Ashes of Candesce: Book Five of Virga

15

"THIS ONE'S NOT on the list."

Jacoby Sarto frowned like a thunderhead at the dockmaster. The open-ended, cylindrical docking structure of the town of Fracas was crowded with ships, a jumble of national flags and royal seals. They'd all landed as scheduled over the past days, disgorging one or two key persons who would look around in apprehension or disdain, then take to the stairs that led down to the city--and never return.

The yacht that was settling onto the decking now was different from the others. It was a kind of assassin's dagger, long, sharp, and bristling with prickles for any unwary hand that tried to grasp it. Closer up, the thorns became fins, some adorned with jet engines. Jacoby's military experience told him that the yacht's cockpit was at its center of gravity, and those engines would let the craft spin around itself, for what Jacoby assumed was uncanny--and clearly military--maneuverability.

The yacht radiated personality, and it was a familiar personality. He rubbed at the itching bandage on his maimed hand, trying not to think of just how urgent this part of the plan had become, after the disaster of the last few days.

Yes, this must be the right ship: it looked like its owners had done their best to disguise the deadly nature of the vessel, but it hadn't done much good; the ominous name painted on its prow--Judgment--gave its purpose away.

Could she be so stupid as to have come here herself?

Jacoby assembled his honor guard at the infinite drop that ran around the edge of the circular docks. The yacht perched there, along with other ships, right on the rim of the hundred-foot-wide mouth of the dock structure. "Atten ... shun!" he snapped as the yacht's main hatch opened.

The woman who stepped out was young, beautiful, and regal in her poise. She was dressed in a black bodysuit with a black lace poncho over it; Jacoby could see the crisscross of a gun belt at her hips. She looked like some sort of pirate queen, but he'd never seen her before--clearly she was a late addition to the list that Inshiri had not had time to tell him about.

He bowed, not too lowly, and said, "Welcome to Fracas. Who do I have the honor of addressing?"

She scowled down at him, no sign of recognition in her eyes, either. "Tell your bosses that Princess Thavia of Greydrop is here, and I demand to know what the hell they're up to."

If the gravity hadn't been trivial up here Jacoby might have fallen over. No, this was not the real Thavia, whom he knew well and whose loyalty he could always count on. What was hysterically funny was that this woman wasn't imitating the real Thavia at all, but rather another spoiled princess Jacoby knew--and she was doing a damned fine job of it.

"Princess Thavia?" She nodded impatiently. "Well, this is an honor, then." In the microgravity she merely had to undulate slightly and her body drifted forward and down to where she could perch on tiptoe in front of him.

"My name is Jacoby Sarto," he said, slightly emphasizing his name while looking her in the eye. Not a hint that she knew him. "I'll be your liaison during your stay here," he continued, then saw that she wasn't even looking at him, but was peering in apparent puzzlement through the iron grating to their left. Thousands of feet below it, the city began.

So, clearly Venera wasn't that stupid. She'd sent a proxy--but she was still taking his bait. If he knew her--and he liked to think he did--that meant that she was not far away.

"I take it you've never been to Fracas before?"

"Never," she said slowly; her eyes were on the interior of the dock cylinder behind him, which in any normal city would have been empty space where ships could hang weightless. "What is that godawful mess?"

"Fracas is special. You'll see."

Behind her, two other people emerged from the yacht, a man and a woman. Both wore drab servants' clothes, but they moved like soldiers.

Okay. This was clearly Venera's countermove to his dangled bait--but what came next?

"The city fathers are eager to meet you," Jacoby said neutrally as he led the way into the curving steel cylinder. Here, the steel deck plating had been removed to expose the cylinder's skeleton of girders. Penetrating this by the thousand were cables, ropes, and chains of all widths and colors, each sporting a bright name tag on which numbers and letters were written. The thicket of cabling was so dense you couldn't see the three hundred feet to the other end of the cylinder, and the view was further complicated by the many cranks, coils, pulley blocks, and winches knotted into it.

Caught off guard as he was, habit made Jacoby lead the imposters along a catwalk over the miles-long drop to the city. The cables all led that way, down beneath their feet. He could only grip the rail with his right hand, but barely noticed the vertigo-inducing scenery; he was thinking hectically about what would happen next. Thavia's message had been sent, and Venera had come running--or had she? Unless she herself came within the walls of the city, this ploy would fail as miserably as his attempt to take Serenity.

They came to the head of a yin-yang stairway that led down to distant rooftops, and he watched the imposters for the expected reaction, as the full grandeur and madness of what was below came into view.

In any ordinary town wheel, this long staircase--which started out nearly vertical here at the docks, and flattened gradually as it dropped--would have led to a ribbon of planking or metal half a mile below. That ribbon would normally make a vast hoop upon which would perch gravity-dependent shops and services, hostels, hotels, and the occasional mansion of the rich. This, however, was Fracas, and it had no such hoop.

"Is this a town, or a belfry?" drawled faux Thavia as she peered over the rail at the chaos below.

Jacoby pretended to chuckle. "Fracas was never planned, the way most towns are," he explained as he began to descend. This was the point of no return for them; he could still decide that they weren't on his list, and send them on their way. But he had no sympathy for sacrificial victims; he gestured for them to follow, and his honor guard closed in discreetly behind them, in case they should balk.

"Originally," he explained, "Fracas was just a couple of buildings spinning in bolo configuration. The original owners--a farming cooperative--added a couple more houses, then somebody thought of putting a hotel here for people who'd come to look at Spyre. As you may know, Spyre used to be quite visible from here ... So then there were a dozen buildings all whirling around a central point. Then a hundred. Then a thousand ... Well, you get the picture."

The full intricacy of a necklace town like Fracas could be understood only by someone born and raised here; but the concept was simple. Fracas was a collection of spokes without a wheel, each spoke a strong cable or rope tied at the great central knot where the ships docked. The cables suspended houses and schools and factories and even short arcs of street; Jacoby pointed out one of these nearby, as it was hoisted up through the forest of buildings like a giant elevator.

"The tax situation is favorable," he added as he watched faux Thavia hop down the long rope-suspended staircase. "They spend no upkeep on a wheel since there's no wheel. Every household simply pays directly to maintain its own cable--and if you let yours deteriorate to the point that it breaks and falls on one of the lower houses, well, then, the rest of the town gets together and they lynch you! It's a simple system, very economical."

"Fascinating," said the actress, or spy, in a bored tone. "I'm going to cut to the chase. I have no intention of remaining here one minute longer than it takes to clear this mess up. I hope you're taking us to see your masters?"

"Oh, I am, I am. Right this way."

Wind was teasing his gray hair now as they entered more deeply into the city's rotation. Weight was increasing, too, and the staircase's steps became correspondingly shallower. The stairway cut through layers of city, brightly painted can-shaped buildings like giant pendulums, all thronged together and lashed to one another with catwalks and ladders. Vertical lines of cable, rigging, and rope dissected the view everywhere. Here in the thick middle of the necklace, you could only catch glimpses of blue sky to either side, while below was a chaos of rooftops. The docks had vanished above, hidden by the sparred undersides of higher dwellings.

"I suppose you can pick your level of gravity," mused the male "servant." "Put the schools on the outside where the kids will have to run in more than a g. Retire to somewhere with lower weight when you get old."

"Maybe," replied the female. Then she held up her hand to the ever-present wind that coursed through the maze of buildings. "But what happens when your house catches fire?"

"The house cables all have release mechanisms," Jacoby said, pointing. "They're mounted above each roof, where the firemen can unlock and spring them in an emergency. They can either hoist a burning building up from above, or lower it below the rest of the city to let it burn out."

"Why not just cut it loose and let it fall?"

He arched an eyebrow at her. "What, through that?" She gave a startled nod as she realized that a burning house crashing down through its neighbors would be the ultimate nightmare here. "You can't just let something go," he added. "You saw the cabling at the docks. Few of these buildings are actually anchored up top. That would put too much strain on the docking ring. Each cable has a house on either end, and they counterbalance one another. It's a cunning feature of the city, it allows them to add as many buildings as they can thread cables through the dock."

She sniffed. "Well, I can certainly see why there are no other towns like this."

Oh, there was no doubt she'd met the real Venera. Five minutes with her would give any actress a lifetime's worth of repertoire.

They'd reached one of the staircase's many landings and now Jacoby left it for a long gangplank. They rounded the corner of a warehouse with the sigil of the cooper's guild on its wall, and ahead of them was one of Fracas's temporary streets. This was a long plank deck that could be winched up or down through the town's layers. Its owners could rent the street out as a market, processional route, or public thoroughfare. As per Jacoby's instructions, this one hadn't been joined to any gangways or other streets, but hung by itself in a canyon of facades. Bright pennants flew over the long tent that had been erected on it, and young men and women in livery were waiting to invite arriving visitors inside.

Aside from the Judgment, one other yacht had docked this morning. Its passenger was standing at the door to the tent now--and there was clearly trouble. Jacoby was just seconds too late to prevent the faux Thavia from seeing it as well, but it hardly mattered; this was a chance to gauge her reactions. She stopped suddenly, clapped her hand on the shoulder of her manservant, and pointed, just as the young nobleman outside the tent twitched his cape behind him to free up his sword arm. Then his sword was out. The pageboys retreated as he squared off against one of Jacoby's men.

They were still some distance away, but the youth's voice carried very well as he shouted, "Lies!"

Jacoby's man on the spot was Palatin, and while he was a good con man, he was no swordsman. He wasn't even trying to defend himself, just talking in a low, reasonable, but inaudible voice to the youth.

"What is this?" demanded faux Thavia. "What's going on here?"

Jacoby opened his mouth to say something plausible, but just then the young man yelled, "No, it's a trick! We're not guests, we're hostages!"

"Ah," said Jacoby--but some sound came from the entrance to the tent that made the youth turn. He lowered his sword and stepped back, just as a middle-aged woman in a regal gown stepped outside. She looked angry.

"How dare you question your father's wishes, Dorion!" she snapped at the youth. He gaped at her uncertainly. Jacoby nodded in approval; this was the boy's aunt, if he remembered right. Instinct and habit won out over suspicion, and young Dorion suffered her to walk right up to him, where she proceeded to deliver a lecture at him in an inaudible, but clearly intense, voice.

"I believe there's been a misunderstanding," Jacoby said to faux Thavia. She raised an eyebrow doubtfully.

The youth began to lower his sword. The woman pretending to be Thavia's servant stepped up to faux her and murmured in a low voice, "Come on. We can still get away."

"I don't think so," said the other with a frown. She nodded at the shadows beyond the catwalk, but her eyes were on Jacoby. "I think it's been a while now since we could have done that."

Her companions looked where she was indicating, and Jacoby saw them finally notice the men with rifles, standing in ones and twos on nearby rooftops and in the shadow of inset windows. The looks on his "guest's" faces were really quite funny, Jacoby thought.

"You led us right into this!" the younger actress hissed at faux Thavia. "I thought you knew what you were doing!"

"Silence," she said with imperious calm. She looked down her nose at the woman, just like Venera would have. "Follow my lead. --If you have the patience for that."

"Oh!"

This was fascinating. Was the younger actress getting cold feet? Was she about to drop the facade and confess in the hope that Jacoby would let her go? Or was her fear part of the performance?

Up ahead, young Dorion had put away his sword, although he still looked unhappy as he entered the tent with the matron.

"So it seems the rumors were right," faux Thavia said to Jacoby. "You've been accumulating hostages."

"And yet, you still came here," he said, shaking his head.

The fake Thavia looked grim. Her friends, stricken and furious by turns, were herded up to the tent where smiling pageboys in dark livery put them into single file. Jacoby watched in bemusement as they were surrounded by the rest of his team, who had not drawn but prominently displayed their holstered guns. They were frisked efficiently but quickly.

Jacoby had to figure out what they were doing. So far, he'd anticipated Venera perfectly. The problem was, if he was right, things were about to spiral dangerously close to out of control. He'd anticipated that, too--and ultimately decided that there was no easier way to get what he wanted.

Since none of the three imposters had any weapons on them, Jacoby waved them through the flap into the larger area. There they found the young nobleman angrily talking to the older woman, who was in tears.

"I had to, I had to," she burst out. "They were going to shoot you if you continued."

"Then at least someone else might have seen, and gotten the word out that this was a trap," he said contemptuously.

"Dorion, I--"

"Enough!"

Jacoby didn't really care what went on between them; he had a decision to make. He stood for a long moment, gazing at the partitions at the far end of the tent. His mouth was a thin, compressed line. Finally he turned to faux Thavia and said, "Make yourselves small." Then he shoved his way through the crowd of distraught nobility that filled the place.

The tent was about thirty feet wide, and twice that long. Jacoby's men had tightly tied down its green canvas sides, and the exits at each end were heavily guarded. Conspicuously, sticks of high explosives hung at regular intervals about ten feet above the heads of the people gathered here.

Jacoby had processed about a hundred hostages over the past several weeks, and none had left this tent once they arrived. A veritable who's who of social standing and ancient nobility sat on low benches, or on the floor, or stood talking in disconsolate groups. There were privies and showers behind a set of curtains, but otherwise, there was nothing for them to do but wait. To them, this deprivation must seem like Hell; but it was a lot better than Sacrus's holding pens had been in Jacoby's day. He had no time for their whining.

He quickly paced to the other end of the space, where a series of low tables and better-quality screens demarcated the administration area. "That's the last of them," he announced as he rounded one of the screens.

The local Fracas boys glanced at one another indifferently, then looked to the other man who waited with them.

"Let's move on to the next phase," said Derance of Arena.

Jacoby had told the men that "Arena" was a distant nation in Virga--but he himself knew the man was from the arena, that mysterious place surrounding Virga that Leal Maspeth had talked of. It was clear he was different. He had amazing presence, even more than Jacoby himself. In a tight space like this, all eyes instinctively went to him. His face was chiseled and his eyes intense blue, and just a touch of gray had started to leaven the black hair at his temples. His voice was low and resonant, as instantly commanding as his appearance.

None of that impressed Jacoby. The sheer workmanship of him, though--to an expert in power like Jacoby Sarto of Sacrus, that was impressive. Inshiri had put him here as Jacoby's minder.

Jacoby despised him.

Derance walked over to a bronze bell on a stand, and began tapping it with a hammer. As the long notes rolled through the tent, Jacoby could hear the murmur of conversation diminish, then cease.

A low podium stood near the tables. Derance walked over to it, and held up his hands for silence. He'd already had it, but at his gesture a low angry hiss came from the crowd.

"I know you're all upset," he called out. "And I apologize for how long this is taking. Some of you have been here for weeks, I know. We've had some trouble coordinating with the transfer ship. But rest assured, everything's on schedule now--"

"What schedule?" somebody shouted. "Who're you?" somebody else demanded, and "What transfer?" came from someone else. Jacoby scanned the crowd for any sign of real trouble, but these members of the vaunted ruling class all looked properly cowed--except ... The faux Thavia had her hand on the arm of the young hothead, Dorion, and now she had a half-smile on her face that might have alarmed Jacoby if hadn't already figured out what was coming. He signaled his own men to alert the pickets he'd set up several blocks away.

After he got a confirmatory wave of reply he quickly looked for the other imposters, who weren't near faux Thavia. He spotted them circulating through the crowd, asking something of each hostage in turn. They looked for all the world like they were taking attendance.

Derance raised his hands for quiet again, and said, "You were all told you had an important role to play in coming here. That wasn't a lie. Your masters have awarded you the honor of becoming ambassadors to your brothers and sisters from beyond the walls of Virga--" He didn't get to finish as pandemonium broke out.

Jacoby heard one young lady say something about "taking us to the realm of the dead." He'd expected this; superstitious fools. Other hostages were trading stories they'd heard about what lay beyond Virga: rumors, legends, even plotlines to a lurid novel or two, now spouted as fact. What interested Jacoby, though, was that the imposter servants had finished whatever it was there were doing. Both raised their arms to signal to their mistress, and she nodded.

As he'd suspected, these three had already known what they were getting into when they arrived here. "I think we have a situation," he said to his men, who'd just started a card game behind the screens. They looked up, surprised, and at that moment he heard a very high, piercing whistle come from somewhere in the crowd.

Derance stopped talking in midword, then said, "What are you doing?" Jacoby stepped back out to look, and everyone else was turning, too, to stare at faux Thavia, who was holding a whistle to her mouth.

She lowered it. "He's lying, you know," she said calmly. "You really are hostages."

"Shut her up!" Derance shouted. Jacoby's men began knocking their way through the crowd. He, on the other hand, had begun backing toward the tent's other exit.

"I suggest you all lie down on the floor," faux Thavia continued loudly. "There's about to be bullets flying."

The nobles exchanged glances. "Who are you?" somebody asked.

She drew herself up into a regal pose. "True, I am not Thavia of Greydrop. I am your rescuer! My name is Venera Fanning, and I'm the wife of Chaison Fanning, admiral of Slipstream."

There was a moment of silence.

"No you're not," said a white-haired old man. "I've met Venera Fanning," he continued argumentatively, as faux Thavia/Venera rolled her eyes. "You, young lady, don't look a thing like her. Why, she has a famous scar, here--"

--and as he gestured at his chin the tent's canvas walls were ripped open in three simultaneous blasts, and he and everybody else were knocked off their feet.

* * *

THERE WAS GUNFIRE now--lots of it. Jacoby heaved one of the tables onto its side and drew his pistol. "To me!" he bellowed at his men while hostages pelted back and forth and generally made a clear shot impossible. He heard wild screaming and more than just the voices of his own men ordering the hapless nobles to get out of the way. Then, quite suddenly, there was silence.

He looked cautiously around the side of the table. The hostages were all on the plank floor, but he couldn't tell if any were actually hurt. The room was otherwise full of soldiers--some of them grim navy men wearing the red and gold of Slipstream, and some wearing ancient and baroque, but somehow familiar, uniforms. They had surrounded Derance of Sacrus and the remainder of Jacoby's men, including Palatin, who all stood back to back with their weapons raised.

It wasn't those guns that had momentarily halted the attack, though. It was Derance, who was holding something high over his head. When Jacoby saw what it was he grunted; he wouldn't have tried this ploy himself. His opinion of Derance wasn't improving.

"This detonator," hollered Derance, "will set off every one of the charges hanging over us. If you don't let us go, I really will push it."

"Go ahead," said someone.

And there she was, fan of black hair framing the lovely, oval face whose perfection was only enhanced by that single, discreet scar. She wore the naval uniform of Slipstream today (quite well) and held a carbine in her hands.

"Meet my better half," said the woman who'd so recently claimed to be Venera Fanning.

"Everybody, back off," said the real Venera to her men. "You don't need to get hurt."

She hadn't noticed Jacoby yet. He wondered whether she would simply shoot him when she did. That had been part of the calculated risk he'd taken in arranging this honeypot. He had to be here himself to make it convincing--both to Inshiri, who had no idea what he was planning, and to Venera.

Derance desperately tried to regain the initiative. "Nobody move! If so much as a single one of the hostages moves, I'll kill them all!"

"Oh, I believe you," said Fanning. "But I'm not here for them." She waved her hand and the Slipstream soldiers began cautiously moving back to the shredded canvas walls.

"What do you mean you're not here for--"

"Their people have already betrayed us by joining your side," she said. "They're a lost cause; despite what my double here said, what possible good would it do me to rescue this lot? They're supposed to be here, and if I wanted to curry favor with their masters I'd leave them here, wouldn't I? So it's a matter of complete indifference to me whether they live or die."

Derance blinked at her, once, twice, three times. "Then what are you here for?"

Jacoby walked out from behind the table. "I should think that would be obvious, Derance," he said, and he had the pleasure of seeing Venera blink in surprise when she saw it was him.

"She already has what she came for," Jacoby continued. "A list of all the nations represented here--and therefore, a list of the nations that have signed our secret pact. All this gunfire was just cover to get her actors out safely, wasn't it?"

Venera nodded, silent for once.

"... And as you can see, that's already been accomplished," he finished.

Venera recovered her poise. "Jacoby Sarto," she said with a sneer. "So you ran home to Momma, did you? Cowering under the skirts of your dead Spyre? I'd expected more from you." He saw her notice his bandaged hand, and waited for her to make some quip about it--and he saw her think about it, but she didn't take the opportunity.

She wasn't going to kick him while he was down, and that threw him for just a second; but Derance was watching their exchange, so he said, "Who were your pretenders? Members of the Slipstream Naval Drama Society?" She shrugged in something like assent.

Derance glared from her to him. "Shut up, Sarto. What are you going to do now?" he asked Venera.

"Oh, the only thing that remains is to shoot you and your men, and let these good people," she indicated the hostages, "contemplate where in the world they would rather be these days. Unless, that is, you have a better idea...?"

As she'd spoken, she had been backing away, leaving Derance standing with his detonator in the center of the cowering nobles. Jacoby's men began lowering their pistols, glancing to him for permission. He flicked his hand at them, and the guns went down.

Derance sighed heavily. "You just don't understand who you're up against," he said. Then he pushed the detonator button.

Nothing happened.

After a moment a faint voice from the edge of the crowd said, "Ah, y-yes, h-here it is. I, um, it took me a minute longer than, you know--but I found the right fuse line, and well..." A gangly man with thick glasses (and wearing the Slipstream uniform) held up two halves of a cut wire.

"Take that one," Venera said, pointing to Derance. Jacoby raised his pistol and shot Derance in the head. Dozens of rifles were suddenly aimed at him, as the agent of Artificial Nature crumpled to the plank floor.

"Okay, leave that one," said Venera. "But take him." With a quite unpleasant smile, she aimed her own pistol at Jacoby.