Karl Schroeder - Ashes of Candesce - Book Five of Virga

"Clutching the hull with a death grip," said an airman, making a clawing shape with his own hands. "Gave me the fright of my life when I saw it."

The commander looked at Leal again, then frowned at the airman she had been following. "Where were you taking her?" he asked the man.

"Lady's orders."

"I see." He drifted himself over and stuck out his hand for Leal to shake. "Jacoby Sarto. Welcome to my ship, the Torn Page of Fate ."

"Leal Maspeth. My men and I are very grateful that we met you, Captain Sarto. I didn't relish the notion of fighting our way out of the city on our own."

"Hmmpf," he said. "Neither did we. The thanks go both ways." Sarto glowered at the knife-ball. "It's dead, you say? Why?"

"Because we're well inside the walls of Virga now. Under the spell of the sun of suns, you might say."

To her surprise he nodded as if this made perfect sense to him. "So you know something about these beasts."

Leal half-smiled. "I've recently become something of an expert in monsters."

Sarto rubbed his chin, then flicked a hand at the men who were securing the dead dagger-ball. "Carry on. You," he said to the airman who'd been guiding Leal, "back to your duties. I'll take it from here." He began rappelling his way up the ship's central core, slowly enough that she could fall in beside him.

"So you know Antaea Argyre," he said. Leal nodded.

"It's been many years," she admitted. "But tell me, how did you come to find me?"

"We followed the trail," he said, "of a man you may know."

She laughed grimly. "Loll!"

They had come to a set of tiny cabins built under the forward compartment. Sarto rapped on one door, and Leal heard Antaea's voice say something muffled. Sarto opened it.

The moment was strangely powerful, because in this lantern light, cleaned up and dressed in something like her old style, Antaea looked much as she had back in Leal's college days. For a moment their surroundings vanished and Leal saw her leaning on the doorjamb of the tiny apartment her sister had shared with Leal. Always the active one, Antaea rarely sat down, often paced, usually with a bottle in one hand. Her sister, more quiet but more self-assured, would interrupt the stream of Antaea's monologues to divert its direction, but rarely to stop it.

Antaea blinked, said nothing, and then unexpectedly she opened her arms. "Oh, Leal," she said, her voice cracking, "she's dead."

Leal hugged her. "I know," she murmured, but really, until that moment, Telen's death had just been a fact to her, a piece of news from a distant land that she'd thought about, but not really come to grips with. Her old life had been busy and selfish. But Antaea had something of Telen's scent to her and suddenly it was real: Leal found herself blinking away tears.

"How did you find me?" asked Leal as she disengaged herself. Suddenly awkward, Antaea floated back to the hammock that stretched from floor to ceiling. She steadied herself against the empty rope cocoon and shrugged.

"Eustace Loll," she said. "He made something of a splash when he returned to Sere, calling up the navy and Guard to help him with something. We were both there for"--she shot Sarto a look--"different reasons. Jacoby here had heard of Serenity, and we thought he'd come from there."

"And you?" asked Sarto. "What in the world were you doing in that hellhole?"

"Just passing through. On my way to speak to the Guard, actually," she said.

Antaea and Jacoby exchanged another glance, and Leal scowled in exasperation. "I'm a bit tired of politics," she said. "My message is too important to be restricted to just one audience. I came to deliver it to the Guard because they seemed most likely to be able to act on it, but after they bombed Brink I'm not so sure."

"Bombed Brink?" said Antaea.

"What message?" said Sarto.

She decided that describing Brink would just take too long. "A message from some of the people who live outside of Virga," said Leal, "and it's simple: Stop bickering amongst yourselves and form a united front, or Virga will be destroyed--probably within the year."

She'd seen this reaction in Hayden Griffin's airmen: both stared at her for a moment in shock, then simultaneously opened their mouths to argue or question. Leal held up her hand and turned her head away. "No," she said. "I'm tired of explaining myself to gatekeepers. The Guard are swarming around the door to Aethyr because of me and my message. A thousand ships are mustered because all they know is that Virga is threatened. I alone have the answer to their panic."

She'd allowed some of her impatience to creep into her voice and stance, and she could see they were both taken aback by that sudden hint of ferocity.

Jacoby Sarto raised an eyebrow. "So what would you have of us?" he asked with heavy irony. "That we deliver you to the Guard? The legends say they're based at the Gates of Virga." Antaea nodded as if this were common knowledge.

"That was my original plan," Leal admitted. "But on our way here I thought about it, and I don't believe they'll listen to me now. My intention was to confront them with the witnesses who accompanied me up from the plains of Aethyr, but Eustace Loll was one of those men, and he's had plenty of time now to poison them with lies. If we go to the Gates, I'll just be arrested again and my message will never reach the ears of those who need to hear it."

Sarto's ironic look slipped as he saw that she was dead serious. "You say that you alone have the answer to their panic. But," he pointed out, "I can't see that you've brought any proof with you. Or have you?"

Bitterly, she shook her head. "The Guard knows much of what happened, and with my witnesses I might have convinced them--if Eustace Loll hadn't gotten to them first. No, I have no direct proof of my claims."

"Then why should any of us believe you?"

"Oh, you don't have to," she said with a grim smile. "Nobody has to, at this point. But I do have a way of getting all the proof I need, if you'll drop me and my men at a particular port."

"And where would that be?" asked Sarto.

Leal looked at Antaea. "I need to talk to a man I think you know," she said. "Bring me to the city of Rush, in the nation of Slipstream, that I may speak to Admiral Chaison Fanning."

After Antaea flinched back and swore, Leal said again, "Take me to him.

"And then things will start to happen."

Part Two | THE CHEETAH AND THE TREE

10

"WHAT ARE YOUdoing?"

Keir had to turn his head to see who'd spoken. It was Leal Maspeth, but she seemed somehow transformed--younger. Part of that was freefall, he knew, which took years off you. But she seemed radiant from some other cause as well. A glance around was all it took to know what that was.

He shifted his position slightly, allowing her to climb onto the mast beside him. "I feel less blind out here," he said in answer to her question. He'd been riding on the outside of the ship for the past hour, as light slowly emerged from the dark sky ahead of them.

He opened his hands to show her what he'd been cupping in the ship's headwind. "A dragonfly?" she asked.

He nodded.

Inside the ship he was constantly reminded of the vision he now lacked. He kept hitting his head on unexpected obstacles, and rapping his knuckles on invisible objects in the dimness. It was upsetting. So he'd come out here.

He pointed past the gray prow of the ship, to where a triangle of mauve and peach-colored sky beckoned past flocks of black cloud. "What is that?"

"That," she said, obviously savoring the sight, "is a country ."

"Your country?"

She shook her head. "My country has no sun. No--that should be Slipstream, in the Hadley cell called Meridian."

Keir realized he'd been waiting for something to happen--waiting for his scry to update him on her recent activities; her alliances and distances within the group. But the intricate small-group politics of the Renaissance didn't exist in Virga. Some other kind of complexity did, and he couldn't figure out how it worked.