Queen of Candesce

5

That evening there was a celebration in a gallery overlooking the cherry trees. Amber light poured into the blued central shaft, glinting off windows and outlining shutters and balconies above and below, while small gusts of air still warm from Candesce's light teased the diaphanous drapes. Like everywhere else in Liris, the party room was small, crammed with memorabilia and eccentric furnishings, and reachable only through a labyrinth of stairs and corridors. It reminded Venera of her childhood bedroom.

She had not wanted to come. All she wanted to do was sit alone in her closet. But Eilen insisted. “Why so gloomy?” she asked as she leaned hipshot in Venera's doorway. “You did great service to your country today!” Venera didn't speak as they walked, and she did her best to be the ghost at the wedding for the remainder of the night.

Her sorrow wasn't catching. Most of Liris turned out for the event, and a dizzying parade of strange and neurotic characters passed in front of Venera as she systematically drank herself into a stupor. There were the hereditary soldiers with their peaked helmets and blunderbusses; the gray sanitation men who spoke in monotones and huddled together near the drinks table; the seamstresses and chandlers, carpenters, and cleaners who all spoke a secret language they had developed together in their childhood. And there were children, too—grave, wide-eyed gamins who skirted around Venera as though she had stepped out of one of their fantasy books.

She watched them all go by, numb. I knew that this might happen, she told herself. That he might die. Yet she had gone ahead with her plan, dragging Chaison reluctantly into it. It had been necessary if they were to save Slipstream; she knew that. But the decision still felt like a betrayal.

"It's so electric,” said Eilen now, “having a new face in our world!” Quite drunk, she balanced on one foot near Venera, waving excitedly at people she had seen every day of her life. Of those people, a few had approached and introduced themselves, halting and stammering; most stayed back, muttering together and eyeing Venera. Foreigner. Strange beast. New darling of the botanist.

And yes, the botanist was here, too. She glided through the celebrants as though on rails, nodding here and there, speaking strategic words on the outskirts of discussions, the same mysterious smile as always hovering just behind her lips. Eventually she made her way over to Venera. She hove to just this side of Eilen. Eilen herself moved away, suddenly quiet.

"I've always said that it pays to know your customers,” the botanist said. “I judged your potential rightly."

Venera eyed her. “Is that what you feel you do? Judge people's potential? Like the buds of flowers that might bloom or whither?"

"How apt. Yes, that's exactly right,” said the botanist. “Some are to be encouraged, others cut from the branch. You nod as though you understand."

"I've done a certain amount of… pruning… in my day,” said Venera. “So I've achieved a great victory for your tiny nation. Now what?"

"Now,” said the botanist in a breathless sort of sisterly way, “we talk about what to do next. You see, you've vindicated my methods. I believe Liris needs to be more open to the outside world—that we need to send our delegates farther, even outside Spyre itself."

The fog of Venera's sorrow lifted just a bit. “Leave Spyre? What do you mean?"

"I would like to send a trade mission to one of the principalities,” said the botanist. “You, of course, would lead it."

"I'd be honored,” said Venera with a straight face. “But isn't it Odess's job to arrange such things?"

"Odess?” The botanist waved her hand dismissively. “Prattling whiner. Take him if you'd like, but I can't see what good he'll do you. No, I picture you, perhaps Eilen, and one or two loyal soldiers. And a consignment of our treasure to tempt potential customers."

"That sounds reasonable.” Venera couldn't believe what she was hearing. Did the woman seriously believe she would come back if she got out of this place? But then, everyone in Spyre seemed dangerously naive.

"Good. Say nothing of this to the others,” instructed the botanist severely. “It won't do to let old wounds fester."

What did that mean? Venera thought about it as the botanist strolled away, but then Eilen returned and spilled her drink on Venera's shoes. The evening went downhill from there, and so she didn't really ponder the botanist's unlikely offer until she got back to her closet, near dawn.

She had just closed the ill-fitting door and was about to climb under the covers when there was a polite knock on the jamb. Venera cracked the door an inch.

Moss leaned like a decapitated tree outside her door. “Citizen F-f-fanning,” he said. “I j-just wanted to give you th-th-these."

In the faint lamplight of the hallway, she could just make out a tiny bouquet of posies in his hand.

The juxtaposition of his chiseled features with the emptiness of his eyes made her skin crawl. Venera slipped her hand out to snatch the little bundle of flowers from his nerveless fingers. “Thanks. You're not in love with me, are you?"

"I'm s-s-sorry you're so's-sad,” he murmured. “T-t-try not to be so's-s-sad."

Venera gaped at him. His words had been so quiet, but they seemed to echo on and on in the silent corridor. “Sad? Why do you think I'm sad?"

Nobody else had noticed—not even Eilen, who had been watching Venera like a mother hawk all evening. Venera narrowed her eyes. “I didn't see you at the party. Where were you?"

"I w-w-was there. In the c-corner."

Present yet absent. That seemed to sum Moss up. “Well.” Venera looked down at Moss's present. Somehow she had clenched her fist and had crushed the little white blossoms.

"Thank you,” she said. Moss turned away with a muted clattering noise. “Moss,” she said quickly. He looked back.

"I don't want you to be sad, either,” said Venera.

He shambled away and Venera closed the door softly. Once alone, she let loose one long shuddering sigh and tumbled face-first onto the bed.

The next morning, Venera wore the half-crushed posies on the breast of her jacket. If anybody noticed, they said nothing. She ate her breakfast with the members of the delegation in their designated dining room—a roofed-over air-shaft lined floor to invisible ceiling with stuffed animals—and followed them silently to their offices. She had discerned the routine by now: they would sit around for the rest of the day, occasionally engaging in desultory, short-lived dialogs, have lunch and then supper, and turn in.

If she had to live like this for more than a couple of days, Venera knew she would snap. So, at ten o'clock, she said, “Can't we at least play cards?"

One of the soldiers glanced over, then shook his head mournfully. “Odess always wins."

"But I'm here now,” said Venera. “What if I were to win?"

Slowly, they roused into a state resembling the attentive. With much cajoling and browbeating, Venera got them to reveal the location of the cards, and once she had these she energetically pulled a table and some chairs into the center of the room. “Sit,” she commanded, “and learn."

This was her opportunity to grill her compatriots properly—the party last night had been too hectic and strange, with everyone playing pal in transparent ways—and Venera made the best of it. After ten minutes Odess emerged from his office, looking bleary and cross, but his eyes lit up when he saw her shuffling the cards. Venera grinned sloppily at him and he drew up a chair.

"So,” she said as the others examined their cards, “tell me about the botanist."

The Pantry War had been dragging on for five years. Liris and the Duchy of Vatoris both claimed a five- by seven-foot room off one of the twisting corridors of the fair. The titles went back a hundred years, and the wording was ambiguous. Neither side would back down.

"War?” said Venera as she peered over her cards. “Don't you mean feud?"

The other players all shook their heads. No, explained Odess, a feud was a family thing. This was a conflict between professional soldiers, and it took the form of pitched battles—even if those battles were between a dozen or so soldiers on either side, which was all the manpower the tiny nations could muster. After years of ambushes, raids, firefights, and all manner of other mayhem, it had settled into a war of attrition. Barricades had been thrown up in the disputed corridor; a no-man's-land of broken furniture and cracked tile stretched for thirty feet between them. The entrance to the closet beckoned only yards away, and either side could capture it in seconds. The trick was to hold it.

The two sides dug in. The barricades were ramified and reinforced, then backed up with cannon and rifles. Days might pass without a shot fired, but the other tenants of the fair got used to sudden flurries of gunfire. Rarely was anyone actually hurt. The loss of a single man would constitute a disaster.

These things happened. Even now, the fair was riddled with strange tensions—empty passages paved in dust where no one had walked in generations because of just such disputes as this; neighbors who would think nothing of murdering one another in quiet corners if they had the chance; victims walled up in alcoves; and everywhere, conspiracies.

It was a random bullet that changed everything. The walls around the disputed hallway had never been strong, but the combatants had hired a neutral third party to shore them up at regular intervals. Perhaps it was inevitable, though, that chinks and cracks should develop. One day, a bullet fired from the Vatoris barricade slipped through such a crack, ricocheted sixty feet down an abandoned air shaft, and killed the heir of a major nation as he stood at a punch bowl.

Venera rubbed her jaw. “I can imagine the reaction."

"I'm not sure you can,” said Odess portentously. The nation in question was the mysterious Land of Sacrus, a country of “vast size,” according to Eilen.

"How vast?"

"Fully three square miles!"

Sacrus traded in power—but exactly how, no one was quite sure. They were one of the most secretive of countries, their fields being dotted with windowless factories, the perimeter patrolled by guards with dogs and guns. Small airships bristling with guns bobbed above the main complex. The Sacrans emerged from their smoke-wreathed towers only once or twice a year, and then they spoke almost exclusively to their customers. They were one of the few nations that had withstood the full force of the preservationists—in fact, nobody in the preservationist camp would talk about just how badly that particular battle had gone.

Sacrus was enraged at the death of their heir. Three days after the incident, the Vatoris barricade fell silent. The soldiers of Liris fired a few shots and got no response. When they cautiously advanced on the Vatoris position, they found it abandoned.

Discrete inquiries were made. No one had seen any of the Vatorins since the day of the fateful gunshot. In a moment of supreme daring, Liris sent its troops directly to the Vatoris apartments. They were empty.

At this point, rumors of a great stench rising from Vatoris itself reached Odess's ears. “I was sitting in our showroom,” he said. “I remember it like it was yesterday. One of the scions of a minor nation entered and told me that his people were walking up and down along the border with Vatoris, sniffing the air and exchanging rumors. The smell was the smell of death."

Odess returned home that night to warn his people. “But it was too late. As I lay down to sleep that evening, I heard it—we all did.” A hissing sound filled the chambers of Liris. It was faint, but for someone like Odess, who had lived behind these walls his whole life, it had the effect of a siren.

"I stood, tried to run to the door. I fell down.” The others related similar experiences, of sudden paralysis, landings behind desks or next to wavering doors. “We lay there helpless, all of us, unable to even focus our eyes. And we listened."

What they heard, after an hour or so, was a single set of footsteps. They moved smoothly from room to room, up stairs and down, not as if seeking anything, but as though whoever walked were taking inventory—committing every passage and chamber of Liris to memory. Eventually, they came to a stop. Silence returned.

The paralysis faded near dawn. Odess rose, retched miserably for a few minutes, and then—trembling—crept in the direction those footsteps had taken. As he went he saw others emerging from their rooms, or rising from where they had fallen in mid walk. They converged on the place where the footsteps had halted: in the cherry tree courtyard.

"And there she sat,” said Odess, “exactly as she sits these days, with the same damned smile and the same damned air of superiority. The botanist. Our conqueror."

"And no one has challenged her?” Venera barked a laugh of disbelief. “You fear reprisals, is that it?"

Odess shrugged. “She ended the war, and under her leadership, the cherries bloom. Who else are we going to have lead us?"

Venera scowled at her cards. A pulse of pain shot up her jaw. “I thought you were a meritocracy."

"And so we are. And she is the best botanist we have ever had."

"What happened to the one she replaced?"

They exchanged glances. “We don't know,” confessed Eilen. “He disappeared the day Margit came."

Venera discarded one card and took another from the deck. The others did the same, then she fanned out her hand. “I win."

Odess grimaced and began to shuffle.

"She came to me last night,” said Venera. She had decided that she needed information more than discretion at this point. “Margit was pleased with the work I did.” Odess snorted; Venera ignored him and continued. “She had a proposal."

She told them about Margit's idea of an extended trade expedition into the principalities. As she did, Venera watched all movement around the table stop. Even Odess's practiced hand ceased its fanning of the cards. They were all staring at her.

"What?” She glanced around defensively. “Does this violate some ancient taboo?—I'm sure, everything else does. Or is it something you've been trying to get done for years, and now you're mad that the newcomer has achieved it?"

Eilen looked down. “It's been tried before,” she said in a quiet voice.

"You must understand,” said Odess; then he fell silent. Knitting his brows, he started furiously shuffling.

"What?” Now Venera was seriously alarmed. “What's wrong?"

"To travel outside Spyre… is not done,” said Odess reluctantly. “Not without safeguards to guarantee one's return. Hostages, if one is married… but you're not."

Venera was disgusted. “The pillboxes, the guns and razor wire—they really aren't to keep people out, are they? They're to keep them in."

"Yes, but you see, if Margit is willing to send you out despite you having no ties here, no hostages or anything she could hold over you… Then she's obviously willing to try it again,” said Odess. He slammed the deck down on the table, kicked his chair back, and walked away. Venera watched him go in startled amazement.

The soldiers were standing too, not making eye contact with anyone.

Venera pinned Eilen with her gaze. “Try what?"

The woman sighed deeply. “Margit is a master of chemistry and biology,” she said. “That's why she is the botanist. Three years ago she conceived the idea of sending an expedition like the one you're describing. She chose a man who was competent, intelligent, and brave, but one whom she didn't completely trust. To guarantee that he would return, she… injected him. With a slow poison that was not supposed to begin to act for ten days. If he returned within those ten days, she would give him the antidote, and he would be fine."

Venera eyed the splayed cards. “What happened?"

"The return flight was delayed by a storm. He made it back on the eleventh day."

Venera hesitated—but she already knew the answer when she asked, “Who was it that Margit sent?"

"Moss,” said Eilen with a shudder. “She sent Moss."