Karl Schroeder - Ashes of Candesce - Book Five of Virga

"Argyre! I see you've regained your rank," she said as she reached out to take Antaea's hand. "Or," she squinted at Remoran, "was she yours all along?"

"She's been demoted, actually," said Remoran. "We could hardly justify her expulsion after we admitted that Gonlin's plan had been the right one. But her blind acceptance of his orders was a problem."

"Ah." Ferance looked down at her toes, which were together and pointing into the black abyss that lay beyond Kaleidogig's red light.

"I'm placing Argyre with you as an advisor," continued Remoran. "She's spent time in the enemy camp, after all."

Inshiri arched an eyebrow, but didn't complain. "Jacoby?"

"You can trust her judgment," he said, which nearly made Antaea guffaw out loud. Who're you to talk about trust! she wanted to say; but she kept her expression neutral.

They boarded the battleship and Antaea found herself in an echoing, warehouse-sized hangar lit with unwavering electric light. Dozens of missile-festooned attack ships hung from cranes here, and airmen swarmed around them, working, cursing, and throwing tools back and forth.

Inshiri pinwheeled slowly, taking it all in. "Wondrous," she said. "You could kill so many people with this thing."

"Hopefully we won't have to," said Remoran. "I'm still expecting the Last Line to come to their senses. No segment of the Home Guard has ever revolted--at least, never on this scale." He shot Antaea an ironic look. "They've swallowed the propaganda that Lacerta brought back from Aethyr, but the internal contradictions will bring them around soon. There are already cracks."

"Ooh," said Inshiri as they hand-walked along a cable to one of the many corridors that opened out of the hangar. "Defections?"

"Well, no, not yet. But let's call them 'reliable signs of unrest.'" He pointed down the corridor. "My office is this way."

"Oh, in a minute, thank you," said Inshiri. "One of your men can direct me. I just have some orders for this lot." She nodded to her servants, as well as Jacoby's other men who trailed her and the general secretary.

"As you will." He disappeared down the corridor. Inshiri turned to Jacoby.

"Your men stay behind," she said levelly.

"What? But I need them to run my communications net--" But Inshiri was shaking her head.

"I've coopted it, I'm afraid. Had to kill a few of your men to do it thoroughly." She laughed at the expression on his face. "Oh, don't act as if you weren't expecting this, cousin. You've had far too much autonomy, and I need you close and controlled for now. Your network is now my network, and you are useful because you know its logistics better than anyone. You can have it back--and I'll throw in a country or two--when we're done."

He glowered at her. "Not a good way to guarantee my loyalty."

"Loyalty? Don't make me laugh. You'd have made your move against me sooner or later." She smiled sweetly and flew off after the general secretary.

Antaea met Jacoby's eye, and smiled.

He pulled himself straight and frowned at her with all the dignity of his years. "It's all right," he said. "I did see this coming." Turning to his men he said, "I'll see you all at Rendezvous Point B. But leave the luggage."

"And what did she mean with that crack about giving you a country?" Antaea continued. "The plan is to tune down Candesce and give the people of Virga more technological capacity. Not to take over the world."

Jacoby shrugged. "Your plan, my plan ... everybody's got plans. Yours is also the Guard's plan, so I wouldn't worry about it too much. Inshiri talks a good line, but even she can't control your people. Now, who do I call to help get our bags to our cabins? It'll be a day or two before we rendezvous with the outsiders."

She watched him go, troubled, and uncomfortably aware that some of the airmen were watching her. They know who I am . Well, let them stare. Winter wraith; traitor; turncoat. She'd played them all, and the stares had always been the same.

But as she hauled her own luggage and it began to slowly move, she couldn't help but think about Inshiri's jabs and insults. The woman liked to keep people off balance; you could never tell when she was telling the truth or lying. What if she really did have some way of capturing Candesce? --Via the outsiders, perhaps?

Antaea would have to watch Ferance; though as she traversed the endless corridors of the giant battleship, the vast scale and obvious power of the vessel led her to concede that Jacoby was probably right.

Nothing inside Virga could successfully oppose the Virga Home Guard--not even its own rebellious Last Line. And surely not Inshiri Ferance.

22

TEN YEARS BEFORE,a single ship could have slipped into Candesce on any given night. An entire flotilla could have--and hundreds of ships did, every time the sun of suns shuttered its blazing eyes and retreated into sleep. The first visitors were always the scavengers: well-insulated, mirror-clad, and fast, they ventured in even before the last of Candesce's fusion engines had gone out. Braving incandescent air, they competed to find castoff and broken parts from Candesce's intimidating furnaces. The scavengers believed from firsthand experience that Candesce deliberately seeded its trash with intact machinery, for they often found vital components for the construction of suns among the flotsam. They snapped up this bounty, fought amongst themselves for it, and the winners retreated back to the principalities ahead of the dawn, to sell their prizes.

After them came the funeral ships. They were not here to pick up, but to drop off. Bodies from all over Virga made their final journey here, to be consigned to the dark, hot air by loved ones or the trusted funerary castes of a hundred nations. As Candesce began to rouse itself, these last ships departed, leaving roses and songbooks, the precious treasures of the beloved dead, and thousands of white-shrouded, silent figures hanging suspended in the air. Those who looked back as the sun of suns awoke might see light well past the throng, lighting the paper wings they wore. Dawn was an inferno of angels.

So it had been for centuries. But ever since the outage, the Last Line of the Virga Home Guard had tightened their defenses. They had long believed the last key to Candesce lost; so there was never any reason to board and inspect the funeral ships, nor to stop the scavengers from approaching the mysterious, closed blockhouses that nestled in Candesce's heart. Now that the key was loose again, everyone was suspect--even ships from other arms of the Guard.

Last Line ships were the first in at dusk, and the last out at dawn. They watched everyone, and their terrifying precipice moths clamped their talons onto ships at random, prying back their hulls to glare suspiciously at their cargoes. So when a small flotilla of First Line ships approached Candesce, they were stopped and boarded.

Since even before the grand colloquy, they'd all known this was going to happen. The First Line and Last Line had fallen out over what to do with Candesce. The First Line had the key, for it had been a First Line precipice moth that had taken it into Candesce to begin with, and when it burst forth again it had taken it to its masters at the rim of the world.

So those who boarded, and those who were boarded, had known for many months that their initially formal meeting would dissolve into gunfire and swordplay. They'd known, they'd even planned for it; but none of them really believed it until the bodies were in the air and blood was raining into the darkening skies. And the reaction that rippled back into both camps was shock, and outrage, and immediate mobilization.

* * *

SOMEBODY RAPPED ONthe door to Leal's stateroom. She jerked and floated several feet away from the sleeping bag strapped to the wall. "Come in!"