Queen of Candesce

9

Venera was nine-tenths asleep and imagining that the pillow she clutched was Chaison’s back. Such feelings of safety and belonging were so rare for her that by contrast the rest of her life seemed a wasteland. It was as though everything she had ever done, every school lesson and contest with her sisters, every panicky interview with her father, all the manipulations and lies, had been erased by this: the quiet, his breathing, his scent, and his neck against her chin.

“Rise and shine, my lady!”

Garth Diamandis threw back the room’s curtains, revealing a brick wall. He glowered at it as scraps of velvet tore away in his fingers. Dust pillared around him in the lantern-light.

Venera sat up and a knife-blade of pain shot up her jaw. “Get out!” She thrashed about for a second, looking for a weapon. “Get out!” Her hands fell on the lantern and—not without thinking, but rather with malicious pleasure—she threw it at him as hard as she could.

Garth ducked and the lantern broke against the wall. The candle flame touched the curtains and they caught fire instantly.

“Oh! Not a good idea!” He tore down the curtains and, fetching a poker from the fireplace, began beating the flames.

“Did you not hear me?” She cast the musty covers aside and ran at him. Grabbing up a broken splinter of chair-leg, she brandished it like a sword. “Get out!”

He parried easily and with a flick of the wrist sent her makeshift sword flying. Then he jabbed her in the stomach with the poker.

“Ooff!” She sat down. Garth continued beating out the flames. Smoke was filling the ancient bedchamber of the Buridan clan.

When Venera had her breath back she stood up and walked to a side-table. Returning with a jug of water, she upended it over the smoldering cloth. Then she dropped the jug indifferently—it shattered—and glared at Garth.

“I was asleep,” she said.

He turned to her, a muscle jumping in his own jaw. She saw for the first time that his eyes were red. Had he slept?

“What’s the matter?” she asked.

With a heavy sigh he turned and walked away. Venera made to follow, realized she was naked and turned to don her clothing. When she found him again he was sitting in the antechamber, fiddling with his bootstraps.

“It’s her, isn’t it?” she asked. “You’ve been looking for her?”

Startled, he looked up at her. “How did you—”

“I’m a student of human nature, Garth.” She turned around. “Lace me up, please.”

“You could have burned the whole place down,” he grumbled as he tugged—a little too hard—on her corset strings.

“My self-control isn’t good when I’m surprised,” she said with a shrug. “Now you know.”

“Aye.” He grabbed her hips and turned her around to face him. “You usually hide your pain as well as someone twice your age.”

“I choose to take that as a compliment.” Conscious of his hands on her, she stepped back. “But you’re evading the question—did you find her? Your expression suggests bad news.”

He stood up. “It doesn’t concern you.” He began to walk away.

Venera gnawed her lip, thinking about apologizing for attacking him. It got no further than thinking. “Well,” she said after following him for a while, “for what reason did you rouse me at such an ungodly…” She looked around. “What time is it?”

“It’s midmorning.” He glanced around as well; the chambers of the estate were cast in gloom save where the occasional lantern burned. “The house is entombed, remember?”

“Oh! The appointment!”

“Yes. The horse masters are waiting in the front hall. They’re mighty nervous, since neither in their lifetimes nor those of their line stretching back centuries, has anyone ever audited their work.”

“I’m not auditing, Garth, I just want to meet some horses.”

“And you may—but we have a bigger problem.”

“What’s that?” She paused to look at herself in a faded mirror. Somewhere downstairs she heard things being moved; they had hired a work gang to clean the building, just before fatigue had caught up with her and forced her to take refuge in that mildewed bed-chamber.

“There’s a second delegation waiting for you,” Diamandis explained. “A pack of majordomos from the great families.”

She stopped walking. “Ah. A challenge?”

“In a manner of speaking. You’ve been invited to attend a Confirmation ceremony. To formally establish your identity and titles.”

“Of course, of course…” She started walking again. “Damn, they’re a step ahead of us. We’ll have to turn that around.” Venera pondered this as they trotted down the sweeping front steps. “Garth, do I smell like smoke?”

“Alas, my lady, you have about you the piquant aroma of a flaming curtain.”

“Well, there’s nothing to be done about it, I suppose. Are those the challengers?” She pointed to a group of ornately dressed men who stood in the middle of the archway. Behind them, a motley group of men in workclothes milled uncertainly. “Those would be the horsemen, then.”

“Gentlemen,” she said with a smile as she walked past the officials. “I’m so sorry to have kept you waiting,” she said to the horsemen.

“Ahem,” said an authoritative voice behind her. Venera made herself finish shaking hands before she turned. “Yes?” she said with a sweet smile. “What can I do for you?”

The graying man with the lined face and dueling scars said, “You are summoned to appear—”

“I’m sorry, did you make an appointment?”

“—to appear before the—what?”

“An appointment.” She leaned closer. “Did you make one?”

Unable to ignore protocol, he said, “No,” with sarcastic reluctance.

Venera waved a hand to dismiss him. “Then take it up with my manservant. These people have priority at the moment. They made an appointment.”

An amused glint came into his eye. Venera realized, reluctantly, that this wasn’t some flunky she was addressing, but a seasoned veteran of one of the great nations. And since she had just tried to set fire to her new mansion and kill her one and only friend in this godforsaken place, it could be that her judgment wasn’t quite what it should be today.

She glanced at Diamandis, who was visibly holding his tongue.

With a deep sigh she bowed to the delegation. “I’m sorry. Where are my manners? If we conduct our business briefly, I can make my other appointment without ruffling feathers on that end as well. Who do I have the honor of addressing?”

Very slightly mollified, he said, “I am Jacoby Sarto of the nation of Sacrus. Your… return from the dead… has caused quite a stir amongst the great nations, lady. There are claims of proof that you must provide, before you are accepted for who you are.”

“I know,” she said simply.

“Thursday next,” he said, “at four o’clock in the Council offices. Bring your proofs.” He turned to go.

“Oh. Oh dear.” He turned back, a dangerous look in his eye. Venera looked abjectly apologetic. “It’s a very small problem—more of an opportunity, really. I happen to have become entangled in… a number of obligations that day. My former debtors and creditors… but I’m not trying to dodge your request! Far from it. Why don’t we say, eight o’clock P.M., in the main salon of my home? Such a date would allow me to fulfill my obligations and—”

“Whatever.” He turned to confer with the others. The conference was brief. “So be it.” He stepped close to her and looked down at her, the way her father used to do when she was young. Despite herself, Venera quailed inside—but she didn’t blink, just as she had never reacted to her father’s threats. “No games,” he said very quietly. “Your life is at stake here.” Then he gestured sharply to the others and they followed him away.

Garth leaned in and muttered, “What obligations? You have nothing planned that day.”

“We do now,” she said as she watched Sarto and his companions walk away. She told Garth what she had in mind, and his eyes widened in shock.

“In a week? The place is a shambles!”

“Then you know what you’re going to be doing the rest of the day,” she said tartly. “Hire as many people as you need—cash a few of my gems. And Garth,” she said as he turned to go, “I apologize for earlier.”

He snorted. “I’ve had worse reactions first thing in the morning. But I expected better from you.”

For some reason those parting words stung far more than any of the things she’d imagined he might say.

“You haven’t talked about the horses,” he said late that evening. Garth was pushing the far end of a hugely heavy wine rack while Venera hauled on the near side. Slowly, the wooden behemoth grated another few inches across the cellar floor. “How—oof!—what did you think of them?”

“I’m still sorting it out in my own mind,” she said, pausing to set her feet better against the riveted iron decking that underlay her estate. “They were beautiful, and grotesque. Dali horses the handlers called them. Apparently, a Dali is any four-legged beast raised under lower gravity than it was evolved to like.”

Garth nodded and they pushed and pulled for a while. The rack was approaching the wall where the little cell of rebels had made their entrance—a hole pounded in the brickwork that led to an abandoned airshaft. Garth had explored a few yards of the tunnel beyond; Venera was afraid the rebels might have left traps behind.

“It was the smell I noticed first,” she said as they took another break. “Not like any fish or bird I’d ever encountered. Foul but you could get used to it, I suppose. They had the horses in a place called a paddock—a kind of slave pen for animals. But the beasts… they were huge!”

Voices and loud thuds filtered in from the estate’s central hallway. Two of the work gangs Garth had hired that day were arguing over who should start work in the kitchens first.

Shadows flickered past the cellar door. The estate was crawling with people now. Lanterns were lit everywhere and shouted conversations echoed down, along with hammering, sawing, and the rumble of rolling carts. Venera hoped the racket would keep the neighbors up. She had a week to make this place fit for guests and that meant working kitchens, a ballroom with no crumbling plasterwork and free of the smell of decay—and of course, a fully stocked wine cellar. The rebel gang had removed all evidence of themselves when they retreated, but had left behind the hole by which they’d gained entrance. Because the mansion only had one entrance—the back doors had not yet been uncovered—Venera had decided it prudent to keep this bolthole. But if she was going to have a secret exit, it had to be secret; hence the wine rack.

“Okay,” she said when they had it about three feet from the wall. “I’m going to grease the floor under the hole, so we can slide the rack to one side if we need to get out in a hurry.” She plonked down the can she’d taken from one of the workmen and rolled up her sleeves.

“We’ll have to survey for traps some time,” he said reasonably.

Venera squinted up at him. “Maybe, but not tonight. You look like you’re about to collapse, Garth. Is it the gravity?”

He nodded, wincing. “That, and simple age. This is more activity than I’ve had in a long while, when you factor in the new weight. I thought I was in good shape, but…”

“Well, I hereby order you to take two days off. I’ll manage the workmen. Take one day to rest up, and maybe on the second you tend to the… uh, that matter that you won’t talk to me about.”

“What matter?” he said innocently.

“It’s all right.” She smiled. “I understand. You’ve been in exile for a long time. Plenty of time to think about the men who put you there. Given that much time, I’d bet you’ve worked out your revenge in exquisite detail.”

Garth looked shocked. “Revenge? No, that’s not—oh, I suppose in the first few months I thought about it a lot. But you get over anger, you know. After a few years, perspective sets in.”

“Yes, and that’s the danger, isn’t it? In my family, we were taught to nurture our grudges lest we forget.”

“But why?” He looked genuinely distressed for some reason.

“Because once you forgive,” she said, as if explaining something to a small child, “you set yourself up for another betrayal.”

“That’s what you were taught?”

“Never let an insult pass,” she said, half-conscious that she was reciting lines her father and sisters had spoken to her many times. She ticked the points off on her fingers. “Never let a slight pass, never forget, build realistic plans for your revenges. You’re either up or down from other people and you want always to be up. If they hurt you, you must knock them down.”

Now he looked sad. “Is that why you’re doing all this?” He gestured at the walls. “To get back at someone?”

“To get back, at all,” she said earnestly, “I must have my revenge. Else I am brought low forever and can never go home. For otherwise—” Her voice caught.

For otherwise, I have no reason to return.

His expression, of compassion, would have maddened her on anyone else. “You were telling me about the horses,” he said quietly.

“Ah. Yes.” Grateful of the distraction, she said, “Well, they have these huge barrel-shaped bodies and elegant long necks. Long heads like on my ring.” She held it up, splaying her fingers. “But their legs! Garth, their legs are twice the length of their bodies—like spider’s legs, impossibly long and thin. They stalked around the paddock like… well, like spiders! I don’t know how else to describe it. They were like a dream that’s just tipping over to become a nightmare. I’m not sure I want to see them again.”

He nodded. “There are cattle loose between some of the estates. I’ve seen them, they look similar. You have to understand, there’s no room on the city wheels to raise livestock.”

Venera pried open the lid of the grease can and picked up a brush. “But now that the nation of Buridan has returned, the horses are our responsibility. There are costs… it seems a dozen or more great nations have acted as caretakers for one or another part of the Buridan estate. Some are tenants of ours who haven’t paid rent in centuries. Others are like Guinevera, who’ve been tending the horses. There’s an immense web of relationships and dependencies here, and we have a little under a week to figure it all out.”

Garth thought about it for a while. “First of all,” he said eventually, “you need to bring a foal or two up here and raise it in the estate.” He grimaced at her expression. “I know what I just said, but it’s an important symbol. Besides, these rooms will just fill up with people if you give them a chance. Why not set some aside for the horses now?”

“I’ll think about that.”

They cleared out the space behind the rack, and slid it against the wall. It fit comfortably over the exit hole. As they stood back to admire their work, Garth said, “It’s a funny thing about time, you know. It sweeps away anger and hate. But it leaves love untouched.”

She threaded her hand through his arm. “Ah, Garth, you’re so sentimental. Did it ever occur to you that’s why you ended up scrabbling about on Greater Spyre for the past twenty years?”

He looked her in the eye. “Truthfully, no. That had never occurred to me. If anything, I’d say I ended up there because I didn’t love well enough, not because I ever loved too well.”

She sighed. “You’re hopeless. It’s a good thing I’m here to take care of you.”

“And here I thought it was I taking care of you.”

They left the cellar and re-entered the bedlam of construction that had taken over the manor.

The headache began that night.

Venera knew exactly what it was, she’d suffered these before. All day her jaw had been bothering her; it was like an iron hand was inside her throat, reaching up to clench her skull. Around dinner a strange pulsating squiggly spot appeared in her vision and slowly expanded until she could see nothing around it. She retired to her room, and waited.

How long was this one going to last? They could go on for days, and she didn’t have days. Venera paced up and down, stumbling, wondering whether she could just sleep it off. But no, she had mounds of paperwork to go through and no time.

She called Garth. He exclaimed when he saw her and ran to her side. “You’re white as a new wall!”

“Never mind,” she said, detaching herself from him and climbing into bed. “Bring in the accounts books. It’s just a headache, I get them. I’m sick but we need to go through these papers.”

He started to read the details of Buridan’s various contracts. Each word was like a little explosion in her head. Venera tried to concentrate, but after ten minutes she suddenly leaned over the edge of the bed and retched.

“You need to sleep!” His hands were on her shoulders. Garth eased her back on the bed.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” she mumbled. “If we don’t get this stuff straight, we won’t convince the council and they’ll cart us both away in chains.” A blossom of agony had unfurled behind her left eye. Despite her brave words Venera knew she was down for however long the migraine decided to hold her.

Garth darkened the lamps and tiptoed around while she lay sprawled like a discarded doll. Distant hammering sounded like it was coming from inside her own head, but she couldn’t hold up the renovations.

Sleep eventually came, but she awoke to pain that was abstract only until she moved her head and opened one eye. This is how it’s going to be. These headaches were the bullet’s fault; when it smashed her jaw it had tripped some switch inside her head and now agony ambushed her at the worst times. Always before, she’d had the safe haven of her bedroom at home to retreat to—her time on the Rook had been mercifully free of such episodes. She used such times to indulge in her worst behavior: whining, accusing, insulting anyone who came near her, and demanding that her every whim be catered to. She wallowed in self-pity, letting everyone know that she was the sad victim of fate and that no one, ever, had felt the agonies she was enduring so bravely.

But she really was going to die if she let the thing rule her this time. It wasn’t that there was nobody around to indulge her; but all the sympathy in the world wasn’t going to save her life if she didn’t follow through on the deception she and Garth had planned. So, halfway through morning, Venera resolutely climbed out of bed. She tied a silk sash over her eyes, jammed candle wax in her ears, and picked up an empty chamber pot. Carrying this, she tottered out of the room. “Bring me a dressing gown,” she said in reply to a half-heard question from a maid. “And fetch Master Flance.”

Blindfolded, half deaf, she nonetheless managed to make her rounds of the work crews, while Garth followed her and read from the books. She told him what points to underline for her to look at later; inquired of the work and made suggestions; and, every now and then, she turned aside to daintily vomit into the chamber pot. Her world narrowed down to the feel of carpet or stone under her feet, the murmur of words in her ear, and the cataclysmic pounding that reverberated inside her skull. She kept going by imagining herself whipping, shooting, stomping on, and setting fire to Jacoby Sarto and the rest of this self-important council who had the temerity to oppose her will. This interior savagery was invisible from without, as she mumbled and queried politely, and let herself be led about passively.

All of this busywork seemed to be getting her somewhere, but that evening when she collapsed onto her bed, Venera realized that she had no memory of anything she had said or done today. It was all obscured by the angry red haze of pain that had followed her everywhere.

She was doomed. She’d never be ready in time for the interrogation the council had planned. Venera rolled over, cried into her pillow, and finally just lay there, accepting her fate. The bullet had defeated her.

With that understanding came a kind of peace, but she was in too much pain to analyze it. She just lay there, dry eyed, frowning, until sleep overcame her.