Karl Schroeder - Ashes of Candesce - Book Five of Virga

"What the hell is that?" He came around to look at it, and as he did, Keir described the gigantic invasion fleet waiting in the frigid blackness just beyond the world's skin. "These are the tiniest motes compared to those vessels," he pointed out.

"You found these in an abandoned city, you say?" Kestrel ran his fingertip along one of the thing's blades. "I know that traditionally, monsters hang around empty places for no apparent reason--and I've always assumed that the lack of a decent food supply in crypt clouds and abandoned town wheels explained why said monsters are not more plentiful. But you say they guarded a door. If these things were scouts--pickets waiting for a signal..."

Antaea was nodding. "After the outage, my sister and I fought beasts a lot like those ones," she said. "There's all sorts of eggs and seeds and dormant dragons slumbering among the icebergs of the world's wall. The Guard and their precipice moths patrol the wall, rooting them out where we find them. Where they find them ... Candesce keeps them at bay, so when the outage happened, thousands of them woke up, and they came in . The dagger-balls at the city aren't just aimlessly hanging around there; they're waiting for an opportunity ... waiting for another outage."

"And that," said Fanning, "means we have an item four: Some enemy of our world is waiting to pounce if we let our guard down." He glanced at his wife and said, "In large part, this current crisis is my fault. In order to win a local war, I sent Venera and Hayden Griffin into Candesce. They caused the outage, which allowed me to win an important battle. But what we didn't know was that it also opened the door for the monsters Antaea and her people had to fight. And it seems to have encouraged those monsters. They've started trying different tactics to get in. This latest one seems to be diplomatic."

"--Backed up by an invasion force," Venera pointed out.

"Yes, yes," he said impatiently. "That's how diplomacy works."

"And anyway," Venera went on, "it wasn't our fault. We were manipulated by that bitch, Aubrey Mahallan. It was her idea to shut down the sun of suns--and she came from outside Virga."

"So." Chaison Fanning stood with his arms crossed; except for Kestrel, who was still examining the knife-ball, the rest of the dinner party was still seated.

"Item five," said Fanning, "and it's the most significant. We have little proof of any of these things . Worse, although there's rumors and wide-eyed legends galore about recent events, almost nobody in Virga has heard anything like the stories we've just traded. Most people still don't even know there's a universe beyond our own walls."

" My people don't believe it," agreed Maspeth. "They think Virga is the universe, and that it's always existed just as it is. They'd never believe in a threat to the whole world, especially one from outside."

"Yes," said Kestrel as he returned to his seat, "and while your story is interesting, Ms. Maspeth, I'm not compelled to believe it, either, on the strength of your word and this--" He leaned forward and plucked up her doll from the table. "--this figurine that you claim talks, but only to you, and only when you're conveniently outside of the world..."

Maspeth glared at him. "Proof is easy to get! Just send a ship to Serenity. The rest of our men should have been rescued by Keir Chen's people by now. And with them is Hayden Griffin--"

Kestrel held up a hand. "I'd be a fool not to at least try to verify your story. So the admiral will be sending the ship--although the logical thing to do would be tell the Guard about the situation at Serenity and go in there together."

"Ah," said Venera. "But how do we contact the Guard? They stay in the shadows. Antaea is the one and only Guardsman we've ever met, and even she's a pariah to them now. Mr. Prime Minister: Since you've been in power, has the Guard contacted you in any way?"

With obvious reluctance, he shook his head.

The admiral smiled slightly. "They might sit up and notice if we were to rescue not just Griffin, but their own men from Aethyr."

"A public handover would humiliate them," Kestrel pointed out. "I wouldn't do that--"

"--but we might threaten to," finished Venera with a smile.

Antaea shook her head. "They won't respond well to threats. You try to blackmail them and they'll make you disappear. They have the forces to do it and mop up the witnesses afterward. How do you think they've remained a legend all these centuries? Few people who've seen them ever tell."

"This isn't their problem anyway," Maspeth burst out. "The offer I'm carrying isn't for them, it's for the people of Virga!"

Antaea nodded. "Hear, hear!"

"We need to approach them, so we will," said Fanning. "But at the same time it's risky to keep what we've learned secret.

"So I say we don't."

Kestrel frowned.

Fanning seemed lost in thought; but after swirling his coffee for a moment he shot a rakish grin at his dinner guests.

"If Sarto's cousin Inshiri is doing diplomacy on the sly, and the Guard know no other way of doing it, then what we need to do is turn all this civilized backroom dealing into a public fight--and as nasty a one as we can manage. We hold a grand colloquy, to which we will invite all the heads of state, ambassadors, newspaper reporters, and gossips of Virga. We will accuse the Guard of outrageous things to draw them out. And at this colloquy, we will reveal all that we know.

"Twice in five years, some force within Artificial Nature has tried to gain entrance to Candesce. We're already at war. Let's bring that war to the doorsteps of every man, woman, and child in Virga--or at least, threaten to."

Kestrel's eyebrows had shot up, and he looked around the table in bemusement. Antaea was grinning openly, but that came as no surprise; but Venera Fanning was also nodding, as was Leal Maspeth. It seemed, for the moment, like Fanning's idea would carry the day.

"There's just one problem," Kestrel said loudly, "even assuming we find the proof you claim is out there. The problem is you can't control what people will do when they find out. What you're proposing is to let go completely of any control of the situation we might have had!"

Fanning shrugged. "And how much is that?" he said. "Next to none, right now."

Kestrel growled, but then nodded slowly. "Your plan has an interesting edge to it, anyway. So as our chief strategist, what do you propose we do next?"

The admiral clearly had a love for ticking things off his fingers, as he did it again now: "One, we gather our proof, which means recovering Hayden Griffin from Aethyr and establishing better contact with Leal's new friends; two, we gather Slipstream's allies, call in favors, and make outrageous promises." He turned to Venera. "Dear, that will be your job. And three, we shake the Guard out of its den and demand a public accounting of what they're up to, to be given at a time and place of our choosing.

"We have two advantages right now," he went on, "that we can't afford to go to waste. Firstly, we have a secret door into Aethyr, and contact already made with allies there. And secondly, we have a way to prove that the Guard is lying, if we can return Hayden Griffin. He's a hero to the people, and the story out of Abyss that he's dead has taken all the wind out of the celebrations here."

Kestrel shrugged. "The backlash will be so much stronger when they find out they've been lied to."

Fanning fixed Antaea, Keir, and Leal in turn with a fierce look. "You've each undergone terrible experiences," he said, "in the course of bringing what you know to us on this day, in this place, and for this decision. I want you to understand that everything that's happened prior to tonight--the outage and the battles around it, the betrayals and deaths, our loss of loved ones and the ruin of Spyre and the fall of civilized life in Abyss--all these were just scene-setting. They merely laid the groundwork for what is to follow, and when history looks back on these years they will be footnotes; because what's really important is what's about to happen. --What we are about to do.