Karl Schroeder - Ashes of Candesce - Book Five of Virga

The iron hatchway creaked open and Piero Harper stuck his head around it. "Ma'am, I'm sorry if I'm--"

"No, no, Piero, I was hoping to see you. And I can't sleep anyway." He glanced sympathetically at the little stateroom's porthole, where brilliant light was flooding in. It was nominally the night shift, but they were passing by some sun or other. "Oh, it's not that," Leal confessed. "It's the vibration." She put her hand to the wall, and felt an intensification of the throbbing from the ship's distant engines.

She didn't add that this stateroom reminded her too much of the cell she'd been stuck into aboard Eustace Loll's ship, back before they'd all crashed in Aethyr.

"But look at you!" she said. "You've fattened up nicely." Then, more seriously: "I can't believe your wife let you go again."

Piero grimaced. "She insisted. 'Those people'd be dead without you!' she said. 'You got to keep them safe!'" He grinned. "Truth to tell, I think she has her eye on the military pension I get for signing up."

"But you get to work with Hayden again?" He nodded.

"And you're a great lady now, as all knew you would be."

"Oh, I don't know about that. Nobody's telling me anything lately." No that she'd expected them to. She'd fulfilled her own mission by delivering the emissary's message, and now she was just so much dead weight. Leal didn't know why she'd insisted on coming along--the truth was, she would rather have been anywhere than here. But they were calling her the Herald these days; airmen got out of her way as she drifted down the corridors; and, apparently, even Admiral Chaison Fanning could not refuse her wishes.

A shadow crossed the porthole, and they both looked up. The sky outside Leal's porthole was full of ships; she'd never seen such an armada, and the thought that her message had launched it filled her with sorrow. "I just wish none of it had ever happened," she murmured.

"Ah, ma'am," said Piero. "This isn't your fault."

The light from the porthole shifted again; but this time, it brightened . Leal assumed one of the local suns had emerged from behind a cloud. Then it brightened again. And again.

Sirens went off all over the ship. She exchanged a wide-eyed look with Piero; then they both jumped to the porthole and looked out, ears touching.

All across the sky, suns were coming on. She knew the fleet was approaching the principalities, and in this spherical region around the sun of suns, some countries perversely lit their lamps in a rotation opposite to Candesce's. They had banished night entirely and grew crops and ran their industries twenty-four hours a day. Most of the principalities didn't even have their own suns; because of their proximity to Candesce, they didn't need their own lights. So Leal had been told. Yet incandescent pinpricks of light were appearing above, below, and to all sides--everywhere, even in those nations that were not supposed to have them.

She pushed open the bulletproof circle of glass, and a chaos of horns, sirens, and bells filled the stateroom. Warm, moist air puffed in and lifted her hair. She could feel the heat of all those suns on her face, and the feeling was so unfamiliar and hostile that she retreated into the shade of the room.

"Lady Fanning's list," said Piero. She shook her head at him, not comprehending.

"Couriers were sent to every country," he said, "all carrying the list, and the words of our treaty. People know which of their neighbors have sided with the invaders, and who's with us. They're choosing sides. They're moving!"

The drone of the ship's engines changed, increasing in pitch. "Is the whole world at war?" Leal asked, as the aft wall drifted up and became a tentative floor.

Piero didn't answer, but she knew the truth. Neighbor was turning against neighbor everywhere, all at once. Treaties a thousand years old were breaking, former friends were shooting one another in the airways between their ancestral homes. The majestic, intricate, and ancient systems of the principalities were being undone in minutes.

She covered her eyes against the glorious light--and it came to her that one man might understand the unraveling going on. Wherever Chaison Fanning was, he held in his mind a tactical map of the world. He knew where the fleets were, who had what ships and how fast they were. Even now his semaphore men must be sending orders to dozens of receivers, turning chaos and random movement into the coordinated flocking of a thousand ships. But had he anticipated this terrible light, the banishing of night in the unveiling of secret suns?

Piero came to stand with her, and she held on to his arm for comfort. But dear as he was, he wasn't Keir, and his presence wasn't enough to keep at bay a growing sense of despair.

* * *

DISTANT SHEETS OFrain trailed like coy veils over the towers and bridges of the city of Brink, uncovering and hiding its vistas and architectural surprises, now here, now there. Where they had passed, the balconies and rearing walls gleamed like oil on water, presenting myriad pastel colors to the eye. The scents of rain and wet stone hung in the warm air, hinting at the possibility of life.

Despite his haste, the sight stopped Keir in his tracks. He had never seen Brink like this--never even guessed that its black minarets might hide such delicate hues. He couldn't even tell which of those distant pillared cathedrals was Complication Hall, because he had always found it in the past by the light from its windows. Now he saw that there was not one, nor two or even a dozen, but many such halls, some within hailing distance of the Renaissance's home.

He could also see bomb damage--lots of it. After enduring brutal avalanches for centuries, Brink was not easily erased; nonetheless, whole precincts of the city were flattened rubble-slopes now.

As he shaded his eyes against the blazing sun to try to make out details, somebody bumped Keir's shoulder from behind. "You're blocking the way!"

"Sorry." People, and stranger things, were pouring out of the wide doorway behind him. Twenty minutes ago, he had been packed into the tiny transfer room with them, enduring the sudden shift from Virga's now-familiar weightlessness to the gravity of Brink. No one had spoken during that short trip, and many of the humans, freshly recruited from Chaison Fanning's navy, had cowered in awe and fear of the morphonts. Now they were bursting into the glowing air of a new world, and everybody was talking at once.

He had to smile as he strolled after them. Brink was new to him, too, though in retrospect it was unsurprising that the Renaissance's allies would tow one of Aethyr's hovering suns up the long slopes to light the city. Those sheets of rain must come from melting glaciers high above, which meant that the avalance problem must be far worse these days. Sure enough, when he looked for it, he could see chunks of ice and snow piled around the bases of nearly every tower.

Better get inside, then. He hurried across the long span of bridge and into the lofting corridors of the metropoloid. Here was military order, of a sort: work gangs hauling strange devices up from the Hall and their various strange births in the Edisonians; soldiers hefting unfamiliar weapons; lines of men being debriefed by pacing officers.

Fanning had wasted no time in establishing a beachhead in Brink; in fact, he had clearly sent a sizable armada there after the abortive attack on Serenity. Keir had known a little about this activity, which was how he'd been able to get himself on board one of the fast courier sloops that Fanning had moored above the palace during the grand colloquy. Keir had talked to some of the pilots about what they might expect to find in Serenity and Brink. But he'd had no idea the operation was being conducted on this scale.

Lightning flickered through the windows and heads turned. "They're at it again," someone muttered. As he walked Keir counted half-consciously, waiting for the thunder to follow the lightning, but it didn't come. Just more insistent flashes.