Karl Schroeder - Ashes of Candesce - Book Five of Virga

It was breathtaking.

"A-Admiral Chaison Fanning?" Leal asked the old man. He laughed.

"Oh my heavens, no." He put a finger to his lips. "I'm not even supposed to be here." He turned and finished jamming a book into the bookshelf--a futile gesture considering that the tomes themselves had become shelves for volumes resting atop them, squeezed in around them, and even (in some cases) hanging off the shelf by opened covers pinned under them.

"Please leave!" the secretary was saying. "Do you know where you are? I can have a dozen naval officers in here in a minute and simply have you thrown off the wheel."

"No doubt," Antaea said dryly.

"Have you seen the admiral?" Leal asked the old man brightly.

He waved at another wall, and after some peering Leal realized there was a door there, half-hidden behind some hanging charts.

"Now don't you tell him I'm in here," he said as Leal picked her way through the maze of books. "Just, sometimes, I have to tidy up a bit."

She put her hand on the half-hidden doorknob, paused, looked back, and asked, "Does he ever notice?"

"All right, I'm calling security," said the secretary, and Leal pushed through this door, too, with her companions behind her. She found herself in a long, wood-paneled hallway with infrequent doors leading off it. Starting to feel a bit ridiculous, she hurried down it.

"Ah!" That had been a woman's voice. Leal stopped.

"Heh heh," chuckled a man. The voices were coming from behind one of the doors. He seemed to be panting, she thought--laboring at something.

Her voice: "Huh-huh-huh-huh!"

He growled in response.

Leal crossed her arms and looked back at Antaea, who suddenly seemed profoundly embarrassed. "Maybe we should come back," said the former Home Guard extraction expert.

Leal thought about everything she'd gone through to reach this spot. "No," she said. She rapped loudly on the door and opened it.

The chamber was large, brightly lit by tall windows, and floored in golden lacquered wood; it looked like a dance floor except that large geometric shapes had been painted on it.

A man and a woman circled each other in the center of the room. He was compact and wiry, with a face that, while somewhat weather-beaten, still managed to convey the mild impression of a civil servant or clerk. He wore naval dress clothes, without the jacket. The woman had raven-colored hair and pale skin, and was dressed in courtly silks that were entirely inappropriate for what she was doing.

"That's a yellow card," the man was saying. "This is sabre: there is a right of way ."

She sneered at him. "Advance!" he snapped, and raised his sword.

She seemed to begin a lunge but instead stamped one foot on the floor loudly; he'd twitched, starting a defensive move, and now she skipped in place and then hopped forward. She sent a vicious cut at his head and he dropped onto his hand while his sword arm shot out, placing his blade right at her sternum.

"Appel!" he said as he straightened up.

"--And passata-sotto," added Antaea, clapping slowly. "Nicely done."

The woman snarled in frustration and turned. "Who--" She stopped, gaping at Antaea. Simultaneously, the man noticed the women and almost fumbled his own blade.

"You!" they said as one.

Antaea nodded coolly. "Chaison."

At that moment there was a clattering at the door as six or eight soldiers made their presence known. "Admiral," came the secretary's voice from somewhere behind them, "they barged past me before I could stop them--"

"It's all right, Idosh," Chaison Fanning called out. "They're friends."

As the soldiers backed away, he turned to the visitors and crossed his arms. Venera Fanning came to stand beside him, looking Antaea Argyre up and down as she did. "Ah, Chaison, it's your little friend from before. Antaea, isn't it?" Antaea's momentary cockiness had vanished; now she just nodded guardedly, and Venera gave her another once-over. "I must say, I like your clothes. Where did you get those flying leathers?"

"The principalities," blurted Antaea. "It's a little shop in Gehellen--"

"We don't like Gehellen," interrupted Venera. "Or, at any rate, Gehellen doesn't like us ."

Leal cleared her throat impatiently. "My lord, my lady, I am Leal Maspeth of the nation of Abyss. I've come to you with important news, and I've brought this woman, whom you know, to testify on my behalf."

Chaison looked down his nose at her; it was a rather priggish motion, but the sabre hadn't moved. "The last time I met Antaea Argyre, she trussed me up like a festival bird ready for the oven."

Patience, patience . The sun lighter Hayden Griffin had only praise for this admiral, Leal reminded herself--and he had told her that Venera Fanning was one of the most dangerous people he'd ever met. Coming from a man who had spent his adolescence among pirates, that was a recommendation to be borne in mind.

"My name is Leal Hieronyma Maspeth," she repeated. "I am a historian from Abyss, which is one of the sunless countries. Recently I spent some time outside of Virga, and the ... people I visited have news and an offer of an alliance for the people of Virga."

She'd said it all matter-of-factly, but how else was she going to do it? Months of rehearsal had yielded no better words.

And they seemed to have taken hold: Chaison Fanning was staring at her, his blade quite forgotten, and his wife was frowning, looking from Leal to Antaea and back again.

"Who are these people and what is this offer?" The admiral walked to a side table and poured himself a glass of water. He did not offer his guests anything, a tiny but pointed warning.

"There is a force that we sometimes call 'Artificial Nature,'" said Leal. "One of its factions is trying to gain access to Virga--actually, it's trying to get to Candesce at Virga's center. Lord and Lady Fanning, you have both had direct experience of its tactics and amoral nature." Chaison Fanning had been kidnapped and tortured by an agent from A.N.--a being that had taken up residence in the body of Antaea's sister, Telen. Venera Fanning had fought against another agent of A.N. inside the sun of suns itself and had later been pursued through the principalities by others. Neither could know--no one in Virga seemed to know--that there were factions within A.N. The emissary's claim that it was the virtuals who were responsible for the attempted incursions would be news to the Fannings, and vitally important news.

"The virtuals are preparing an all-out assault on Virga," Leal continued. "As long as Virga keeps A.N. out, our world stands as an example to others who resist final assimilation by their system. Those resisters have banded together, and they want to ally with the humans of Virga to defeat the virtuals, or at least to push them back."

Fanning squinted at her. "Interesting..."

"Not to mention preposterous. And why tell us?" Venera was swishing her sabre at her side in an unconscious but dangerous way. "Isn't this a message for the Home Guard?"

"It would be, yes," said Leal. "That would be why we're here."

Chaison put down his glass and walked up to Antaea. "Would that be why you're here?" he asked her.

She nodded. "The Guard has been deceived by the virtuals. It's not the first time--"

"How do we know it's not you who's been deceived? You come to us with offers of an alliance--with who? If they're friendly, why are they sending messengers instead of coming to us themselves?"

"The morphonts did come to us," said Leal. "Virga proved to be too toxic for them to survive here. That's why I had to leave, to visit them in their own airs. Anyway, if you don't believe me, maybe you'll believe Hayden Griffin?"

The Fannings exchanged a glance. "How's he involved in this?"