Karl Schroeder - Ashes of Candesce - Book Five of Virga

"These men," she gestured at Harper and the others, "built a new sun for Aerie; you can see it burning there." She pointed at the distant second point of light. "They gave Aerie a new sun, and with the Pilot dead, Slipstream has given the citizens of Aerie their freedom. But even though they lit the new sun two years ago, most people haven't moved into its light yet. It's been going through testing and safety trials."

"And now," shouted Harper, "they're done! Our sun's been proven stable. We can all go home!"

Freedom Day. Keir pictured two Virgan nations: each was defined by a vast sphere of light inside of which were all its agriculture, its towns, factories, and mansions. A country could be destroyed if its sun was snuffed out. Its people would become refugees, desperately fleeing to whatever lit airs they could find. Even worse, one nation could simply move into the space occupied by another, assimilating its sun and cities and people directly, like one amoeba swallowing another. Evidently Aerie had proven too tough a foe for this latter strategy, but with their sun gone, they'd been helpless. Slipstream had swallowed all their towns and farms, making them all dependent on Slipstream's own sun.

The great iron wheels of Rush surrounded the Page now. Keir could clearly make out the rooftops, chimneys, and streets that paved their inside surfaces. Also visible were clouds of people swarming around a wheel whose inner surface was one continuous building--a sumptuous place of gardens and balconies, towers and towering halls, all wrapped into a ring and spun like a giant's toy. The crowds--men and women and children flapping spring-loaded wings or pedaling saddled propeller-fans--were gathering at the central space around which this beautiful building turned.

Harper nodded at it. "The Pilot's palace," he said. "Hey, look!" he added, turning to his men. "Whose face is that?" He laughed.

Keir could see that some of the biggest banners had been printed with the image of a man's face. He seemed young, with angular features and pale eyes. Now Harper and the others began pumping their fists in the air and chanting, "Sun lighter! Sun lighter! Sun lighter!"

The crowd and the banners formed a rough arc around a crimson disk that hovered in the air next to the palace. Huge mirrors aimed sunlight at this, and as Keir watched, a small group of people (little more than dots at this distance) began drifting into the focus of the light.

"Who's that?" he wondered aloud.

Leal Maspeth crossed her arms on the edge of the hatch, and smiled in self-satisfaction. "I believe those are the very people we've come to talk to."

"Really? And what are we here to talk about?"

Now she laughed. "Why, we've come to tell them the whereabouts of the one man who's missing this party--the man responsible for building Aerie's new sun."

"And who would that be?"

She pointed at the image on the distant banners.

"Hayden Griffin. The sun lighter !"

* * *

TO EVERYONE'S SURPRISE,when they hove to at a mooring station high on the axle of one of the grand cylinders, Jacoby Sarto refused to dock the ship. "Belay that!" he'd shouted at the crewman who was about to toss a rope to a boy waiting at the metal lip of the docking cylinder. "We're unloading passengers only."

They'd all been gathered at the open door of the ship's little hold anyway, and now Antaea turned to Sarto. "Why?" she asked.

He laughed brusquely. " You ask me that? What do you think she'll do to you when she finds out you're here?" He shook his head. "Don't get me wrong, give her my best when you see her," he added to Leal. "But I intend to be over the border before she knows I've been here."

Nobody argued; they all knew who she was, either personally or by reputation. So, Leal found herself admiring Antaea's courage when, two hours later, they stood in an outer office of the Slipstream admiralty, and Argyre said calmly, "Oh, he'll know me," to the uniformed secretary.

Leal glanced around the austere office, idly wondering if this wasn't a more dangerous gambit than taking her message to the Guard. If so, it was far too late for second choices.

She and Antaea had argued long and hard about this choice; oddly, it was Piero Harper who had been the deciding factor. "Hayden's from Aerie," he'd pointed out, "and we left him trapped on the plains of Aethyr. He's Aerie's native son, our hero. Take us to the new Aerie government, they'll fall all over themselves to get him back."

They might, she'd agreed; yet Aerie's government was still a government-in-exile, located in the city of Rush while they awaited the shakedown of Aerie's new sun. All power in the region still rested with Slipstream. It was Slipstream that had the navy, Slipstream the disciplined intelligence network, the money and resources to mount a rescue effort. And more: it was Slipstream that had the international clout to make agreements and alliances stick, right now.

"We're taking our message to Slipstream," she had insisted.

This little office was not in the palace wheel. That vast edifice was visible outside the window to the secretary's left. Currently, the fireworks there were causing banging echoes to rebound throughout the city. The Torn Page of Fate was arrowing for the border as Sarto had promised, but most of Piero Harper's men had gone straight from the docks to the independence ceremony--and part of her longed to be there, too, writing it all down, as it was indeed a historic day.

She would have to content herself with simply saying that she was here for it--later, when she wrote her memoirs. The rebirth of a nation and the division of two peoples like the fissioning of a cell would have to be footnotes to a chapter dealing with this smaller place; this room, and the meeting that was about to start.

The secretary went into the inner office and could be heard speaking to someone. Beside Leal, Antaea cleared her throat and shifted from foot to foot. She half-wished that Jacoby Sarto had come with them, because without even opening his mouth, he had a way of attracting attention and deference like a magnet. The doormen and lackeys who'd only reluctantly let Leal's party through would have leaped to their feet when they saw him coming, even though they had no idea who he was. He simply looked important. It still seemed odd that he'd fled from the wrath of Venera Fanning.

The secretary slid around the door to the inner office and quickly shut it behind himself. "The admiral has appointments today," he said in an arch tone. "He's aware of your petition, and will contact you at your hotel," he glanced down at the paper Leal had given him, "when you actually have one."

Leal felt her stomach flip over in an old familiar way: she was being shunted aside again . The feeling lasted for just a second, and then she laughed.

"What are the odds," she said to Antaea, "that Admiral Chaison Fanning would put off seeing you ?"

She turned to the secretary. "All right," she said with a nod. He went to sit down, and as soon as he'd rounded his desk, she stalked over to the inner door and yanked it open. "Hey!" he shouted as Leal walked through.

The old man wobbling on a rolling ladder next to the bookcase said "Oh my goodness!" and would have fallen had she not steadied him. He blinked at her over oval pince-nez glasses, then smiled. "What can we do for you, my dear?"

"I'm looking for the..." Leal forgot the rest of the sentence as she saw the state of the small room. If it even was a small room--it seemed perfectly possible that architecturally, the place was much larger, but had become the repository of so many books, charts, and blueprint tubes that its original walls were hidden, perhaps yards behind the new facades of paper. There was one desk, mounded with paper and parchment with one tiny clear corner (this open space obviously made possible by the growing pile on the floor beside the desk).