Liris with a comparatively small force, and was now depleted on the Spyre side of the building. The bulk of the council army was wheeling in that direction, pushing back the few defenders on the barricades. They’d take the siege ladders on that side in no time. It shouldn’t have been a problem for Sacrus; they now held the roof and could lower ladders, ropes, and platforms to relieve their own forces from the other side of the building. Now that they knew where the council army was going, their ground forces had started running back in that direction from the world’s edge. This seemed safe because they had a large force below no-man’s land to block any access from the direction of the roundhouse.

But Venera’s cavalry had just crossed over no-man’s land and were now stepping into the strip of cleared land next to the building. Without hesitation they turned right and galloped at the rear of the Sacrus line. Simultaneously, those council troops fronting the roundhouse assaulted them head-on.

A hysterical laugh pierced the air. Garth turned to see Margit perched atop the wall. She was staring down at the horses with a wild look in her eye. “I’m seeing things in broad daylight now,” she said, and laughed again. “This is a strange dream, this one. Things with four legs… taller than a man…”

Selene reached up to take Margit’s arm, but the former botanist batted her hand aside. Stepping back, her face full of doubt, Selene looked around—and her eyes met Garth’s. He frowned and shook his head slowly.