Queen of Candesce

20

The sound of bullets hitting Liris’s walls reminded Garth Diamandis of those occasional big drops that fall from trees after a rain. Silence, then a pat followed in this case by the distant sound of a shot. From the gunslit where he was watching he could see the army of the Council Alliance assembling next to the rust-streaked roundhouse. In the early morning light it seemed like a dark carpet moving, in ominous silence, in the direction of Liris. Little puffs of smoke arose from the Sacrus line, but the firing was undisciplined.

“Come away from there,” said Venera’s friend Eilen. They stood in a musty closet crammed with door lintels, broken drawers, cracked table legs: useless junk, but impossible for a tiny nation like Liris to throw away. Lantern light from the corridor shone through Eilen’s hair. She could have been attractive, a habitual part of his mind noted. At one time, he could have helped her with that.

“I have a good view of the Sacrus camp,” he said. “And it’s too dangerous to be on the roof right now.”

“You’ll get a bullet in the eye,” she said. He grunted and turned back to the view, and after a moment he heard her leave.

He couldn’t tell her that he had recognized one of the uniformed figures moving down there—maybe two of them, he couldn’t be sure. Garth was sure that Eilen would tell him he was suffering an old man’s delusions if he said he’d recognized his daughter among the hundreds of crimson uniforms.

He could be imagining it. He’d had scant moments to absorb the sight of her before she’d signaled her superiors and Sacrus’s thugs had moved in on him. Yet Garth had an eye for women, was able to recall the smallest detail about how this or that one moved or held herself. He could deduce much about character and vulnerability by a woman’s stance and habitual gestures, and he damned well knew how to recognize one at a distance. That was Selene standing hipshot by that tent, he was sure of it.

Garth cursed under his breath. He’d never been one to probe at sore spots, but ever since they’d thrown him into that stinking cell in the Gray Infirmary, his thoughts had pivoted around the moment of Selene’s betrayal.

He had told her that he was her father, just before she betrayed him. In the seconds between, he’d seen the doubt in her eye—and then the mad-eyed woman with the pink hair had come to stand next to Selene.

“He said he’s my father,” Selene murmured as the soldiers cuffed Garth. The pink-haired woman behind her laughed.

“And who knows?” she’d said. “He might well be.” She had laughed again, and Garth had glimpsed a terrible light in his daughter’s eye just before he was hauled out of her sight.

There it was again, that mop of blossom-colored hair poking out from under a gray army cap. She was an officer. The last time Garth had seen her had been in a bizarre fever dream where Venera was whispering his name urgently. This woman had been there, among glass cases, but she was naked and laved with crimson from head to toe. Venera had spoken her name then, but Garth didn’t remember it.

The sound of firing suddenly intensified. Garth craned his neck to look in the direction of the roundhouse. Sacrus’s forces were moving out to engage the council troops on the inside of Liris. Behind him, though, he could see an equally large contingent of Sacrus’s soldiers circling back around the building—headed toward the edge of the world.

Garth had some inkling of what the council army was doing. They were pressing up against the no-man’s land of thorn and tumbled masonry, a scant hundred yards from the walls of Liris. From there they could turn left or right—inward or toward world’s edge—at a moment’s notice. Sacrus would have to split their forces into two to guard against both possibilities.

It was an intelligent plan and for a moment Garth’s spirits lifted. Then he saw more of Sacrus’s men abandon their positions below him. They were leaving a noisy and smoke-wreathed band of some two hundred men to defend the inward side while the rest of their forces marched behind Liris and out of sight from the roundhouse. They clearly expected the council army to split right and try to relieve Guinevera and Anseratte at the hurricane-wracked world’s edge. But how did they know what the council was planning?

He cursed and jumped down off the ancient credenza he’d been perched upon. The corridors were stuffed with armed people, old men and women mostly (strange how he thought of other people his age as old, but not himself). He elbowed his way through them carelessly. “Where the hell is Moss?”

Someone pointed down a narrow, packed hallway. Liris’s new botanist was deep in discussion with the only one of Bryce’s men left inside the walls. “I need semaphore flags,” Garth shouted over two shoulders. “We have to warn the troops what Sacrus is doing!”

To his credit, Moss didn’t even blink. He raised a hand, pointed to one man, then held up two fingers. “Forward stores,” he said. He pointed to another man and then at Garth. “Go with.”

It took precious minutes for Garth and his new helper to locate the flags. Then they had to fight their way to the stairs. They emerged outside to the mind-numbing roar of the winds and an almost continuous sound of gunfire. Ducking low, they ran for the edge of the roof.

“They expect you to act as if you don’t know about the key,” Venera was explaining for the tenth time. She was surrounded by nervous officers and staffers; the gray-mustachioed army commander stood with his arms crossed, glowering as she drew on the ground with a stick. “If you don’t know about it, then the obvious strategic goal is to relieve Guinevera’s force. Jacoby Sarto has told them that we are going to do that. This frees Sacrus to take Liris, their real objective.”

The commander nodded reluctantly. A bullet whined past somewhere too near for comfort. They stood behind a screen of brush on the edge of no-man’s land. An arc of soldiers surrounded them, far too few for Venera’s taste. This force would hardly qualify as a company in Chaison’s army. Yet Sacrus didn’t have much more.

“So,” she continued. “We feint right, then strike left. I humbly suggest that we start with sustained fire into Sacrus’s position on the edge side of no-man’s land.”

There was some talk among the officers—far too much of it to suit her—then the commander said, “It’s too risky. And I remain skeptical about your story.”

He didn’t believe the key was real. Venera was tempted to take it out and show it to him, but that might backfire. Who could believe a whole war would be fought over an ivory wand?

While she and the commander were scowling at one another Bryce ran up, puffing. “They’re here!” Venera turned to look where he pointed.

She turned back, grinning broadly. “Commander, would you be more amenable to my plan if you had a secret weapon to help with it?”

The commander and all the officers fell silent as they saw what was approaching. Slowly, the commander began to smile.

“Damn it, they’re ignoring us!” Garth ducked as another volley of fire from below raked the edge of the roof. His assistant slumped onto the flagstones next to him, shaking his head.

“Maybe they don’t see us,” he said.

“Oh, they see us all right. They just don’t believe us.” Garth risked a glance over the stones. The council army was pressing hard against the barricades hastily thrown up by Sacrus on the inward side of Liris. The bulk of their army was hovering on the far side of the building, ready to speed toward the edge as soon as they were given the word.

Another ladder thunked against the wall. That made four in as many seconds. Garth pushed his companion. “Back to the stairs!” Sacrus was moving to take Liris. There was nothing anyone could do to stop them.

Garth stood up to run, and hesitated for just a second. He couldn’t stop himself from looking down through the gunfire and smoke to find his daughter. The ground around Liris was boiling with men; he couldn’t see her.

Something hit him hard and he spun around, toppling to the flagstones. A bullet—was he dead? Garth clawed at his shoulder, saw a bright scar on the metal of his armor but no hole.

“Sir!” Damn him, his helper was running back to save him. “No, get to the stairs dammit!” Garth yelled, but it was too late. A dozen bullets hit the man and some of those went right through his armor. He fell and slid forward, and died at Garth’s feet.

Garth had never even learned his name.

Up they came now, soldier after soldier hopping onto Liris’s roof. One loped forward, ignoring rifle fire from the stairs, and pitched a firebomb into the central courtyard. The cherry trees were protected under a siege roof, but a few more of those and they would burn.

Swearing, he tried to stand. Something hit him again and he fell back. This time when he looked up, it was to see the black globe of a Sacrus helmet hovering above him, and a rifle barrel inches from his face.

Garth fell back, groaning, and closed his eyes.

“We’ve lost our momentum,” said Bryce. He and Venera were crouched behind an upthrust block of brickwork from some ancient, abandoned building. A hundred feet ahead of them, men were dying in a futile attack on the Sacrus barricade.

She nodded, but the council officers were already ordering a retreat. For a few seconds she watched the soldiers scampering back under relentless fire. Then she cocked an eyebrow at Bryce, and grinned.

“We’ve lost our momentum? When did you decide this was your fight?”

“People are dying,” he said angrily. “Anyway, if what you say is true, there’s far more at stake than any of us knew.” She shrugged and glanced again at the retreat, but then noticed he was staring at her.

“What?”

“Who are you, really? Surely not Amandera Thrace-Guiles?”

Venera laughed. He hadn’t been there for her moment of humiliation at the feet of Guinevera—had, in fact, been flying through the air over brambles and scrub just about then.

She stuck out her hand for him to shake. “Venera Fanning. Pleased to meet you.”

He shook it, a puzzled expression on his face, but then a new commotion distracted him. “Look! Your friends…”

Through the drifting smoke, she could see a dozen spindly ladders wobbling against the building’s walls. Men were swarming up them and there was fighting on the roof. In seconds she could lose the people who had become most precious to her. “Come on!”

They braved rifle fire and ran back. The army commander was crouched over a map. He looked up grimly as Venera approached. “Can you feel it?” When she frowned, he pointed down at the ground. Now she realized that for some time now, she had been feeling a slow, almost subliminal sensation of rising and falling. It was the kind of faint instability of weight that you sometimes felt when a town’s engines were working to spin it back up to speed.

“I think Sacrus cut one too many cables.”

“Let the preservationists deal with it when we’re finished,” she said. “Right now we need to cut down those ladders.”

He shook his head. “Don’t you understand? This is more than just a piece or two falling off the world. Something’s happened. It—we…” She realized that he was very, very frightened. So were the officers kneeling with him.

Venera felt it again, that long slow waver, unsettling to the inner ear. Way out past the smoke, it seemed like the curving landscape of Spyre was crawling, somehow, like the itchy skin of a giant beast twitching in slow motion.

“We can’t do anything about that,” she said. “We have to focus on saving lives here and now! Look, I don’t think there’s more than three dozen men on those barricades. The rest of their men are waiting on the far side for us to try to relieve Guinevera.”

With an effort he pulled himself together. “Your plan… Can you do it?”

“They’ll start to pull back as soon as they realize we’re concentrating here,” she said. “When they do, we’ll have them.”

“All right. We have to… do something.” He got to his feet and began issuing orders. The frightened officers sprinted off in all directions. Venera and Bryce ran back in the direction of the roundhouse and as they passed the fringe of the no-man’s land she saw scores of men standing up from concealment in the bushes. Suddenly they were all bellowing and as more popped up from unexpected places Venera found herself being swept back by a vast mob of howling armored men. She and Bryce fought their way forward as hundreds of bodies plunged past them. She had no time to look back but could imagine the Sacrus barricades being overwhelmed in seconds; the ladders would tremble and fall, and when they rose again it would be council soldiers climbing them.

A small copse of trees stood at the end of no-man’s land; bedraggled and half-burnt, they still made a good screen for what hid behind them. Venera smelled the things before she saw them, and her spirits soared as she heard their nervous snorting and stamping.

With murmurs and an outstretched hand, she approached her Dali horse. A dozen others stood huddled together, flanks twitching, their heads a dozen feet off the earth. All were saddled and some of the horsemen were already mounted.

Bryce stopped short, a wondering expression on his face. Venera put her hand on the rope ladder that led up to her beast’s saddle, then looked back at him. “See to your people,” she said. “Run your presses. If I live, I’ll see you after.”

He smiled and for a moment looked boyishly mischievous. “The presses have been running for days, and I’ve sent my messages. But just in case… here.” He dug inside his jacket and handed her a cloth-wrapped square. Venera unwrapped it, puzzled, then laughed out loud. It was a brand-new copy of the book Rights Currencies. She raised it to her nose and smelled the fresh ink, then stuffed it in her own jacket.

She laughed again as Bryce stepped back and the rest of her force mounted up behind her. Venera turned and waved to them, and as Bryce ran back toward the roundhouse and safety, she yelled, “Come on! They’re not going to be expecting this!”

Garth could see it all. They’d tied his hands behind him and stood him near the body of the man who’d come with him to the roof. From behind him came the sounds of Sacrus’s forces mopping up on the lower floors of Liris. Prisoners were being led onto the roof under the direction of the pink-haired woman, whose name, he now remembered, was Margit. She had climbed up the ladder with ferocious energy a few minutes before.

Garth had turned away when his daughter stepped onto the roof behind her.

Turning, he saw what was developing under the shadow of the building, and despite all the tragedy it made him smile.

A dozen horses, each one at least ten feet tall at the shoulder, were stepping daintily but rapidly through no-man’s land. The closely packed thorn bushes and tumbled masonry were no barrier to them at all. Each mount held two riders except the one in the lead. Venera Fanning rode that one, a rifle held high over her head. Garth could see that her mouth was wide open—Mother of Virga, was she howling some outlandish battle cry? Garth had to laugh.

“What’s so funny, you?” A soldier cuffed him on the side of his head. Garth looked him in the eye and nodded in Venera’s direction.

“That,” he said.

After he finished swearing, the man ran toward Margit, shouting, “Sir! Sir!” Garth turned back to the view.

Sacrus had taken Liris with a comparatively small force, and was now depleted on the Spyre side of the building. The bulk of the council army was wheeling in that direction, pushing back the few defenders on the barricades. They’d take the siege ladders on that side in no time. It shouldn’t have been a problem for Sacrus; they now held the roof and could lower ladders, ropes, and platforms to relieve their own forces from the other side of the building. Now that they knew where the council army was going, their ground forces had started running back in that direction from the world’s edge. This seemed safe because they had a large force below no-man’s land to block any access from the direction of the roundhouse.

But Venera’s cavalry had just crossed over no-man’s land and were now stepping into the strip of cleared land next to the building. Without hesitation they turned right and galloped at the rear of the Sacrus line. Simultaneously, those council troops fronting the roundhouse assaulted them head-on.

A hysterical laugh pierced the air. Garth turned to see Margit perched atop the wall. She was staring down at the horses with a wild look in her eye. “I’m seeing things in broad daylight now,” she said, and laughed again. “This is a strange dream, this one. Things with four legs… taller than a man…”

Selene reached up to take Margit’s arm, but the former botanist batted her hand aside. Stepping back, her face full of doubt, Selene looked around—and her eyes met Garth’s. He frowned and shook his head slowly.

Angrily, she turned away.

The twelve horses stepped over a barricade while their riders shot the men behind it. The horses were armored, Garth saw, although he was sure it wouldn’t prove too effective under direct fire. Sacrus’s men weren’t firing, though. They were too amazed at what they were seeing. The beasts towered over them, huge masses of muscle on impossibly long legs, festooned with sheet metal barding that half hid their giant eyes and broad teeth. The monsters were overtop and past and wheeling before the defenders could organize. And by then bullets and flicking hooves were finding them, and they all fell.

Margit stood there and watched while the commanders on the ground shouted and waved. The other men on the rooftop stared at the fiasco unfolding below them, then looked to Margit. The seconds dragged.

In that time the horses reached a point midway between the bottled-up council leadership and the Sacrus force below no-man’s land. Now they split into two squads of six. Venera led hers in a thunderous charge directly at the men who had pinned down Guinevera and the Liris army.

Selene jumped onto the wall beside Margit. She stared for a second, then cursed and whirling, shouted, “Shoot! Shoot, you idiots! They’re going to—”

Margit seemed to wake out of her trance. She stepped grandly down from the wall and frowned at the line of prisoners that had been led onto the roof. She strolled over, loosening a pistol at her belt.

“Where is Venera Fanning?” she shouted.

A sick feeling came over Garth. He watched Margit walk up and down the line, saw her pause before Moss, sneer at Samson Odess, and finally stop in front of Eilen.

“You were her friend,” she said. “You’ll know where she is.” She raised the pistol and aimed it between Eilen’s eyes.

Garth tried to run over to her, but a soldier kicked his legs out from under him and only the light gravity saved him from breaking his nose as he fell. “She’s right there!” Garth hollered at Margit. “Riding a horse! You were just looking at her.”

Margit glanced back. Her eyes found Garth lying prone on the flagstones.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” she said with a smile. “Those things weren’t real.”

She shot Eilen in the head.

Venera’s friend flopped to the rooftop in a tumble of limbs. The other captives screamed and quailed. “Where is she?” shrieked Margit, waving the pistol. Now, too late, Selene was running to her side. The younger woman put her hand on Margit’s arm, spoke in her ear, tugged her away from the prisoners.

As she led Margit away Selene glanced over at Garth. It was his turn to look away.

There was a lot of running and shouting then, though little shooting because, he supposed, the men on the roof were afraid of hitting their own men. Garth didn’t care. He lay on his stomach with his cheek pressed against the cold stone and cried.

Someone hauled him to his feet. Dimly he realized that a great roaring sound was coming from beyond the roof’s edge. Now the men on the roof did start firing—and cursing, and looking at one another helplessly.

Garth knew exactly what had happened. Venera had broken the line around Guinevera’s men. They were pouring out of their defensive position and attacking Sacrus’s force beneath no-man’s land. That group was now itself isolated and surrounded.

He wouldn’t be surprised if Venera herself had moved on, perhaps circling the building to connect up with the main bulk of the council army. If she did that, then none of the ladders and elevator platforms to this roof would be safe for Sacrus.

“Come on.” Garth was hauled to his feet and pushed to the middle of the roof. He coughed and realized that smoke was pouring up from the courtyard. The prisoners were wailing and screaming.

Margit’s soldiers had set the cherry trees alight.

“Get on the platform or I’ll shoot you.” Garth blinked and saw that he was standing next to the elevator that climbed Liris’s cable. Margit and Selene were already on the platform, with a crowd of soldiers and several Liris prisoners including Moss and Odess.

He climbed aboard.

Margit smiled with supreme confidence. “This,” she said as if to no one in particular, “is where we’ll defeat her.”

Venera looked down from her saddle at Guinevera, who stared at her with his bloody sword half raised. “You spoke out of turn, Principe,” she called down. “Even if I wasn’t Buridan before, I am now.”

He ducked his head slightly, conceding the point. “We’re grateful, Fanning,” he said.

Venera finally let herself feel her triumph and relief, and slumped a bit in her saddle. Fragmentary memories of the past minutes came and went; who would have thought that the skin of Spyre would bounce under the gallop of a horse?

Scattered gunfire echoed around the corner of the building, but Sacrus’s army was in full retreat. Their force below no-man’s land had surrendered. No one had any stomach for fighting anyway; Sacrus and council soldiers stood side by side, exchanging uneasy glances as another long slow undulation moved through the ground. Council troops were swarming up the sides of Liris, but there was no sound from up there, and an ominous flag of smoke was fluttering from the roof line.

Seeing that, Venera’s anxiety about her friends returned. Garth, Eilen, and Moss—what had become of them during Sacrus’s brief occupation? Her eyes were drawn to the cable that stretched from Liris up to Lesser Spyre. It seemed oddly slack, and somehow that tiny detail filled her with more fear than anything else she’d seen today.

Closer at hand, she spotted Jacoby Sarto walking, unescorted, past ranks of huddling Sacrus prisoners. He looked up at her, his face eloquently expressing the unease she too felt.

Another undulation, stronger this time. She saw trees sway and a sharp crack! echoed from Liris’s masonry wall. Some of the soldiers cried out.

Guinevera looked around. Ever the dramatist, his florid lips quivered as he said, “This should have been our moment of triumph. But what have we won? What have we done to Spyre?”

Venera did her best to look unimpressed, though she was worried too. “Look, there’s no way to know,” she said. That was a lie: she could feel it, they all could. Something was wrong.

A captain ran up. He saluted them both, but it was almost an afterthought. “Ma’am,” he said to Venera. “It’s… they’re waiting for you. On the roof.”

A cold feeling came over her. For just a second she remembered lying on the marble floor of the Rush admiralty, bleeding from the mouth and sure she would die there alone. And then, curled around herself inside Candesce, feeling the Sun of Suns come to life, minutes to go before she was burnt alive. She’d almost lost it all. She could lose it all now.

She flipped down the little ladder attached to her saddle and climbed down. Her thighs and lower back spasmed with pain, but there was no echo from her jaw. She wouldn’t have cared if there had been. As a tremor ran through the earth, Jacoby Sarto reached to steady her. She looked him in the eye.

“If you come with me,” she said, “whose side will you be on?”

He shrugged and staggered as the ground lurched again. “I don’t think sides matter anymore,” he said.

“Then come.” They ran for the ladders.