Karl Schroeder - Ashes of Candesce - Book Five of Virga

"Can't tell me? Or won't?"

"Can't. Because I made a promise that I wouldn't."

"To who? You're the leader here, aren't you? Who could you possibly have to make a promise to that you'd have to keep?"

Maerta stood up, clasped her hands, and walked to the door. Then she turned and said, "I can't betray my promise, Keir; and I'm sorry, but for now, that's how it has to be."

He just stared at her, tears starting in the corners of his eyes. Maerta came back, her hands hovering over him. "Oh, no, no, I'm sorry, Keir. It's for the best. You'll understand when it's all over and it'll be fine, fine. You'll see. We would never do this to hurt you, we love you."

"Do what?" He was crying as much from frustration as disappointment or fear. "What did you do?"

"You'll see in time, and it'll be all right, I promise." Briskly, she went on: "Now I have to ask you something, and it's very important. Can you be honest with me? Did you tell the Virgans anything about what we're doing here? --In Brink? Anything about who the Renaissance are?"

He shook his head bitterly. Now he wished he had.

"Good. Good. We don't know them, Keir. They might be spies. They might be dangerous, do you understand?"

He nodded sullenly.

"And Keir, the flying machine..." She was silent so long that finally he was forced to look at her.

"When the time comes," she said, "you'll be able to leave Brink, and go anywhere in the universe that you want to go. But just hang on a little longer. Your time's not yet, Keir.

"Not yet."

* * *

"MA'AM?"

Leal turned to find Piero Harper at the doorway; there was concern written on his wind- and labor-aged features. She smiled warmly at Hayden Griffin's loyal crewman, and raised her hands to show off the room. "Isn't this nice? It has a roof! I'd forgotten what those were like."

Piero smiled and ducked his head. "It's no fun, ma'am, camping out under gravity."

"The things you learn." This chamber they'd given her was huge--but then, there was no lack of space in this city-that-wasn't-a-city. Before letting herself be walked here last night, she'd had to wait while her bed was constructed--extruded, actually, from one of the odd half-animal, half-machine things they called a fab . The things had squatted and huffed and beeped and squelched out chairs, tables, and cupboards, each one to order and each one slightly different. Maerta and her people had demonstrated what they called exoskeletons, which hoisted the finished goods on their backs and hauled them--a roomful of furniture per person--up stairs and ramps to these chambers. It would all have been wonderful to someone who wasn't half-dead with exhaustion. As it was Leal had slept like a stone for what must have been twelve hours; in this permanent gloom, it could have been six or two days. Now she felt like she could barely lift a limb. The lethargy was good; her mind had been gloriously blank for much of the day.

"Are they actually doing it?" she asked.

Piero nodded, and she shook her head with a wondering smile. Keir Chen's people were being outrageously generous. Leal, Piero, and some of his more trusted crewmates had spent part of the morning sitting around another strange device, the one Maerta called an Edisonian, discussing how they might rescue Piero's master Hayden Griffin and the rest of the airmen trapped on the lower plains. While they talked, the Edisonian listened; and then it thought a little bit; and then it began showing glowing images on its side, of the complete design for a flying machine of a type Leal had never seen before. The thing had big ungainly bags attached to it, and stiff wings, presumably to catch the wind. Neither of those were features of Virgan airships, but they made sense in the context of the pervasive gravity in Aethyr. "How long will it take to construct these?" Leal had asked Maerta.

The woman had shrugged. "A couple of days."

"They are being generous," Piero said now. She waved him in and he shut the door (also new, also made last night while they watched), but didn't advance any further into the room. "Ma'am, it's not that I'm ungrateful ... but I can't help getting the feeling they want to get rid of us."

"Y-yesss," she admitted. "But not in a hostile way. You know the old saying, 'Fish and visitors stink after two days.'"

He grinned. "They're like monks, aren't they? Very serious and studious. But I can't for the life of me figure out what they're studying."

"Keir said they're studying the city."

"The boy. You believe him?"

She shrugged. "No. Look, what does it matter, if we get our airships in two days? We can go home , Piero."

He stood there uncertainly until she shook her head and said, "Oh, do sit down!" He lowered himself into one of the armchairs--becoming, she realized, the very first and maybe the last human to use it--and clutched its arms uncomfortably.

"Beggin' your pardon, ma'am, but if it don't matter, then why were you standing in the window when I came in, just starin' at nothing and sighing?"

She scratched the side of her head. "Mm, well..."

"Somethin' about this place is bothering you, ma'am. What is it?"

"It's not these people." She looked down, summoning her thoughts and her courage to express them. "Piero ... how old were you, when your country was conquered?"

This was obviously not the question he'd expected. "Wha--Well, about fifteen. Old enough to know what I was losing."

"And what is that like?"

"Ah." Crow's-feet gathered around his eyes as he smiled. "You think you've lost Abyss forever?"

"Haven't I? Piero, I've been branded a traitor! Bringing Loll with us was a mistake, I know that now. We'll never win him over, and when we get home and he's among his old cronies and the power-brokers of Abyss, he'll turn on us. I know it, no matter what he says. He'll have me arrested if I return."

He nodded, but then said, "You suppose that his word is all that matters there now? Ma'am, Slipstream took over my beloved Aerie, and I lost my home. It's a terrible thing, being lost like that. But I got it back. Aerie's a nation again, thanks to Mr. Hayden Griffin and the sun he made. And you'll see, when all this is over, Abyss will take you back with open arms. All'll be forgiven when they realize you saved them all."

She looked away. After a moment she murmured, "Maybe it's not enough for them to forgive me; after all, I've done nothing wrong. What I keep asking myself, after what's happened, is whether I'll ever be able to forgive them ."

Piero frowned.

"And if not," she continued, "where will I ever find a new home?"

Piero stood and came to lightly touch her hand--reticent, always-polite Piero, who had always treated her like some upper-class client, like the professor she'd wanted to be. She clasped her own hand over his and blinked up at him. "Ma'am, you'd be queen of Aerie if I had any say in it," he said fiercely. "And a citizen, surely, there or in Slipstream or any nation that learns the treasure you're bringing and what you had to sacrifice to get it."

Tears blurred her view of him. She hadn't cried since the night her friend Easley had died, because in order to survive, she'd had to choke the old, emotionally fluttery version of herself. These tears were different than the old Leal's would have been, though--more hard-won, and with vaster depths of feeling behind them.

"Thank you, Piero," she said. "Still, I feel like a bird lost in an ocean of air. Where can I set my feet, Piero? And when can I fold my wings, and sleep?" She closed her eyes. "Sleep like I used to sleep."

"Tell the people back home what you learned out here, ma'am," Piero asserted. "And then you may be surprised what becomes possible."

3

"I KNOW ITdoesn't look like much right now," Maerta was telling Leal Maspeth, "but in a day or two it'll be able to fly."