Karl Schroeder - Ashes of Candesce - Book Five of Virga

The orchestra had begun to play, but nobody ventured onto the dance floor.

Antaea was neither dressed nor inclined to dance, but nonetheless she cursed under her breath and glanced around for a partner. Somebody would have to start things--but there stood Chaison, forlorn without his wife by his side. Should she...? No, no, that would be disastrous in so many ways.

Suddenly the crowd parted and two lines of people filed onto the floor: the female acrobats, smiling, perfumed and dressed in sparkles and crinoline; and a column of extremely tall, extremely handsome Aerie naval officers. The lines dissolved in the center of the floor and the acrobats and officers walked up to hesitant men and women in the crowd, and curtsied and bowed.

Gray-haired men paired off with the young acrobats; matrons and ingenues stepped out with the officers; and suddenly it was a ball. Antaea blew out a breath and rolled her shoulders. Yet another reminder of a world that she would never feel a part of.

She took a seat at an empty table. Hayden and his men, as well as Travis, Lacerta, and Sayrea Airsigh's Last Liners were all sitting nearby, but she had no desire to join them. The rest of the guests were milling in strategic ways, all very political; but no one came near Antaea.

--That is, until Lady Inshiri strolled over and gathered her skirts to sit opposite her. "Ah, the author !" When Antaea didn't reply, the lady nodded to the Home Guard contingent and said, "They don't seem to like you," in a confiding tone.

Antaea eyed her. "What's to like?"

"Why, whatever do you mean? You're the one who saved their collective asses, if I've heard the story correctly. If not for you, Candesce would now be in the hands of--" Inshiri paused. "Whose hands, exactly?"

"Your friends over there," Antaea nodded at the handsome outsiders, "would say it was the emissary's people. Or some such."

"And I'll bet ," said Inshiri ironically, "that this emissary would say it was these very people"--and here she waved brightly at them--"who tricked your leader Gonlin into going after the key to Candesce, thence to open the sun of suns, switch off Virga's defensive field, and hand them our whole world on a platter."

"That is the argument," Antaea said neutrally.

"A bit of a 'my fault/your fault' tiff, don't you think? Though why anyone should want this dreary little world I don't know. Yet, I do remain puzzled by one thing." When Antaea didn't prompt her, Inshiri went on. "You were there. You met the creature that they--whoever 'they' are--sent to penetrate Candesce. I understand it took the form of your sister. So you must have looked it in the eye--you must have seen what kind of being it was."

Antaea turned away. She had seen. After she'd delivered Chaison Fanning to him, Gonlin had told Antaea that she was free to go, and that her sister was waiting for her in a nearby building. Antaea had put her hand on the door latch to that hut, then hesitated, and gone around the side to look in a grimy window. It had looked like Telen standing there--yet she didn't move, didn't even blink, just stood gazing at the door Antaea was supposed to come through. Her uncanny stillness had had the air of an automaton to it--of something without a mind.

She couldn't deny to herself that Leal's description of the emissary had sounded a lot like what she'd seen in Telen. But she would never admit that to Inshiri, whom Jacoby Sarto had painted as the vilest of political criminals.

"I've learned not to trust my own judgment in some things," she said finally, and turned a quick and formal smile on Inshiri. "It's not my place to judge who's lying unless I can catch them in the lie. That's why I brought Hayden Griffin here: because Eustace Loll, at least, is lying."

"Let me put it another way," said Inshiri in a musing tone. "If you had to give something up--power, rights, or, say, secrets--who would you rather give them up to: a human being, however different in culture and morality they may be from you; or something that doesn't even think, but claims to have your best interests in mind?"

"Is one of my options 'whichever side you're not on'?"

Inshiri laughed lightly. "You have heard of me. Fair enough--but I think that most people would choose the worst possible human tyranny over any tyranny by the nonhuman, for the simple reason that we all want to believe that someone, somewhere, is free, even if that person is grinding our own freedom into the muck. Because the alternative is that no one, anywhere, is free--and do you really think you could live with that?" She looked up. "Ah! I happen to be good at this dance. Surely one of these handsome officers will take a turn with me."

She left, and Antaea saw that Hayden had been watching them. She walked away herself, not seeing the gardens, the azure sky and dancers. Half-consciously, she reached up to unclip the locket that hung around her neck. She hefted its tiny weight in her hand.

In it were two tiny photos of her sister, Telen. The first showed her in happy times. The second, hidden behind it, showed Telen tied to a chair, bruised and apparently terrified. Gonlin had given it to Antaea, as proof of the leverage he had over her.

She couldn't hate Gonlin. He'd had the best of intentions. He'd felt he had to do what he did in order to save the world.

So did Leal Maspeth.

She stopped, holding the locket, and searched the dancers until she spotted Maspeth. The former history tutor was dancing with Chaison; seeing that, Antaea's mouth thinned, and she turned and took a shadowed and empty path away from the light and music, and everyone she knew.

* * *

CHAISON FANNING WASbeing very polite to Leal, and she couldn't fault his dancing; but she knew he was angry. As they stepped across the floor he kept glancing at one edge of the crowd, where Inshiri Ferance posed with a glass in her hand. She was laughing gaily with a bevy of courtiers.

The admiral stumbled, and stopped for a moment. Leal hesitated, lifting her hand from his shoulder, but then he scowled and took up the dance again.

"Admiral..." she ventured.

"A talking tree?" He glared at her. "A four-pawed statue? Travis said they walked and talked outside of Virga, but if they're not going to do that here, what good are they?"

She ducked her head. "They want us to meet them at the walls--"

"That's not going to happen!" He tripped again but recovered and spun her around, rather roughly. "Maspeth, I've risked everything on your say-so. Not just my career, but the reputation of my people, my country's relationship not just with Aerie but all these states--and my..." His fingers tightened around her hand.

The day had swung one way and another like an off-balance town wheel. It was a miracle that so many nations had sent delegates at all, but their overall level of skepticism had been high, and hadn't come down by nightfall. Many of the delegates had to get over centuries of myth-based prejudice about what the greater universe was like, and, despite the best efforts of Hayden and Lacerta, many still refused to believe Leal's story. Nicolas Remoran's tale and his appeal for a simple change to Candesce had irrevocably won over half the crowd; and Inshiri Ferance was openly mocking the whole affair.

"You promised that your allies would back us up," said Fanning. "Instead, they've delivered us a practical joke. It's a disaster, Maspeth, and I don't see how we're going to recover from it."

"Travis brought documents, too, didn't he? They wrote us books..." In fact, it was Gallard, Keir's old friend from Brink, who'd brought the books. He and Keir had sat together and talked intensely for an hour; afterward, Keir had told Leal that Gallard and Maerta were worried about him. "It's the neotenization process," he'd told her. "Apparently they ran some sims, and they think ... well, they say if I stay in Virga, it's going to kill me."