Ashes of Candesce: Book Five of Virga

7

"REEL IN THE hulls!" shouted Jacoby Sarto. He turned to Antaea Argyre, his face only half-visible in the light of the few oil lanterns that hung from the ship's rigging. "I'm turning off our gravity. It's safer at this point."

She nodded. Behind Jacoby, the crew was hulking silhouettes, their half-seen hands reaching up to clutch and drag at the gravity ropes.

Antaea heard a quiet clatter--Jacoby's teeth chattering--and she smiled. "Finding winter too cold for you, Jacoby? You're from the principalities, after all." Her breath fogged as she spoke.

They stepped down from the railing as Jacoby's ship, the Torn Page of Fate, began to sway. Half a mile overhead, the faint lights of the ship's other hull faded in and out of view as clouds obscured it.

"Time for the winter gear, I suppose," Jacoby agreed grudgingly. "I shall be back." She watched him walk to the forward cabin, bouncing slightly in the lowering gravity. Then one of the men shouted something and she turned and squinted, watching the airman's lips move as he held up a lantern.

"Ice!"

Antaea spun around in time to see a pale boulder, smudged with darkness and the size of a house, glide by off to starboard. Jacoby had given the order to draw in the hulls just in time.

She made her way to the bow, using her hands as much as her feet for purchase. Lines creaked overhead and the men began greeting their companions in the other hull, whom they hadn't seen in days.

They would be passing more icebergs soon enough--and perhaps, other things. When the first of the vast, dark lanterns had loomed out of the darkness, Antaea had half-believed it was a mirage. She'd spent her childhood and much of her adult life in these frozen regions, far from the light of civilized suns, and there should be no man-made constructions here--other than the walls of Virga itself.

The lantern had been a hundred feet across, clenched together out of rusted girders and huge, bowed sheets of glass. Those glossy panes were dark; once this lamp might have been visible a hundred miles away. From one of its corners, thick cables twisted away into the dark. It was moored to the skin of the world somewhere, but if the photos from Jacoby's magic telescope were right, it was just an outrigger. Once, she imagined, the city the lantern pointed to had been its own beacon, a glittering jewel nestled in a forest of bergs on the world's wall. All lost to the dark now.

The cables had kept the lantern pointed in one direction. That heading had confirmed Jacoby's inertial map, and so they had followed the dark lamp's lead. The Page had eventually come to another lantern, then another.

Antaea's feet left the deck. She grabbed some rigging to stabilize herself as the ceiling of the second hull lowered over her. By splitting the hull of the spindle-shaped Page down its midline they could let the two pieces out and spin them around a common axis. The result looked a bit like two ancient gravity-bound ships of the sea, attached mast-to-mast and pinwheeling together through the sky. In this way, they had enjoyed gravity throughout most of the journey. Now, with a set of muffled thuds, the Page's two halves closed over one another and what had been exposed decks were now the inside walls of a single hull.

Antaea watched as Mauven, the first mate, took reports from the men in the other hull. To her surprise, she felt a sigh of relief escape her at being enclosed by the hulls--cut off, finally, from the necessity of having to feel the wintry airs of Virga's outer reaches.

She'd hoped never to have to come here again. This place was the realm of the Virga Home Guard--of precipice moths, and strange beasts like the eaners; of icebergs that coated the world's wall like stucco; of myths and darkness and dreams. It had also been her home as a child, and for much of her adult life with the Guard.

She remembered this darkness lit with fire. Battles had been fought here in the days following an incident now referred to as the outage: a brief time when Candesce's shield against the monsters of the outside world had failed. Antaea and her sister, Telen, had been members of the Home Guard then, and they had joined ranks with the fearsome precipice moths to beat back an incursion that followed the start of the outage so closely that the two must have been coordinated somehow. Scheduled.

Antaea herself had been an "extraction specialist"; she specialized in rescuing people from sticky situations such as jail and imminent execution. Ironic, then, that she had ended up in a Guard prison herself after the events following the outage.

She'd become caught up in circumstances beyond her control, forced to kidnap Admiral Chaison Fanning of Slipstream under the threat that Telen would be killed if she did not. Antaea had been emotionally shattered by the discovery that her sister had died long before, and after the triumphant return of Fanning and the fall of Slipstream's pilot, she had left civilization entirely. For months she had flown through the near-infinite depths of Virga's skies, visiting countries she'd never heard of and basking in the light of nuclear-fusion suns glowing in every color of the spectrum. She'd been running as much from herself as from the Guard; but in the end, the Guard had found her.

She waited now for a few minutes until the warmth of the ship drove away the memory of ice. Then she flew to Jacoby Sarto's cabin and knocked. "Come," he said curtly.

He had taken off his jacket, and the white linen shirt emphasized his barrel chest. He held a helix glass of amber liquid, and as he saw it was her he gently lofted it over to her. Antaea took a cautious sip, and as the liquid slipped into her mouth, she almost coughed. It was rum, and very strong.

"Good, eh?" he said with a quick grin.

He'd found all sorts of ways to divert her attention over the past few days: with preparations, with plans, with the details of sailing the Page. Antaea had begun to relax around him, and he, it seemed, around her. She decided it was time to be blunt. "When I first asked you how an exile like yourself could afford this ship, you told me that you'd taken over Sacrus's international network after the fall of Spyre."

"Yes," he said. "What of it?"

"Your crewmen," she nodded at the door, "are little more than pirates. They're the cheapest of a bad lot. Hard to imagine you'd be buying men at bargain rates if you really had access to your country's assets."

He wound some liquor from a small cask into another glass. "I didn't lie to you," he said before taking a sip. "I did take over the network. Briefly. Long enough to extract those men who were loyal to me--and a goodly amount of money, to boot."

"What happened?"

Jacoby tilted his head, frowning at her. He was obviously considering how much truth to tell her--so Antaea said in exasperation, "I can hardly run out on you now. We're at the walls of the world."

He grunted, and looked down. "The Sartos were one of two great ruling families in Sacrus. The other was the Ferances, and they were in charge when Spyre broke up. My cousin, Inshiri Ferance, was the ruler of Sacrus--and never was born a more vicious, morally distorted human being."

Antaea raised an eyebrow. "Worse than Venera Fanning?"

"Venera's a good person." He shook his head. "Inshiri has ... hobbies. That you wouldn't want me to describe. Sacrus's product--what we traded to the world--was expertise in the art of manipulating people, and nobody's better at it than Inshiri. One of her proteges was her niece, Margit, who had a little run-in with Venera and came out the worse for it. Venera got the better of Margit--but Inshiri would eat Venera alive. Maybe literally."

He said this so matter-of-factly that Antaea couldn't doubt it was true. "You're afraid of her," she observed.

"That's because I know her. And, because I know her, I didn't try to fight when she demanded that I give back control of the network. I cut my losses and ran."

"I get it," she said, nodding. "This expedition we're on--you're doing this because it's the furthest thing from your cousin's interests you could find. You're staying out of her way."

Now Jacoby sighed heavily. "Oh, if only that were true. I'd be able to sleep a lot better if it were."

"What do you mean?"

"Before Spyre fell, Inshiri made a political pact with an outsider--and by outsider, I mean an ambassador from beyond Virga. The same people--if you can call them people--who killed your sister, and who've been trying to take down Virga's defenses ... they're supporting Inshiri now."

"Supporting--! Why didn't you tell me this before?"

He laughed. "You wouldn't have signed up if you thought I had any connection at all with Artificial Nature."

"Do you?"

He shrugged. "I met one of their ambassadors once. He made Inshiri look like an amateur, not because he enjoys torment and terror the way she does, but because he doesn't seem to consider human beings as, well, human at all. But I don't know how much involvement he and his kind have with Inshiri. All I know is that she has plans."

"To do what?"

"I don't know!" He glowered at her. "All I know is that this friend of yours, Leal Maspeth, has Inshiri and her friends running scared for some reason. They're so afraid of her that they're stretching the network to its breaking point, sending spies and diplomats and courtesans to all the great nations. They're proposing alliances ... making friends. Getting ready for something."

Antaea thought about this for a long while, and Jacoby watched her. The creak of the hull, the rumble of the Page's jets, and the distant murmur of the crew were the only sounds.

"When were you going to tell me this?" she asked finally.

"When I had some idea of what they're up to," he said. "That may be once we've had a look at what the Guard is doing at the center of that ice-free area.

"Anyway," he added as he tossed off the last of the rum, "I didn't know how far I could trust you."

"Captain! City's in sight!" Jacoby and Antaea looked at one another, then both bolted for the door.

* * *

"I TOLD YOU," Keir insisted. "That way is too dangerous."

"Did you see those missiles?" Piero Harper crossed his arms and glared at him. "We have to get home."

The Virgans had him surrounded--or thought they did. Actually it was Keir's second body they were looming over. He was able to watch the confrontation from thirty feet away, in his real one. Still, he felt the intensity of their desperation, and it struck a chord with him.

"Where does this other door actually go?" asked Leal. "You just said it went to Virga."

"It's a city on the Virgan side," he told them. "Beyond that, we don't know much."

"And the inhabitants of this city? They're hostile?"

"There are no inhabitants. It's like Brink, empty, except for guards that the virtuals put there. Those will tear you apart before you get ten meters."

"But not," said Piero, "if we were suitably armed?"

"Sure, but I--" He'd been about to say I'm not allowed to evolve weapons. And of course that was true; Keir had never had any means of equipping himself to fight the guardians of that gate.

Not four meters away from where his main body stood, two Edisonians were vomiting weapons onto the floor.

Piero Harper had seen this activity, and now he walked over to the members of the Renaissance who were outfitting themselves there. "Pardon, but this is our fault," he said. "There ain't no need for any of you to get hurt if they come down here."

Gallard shook his head. "We can send our second bodies in," he pointed out. "We don't die if they're destroyed. Can you say the same?"

"We're willing to take that risk. And this is our fault."

Gallard cocked his head and narrowed his eyes. He was consulting with the rest of the Renaissance. Keir tried to remain silent and small, willing them to trust the Virgans. Of course, the weapons could be remotely disabled at a command from the Renaissance; there was no danger these people could pull a coup.

Gallard gave a sharp nod. "All right. Equip yourselves. And good luck."

As the Virgans picked up the new guns, Keir broke out of the shadows and joined his second body. "Surely we can't just abandon these people?" one of the airmen was whispering.

"They'll be fine," he said. "They know the city. And now that they're forewarned, they can build weapons that can eliminate another attack from a hundred kilometers away."

Keir saw Maerta approaching from the far end of the hall. If she realized what they were planning ... But before she got within voice distance, a deep rumble shook the floor under them.

"It's a second attack!" Suddenly everybody was running again.

Maerta turned to talk to somebody.

"This way! Now!"

Keir ran with both his bodies, hoping that in the chaos, nobody would wonder where they were going until it was too late.

* * *

AS THE SHIP'S searchlight played over the ice-choked domes and spires of the lost city, Jacoby felt an unnerving sense of doubt. The frozen towers were clutched by the fingers of a glacier that encircled most of the world. Yet on one side of the city, they stopped. The wall of the world that underlay them was swept clear here. A black plain, it stretched away into obscurity, utterly empty of any feature the eye could use to judge its scale. Two hundred miles away across that flat blackness, a hundred Home Guard ships were building a base of some kind.

These lightless windows in empty facades, the grasping iceberg wall--even to Jacoby, this place looked like nothing so much as a gateway to the afterworld.

The city had never known gravity, so its buildings grew out of Virga's wall at all angles. Black glittering windows corkscrewed around the towers and swept in spirals and whorls across the vast gray domes. Girdered docking gantries stood into the air, faint whiskers in the distance. No ships were berthed on them.

The pastel airs of his home were far away, veiled behind more than two thousand miles of air. The influence of the sun of suns itself was barely felt here; nothing grew, and not even the poorest or most desperate souls would try to subsist in this place. What mad impulse would lead a people to colonize such empty desolation?

"Captain?" said Mauven from behind him.

Jacoby blinked away his distraction. "Yes, yes," he said, then cleared his throat. "Locate an area that's clear of ice and has a view of the blank area. Forget the docking gantries, we'll lash the ship directly to whatever building we choose to camp in. That'll make for a speedy exit if we have to."

Antaea was waiting at the main hatch with a sizable crowd of airmen. They were all holding the straps of packs that were bigger than they were--carrying tents, heaters and stoves, gas supplies, guns big and small, ammunition, food supplies, extra clothing, blankets, and personal items. They looked ready to settle in for a long stay; good.

"What's that for?" Antaea pointed at two men who were struggling with a huge reel of rope.

Jacoby grunted. "When we triangulate the direction of that nest of Guard ships, we'll unreel that behind us as we go, to make a road back. We're bringing black cloth to make a blind we can hide behind when we get close enough to watch them."

"Ah. Clever."

"We wouldn't have to be clever if the Guard trusted you better," he said. "Then you could have just asked them what they were up to."

She scowled at him. With one last look at the readiness of his men, Jacoby swung out the hatch and into the darkness of the lost city.

The air smelled of stale ice. One by one the others left the warmth of the ship behind, gathering in a knot around Jacoby. There were already several crewmen out here manning searchlights and telescopes; the telescopes were aimed into the black-on-black geometry of the city, but the searchlights were roving over the tower that they had stopped next to. This was cylindrical, with one band of glass windows that spiraled around it from its base to its crown. The windows were unbroken, and Jacoby had seen no wreckage drifting in the air. Whatever ancient event had caused its citizens to abandon the place, it seemed not to have been a war.

"Find a way through that glass," he said. "If you have to break it, then break it. I want this tower thoroughly searched and secured within one hour." Then he turned to Antaea. "Can you fly a bike?"

"Mine is in the hold, remember?" He heard the eagerness in her voice, and smiled.

"We have six. Break 'em out, boys!"

The bikes were simple: wingless jet engines with a saddle and handlebars. Each was capable of accelerating hard enough to knock its rider off, and cruise fast enough that the headwind would snap your neck if you poked your head out from behind the windscreen. Jacoby had no special ambitions for them today, of course; they were convenient for reconnoitering the ruin. He and Antaea each took one, and some of his men doubled up on the other four. They growled and grumbled into the grasp of the towers, listening to echoes murmur back from dead walls.

One of the men quickly spotted a set of big square doors gaping at the base of the docking gantries. He swung his headlight in. "Sir? Can we?"

The boys were nervous, and that was making them dare one another to go farther. Well, Jacoby could play that game, too. He turned to Antaea, who expertly straddled her bike a dozen feet away. "Shall we?"

"You brought rope?" He nodded. "Then let's not waste time," she said. "Remember, the Guard may be on its way here."

They lashed the bikes at the base of the docking gantries, and left the icy air of the outdoors for even colder inside air. One of the crew whistled as he played his little magnesium lantern around the walls.

From the maw at the base of the gantries, the passages and veins of the dead city corkscrewed away like the inside of a nautilus's shell. From the first long curving chamber--like the inside of a hollow horn--large openings like the maws of great arteries branched away. Other smaller ways branched and rebranched into impossible complexity like some system of capillaries. All the open spaces were crisscrossed by cables that one could swing or jump from. Doors and windows were scattered over the walls in patterns; great dark lamps hung like dead jellyfish in the open air.

And everywhere, there was debris. It clotted the dark air, flicking into visibility as the lantern's light found it: chairs, books, picture frames, wicker storage balls full of china plates--the whole inventory of a living city, vomited into these spaces and left to drift and assemble in strange clouds. Spiderwebs and skeins of fungi held some of the collections together.

They moved in, casting their lights in side passages as they went, but keeping to the main way. This corkscrewed but maintained a steady direction, heading toward Virga's outer wall.

"I saw no town wheels," said Mauven after a long silence. "Nothing to spin at all. What did these people do for gravity?... Sir? What's that?"

He looked to where the first mate had aimed his lantern. At first this artery seemed like the others they'd come through--but no, Mauven had spotted something affixed to one wall. It looked like nothing so much as a great fist, made of a substance disturbingly like cuticle or horn. The thing was eight feet across, and it clenched the wall so strongly that the ancient metal surface was furled and torn.

Jacoby swung his own lantern around and looked back the way they had come. His heart sank as he saw that they'd already passed a number of the things, but had missed them in the jumble of junk that choked the round corridor.

"I hate to say this," said Antaea, "but those look like eggs."

One of Jacoby's men swore suddenly and loudly. Jacoby followed the light of another lantern and felt a prickle of shock down his spine.

The lamplight played across a galaxy of corpses, all hanging in perfect stillness in the center of the passage ahead of them.

The sight was paralyzing, but as soon as Jacoby saw how it had stunned everyone else into silence, he shook himself and forced himself to take a more dispassionate look at what they'd discovered. The bodies were frozen, many showing huge and distressing cuts and slashes; beads of frozen blood hung in the air next to them. They were dressed like airmen, in a style he hadn't seen since he last visited some of the more backward nations of Spyre.

"So now we know why no one comes here," he said heavily. "But who did this? I don't like it; we'd better get back."

They had been drifting down the middle of the corridor, but now they all tried to stop themselves by grabbing ancient pedestrian ropes or wall rings. Mauven, however, was in the middle of the way and had nothing to grab on to; he kicked his feet into the stirrups of the spring-loaded wings mounted on his back, and they flapped once. The burst of wind caught the cloud of bodies, and the corpses began to move languidly. Less massive, the frozen beads and balls of blood began colliding and spinning away. The passageway filled with a strange, rapid-fire clicking sound as a wave of movement spread through the blood cloud.

Jacoby heard himself say, "Let's get out of here," and there was no disagreement. But as they turned to go back the way they'd come, the clicking sound was suddenly drowned out by a dry crackling noise.

One of the ominous growths that lined the wall was rocking. It was thirty feet up the corridor--in between them and the way out--and just a gray outline in the penumbra of their lanterns' light. It shook again, and then with a shattering sound it burst, and bright metal and splintering crystal flew through the air. Something scrabbled out of the wrecked cocoon and in seconds the passageway was filled with screaming and the sound of gunfire.