Ashes of Candesce: Book Five of Virga

6

KEIR SAT IN his room, hands folded in his lap. His knapsack lay on the bed, but he'd pulled the clothes and rations out of it. With no means of escape other than walking, it just seemed pathetic to keep it ready to go.

Maerta had spoken to the Edisonians and forbidden them to evolve any kind of vehicle or personal transportation device for him. She didn't trust him, clearly--and he didn't blame her. The need for escape burned so brightly in him that he could no longer think about anything else.

And yet ... he could have done what Eustace Loll actually did; he could have taken the ornithopter himself and flown away. There'd been no guard on it, only his promise to Maerta that he wouldn't use it. If he wanted to get away so badly, why had he given her his word that he wouldn't; and why had he kept it?

Maybe for the same reason that, until today, he hadn't delved through his own scry to look at his memories from more than six months ago.

Because there weren't any. He remembered school. He remembered a mounting anxiety, a feeling that these happy days with the other kids, the lessons, the comfort of elders in the morning and evening--that these were a mask of some kind, covering ...

He stood up and started to pace to the door, but caught himself, and sat down again. That was how it had been: whenever he'd actually started to think about his situation, terror had bubbled up overwhelmingly, and escape became the only option. So he'd walked the dark corridors of the city, explored it end to end, and fantasized about being anywhere else. It had worked to stave off the panic, but only because it was a distraction.

And then, Maerta had said the name Sita.

There was no one in the Renaissance named Sita. His scry couldn't locate any reference to her, and when he'd asked the Edisonians they'd simply sat there like dumb blocks of stone. Yet Maerta thought he should know the name.

He looked down at his hands, where two of his dragonflies perched, then up at the forlorn knapsack. What he should have done was go after Maerta, demand that she explain. Or he should have talked to the others. That was something, in fact, that he should have been doing from the start. Why hadn't he cornered another of the adults, forced them to tell him what had happened? Surely they all knew.

The panic was rising in him again. He couldn't help himself; he had to stand and leave the room. This time, though, he swore, he wouldn't take one of those dark archways and disappear into avoidance and solitude.

His mouth set in a determined line, he headed for the plaza where the new airship was being built.

He passed Gallard on the way down the stairs. "You were supposed to be in workshop this morning," Gallard commented, though not in a scolding tone.

"Not now," said Keir, and he kept going.

As he reached the bottom of the steps a nagging little voice in the back of his mind said, Why didn't you confront Gallard? Gallard was something of a friend; at least, Keir trusted him.

But something had been done to Keir, and Maerta had promised someone that she would not tell him what that was. Who was that someone? Could it be Gallard? It could be anybody. Anybody in the Renaissance.

He picked up the pace a bit until he reached the entrance to the plaza.

Maerta was taking a walk around the airship with Leal Maspeth. An Edisonian remote was lumbering beside them, trying to explain in its halting way how the ship worked. Leal was shaking her head.

He shouldn't interrupt them. Of course; he'd wait until they were done and then speak to Maerta alone.

No. No, he wouldn't.

She was right there. Yet he knew he couldn't do it. The panic had taken over, and he stumbled back into the shadow of the archway, covering his eyes with his hands.

He could still see through his dragonflies, and they had fanned out into the plaza; so that's why he once again became the one to see something no one else was looking for.

In the featureless, unchanging black sky above the plaza, a little orange spark had appeared. His misery kept Keir from wondering about it until it had grown into a dot with a truncated tail--and then it came to him that it was moving fast.

"Look out!" He didn't know why he was running into the plaza, but as Maerta and Leal turned, he shouted, "Up there!"

Maspeth turned to look, and her eyes widened in shock. She grabbed Maerta's arm and began to run for the colonnade at the plaza's edge.

Maerta pulled back. "What is--"

"Missile!" Leal pulled all the harder, and now Keir took Maerta's other arm. The Edisonian took a ponderous step, then aimed its blocklike head at the spear of fire. "Perchlorate oxidizer," it observed. "Evidence of a conical gas expansion device to exploit law of equal and opposite reaction."

"Run, you stupid..." Keir had no word for it. Anyway, they'd reached the colonnade and fell together behind one of its vast, dark pillars.

The Edisonian reached up as if to catch the missile, and the orange streak hit it with an overwhelming flash. What followed wasn't sound, but a hammer blow that picked Keir up and flung him against the wall.

Dust and grit whirled, and pieces of the airship tumbled in the plaza. Most of the lamps that had lit the space were out, but a few were bouncing around like terrified lightning bugs. Weird shadows capered after them, but the whole scene was oddly silent except for a kind of long throbbing note. Keir helped Leal Maspeth to her feet, and although her lips were moving, she wasn't making any sound.

His dragonflies had been scattered, but they could still see; and he realized that their vision was much better than that of his own eyes. He sent a couple through the dust to check if any of the plaza's entrances had collapsed, and shot another one up and up to loft finally out of the spiraling cone of dust.

Another red spark appeared, and in the flash of its birth he glimpsed the thing that had fired it: a cylindrical craft of some kind, its prow narrow and surmounted with an ornate ram. On its sides and at its rear were engines of some sort, all pointed down and laboring to keep it aloft.

It fired a third missile. "Come on!" Keir pushed and hauled Maerta and Leal in the direction of the nearest stairwell. They came readily enough and all three made it into the archway just before the second missile hit. This time, as the flash happened, they crouched as one and braced themselves.

This time it was scry that he saw first. The Renaissance was lighting up with frantic messages and queries. They all boiled down to one question: What's going on?

"We're under attack!" he projected. "Some kind of airship."

Glyphs of astonishment and outrage flooded the air. Maerta, however, was projecting only confusion. As the shock of the second explosion passed, the three of them hurried farther down the stairs with Leal in the lead, and Keir saw that Maerta was flinging questions at her back. Maerta had forgotten that Maspeth didn't have scry.

They reached a landing. Though the walls shook to another thumping explosion, they seemed far enough away now to be safe. Maerta grabbed Leal by the shoulder and whirled her around. She was shouting, and past the buzz and pain in his ears, he faintly heard her words: "Who did you bring here?"

Leal shook her head and said something. Keir didn't hear the words, but her mouth shaped a name he recognized.

Loll.

Scry had done a head count, and nobody had been hurt. Except that, as Maerta pointed out, she, Keir, and Leal had damaged eardrums.

"Come up to the Hall," somebody said. "We'll fix you up."

Maerta shook her head. "Evacuate the Hall. One of these bombs would obliterate it. Everybody needs to get into interior corridors and rooms that are behind Aethyr's skin."

Leal was flailing around frantically. After a moment Keir realized that it was entirely dark down here; she couldn't see. Only he could, apparently, through his dragonflies. Keir grabbed her hands, and she shouted something. He made out the words "my people" behind the ringing drone.

"Does anybody know where the Virgans are?" he interjected.

The walls of Brink faded, replaced by a wireframe map where everybody's location was indicated. He tapped both of the women on their shoulders, then took their hands and began guiding them through blackness to the empty depths of the city.

* * *

THEY'D FUSSED AROUND her ears for a minute, and now Leal had something icy cold in each one. Her junk-doll was standing on tiptoe, its hand in the left canal, which felt simultaneously odd and comforting.

Running people and single-minded machines swirled around her as she sat on a crate that had just been brought into this long chamber. Keir's people looked panicked, but they acted in perfect synchrony, stacking supplies in precise locations, avoiding one another with uncanny accuracy. Piero Harper and the other Virgan airmen looked calm, but they were all over each other in their attempt to get organized.

"How do you hear now?" asked the junk-doll. Surprisingly, the ringing had stopped.

"Uh, fine. It's like normal." The ice seemed to be penetrating deep into her skull, twin spikes on either side. She felt they should be visible, like antennae or headlamps.

Piero knelt down and looked at her with concern. "You're sure you're okay?"

"She will be fine, thank you," said the doll. Leal couldn't help but smile.

"Was it Loll? Did you see?"

She shook her head. "It was too dark. But it must have been. Though I didn't think Abyss had ships that could come so deep into gravity..."

"They've had time to experiment. Probably just clamped extra engines onto something until it stayed up. But," he added, glancing up at the stone ceiling, "I doubt they can land."

"They don't have to. They can pummel the city into dust from above."

He stood up again. "I don't think they can. Or will. Listen." Now that she could hear, Leal realized that the only sounds she heard were from the people and machines here. The assault had stopped, at least for the moment.

"If it's Loll, he knows he don't have to kill us," Piero said. "He's sending a message, to you."

She had to nod. And she knew what the message was: The door to Virga is closed.

"He'll have spun some story about being the only survivor. I bet we're all dead, or the emissary's taken over our bodies. But would he go so far as to strand his own countrymen down on the plains?"

"If he can convince the Guard to give up on rescuing them?" Piero snorted. "In a heartbeat. Beggin' your pardon, ma'am, but I never trusted him. Why did we bring him along?"

She sighed wearily. "Because we're compassionate people, I guess. It's a flaw."

Leal stared at the polished floor, where maybe no human feet had trod before hers. She gradually became aware that the others were gathering around. She looked up and did a count; nobody else was missing, at least.

"We can't go back, can we, ma'am?"

She opened her mouth to agree, the words like stones in her heart--and then saw Keir Chen walk by in the background.

Leal stood up. "Not that way," she agreed.

"But there may be another.

"Keir!"