Queen of Candesce

4

A thick cable rose from the roof of the Nation of Liris. Venera squinted at it, then at the blunderbusses the soldiers cradled. Another, larger blunderbuss was mounted on a pivot under a little roof nearby. That must be the damnable gun whose firing kept waking her up in the morning.

None of those ancient arms looked very accurate. She could probably just jump off the roof and run for it… but run where? Chances were she'd be snapped up by some neighbor worse than these people.

She decided—for the tenth time today—to remain patient and see what happened. No one in Liris seemed to have any immediate desire to harm her. Her best strategy was to play along with them until the moment came when she could escape.

"Now pay attention,” whined Samson Odess. The fish-faced little man had been introduced yesterday as her new boss. The very idea of a commoner giving her orders without an immediate threat to back them up struck Venera as both bizarre and funny. She had so far done the things he had asked, but Odess seemed to sense that she wasn't taking him seriously. He was becoming ever more defensive as the morning wore on.

"This is our lifeline to Lesser Spyre,” Odess said, slapping the cable. Venera saw that he stood on a low platform, at the center of which was a boxy machine that clamped the cable with big ratchet wheels. “By means of this engine, we can rise to the city above, where the Great Fair is held once a week. Visitors from everywhere in Virga come to the Fair. It is the trade delegation's sacred task to ensure that we conduct the most advantageous transactions in the name of Liris.” As he spoke, the rest of the delegation popped up through the roof's one hatch. Four heavily armed men bracketed an iron box that must have held pitted cherries. Flanking them were two men and two women, the women veiled like Venera and dressed in ceremonial robes of highly polished silver, inlaid with crimson enamel.

"Is the gravity the same up there as it is here?” Venera asked. If it was a standard g, they wouldn't be able to move.

Odess shook his head vigorously. “You can see the spin-rate from down here. We'll shed our heavy vestments for city clothes once we're up there."

"Why not change down here?” she asked, puzzled.

Odess goggled at her in astonishment. He'd stared exactly that way yesterday, when he was first introduced. Moss had taken Venera to Odess's office, a glorified closet that made her wonder if Diamandis's pack-rat ways might not be the rule here, rather than the exception. Odess had filled the small space over the years, perhaps his whole lifetime, with oddments and souvenirs that likely made sense to no one but him. What was the significance of that single shoe, mounted as though it were a trophy and given its own little niche in the wall? Could anyone read the faded text on those certificates hung behind his chair? And was that some sort of exotic mobile that drooled from the dimness overhead, or the hanging mummified remains of some sort of animal? Books were stacked everywhere, and a pile of dishes three feet tall teetered next to a rolled-up mattress.

Odess's first words were addressed to Moss, not Venera. “You expect us to accept this… this outsider in our midst?"

"Is th-that not what you d-do?” Moss had asked. “G-go outside?” Startled, Venera had sent him a sidelong look. Was there somebody home behind those glazed eyes, after all?

"B-besides, the b-botanist commanded it."

"Oh, God.” Odess had put his head in his hands. “She thinks she can do anything now."

Any slight deviation from routine or custom threw Odess into a panic. Venera's very presence was upsetting him, though the rest of the delegation had been pathetically happy to meet her. They would have partied till dawn if she hadn't begged off early, pointing out that she had not yet seen the room where she was expected to sleep for the rest of her life.

Eilen, Mistress of Scales and Measures, had shown Venera to a closet just outside the delegation's long, cabinet-lined office. The closet was seven feet on a side—its walls of whitewashed stone—and nearly twelve feet high. There was room for a bed and a small table, and there was no window. “You can put your chest under the bed,” Eilen said, “when you get one. Your clothes you can hang on those pegs for now."

And that was all. If Venera were inclined to sympathy with other people, she would have been saddened at the thought that Eilen, Odess, and the others accepted conditions like these as the norm. After all, they had likely been born and raised in such tiny chambers. Their playgrounds were dusty servants’ ways, their schoolrooms window niches. Yet of all the citizens of Liris, they were the privileged ones, for as members of the delegation they were allowed to see something of the world outside their walls.

While Odess sputtered and tried to explain why tradition demanded that they rise to Lesser Spyre in full ceremonial gear, Venera watched the soldiers deposit their precious cargo on the platform. After the rest of the delegation was on board, they flipped up railings on all sides (to her relief) and one bent to examine the archaic engine. This was what really interested her.

"If we're all ready, we will sing the Hymn of Ascension,” said Odess, portentously.

Venera looked around. “The what?"

He looked as though he'd been slapped—but Eilen put a hand on his arm. “We didn't tell her about it, so how would she know?"

"Anyone in Spyre could see us arise, hear the…” He realized his mistake. “Ah yes. A true foreigner.” Shaking himself, he put both hands on the rail and puffed out his cheeks. “Listen, then, and learn the ways of a civilized society."

While they sang their little ditty, Venera watched the soldier spark the hulking rotary engine into life. Its chattering roar immediately drowned out the miniature choir, who didn't seem to notice. The wheel turned, gripping the cable, and the platform inched slowly into the air.

The purpose of the railings soon became clear. Only a few yards above the rooftop they caught the edge of the howling gale that swept toward the open end of Spyre. This steady hurricane was produced by the rotation of the great cylinder, Venera knew; she'd seen its like in smaller wheels like those of Rush. A wind came in at the cylinder's axis of rotation and shot out again along the rim. If she simply jumped off the platform at this point, she would be propelled out of Spyre entirely, and at goodly force.

The four soldiers were here to shoot anyone who tried that. And now that they were higher up she could see other guarantors of obedience: gun emplacements were suspended in the middle air by more cables, and some of them were visibly manned. Hanging in the sunny clouds beyond the wheel were more bunkers and turrets. It seemed a miracle now that she had, unconscious, threaded her way between them all to land here.

"Father would love this place,” she muttered.

Chaison Fanning, her missing husband, would probably consider Spyre a moral obscenity, and would want to blow it up.

They rose some miles, through filigrees of cloud, puffballs that hovered like anxious angels between the incoming and outblowing gales; past houses and pillboxes bolted to other cables, whose glittering windows revealed nothing of what might be taking place inside them. The lands of Greater Spyre widened and widened below Venera, their patchwork estates becoming a mesmerizing labyrinth: the blockhouses of a dozen, a hundred and more Nations of Liris, it seemed, painted the inside of the cylinder. Slicing through these, leaving ruin and wildflowers on their sidings, were the railways of the preservationists.

All the while, Lesser Spyre came closer.

Venera had seen a geared town once before—in the dead hollow heart of Leaf's Choir, Chaison Fanning's ships had moored next to the asphyxiated city of Carlinth. But Carlinth's pale grandeur couldn't match the wonder of Lesser Spyre because that other city had been motionless in death, and Lesser Spyre lived. Its great wheel-shaped habitats, each a half mile or more in diameter, turned edge to angled edge like the meshwork of a vast clock. The citizen of one wheel could stroll to its edge and simply step onto the surface of another as their rims came within touching distance. The wheels were kept in configuration by a lattice of giant spars and thick cables, from which black banners fluttered.

For all this cunning and motion, Lesser Spyre did not look inviting. There were some houses and streeets, but most of the wheels were dominated on their inside surface by one or two sprawling buildings. The Admiralty at Rush had been like that, as had the Pilot's palace. But also in Rush there were wheels weeded with taverns, towers, and twisting streets, as organic and inviting as a party.

Lesser Spyre was monolithic, self-contained, and controlled. Almost nothing stuck out.

The cable car eluded gravity entirely after a while, and its passengers clipped their metal costumes to the railing and waited until their destination hove into sight. The cable terminated in a knot of dozens of others, at a complicated cagework that threaded the axle of a town-wheel. Venera could see other people embarking and disembarking there. They moved in small groups that gave one another a wide berth.

She saw something else, though, that gave her hope for the first time in days: ships were berthed here. Sleek yachts, for the most part, of many different designs and flying diverse colors—but all foreign. They signaled the possibility of escape, real escape, for the first time since her arrival.

She tapped Odess's tin shoulder and pointed. “Our customers?"

He nodded. “Pilgrims from all the principalities of Candesce come to us, hoping to leave again with some trinket or token of ours. Do you recognize any of those ships?"

Venera nodded. “That one is from Gehellen.” It was the only one she knew, but Odess was obviously impressed. “I know that we'll trade them cherries,” she went on. “But what do the rest of Spyre's countries sell?"

He laughed, and just then the platform came to rest at its terminus. As they clambered over to the axle like so many iron spiders, Odess said, “What do they trade? You ask that with refreshing innocence. If we knew what half our neighbors traded, we might arrange some extra advantage for Liris. The fame of many of Spyre's commodities is spread far and wide—but not all. There are sections of the fair no stranger can enter without providing a guarantee of circumspection."

"A what?"

"A hostage, sometimes,” said Eilen. They had entered a long cylindrical chamber with many small doors spiraling up its interior. Odess found one of these and, producing a massive key, unlocked it. Inside was a slot-shaped locker, its walls encrusted with rust and cobwebs, with one incongruously bright mirror at the far end. Odess and the others proceeded to strip off their metal shells, trading them for ornately tooled leather equivalents—except that in place of veils, each costume came with an elaborate mask. Odess passed a kit to Venera, and she turned her back modestly to change. Her mask had a falcon's beak.

"There are nations,” Odess said, “that average one customer every ten years. Whatever it is they trade, it is so fabulously valuable that the whole country lives off the sale for a generation. That's an extreme example, but there are many others who guard the nature of their produce with their lives. Liris used to be one such. Now everyone knows what we produce, but that's actually worked to our advantage."

"But what can those others be selling?” Venera shook her head in incomprehension. She was stretching a black jacket over a silver-traced vest, admiring the effect in the mirror. With the mask in place she looked intimidating. She liked the effect.

"She is from one of them.” It was one of the soldiers who said it. He didn't have to say who she was; Venera knew he meant the botanist.

Venera raised an eyebrow. “She wasn't born in Liris?"

The soldier shook his head, glancing uneasily at Odess. “Our previous botanist… the trees were languishing, m'lady. They were dying, until she came.” Odess was scowling in obvious warning, but the soldier shrugged. “Five years now, she's brought them back to health."

"And you don't know anything about where she came from?"

"Of course we do!” Odess laughed loudly. “She's a lady of the Nation of Sacrus. We know who she is… even if we don't know what it is that Sacrus does."

"You need better spies,” said Venera. Nobody laughed, but the thought intrigued her. Spyre, it seemed, was an investigator's playground. She would love to develop a network here, the way she had in secret in her adopted home of Slipstream.

They moved from the locker cylinder to the axle of the town-wheel. Here, dozens of yin-yang stairs and elevator shafts ran down to the copper-shingled roofs of the vast buildings lining the wheel. Odess showed their letters of transit to a succession of inspectors and gradually they worked their way over to one of the elevators.

"Stay alert, everyone,” Odess said as the wrought-iron doors grumbled shut behind them, and they began to move down. “Watch for any signs of change. In particular, our new interpreter,” he nodded at Venera, “is going to cause a stir. We need to stick to our agreed story. You,” he said to Venera, “must only speak to the customers, and then only when we ask you to. We don't want to give our rivals any clues about our capabilities or what's been going on inside Liris."

This paranoia reminded Venera of Hale and the darkened corridors of her father's palace. “But why?” she asked in irritation. “Why this skulking?"

"Questions might be asked,” said Odess darkly. “About where you came from. About why our people might have ventured outside our walls. Where we might have gone, what we might have seen. What you might have seen.” He shook his head. “Your story is that you were born and raised in Liris."

"But my accent—"

"Is why you will only speak to the customers."

There was silence for the rest of the ride. Venera adjusted her veil, glanced around, and noted the tightening of shoulders, straightening of stances as gravity rose until it neared the level she was used to. And then the elevator clunked to a halt, and the doors opened.

The trade delegation of Liris edged cautiously into the Great Fair of Spyre.

Fabulous beasts swept across the dance floor, their skirts wheeling in time to the deep drumbeat of Spyre's music. The beasts had the faces of monsters, of animals, of gods. They danced in pairs, sometimes pausing in midpose as the music paused. It was during those pauses that business was transacted.

One slender figure with a hawk's face stood at the foot of a gold-chased pillar, her backdrop a blue trompe l'oeil vista of wheeling towns. She watched the dancers alertly, aware of the deep strains of paranoia and deceit that must run through Spyre for it to have developed this custom. For this filigreed and gleaming ballroom and its whirling dancers was the Great Fair itself.

True, there were display rooms. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Odess emerging from the doorway that led to Liris's. He was alone, and doubtless his errand had been to check on the disposition of the glass cases and lights there. No customers had passed that door since she had been here.

Venera had spent some hours in the display room, helping the others set up. A solitary cherry tree dominated the marbled parlor; it sat in a broad stone bowl, the glow of its pink blossoms the first sight that greeted a visitor. It was a fake, made of silk and common woods.

While Liris's soldiers played cards behind a screen in the display rooms, the rest of the delegation danced. The music was loud, the dances fast and close; so conversation consisted of quick whispers in your partner's ear, quips at arm's length, or brief nose to nose exchanges. Eavesdropping was impossible in these circumstances—and the soldiers of Spyre watched carefully for any sign of it. Venera had been told that visitors were carefully screened, and the penalty for revealing secrets here was death. Ironically, the whole setup seemed designed for cheating, for who could tell what any two dancers were telling one another?

She had heard that the dances were occasionally interrupted by spontaneous duels.

The denizens of Spyre took their masque very seriously. Not all the visitors did; most eschewed disguises, and so Venera was able to tell how many principalities were represented here. She even recognized one or two of the national costumes they wore.

A gavotte ended and the dancers broke up. Gorgon-headed Eilen headed Venera's way. A waiting footman handed her a drink as she paused, panting. “Is it always like this?” Venera asked her. “Interested customers seem a bit thin on the ground."

"We have our regulars,” said Eilen. “It's not the season for any of them. Oh, this gravity! It pulls at my stomach."

Venera sighed. These people were so immersed in their traditions that they couldn't see the insanity of it all. In the brief pause between dances, some of the customers had drifted off with outlandishly masked delegates—salesmen, really. Venera had been keeping track of who went through which doorways. Many of the portals around the vast chamber had never opened. They might be locked or even bricked up on the other side, for all she knew.

She couldn't figure out the architecture of the fair. It seemed that the sprawling, multi-winged building had been renovated, rebuilt, and reimagined so many times over the centuries that it had lost any sense of its original logic. Corridors ran into blank walls; stairwells led nowhere; elevator shafts opened onto roaring air where lower floors had once been. Behind the public walls countless narrow passages twisted their ways to the offices, storage lockers, and panic rooms of the trade delegations. Liris's domain extended several floors above and below their public showroom; Venera had glimpsed in passing a huge chamber, like a collapsing ballroom, its dripping casements lost in gloomy shadows. Eilen had told her that this was where they met customers back when their cherries were a state secret. The ballroom was on one of the high-security levels of the fair; Liris still owned title to it, but had no use for it now.

Venera had scoffed at this. “Has no one had the courage to drill spy holes in the walls to find out what your neighbors are up to?” Odess had sent her one of his disapproving, frightened looks, but nobody had said anything.

Oh, something was happening—Capri, Eilen's apprentice, was leading four people in rich clothes toward the Liris door. The little surge of excitement was absurd, and Venera nearly laughed at herself. Now Odess was bowing to them. He was opening the door. Venera imagined cheering.

"Who are they?” she asked Eilen.

"Oh! Success! That's… let's see… the delegates from Tracoune."

Venera ransacked her memory; why was that word familiar? Ah, that was it. It was only a couple of weeks ago that Venera and her husband had attended a soiree in the capital of Gehellen. The event had been unremarkable up until the shooting started, but she did remember a long conversation with a red-faced admiral of the local navy. He had mentioned Tracoune.

"Excuse me, I'd like to watch this,” she said to Eilen. The woman shrugged and turned back to the dance. Venera threaded her way around the outskirts of the ball and pushed open the door to the Liris showroom. It was at the end of a long hallway, seventy feet at least in length. Random words echoed back at her as Venera walked down it.

Odess was showing them the tree. Now he was opening a lacquered box to reveal the cherries. Capri hovered nervously in the background.

The visitors didn't seem too impressed. One of the four—a woman—wandered away from the others to stare idly at the paintings on the walls. They seemed to be marking time here, perhaps taking a break from dancing. Even Venera, with no experience in sales, could tell that.

She approached the woman. “Excuse me…” said Venera. She deliberately did not stand or move the way Odess and Capri were—clasping their hands in front of them, darting hesitantly like servants. Instead, Venera bowed like an equal.

"Yes?” The customer looked surprised, but not displeased at being approached in this way.

"Do I have the pleasure of addressing a citizen of Tracoune?” The woman nodded.

"I had the most illuminating conversation recently,” Venera continued, “at a party in Gehellen. We talked about Tracoune."

An edge of calculation came into the woman's gaze. “Oh, really? Who were you talking to?"

"An admiral in the Gehellen navy, as it happens.” Venera saw Odess notice that she was accosting a customer (his expression said, ‘the new one's loose!') and then he started trying to make eye contact with her while pretending to give his full attention to his own people.

Venera smiled. “I'm so sorry that you've had to cancel the Feast of Saint Jackson this year,” she said to her prospect. “The Gehellenese are speculating that you won't be able to afford to feed your own people this time next year. Gauche of them, really."

"They said that?” The woman's face darkened in anger. “The Incident at Tibo was hardly that serious!"

"Ah, we thought not,” said Venera in a conspiratorial way. “It's just that appearance is so important to international relations, isn't it?"

Ten minutes later the visitors were signing on the dotted line. Venera stood behind the astounded trade delegation of Liris, her arms crossed, inscrutable behind her beaked mask.

Odess stepped back to whisper furiously to her. “How did you do it? These people have never been customers before!"

She shrugged. “You just have to know people's weaknesses. In a few weeks Tracoune will throw some minor party for visiting officials, and among other things they'll give away a few cherries… as if they could afford boatloads of them. A very discreet message, on a channel so private that almost no one on either side will know why when the Gehellens decide not to call in their outstanding loans to Tracoune—which they've been thinking of doing."

He glared at her. “But how could…"

She nodded. “The levers of diplomacy are very small. The art lies in knowing where to pry."

Venera chatted with the clients while a soldier loaded a carrying case with dry ice and Odess measured out the pitted cherries. “Speaking of Gehellen,” Venera said after a while, “we heard about some sort of commotion there a couple of weeks ago."

The head of the Tracoune expedition laughed. “Oh, that! They're the laughingstock of the principalities!"

"But what happened?"

He grinned. “Visitors from one of the savage nations… Oh, what was the name?"

"Slipstream,” said the woman Venera had first dealt with.

"Slipstream, that was it. Seems an admiral of Slipstream went mad and took to piracy with some of his captains. They fought a pitched battle with the Gehellen navy in the very capital itself! Smashed their way out of the palace and escaped into Leaf's Choir, where it's rumored they found and made off with the Hoard of Anetene itself!"

"But that part's too preposterous, of course,” said the woman. “If they'd found the hoard, they would have a key to Candesce as well—the last one is supposed to be the centerpiece of the hoard. With that they could have ruled all of Virga from the sun of suns itself!"

"Well.” The man shrugged.

"What happened to them?” asked Venera. “Did they escape?"

"Oh, they evaded the Gehellen navy right enough,” he said with another laugh. “Only to be cut to ribbons in some barbarous nation near the edge of the world. None escaped, I hear."

"None…” Venera's pulse was racing, but she chose not to believe this man. His story had too many of the facets of rumor.

"Oh, no, I've been following this one,” said the woman, with evident enjoyment. “It seems the Slipstreamers ran afoul of a place called Falcon Formation. The admiral suicidally rammed his flagship into some sort of dreadnaught of Falcon's. Both ships were obliterated in the explosion. Of his six other ships, only one got away."

"Its name?” Venera put her hand out to steady herself. Her fingers met the false bark of the fake cherry tree.

"What's name?"

"The… the ship that escaped. Did you hear which one escaped?"

The woman looked affronted. “I didn't follow the story that closely.” Now it was her turn to laugh. “But they foolishly ran for home, and the Pilot of Slipstream had them arrested the instant they came into port. For treason! What foolishness of them to even try to go home."

Venera was glad of the mask she wore. It felt like her heart was slowing and would stop at any second. It was all she could do to keep up appearances until the Tracoune delegation left with their first consignment of cherries. Then she rushed back to the screened alcove, ignoring the jubilant congratulations the others were lavishing on her.

Even though the mask would have hid them, she shed no tears. Venera had learned many years ago never to do that in the presence of another human being.