Ashes of Candesce: Book Five of Virga

9

THE ICE-CHOKED CITY of Serenity fell behind, and with it the constant edge of anxiety that had become so familiar to Leal that she hardly knew it was there anymore. In the first minutes of the flight she felt a huge lifting away, as though some immense weight had lain on her heart; over the next hours that lifting continued, combined with a growing revelation that really, they were safe.

In the little hold where the refugees from Aethyr had been put, Leal watched her lads celebrate with something like maternal affection. Their initial backslapping and cheering had faded to grins, but now they were starting to tell each other stories about the ordeal they'd been through together--stories they all knew, but were delighted to hear again.

The biggest surprise was Piero, whom Leal had known for a few months now. She'd met him on Hayden Griffin's yacht, one black-skyed day when they'd been beset by monsters in the dark, and she'd told him a ghost story to distract them all. Now he was surprising her. "It's not so much that I think she'll be frantic with worry," he said about the wife Leal hadn't known he had, "as it's that I'm afraid she'll have remarried by the time I get back to her."

The other lads variously grumbled and joked at that; one smacked Piero lightly on the back of the head and said, "As it is, she's not going to recognize you with all that weight you've lost." They all laughed--except for Keir Chen, who was half-curled into a silent ball on the edge of the discussion.

Piero pressed his stomach with tentative fingers. "It's muscle," he protested; but Leal had turned away from the discussion. One of the ship's crew had appeared at the edge of the lantern light and was gesturing for her to follow him. Harper flew over to perch next to her. He looked where she was gazing, and nodded.

"If this Antaea Argyre really has had some kind of falling-out with the Guard," he said, "then she may not take us to them."

"All I can do is ask," said Leal. She was still astonished that her halfhearted appeal to Antaea had actually been answered. The Guard had accepted the letter from Leal, but had made it very plain that they had little intention of bringing it to Antaea herself, since they considered her a traitor.

Leal shook her head. "Maybe she'll remember my friendship with her sister." She kicked off lightly and, following the airman who'd come for her, sailed up the center of the ship.

She was traveling the length of two decks that visually made a floor and ceiling, but which were both rigged as floors. The ship must split lengthwise, probably so the two sections could spin around a common center for gravity. The portholes were open, letting in cold air and revealing only blackness. Leal knew the ship was running at speed with its headlights poking as far ahead into the darkness as they could--but that was not far, and their airspeed was not great.

"Haul it in, boys!" Up ahead, one of the big starboard hatches was open. Some airmen were pulling on a rope, and to Leal's shock a dagger-ball bounced into the ship. It was securely netted and unmoving, but still her hackles rose at the sight of it.

The older man, Jacoby Santo, was there, directing the airmen. "It's playing dead or something," he said. "Better clip those knives just in case."

Leal saw an opening. "Not playing dead," she said as she flew over. "Really dead--or dormant, at best. Where did you find it?"

"Clutching the hull with a death grip," said an airman, making a clawing shape with his own hands. "Gave me the fright of my life when I saw it."

The commander looked at Leal again, then frowned at the airman she had been following. "Where were you taking her?" he asked the man.

"Lady's orders."

"I see." He drifted himself over and stuck out his hand for Leal to shake. "Jacoby Sarto. Welcome to my ship, the Torn Page of Fate."

"Leal Maspeth. My men and I are very grateful that we met you, Captain Sarto. I didn't relish the notion of fighting our way out of the city on our own."

"Hmmpf," he said. "Neither did we. The thanks go both ways." Sarto glowered at the knife-ball. "It's dead, you say? Why?"

"Because we're well inside the walls of Virga now. Under the spell of the sun of suns, you might say."

To her surprise he nodded as if this made perfect sense to him. "So you know something about these beasts."

Leal half-smiled. "I've recently become something of an expert in monsters."

Sarto rubbed his chin, then flicked a hand at the men who were securing the dead dagger-ball. "Carry on. You," he said to the airman who'd been guiding Leal, "back to your duties. I'll take it from here." He began rappelling his way up the ship's central core, slowly enough that she could fall in beside him.

"So you know Antaea Argyre," he said. Leal nodded.

"It's been many years," she admitted. "But tell me, how did you come to find me?"

"We followed the trail," he said, "of a man you may know."

She laughed grimly. "Loll!"

They had come to a set of tiny cabins built under the forward compartment. Sarto rapped on one door, and Leal heard Antaea's voice say something muffled. Sarto opened it.

The moment was strangely powerful, because in this lantern light, cleaned up and dressed in something like her old style, Antaea looked much as she had back in Leal's college days. For a moment their surroundings vanished and Leal saw her leaning on the doorjamb of the tiny apartment her sister had shared with Leal. Always the active one, Antaea rarely sat down, often paced, usually with a bottle in one hand. Her sister, more quiet but more self-assured, would interrupt the stream of Antaea's monologues to divert its direction, but rarely to stop it.

Antaea blinked, said nothing, and then unexpectedly she opened her arms. "Oh, Leal," she said, her voice cracking, "she's dead."

Leal hugged her. "I know," she murmured, but really, until that moment, Telen's death had just been a fact to her, a piece of news from a distant land that she'd thought about, but not really come to grips with. Her old life had been busy and selfish. But Antaea had something of Telen's scent to her and suddenly it was real: Leal found herself blinking away tears.

"How did you find me?" asked Leal as she disengaged herself. Suddenly awkward, Antaea floated back to the hammock that stretched from floor to ceiling. She steadied herself against the empty rope cocoon and shrugged.

"Eustace Loll," she said. "He made something of a splash when he returned to Sere, calling up the navy and Guard to help him with something. We were both there for"--she shot Sarto a look--"different reasons. Jacoby here had heard of Serenity, and we thought he'd come from there."

"And you?" asked Sarto. "What in the world were you doing in that hellhole?"

"Just passing through. On my way to speak to the Guard, actually," she said.

Antaea and Jacoby exchanged another glance, and Leal scowled in exasperation. "I'm a bit tired of politics," she said. "My message is too important to be restricted to just one audience. I came to deliver it to the Guard because they seemed most likely to be able to act on it, but after they bombed Brink I'm not so sure."

"Bombed Brink?" said Antaea.

"What message?" said Sarto.

She decided that describing Brink would just take too long. "A message from some of the people who live outside of Virga," said Leal, "and it's simple: Stop bickering amongst yourselves and form a united front, or Virga will be destroyed--probably within the year."

She'd seen this reaction in Hayden Griffin's airmen: both stared at her for a moment in shock, then simultaneously opened their mouths to argue or question. Leal held up her hand and turned her head away. "No," she said. "I'm tired of explaining myself to gatekeepers. The Guard are swarming around the door to Aethyr because of me and my message. A thousand ships are mustered because all they know is that Virga is threatened. I alone have the answer to their panic."

She'd allowed some of her impatience to creep into her voice and stance, and she could see they were both taken aback by that sudden hint of ferocity.

Jacoby Sarto raised an eyebrow. "So what would you have of us?" he asked with heavy irony. "That we deliver you to the Guard? The legends say they're based at the Gates of Virga." Antaea nodded as if this were common knowledge.

"That was my original plan," Leal admitted. "But on our way here I thought about it, and I don't believe they'll listen to me now. My intention was to confront them with the witnesses who accompanied me up from the plains of Aethyr, but Eustace Loll was one of those men, and he's had plenty of time now to poison them with lies. If we go to the Gates, I'll just be arrested again and my message will never reach the ears of those who need to hear it."

Sarto's ironic look slipped as he saw that she was dead serious. "You say that you alone have the answer to their panic. But," he pointed out, "I can't see that you've brought any proof with you. Or have you?"

Bitterly, she shook her head. "The Guard knows much of what happened, and with my witnesses I might have convinced them--if Eustace Loll hadn't gotten to them first. No, I have no direct proof of my claims."

"Then why should any of us believe you?"

"Oh, you don't have to," she said with a grim smile. "Nobody has to, at this point. But I do have a way of getting all the proof I need, if you'll drop me and my men at a particular port."

"And where would that be?" asked Sarto.

Leal looked at Antaea. "I need to talk to a man I think you know," she said. "Bring me to the city of Rush, in the nation of Slipstream, that I may speak to Admiral Chaison Fanning."

After Antaea flinched back and swore, Leal said again, "Take me to him.

"And then things will start to happen."