Karl Schroeder - Sun of Suns

"After centuries of peace, rumor began to circulate of the beauty of an heiress from Leaf's Choir, and that rumor attracted the attention of a warlord who determined to have her for himself. He laid siege to Leaf's Choir and was finally able to seize the giant air-pumping stations that kept the forest from supersaturating itself with oxygen. He threatened to blow up the stations unless the young lady was turned over to him. The government refused but the heiress secretly fled the capital and made her way to the warlord's encampment, and there gave herself up.

"To punish the nation, the warlord ordered the pumping stations blown up. Then he left—and behind him, the millions of trees of the forest continued to bask and produce oxygen. Leaf's Choir had cultivated them for centuries, to the point where it needed the artificial circulatory system of the pumps to ensure that oxygen did not build up to dangerous levels within the nation. Without the pumps, the least spark might set off an impossible conflagration—and so it happened, weeks after the warlord left. The fire raged out from the heart of Leaf's Choir and consumed everything, town, tree, and sun. All that was left when it was over was a sphere of charred wood and ash thirty miles across. That sphere is now tethered at the edge of Gehellen's territory; we've been mining it for its charcoal for centuries. It's very slow work because the heat of combustion is still trapped in airless pockets deep inside the sargasso. If oxygen reaches them, they break into flame again; so Leaf's Choir remains choked with stagnant, dead air. We have special ships that can go in, but navigation is a nightmare; it's all just black twisted wreckage that goes on forever. Leaf's Choir is ugly now—like a scar on the sky. Nobody goes there, unless it's for mining."

"That's very sad," said Aubri.

Yet somewhere deep inside it, Hayden mused, was the hidden treasure of the pirate king.

They spent several hours poring over maps of the place. The librarian was very helpful—Hayden and Aubri were a blessed break in her routine, it seemed. They both began to relax in each other's presence again. Hayden couldn't help but be distracted by occasional flashes of thigh or calf when Aubri reached for something; she pretended not to notice him noticing. The time went quickly.

Still, Hayden couldn't stop thinking about the assassin thing she had described. He wondered whether there were some way to pull the monster out of her, or poison or blind it. Aubri spoke no more of it, and he said nothing further about his own troubles. Perhaps out of a mutual need to turn their thoughts away, they focused with great intensity on comparing photos of Venera's map to the various charts. The charts were all centuries out of date. As the librarian had pointed out, the outer shells of the sargasso had been stripped away long ago, and the inner ways were char. It would take a miracle of navigation to find the treasure.

"I wish Gridde were here," Hayden said eventually. "He'd be able to sort all this out." As he said this he realized he'd felt a pang of affection for the crabby old man. Well, why not? Gridde was no soldier, he was just in love with his work. He was an innocent.

Finally they had compiled enough information to satisfy Aubri. "I think we've earned a break," she said. "There should be a restaurant near here, don't you think?"

They followed the librarian's instructions and soon found them-selves back in the crowded sky of Vogelsburg. Distant Candesce was cycling into its evening phase, its light reddening slowly. Where the librarian had directed them, the air was so crowded with structures as to be nearly impassable. Blocks and spheres, triangles and loose basket-farms were jammed in together, all jostling for sunlight and air. People sailed every which way, and as they nearly collided they would reach out to push off from one another without rancor or pause. The air was full of the scent of cooking and of waste, as well as shouts and laughs overlaid with the distant, ever-present rumble of buildings grinding together.

Hayden had just spotted the wicker restaurant the librarian had recommended when suddenly Aubri clutched his arm. "Someone's following us," she murmured.

He restrained the urge to turn and look. "Are you sure? How can you tell in this crowd?"

"Because he followed us into the library. I spotted him dawdling in the history room when we were working. He was trying to see the maps, I'm sure of it. Now he's behind us again."

"Well…"

"He looks like one of them." He looked at her blankly. "One of the pirates!" she whispered.

Now he did contrive to glance casually behind him. Hayden spotted a shock of yellow hair moving through a swatch of sunlight and felt his scalp prickle with recognition.

"Come on." Hayden led them in a complicated path between buildings, just to see if their tail would keep up. He did, a constant in the churning flow of faces and clothing.

"Okay, forget about lunch. We'd better get back to the bike and tell the others about this." He grabbed a municipal rope to change his course; less gracefully, Aubri followed.

She touched his ankle. "Look, there's a police station. Should we…?" Hayden wasn't inclined to trust the constabulary, but today might be a good time to make an exception. He grunted and they jumped in that direction. "He's gaining on us."

"Wants to keep us from getting to the station, maybe?" Hayden didn't look around, but redoubled his efforts to get to the building, which was a cube built of stone and rust-streaked iron. "He's right behind us!"

Hayden looked back, and hissed with shock: he recognized this man. He had been one of the two who had doused the Rook's crewmen with kerosene. Now he was only yards back, moving with great easy bounds between the buildings and carefully not looking at Hayden or Aubri.

The police station was just on the other side of a great crumbling apartment held together by rope and stretched burlap—but they weren't going to make it. "Fuck it," said Hayden; he grabbed the corner of the building and stopped himself. Then he reached for his sword.

The pirate dove toward him, but passed a good ten feet away, still looking the other way. "What the—" Hayden and Aubri watched in disbelief as their follower sailed on through empty air; with no ropes to catch and change course, he had only one possible destination.

"I don't believe it," said Aubri as the pirate disappeared into the funnel-shaped entrance of the police station. "What do you suppose that means?"

"I think I know exactly what it means," said Hayden as the entrance suddenly boiled with uniformed officers wearing powerful foot-fins. Somewhere behind the building he heard jets whining into life.

"We've got to get back to the bike!"

Aubri sat perched on the side of the apartment, staring at the cloud of oncoming policemen. "But what's—"

"He's working with them! Aubri, come on!"

"Oh, I think you'll find it's too late for that," said a familiar voice behind them.

Hayden spun around.

Captain Dentius stood on the building, not fifteen feet away. He was flanked by two policemen, and he looked very pleased with himself. "Hello again," he said in his grating voice. "It's always a pleasure to run into former clients… especially whenyou've got unfinished business with them."

"Bastard!" Hayden's anger finally had a focus. It waswith some-thing like joy that he drew his sword andleaped at theman, ignoring the policemen.

He spun until he was going feetfirst and nearly managed to put his blade through the captain's throat, but Dentius ducked out of the way at the last moment. The policemen couldn't react before Hay den planted both boots on Dentius's chest and kicked hard. He sailed back to Aubri with extra momentum on his side. "Come on!"